Destiny's Road (28 page)

"You used to hunt it?"

She sighed in exasperation. He said, "Tell it your way."

"Tell what? You can't pass for a citizen just because you somehow crossed the Neck! I should be telling you how to talk like a trusty."

"I'm tired, Barda."

"Get yourself a nap. Tomorrow you work."

The melee around the stormbock woke him. He walked down to watch Barda and Shimon cook dinner. It went fast. They set up a pot to boil rice, then a wok big enough to bathe in. He wouldn't be able to lift that for a while! Barda shook and tilted it to stir-fry the vegetables. Fans sucked the smoke and smells up into the ceiling: settler magic, whereas the stove was a wood-fired iron box.

Barda served herself, then Shimon, then Jemmy. They sat while Halfbeard and the gatherers, fresh out of hot showers, converged.

"I never saw anything like that," Jemmy said. "Is that how they cook at the Swan?"

"It's how we cook vegetables. We served fish and waterfowl grilled and baked. I know other ways to cook, but I couldn't feed twenty people that way."

"You can feed two hundred with a fire pit."

"Not when it rains one day out of four, and that's how it is around Destiny Town. The settlers must have liked things wet. The spaceport's on a plateau, top of Mount Canaveral, and that's dry. Old Igor didn't want the noise-my granddaddy's granddaddy-so he built down below Swan Lake."

"How does the Road go? Spaceport, then Destiny Town, then here?"

Shimon's sullen silence cracked. He said, "Trusty,. may I?" And he spilled some flour across the wooden table and began to draw in the flour. "The Road runs straight from the Neck along the coast to the Winds-"

"How high?"

"High?"

"Along most of the Crab, the Road acts like it's afraid of water."

"Oh. Yeah. High enough that nobody bothers the Otterfolk, except here." Shimon's fingertip grazed the line of ocean and veered away. "Then you have to go right past unless you get permission from the Overview Bureau. Then the Road branches here, about halfway, and the other branch runs inland. Cavorite stopped for a few years where this little town is now, Terminus, and that's where I was born. We grow up wanting to leave," he said. "Destiny Town is where it all happens, but they don't want you in Destiny unless you already got work there, and how can you do that? The damn Admiralty-"

"Shimon, stick to the point."

"Yesss, Trusty. Trusty, there's a little branch off the Road, here. It spirals around this bluff to the top. They flew Cavorite to orbit from Terminus a lot of times, then from Mount Canaveral just once. They gave it up thirty years ago. They only started flying again... Trusty?"

"Fifteen years ago. Those new ships have to land on the ocean. The port had to be moved, and that's what did it for Daddy." Barda reached past him. "The Swan is here, foot of Mount Canaveral. And now they launch the ships from somewhere this way. Clean it up now, Shimon."

"Shimon, wait," Jemmy said. "Barda, where were you thinking of moving to?"

"Moving? Oh, Daddy. Daddy wanted to build another inn here." Her finger left an imprint on the other side of the Road's first branching, where the Road dipped to nearly touch the sea. "A day short of the Neck. We'd get all the caravan custom, and people who wanted to study the Otterfolk could stay there too. It wasn't just a whim. Daddy sent us to build the damn thing, Barry and Bill and me."

Shimon said, "There now. Is that everything you need to know?"

"Let's hope," Jemmy said, and Shimon began to clean the flour off the table:

Barda said, "It better be, Shimon. Tomorrow you keep him straight. Right at his elbow every second. If he starts to make a mistake, you cover for him. I can't. I've got to be watching the whole troop."

"Excuse me," Jemmy said, and he managed to reach his bed without falling over.

When the lights came on, Jemmy crawled out of bed with the rest. They eased out of his way so he could get to the bread before it was gone. Nobody seemed to want to talk to him.

Half-beard watched him. He said, "Take another day."

Barda said, "I wanted Shimon watching him."

"Oh, we can fix that. But look at him, if he tries to hold the pose... You taught him the pose?"

"No."

"I'll do it.''

Barda and Shimon went out with the rest. Half-beard waited until they were gone. Willametta was tending Miledy, the pregnant woman, but listening too.

"The pose," Jemmy reminded him.

"It looks like this." Half-beard stood with his arms held high to the sides. "Do it."

