Destiny's Road h-3

by Larry Niven

  Dennis had been naked. Jemmy felt shamed that he'd thought to look, but he looked around and ticked them off: his own and five other sets of windbreakers and shorts, all climbing well.

  A rift in the blazing clouds showed as a black canyon and a terrible light within. Blinded, they froze against the hillside, under a blazing eye in a black sky.

  The rift closed before they moved again.

  As they climbed, the light crawled away from them, back toward the firebird ponchos.

  Andrew was coming back down. “Not this way. Stop them.” He edged sideways along the hillside and trie.d another path. Jemmy got the rest of them to where they could cling, and they waited until Andrew shouted.

  Now the sky blazed upRoad, above the ponchos they'd left behind, lighting them until proles could come to see what they were. That ought to take hours. The Windfarm's felons climbed in the fringes of the light, with no firebird colors to mark them.

  The bulge of the hill hid further heights. The crest receded like dreams. Jemmy tried to count heads. Ten plus his own plus Andrew should be twelve. He waited, and presently heard sobbing. Ansel Tarr, sixteen and skinny and shivering in the rain. Jemmy doubled back, cursing the slope he'd have to climb twice, and guided Ansel's hands and feet until they'd found the next split in the rock.

  The next man he had to help was Andrew.

  Andrew had spent the last day and night exploring, preparing. It wasn't surprising that he was exhausted. His glare of hate was hard to take. Jemmy tied the rope under Andrew's shoulders, then his own waist, and climbed.

  They found a flat spot, and stood, and looked about.

  Beyond was down. They could hear the whoops of the gatherers receding ahead of them. Only Barda and Willametta and Amnon had waited.

  They chattered as they flowed downhill. They had their wind back.

  Blazing clouds lit the way. There was valley below, and behind it another ridge. The slopes were steep, with a tangle of black and bronze and yellow at the bottom, and a glitter shining through. A glitter of water, not Road, Jemmy thought.

  He didn't see any easy way to cross.

  “That's not the Road,” Henry said critically.

  Andrew snarled. “Barda? If we follow the valley far enough, we have to hit the Road. We'll be moving toward the Neck.”

  Barda didn't answer.

  ''Willya?''

  “Okay.”

  Andrew led off.

  The bottom of the valley was all water and mud and Destiny thorn.

  They crawled along the slope at the frost line. They were picking up stones and branches for weapons even before they saw the birds.

  Two. They plunged out of the bush, uphill, silent, aimed like darts. Just beyond stone's throw they stopped suddenly, wings braked against the air. Turned and plunged back.

  “We must stink of alien blood,” Rafik said.

  Andrew said, “Keep the clubs. Oh, man, I miss the prole gun!” He glared at Jemmy,

  Jemmy said, “I should have given it to you and made you carry it.”

  “Carry it? But... oh. You bastard.”

  “Carry it back to where we left the ponchos and then throw it away. That would have fixed you.”

  Andrew was laughing, much against his will. “No birdfucking allowed!”

  “It's the law!” shouted half a dozen voices.

  The line straggled to a halt. The valley ended in a dome of gray lava or began there. It appeared they'd been moving upstream.

  Jemmy asked, “Andrew? Anyone? What makes tubes?”

  “Tubes?”

  Jemmy pointed across at the opposite slope. Lava had oozed out of Destiny's core to form a pillow of rock half a klick high. A snake of gray rock flowed from it, widening and narrowing in pulses. A rounded break like a snake's mouth emitted a lesser tube like a snake's tongue, and that grew larger until it did it again, and that tube ran down into the thorn. Jemmy could see breaks where the tube had collapsed.

  He said, “I hid out in one of those. Saved my life.”

  “Great. How do we cross? Why bother?”

  Henry said, “About now the proles are looking at, what was it, a dozen empty ponchos? And they're trying to think of someplace else to look-”

  “And we're all ready to collapse,” Willametta said. “But we've got knives, Andrew. We'll cut through.”

  Barda passed out knives: she had eight, and Andrew got one, but she kept the biggest. Andrew's opinion had not been asked.

