Destiny's Road (11 page)

"...No. Tell me about Columbia."

Tim spoke to the back of Haron's head.

Columbia was a huge squat tower in a nest of cables, with a brick building against its side to protect the join. The original cables were as thin as angel hair pasta. Replacement cables were as thick as a man's fingers, made of copper or silver bought from merchants. Clusters of black conical pits each the size of a boy were attitude jets. Once they had spit fire. The hatch ten meters up, and the old stairway built to reach it, were made of poured rock, wonderfully precise.

Power had flowed from Columbia for two and a half centuries. Tim spoke of Spiral Town's machines all wearing down, getting less and less power as Columbia's energy grew more sluggish.

The old man listened and gave nothing back, and Tim spoke more than he intended. He spoke of boyhood dreams: studying engineering and plasma physics, running the power system as apprentice and journeyman, until they would let him enter Columbia's interior. To turn on the old ship's motors. And rise in a blaze of light and a tearing away of the ship's prison of cables, rise into the sky and fly.

The eldest Bloocher boy, the one who would inherit, could never do any of that.

The old man's attention was wandering. From some attic storage in his memory Tim pulled something random.

"Did you know that Earth's sun was hotter than ours?"

Haron's eyebrows arced. "Why didn't they fry?"

"Earth was farther away, of course. The sun probably looked smaller, and brighter, so it'd dazzle you quicker, and the light would have been more blue. Maybe the sky had more blue in it.'~' Tim was guessing at some of this. "But Destiny's sun is a little smaller than Sol, and maybe two billion years older."

"Huh. And why would any of this crap make a fingernail's difference ~ to anyone?"

Jemmy Bloocher had asked that too. There were answers. "Earth took almost twice as long to go around Sol. We have eight months in a year, they had twelve, but theirs were longer. The clocks still measure Earth days and Earth years."

"Yeah, the Spiral Town clocks. Can't anyone make a clock for Destiny time?"

"Nobody I know. Hey, have you ever been sunburned?"

Haron considered. "Few times, I've stayed out all day surfing. Next day I'm bright red and everything hurts. Can't wear clothes. Can't go outside. Next day, itch. Two days after that I'm peeling like a snake in spring."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"On Earth you could do that in a hour," Tim said. "They had to wear hats and spread goo on their skins to thin the sunlight or they'd get cancer. Too much-" He'd never quite got this straight. "Too much of the light that's too blue to see."

Haron seemed to find that funny. "Too blue to see." He set down the board. Nearly naked to the wind, he didn't shiver. "All right. You know something. Not like these yutzes. What do you want?"

"Did you ever see Cavo rite?"

"No,"

"Did you ever find out where Cavorite went? Do the traders know?" Haron's eyes went distant. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

"The Neck," Tim prodded.

"We got to the Neck. The Road goes right across."

"Is that where the Otterfolk are?"

"Them. They're all along the shore of the big bay. They don't talk. They can't go anywhere."

"You went twice? You must like it."

"Not so much that."

Tim waited.

"They don't know anything here. Surf in summer, gather and eat in fall, huddle hungry in winter. Time of year tells them what they're doing, everything they're doing. It feels so cramped." Haron's voice was rising, but he caught himself. "Doesn't matter anyway. The merchants asked, I had to go."

"Why?"

"First time, they gave us two knives." Haron grinned. "Second time, I was trained already. Four knives."

Ah, he'd been bought.

"The Otterfolk, they can't go anywhere," Haron said. "There's only the bay. Anywhere else, they die. That's one reason. I'd go again, because the Otterfolk can't."

"What are they like?"

"We're not supposed to talk to them, but you can sneak away. They draw pictures in the sand. You try to tell them things that way, but it's-" Haron frowned. "It's not enough."

"For what?"

Haron shook his head. He picked up his board and ran into the water.

Merchants and Twerdahls mingled on the sand. Tim Bednacourt worked anonymous in their midst.

For a long moment Quicksilver burned at the edge of the sea, just below the cloud deck. Then it winked out. An hour of sunlight left.

Merchants watched Tim Bednacourt cutting onions, carrots, bell peppers, mushrooms picked in the cypress swamp. "That looks good," the older woman said. Tim smiled.