Jemmy stood, feet apart, and raised his arms. Any speckles-shy could have done it.

"Hold it till I tell you to quit. Barda says you're smart."

"Good."

"You need to fool the probes into thinking you're me. Can you do that?"

"Not yet. Tell me about proles."

Half-beard studied him.

Jemmy said, "We're the, Barda said gatherers? You're trusties? Some-one is trusting you. Your bosses. That would be the probes?"

"Proles."

"Proles. Keep talking, I need to hear you."

"Ten men and women. They rotate. We don't know their names. We don't ever have to."

"When you talk to them-"

"You say Yes man. If it's a woman, Yes maam. They sound alike, so if you're outside it doesn't matter if you can't tell. You know them 'cause-"

"They've got more orange. They wear the orange."

"Right."

His arms were beginning to ache.

"Where do they live?"

"Down the Road through the cleft, not far. If you go there you don't come back. Andrew, Barda says you've fired yutz guns? What the probes have is worse. Don't ever go up against the probes. And when you talk to them you say the Parole Board. Like their main job is to let us go."

Jemmy bobbed his chin. His arms and shoulders were hurting now. He held his breathing deep, and reached.

"I'm going out tomorrow to farm in the rain," he said. "I'm a trusty. Probes come to check on us? But they can't see anything about me but a big jacket with a hood and an orange stripe, unless there's something funny about your legs-"

Half-beard laughed, a full-throated bellow.

Jemmy said, "Right. But you have to tell me what they think you'll be doing-"

"Sit down. Lie down."

Jemmy lowered his arms, then sat. "I don't know how to get speckles off a plant. Do I have a sack?"

"Backpack. You get your gear after you leave the stormbock. Gatherers get a pack and a scoop glove, this time of year. You get a bird gun. They strip the speckles with the scoop gloves. Come spring they'd be planting. Weeding takes a weed cutter. Probes don't give gatherers weed cutters, so you have to cut the weeds. But you still get the bird gun, and a pack too, but there's rescue gear in yours. You get your gun in the toolhouse and hang it back when you come home, and the probes replace the ammo while you're gone. They take the packs.

"Now, as far as the Parole Board is concerned, nothing, nothing stops us from gathering speckles, and that's how they pick trusties, so you better not show them anything else. Otherwise you don't have to know anything except to count gatherers and see they do the work."

"Count?"

Half-beard grinned. He said, "You met Shimon. He'll help you. You watch Shimon, don't make it too obvious, and he'll point the way if you get confused-"

"And what will you be doing while Andrew Dowd is leading a work party?"

"Leading a shift." Half-beard grinned. "And that's my problem."

Twenty-two prisoners, Jemmy thought. The trusties are prisoners too. Firebird shorts and ponchos would mark them anywhere outside the Winds. Go out without them and you're naked in a storm, and birds tear you apart.

But now the storm gives up a stranger. The Parole Board doesn't know about a twenty-third gatherer carrying shorts and windbreakers that aren't red and yellow with an orange stripe.

Now the probes can count twenty-two while the other Andrew Dowd is off... where? Gathering whatever might be needed when six prisoners disappear wearing clothes they shouldn't own.

Barda Winslow and Andrew Dowd and four others. Not Jemmy Bloocher, unless he can talk his way in.

Do the rest know?

Half-beard was watching his face. "Do you think you can be me?"

"There's no telling what I might have to know. I got Barda talking yesterday. Tell me how you got here."

Half-beard scowled and turned away.

Jemmy said, "The Parole Board knows how you got here, Andrew. When they ask me, I'd better know."

Half-beard spoke without turning. "Murder twice. They don't want to know any more. If they do, you killed them when they tried to rob you, okay? The damn tribunal didn't believe you."

"Transport?"

"Trans-? They walk us in. Felony tape around our wrists, crossed like this in front of us. There's a wagon sealed bike a safe, with gun slits, and tugs to pull it. We stick close to that. We're already wearing firebird colors. If we run, serve us right. Andrew, I got to start dinner sometime. Come along."

"I was a caravan chef."

"Barda said."