  They sawed their way through the weeds at the bottom of the valley, wading through waist-deep water. Birds of all sizes fled in terror from twelve noisy alien life-forms and a rich stench of human blood from cuts and scrapes and scratches. They were well and truly exhausted by the time they reached the tube.

  The sky went black.

  The light had been glaring beyond the ridge, over the valley they'd left behind, for so many hours that at first Jemmy couldn't understand what had changed. But someone in the Parole Board must have guessed that fleeing felons might need light.

  In a sputter of lightning they crawled into true dark. The tube was big. It might have held any kind of predator. Jemmy moved knifepointfirst, ready to back up fast, though he was third in line behind Andrew and Willametta.

  It was a big tube, as wide as two people; wider in spots. Jemmy sprawled out and let himself fade...

  “Let me out! Let me out!” far away and garbled; and then a rustle.

  Barda:"Anything wrong down there?”

  “Just Denis losing his dinner.”

  The tube was quite smooth and comfortable, barring a little rainwater in the bottom. Wind blew through the big holes and kept it from being stuffy. Thunder roared from time to time, but he'd grown used to that. He could hear Willametta and Andrew making noisy love, both wild with the taste of freedom, their feet a meter from his head. That was almost restful.

  Yet he couldn't sleep.

  He heard Henry ask plaintively, “Did anyone see an Earthlife bird?”

  “We'd have known.” Barda, three centimeters from Jemmy's feet.

  Henry:"I'd kill a prole for a duck.”

  Ansel, much closer: “There's good eatin' on a prole.”

  “Is he right, Barda?”

  “Oh, shut it, Henry. Even so, you all listening? We've gotto find Earthlife food. If we still look like a dozen ghouls the first time any citizen finds us .

  “That's kind of what I meant.”

  Willametta, from uptube: “Barda, tell us more about this inn we're trying to get to.”

  “Wave Rider, we were going to call it. My older brothers, Barry and Bill, and I went off with a gang of workmen from Destiny Town. That left Daddy with Brian and Carol. We knew Daddy'd work them hard. We hated to leave them.

  “The Overview Bureau used to be antsy about people messing with Otterfolk, but they've loosened up some. Daddy got permission somehow. We built not far from shore. We brought a specialist to teach us how to deal with Otterfolk for fish. I don't think Daddy could ever have loosened up enough. You have to swim with them. They like to play.”

  “You like that, Barda?”

  “It beats what else we were doing. Digging a foundation. Pouring stone. We were starting to build the frame when Daddy sent me off to Romanoff.”

  “The other best restaurant.”

  “Jeremy, I grew up knowing how to cook the Earthlife fish from Swan Lake, but Daddy thought seafood must be different, and Destiny seafood anyway, I went. Wide Wade's School of De~tiny Biochemistry and Cuisine is attached to Romanoff. The best students end up there.

  “And while I was at Wide Wade's, I got word that Bill ran away with the money for the workmen! Daddy was in a rage and I was supposed to go back to the Swan. So I ran too. And I never saw any of them ever again until the tribunal.”

  “I've been in the Swan,” Duncan Nicholls said.

  “No way,” said Barda.

  Willametta asked, voice raised to talk past Jemmy, “Barda, how far away is this shoreline site you picked?�
�

  “Seventy klicks from Destiny Town, where the Road dips almost down to the water. About that far from here, I guess. Willya, I don't know how much of it they built.”

  “Well, there's ten of us, and you tell us how to do it, and Jeremy can make us a pit barbecue.”

  “If we can get there,” said a voice. Another told him to shut up. Jemmy stopped listening. He was half-asleep, and so were the rest of them, and anyone still awake wouldn't be making sense.

  He dozed. The voices had all gone quiet. All but- “It's at Swan Lake, between the Road and the shore.” Duncan. “Daddy wouldn't let you in the Swan.” Barda, scornful. “Harold Winslow? He wasn't there.”

  “Who was?”

  “Nobody. Barda, it's just a shell. They took out the ovens even, and the chairs and tables. I hid out in the Swan while they were looking for me after, you know.”