Four merchants came, all a few inches shorter than Tim, all exotic and elegant, dressed in many colors, many layers. I noticed the younger man first. Dark, with a thin mustache: Tim had seen him before. An older man with brown hair and a forked beard turning gray. A blackhaired woman his own age; another very like her but no older than Tim. Skins browner than Tim's, all four. Their eyes were dark and a bit tilted. Parents, son, daughter?

He could be wrong about that, or their ages, or almost anything. Any fool might pretend to know all about merchants. Nobody really knew.

The young man said, "I remember you. We were talking about Otterfolk. I noticed you trying to listen and cook-"

"I remember. You're Joker?"

He nodded. The older woman asked, "Would you like to see them for yourself?"

Caught by surprise, Tim laughed. "Sure. It's not likely, is it?"

"I'm Senka," she said. "These are Damon and Rian, my husband and daughter."

"I'm Tim Bednacourt."

She was examining him. It made him uncomfortable. "How long have you lived in this place?"

"Twenty years. Born here," making himself a year older than Jemmy Bloocher.

The man asked, "Do you ever wonder what the rest of the world looks like?"

"Well, sure, sometimes I look off down the Road and-"

"Tim."

He jumped. Loria! She said, "You can't cook in the dark. You need help?"

It wasn't dark yet, but... "Yes, love, I got a little behind. You cut, I'll start these." An hour of light left. Tim added oil to the wok-already hot-then vegetables. The action became brisk. The merchant trio watched, then wandered off.

Loria asked, "What did they want?"

"They didn't say."

"But something?"

"Oh, yeah. Sounds like they need a labor yutz or two."

The big vegetable omelets had become almost reflex. Tim finished one and shouted for the nearest older child whose name he could remember.

"Did you talk to Haron?"

"Tried. What happened to him?"

"This batch is finished," Loria said, and went briskly away.

Food wandered toward him from other cookfires. Tim ate as he cooked: sausage, roasted ear of corn, half of a passerby's chunk of bread, a slice of his own omelet. When it was too dark to see he settled himself on the sand.

Heaven's fire still burned where sky met sea.

His arms and shoulders hurt. He didn't usually push himself this hard. Where was Loria? Why?

Hadn't she expected him to talk to Haron? It was her own suggestion! Someone was at his side. He turned hoping to see Loria, or any Bednacourt who could explain what Loria was angry about.

It was a young merchant woman, her clothes still a patchwork of color in the dying light. She handed him the edge of a half melon. They broke it together; he kept half, the juice running down his fingers.

"Rian," she said. "You're Tim?"

"Hello, Rian."

Senka's daughter. She sat beside him. In the dark her face was all planes and angles, a lovely but abstracted shape. Eyes a bit tilted, like almonds. "This is my first trip," she said.

"From where?" he asked.

"We don't talk about that. We don't take labor yutzes past the Neck." Too bad, he thought. Then he stared. Past the Neck? She'd been born on the mainland!

Rian leaned close enough that he could feel her breath on his cheek. "One of our cooks has died," she said. "We need another."

"Uh-huh?"

"Want to come with us?"

"As a labor yutz?"

"Yes."

Tim smiled politely. "Rian, why don't you tell me how your cook died?"

She hesitated. "Well. We were too far from the other wagons. Petey was a cowboy-"

"Say?"

"Cowboy. He liked to be right there on the sand shooting when the sharks came at us. Made us shoot around him. Few days ago the sharks got ahead of us a bit. They got Petey."

Tim said what he should have said first. "I've only been married two months."

"Yes, to Loria Bed... Bednacourt. She carrying a guest yet?"

This question seemed excessively personal, but Tim supposed it might matter to merchants interested in hiring a woman's husband. He said, "Not yet."

"So come."

Tim shook his head.

She was trying to study his face in the dark. "Nobody has to be down there on the sand with the sharks, Tim. Not a labor yutz, anyway. They never reach the wagon roofs."

She thought he was afraid?

"You know," she said, "the Otterfolk must have been the first unhuman tool users anyone ever saw. Cavorite wouldn't have just sailed past."