He noticed more today. Food was stored in bins near the stove: grains, fresh and dried fruit, potatoes and carrots and other vegetables, a big bottle of cooking oil, some spices. Half-beard opened the bins with a key. Cookware was in there too, including heavy pans and cooking knives. The ovens and burners seemed to run continually, keeping the place warm.

Cooking was wonderfully relaxing. Jemmy helped where he could, peeling and cutting vegetables and feeding the fire, until he got tired. Then he watched. Willametta and Half-beard set up the wok.

Indoor cooking was most unlike the fire-pit cooking he'd learned on the Road. Suddenly, powerfully and painfully, Jemmy missed the kitchen in Bloocher Farm.

The gatherers brought a dead bird in with them and gave it to Halfbeard, who passed it to Jemmy and Willametta. Jemmy was startled to find himself holding two raptor-clawed legs while Willametta took the other pair. Big wings drooped between. Eight kilos of Destiny bird!

Half-beard shouted, "We don't stare at it, Andrew, we cut it up and cook it!" Willametta smiled and showed him how to slice under the feathers. The bird didn't seem to have a distinct skin. The feathers were narrow fractal spikes based in muscle tissue. The blood was rich, dark red. This was no relative of the shelled varieties Jemmy had encountered along the Crab.

"I was expecting Earthlife," Jemmy said. He was surprised, now he thought about it, to find himself holding a knife. Twerdahi Town wouldn't trust a stranger so. "Where are the speckles?"

"You're gonna love this, Andrew. Barda showed me how to stir-fry Destiny bird with potatoes and onions. Speckles? We don't need speckles. The birds and turtles around here concentrate the elements in the meat."

"But is it all-"

"Sure. The wagons bring in Earthlife food, and we kill windbirds for the meat." He waved the cooking oil. "This is the only fat we get, and they don't give us enough.

"We were real glad to see you, Andrew. Just anyone wouldn't pass for one of us. It had to be someone who's been starved." Half-beard smiled. "I'd kill a probe for a rasher of bacon."

Willametta's lips twitched: a token of a smile. "Fletch. Say fletch of bacon. People will think you're easy."

The gatherers were piling their ponchos into the dryer, taking firebirdcolored towels and trooping back to the showers.

Before the lights went out, Dennis Levoy cut his hair to match Halfbeard's.

The Speckles Crop

You can't eat these seeds straight. On food they're almost salty, almost metallic. I hope we can get used to the taste.

-Dutton, #2 Hydroponics

Jemmy entered the stormbock first, with Shimon and four he hadn't met. He got their names: a trusty would know. Rafik, Shar, Denis, Henry- "Henry? You found me."

Henry grinned. "You looked like a drowned dustbird."

"Trusty!" Shimon snapped.

"-Trusty," Henry said.

"Door, Trusty." That was Shimon again, reminding "Andrew" that the trusty was always first through a door.

He walked into pulsing yellow-white light.

It stopped him for an instant. A flood of raindrops flared irregularly as the light waxed and waned. Somewhere in his murky memory... hadn't he seen this before? Flashing yellow rain. Too tired to look up. A pair of skeletons took him by the arms and told him "Don't say birdfucking aloud!" and led him out of hell....ome kind of hallucination?

He didn't look up now either, because two bird-shapes and a cart waited outside in the rain. A cart pulled by a little smooth-shelled machine.

Jemmy lifted his hood and, as hood and arm hid his face from them, shouted over the thunder. "Probes?"

Shimon nodded violently.

Jemmy had thought they'd wait in the toolhouse, where it was dry.

The gatherers were all pulling their hoods up. Jemmy wiped his eyes and looked around and had to throttle a laugh. The hoods had eyes and beaks!

The proles came near, one behind the other and a little to the side. The orange stripes on their ponchos were broader than a trusty's. Weapons dangled at their sides, belted over ponchos. Jemmy had seen merchants returning such things to Spadoni wagon after a bandit hunt.

They bore another clear sign of their power. Half-beard hadn't told him that probes would wear pants! Big loose pants and boots to keep legs and feet dry. Luxuries beyond your wildest dreams.

Jemmy stepped forward, eagerness over fear. "Yes, man?"

The lead probe's voice was rusty, and male. "Get on with it." He waved, and Jemmy saw the toolhouse, like the short arm of an L built onto the barracks building.