  “How'd they catch you?”

  “Got careless. Twice. I mean, I thought I'd hide out for a while and then hit the Road with the money and settle down in Terminus. But I didn't think of speckles. So I got speckles-shy and careless and got caught fishing off the dock.”

  Jemmy asked, “Duncan, do you have any idea where the Winslow family went?”

  “How would I?”

  “Well, the proles might have said something.”

  “Nope.”

  “Barda, it strikes me that maybe your daddy just left the Swan and went off to finish Wave Rider.”

  Silence.

  Jemmy asked, “Who else would take the ovens?” “Is Andrew awake?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “We'll tell him in the morning.”

  24

  The Ridges

  We could build clocks that keep a Destiny calendar and Destiny time, but there's no point. The Spirals sell clocks by wagonloads, and we all use them. On Earth it's some slightly different date plus the lightspeed gap, and that doesn't matter either.

  -Hillary Miller, first mayor of Terminus

  In the morning they crossed the ridge and found another valley. They hacked and waded across.

  And another behind the next ridge, but Cavorite must have seared and seeded this land. They yelled like maniacs to see green trees and grass covering the slopes. Black and yellow-green ran along the bottom, Destiny life seared away and then returned.

  Felons scattered to hunt. Andrew kept others to dig a pit with their hands and to cut Destiny wood with kitchen knives. Jemmy Bloocher and Barda Winslow fought sporadic flurries of rain to make fire.

  Before night fell they had cooked a pig, four rabbits, a small bird Ansel caught by leaping at it, and a man's weight of green bananas.

  Gorged stupid, the dozen escapees lay on a sloping hill and looked at each other. Andrew Dowd said, “It can work.”

  Someone was talking about staying here.

  Jemmy could have slept through that if Andrew hadn't begun shouting. Where will the Parole Board look first? where... more speckles? crazy bastard... had a plan...

  He tried to ignore the sounds, but now Ansel was shouting back. “Not forever! We stay here till the Board gets bored looking for us.”

  Andrew: “I know where the caravan is now! When they get to the Swan we've got to be ready. Merchants won't wait.”

  “If we settle here, the Board will quit after a month. They don't know we've got a speckles stash-“

  “Speckles rots!”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  Barda: “Ansel, speckles gets a splash of radiation before it goes on the Road. They do it in the Parole Board complex. Didn't you know?''

  “You planned this knowing-? Wait a minute. Andrew, how long does speckles last if nobody zaps it?”

  “No idea.”

  “You don't even know it's to preserve the speckles, do you? It might be they don't want fertile seeds getting out-”

  “That's birdfucking crazy!”

  “Who died and made you prole?”

  “Shut up! Shut your face or I'll turn it inside out for you!”

  Barda was on Andrew's arm, whispering, while Willametta stalked off in a rage.

  Jemmy spoke as she passed. “Willya.”

  She dropped beside him. She said, “They're all crazy.” Jemmy said, “Sure.”

  “Andrew too. Idiot. If he'd just let them talk.” “He still thinks he's a trusty, Willya.”

  “What's your take on this, Jeremy?”

  Jemmy said, “We had a plan. Then we had another plan. Plans are cheap. I've thrown away a lot of plans. I like-” His arm swept about himself. ”-this. We can hunt!”

  “You'd stay?” The ragged clouds permitted glimpses of stars, but it was too dark to see more than shadows. She moved closer, to see his face.

  “No, I mean we can keep a restaurant supplied. If they seared this valley, Cavorite must have seared and seeded every valley between here and the Road. They're all ready to be hunted. I saw-”

  “Ah.” Relieved, she nestled against him.

  He asked, “Does Andrew-?”

  “Too many men, not enough women, and a woman who gets pregnant goes free. Any man who tries to hold on to a woman gets taught different.”

  “Unless he's a trusty?”

  “By that time, he knows.” Somehow they'd come to be lying side by side, their backs against the long damp grass. Willametta said, “I haven't seen stars in two years.”

  “Me... well. Days.”

  “Be a restaurant. It sounded crazy when you said it.”