She was right, he thought. And- "They can draw pictures of Cavorite," he said.

He couldn't say, Loria doesn't even want me talking to you, let alone- Rian would wonder why, and Tim didn't know, but that left only a killing in Spiral Town as his excuse, and what would he tell her instead? He said, "I wasn't the only cook-"

"You have four. Van Barstowe limps. A caravan yutz has to walk, you know. Drew Bednacourt drops things, and he's surly. You and Van, you're the best. Do you like my company, Tim?"

At dinnertime there were knives everywhere you looked, and where was Loria right now? "No, look, Rian, we all grow up knowing about hybrid vigor, but Loria doesn't think like that. My life wouldn't be worth living if-"

He stopped talking, because the merchant woman was up and moving away.

He wondered if he'd jumped to conclusions. "Company," she'd said. Only that. He'd made an embarrassing mistake.

The house was empty.

Long after he was in bed, Loria slid in and tickled him awake. There was a ferocity to her lovemaking, and she wouldn't let him talk. She didn't want to talk afterward either. They made love again... unless he fell asleep first... but sunlight blazed through the bedroom window and someone was pounding on the door.

Tim pulled himself out of bed, squinting. Why didn't Loria answer? "Come," he called. He pulled on some pants and went into the common room.

Sharlot Clellan, Drew Bednacourt, Harl Cloochi, and Berda Farrow, all elders of Twerdahl Town, came in from the glare of sunlight. They ushered in three merchants wearing wild colors. Two men, one woman. Tim recognized the dark man named Damon.

"What's it all about?" he asked.

Harl said, "Tim, these are Damon and Milo and Halida, elders of the caravan. They came to us last night, not just to us, you understand, but to all of Twerdahl Town. Tim, this may sound odd-"

The door opened again. Loria and Tarzana.

Tim repeated, "What is this?"

"Loria, dear, we've had an offer," Harl said.

"Right. Did you know they came to Tim last night? Tim, what did they offer you?"

She could have learned that last night. "Job as a labor yutz. Cooking."

The elder Twerdahls stared at the merchants. "You went to him first?"

Damon smiled and shrugged. "We looked for a better bargain. He was reluctant."

Tim couldn't read Loria's expression.

The merchant woman, Halida, said to Tim, "Your elders and mine, they've been talking. We offer a long knife for every twenty days you're gone."

"Loria, is that a good price?"

"Dammit, Tim!"

"Tarzana?"

Tarzana said, "Yes."

"Sounded like it. Haron got less, his first time."

Damon said, "We want you cooking for us tonight, Tim. That means you join us now. You'll be with ibn-Rushd wagon, my family's wagon. Don't take too much with you, no more than you can carry. Don't take speckles. We've got plenty. And Tim-" He smiled. "The more we discuss it, the farther we'll have to chase the wagons."

It was happening faster than he could think, and he was still playing catch-up. "Loria, let's talk," he said, and pulled her into the bedroom.

Dawn light blazed through the window. It was easier to read her face in here. "What's going on?"

"Can't you tell?"

"Oh, a little. They'd have had me cheap if I'd gone with them last night. Now they've got to pay off the whole town, but Loria, do they think I'm for sale? I have a house and a wife."

And a secret that any of three hundred people might speak.

"The old people, they've already taken the knives," Loria said bleakly. She swept the blanket off their bed, flung it high and let it settle on the floor. "We have to pack. I knew they'd have you. You can do things nobody else can. Tim, didn't I try to keep you in the house?" He saw she was crying. "At least I gave you a great send-off. Didn't I?"

"I didn't know I was going."

"T-"

"Great send-off, damn right. Can you come with me?" Her head snapped up, amazed.

"You'd...

"What?"

"Want me?"

"Yes!"

"No. No, I can't. Yutzes are always men."

"What do you want, Loria?"

"I want you to come back. But if you're coming back like Haron Welsh, then don't."

She'd stacked his possessions on the blanket. Coat and shirts. No hat; Twerdahls never wore hats. The skillet from Bloocher Farm had become Twerdahl Town property, and retrieving it would be a mistake. She took his pouch of speckles. "If a yutz carries speckles, they think it's caravan property," she said.