  “Caravans build a new restaurant every evet~iing, and I was the one who did the building. When I see the Swan I'll tell you what I think. Maybe it's fallen down.”

  “What do we do then?”

  “I can't stop until I've seen Destiny Town.”

  She sat up abruptly. “Crab shies aren't allowed on the mainland,” she said. “You know better than to go into town without an identity, Jeremy.”

  Crab shies?

  “How would I pick up an identity? What identity? I mean, with this accent.”

  “You could be a merchant child.”

  Jemmy chewed that. He'd have learned the Crab accent while traveling with the caravan... wait. “Willya, there weren't any children on the caravans.”

  “No. Jeremy, if a merchant gets pregnant on the Road, she's bound to be home before she has the baby.”

  “Then what are we talking about?”

  “Well, merchant men make children along the Road too. The children stay where they're born unless something happens. You could have been picked up at two or three years old.”

  “That ever happen?” It sounded like a children's story.

  “Ask Duncan Nick. Nicholls.”

  “Duncan doesn't have any accent.”

  “He lost it.” She rolled over onto him. “You going to talk all night?” He did wonder, afterward, why he had been so favored. But Willya, her breath easing, whispered, “What did you see?”

  “When?”

  “You said-”

  He remembered, and smiled. “I saw green beans growing up cornstalks over most of a hillside, but they're not ripe yet. In a few months we'll get our veggies here too. I've been looking for potatoes. We can bake bananas-“

  At dawn the felons were all over the place. Andrew whistled to gather them up.

  Winnie was talking to Barda, low and fast.

  Barda listened, then summoned Andrew.

  The rest straggled in. Winnie looked exhausted already, and two were still missing: Ansel Tarr and Asham Mandala. Andrew looked like bloody murder.

  This would be easier, Jemmy thought, if he had bread to offer instead of leftover pork. He said, “They'll catch up. Once we're on the ridge they'll see us. Being seen from the sky is the problem.”

  “Always ready to spot the problem, aren't we, Jemmy?”

  “Mmm? What am I missing?”

  Barda said, “Tell him, Winnie.”

  The slender dark woman spoke in a fast monotone. “They wanted me to go with them. Asham had my arm
s but I bit Ansel's hand and started screaming, I think I kicked him a good one too, and I pulled loose. They wanted me to stop yelling and let them go, and I saw Asham had one of the knives so I just ran back here. But they're gone.”

  “And you didn't tell me,” Andrew said venomously.

  “We can't wait,” Barda said.

  “Barda, they've deserted me!”

  Andrew and Barda were still keeping their voices down, though Amnon and Henry had moved into earshot. Jemmy risked saying, “Some of us still think you're the trusties, you know? And some of us have noticed that there aren't any proles to say so. Andrew, when you tell all of us to stop talking about anything but the plan, who is it that stops talking? Just the ones who say you're right, right?”

  “Your point?”

  “Keep us talking or you'll lose more.”

  Andrew sighed. “But if I let these birdfuckers go-”

  “Did they get our speckles stash?”

  “What? Turn around.”

  Jemmy turned. Andrew opened Jemmy's pack and looked in. “Still there. Wait.” He fished the bag out, opened it, looked, sniffed. “Still there. What are you playing at? Did you think they could get it away from you?”

  “It was the only thing they could take that's worth anything, and they don't have it. Let them go.”

  “No!”

  Henry said, “We can't catch them. Earth's sake, would you have chased them in the dark? When they do show up in a few days, speckle sshy and begging for their brains back, they'll be a horrible example."

  Andrew snorted. Barda said, “We'll be restaurateurs by then. They'll have to be hidden fast.”

  Jemmy saw Andrew bite back his answer. Killed! We're planning a charade, and a speckles-shy might blurt out something deadly. Jemmy looked for alternatives... and Andrew saw his nod.

  Ten were left.

  Over the ridge was another valley, Destiny rife along the bottom, Earthlife running up the slopes, birds that hovered like hawks. The sky was tattered clouds and fluttery winds that would not support heavy Destiny birds. Those birds must be Earthlife.