Destiny's Road

23 The Run

Andrew stopped them just outside the stormlock in the flapping white light of the electric banner. “I forgot something.” He grinned, and turned to go back in.

Jemmy had him by the poncho. “No you don't. Amnon!” he bellowed.

The snout of the prole gun pushed into Jemmy's throat. Andrew almost-whispered, “Just what d-?”

Jemmy screamed, “He's going to kill the ones who stayed!” The crowd of refugees melted. Jemmy couldn't tell who ran or where they hid, but Barda and Willametta moved immediately to Andrew's side. They whispered urgent remonstrances, their hands caressing his arms, while Amnon stepped up behind him and wrapped his big arms around Andrew's head.

But Andrew pushed the prole gun hard under Jemmy's chin, and Jemmy didn't try to move.

Amnon's arms began to tighten and twist. He asked, “The twins too, you birdfucker?”

“We can't leave them to talk!”

Barda was holding the point of the biggest of the kitchen knives just under Andrew's eye.

Andrew cursed and released the gun. Jemmy caught the heavy thing and cradled it, pointing it at nobody. A tiny green light twinkled in the butt. He said, “You never did have a plan, did you? Just kill and kill until something stops you.”

“Nooo.”

“Jeremy. Jeremy! Give me the gun a minute.”

“What?” Jemmy swung round; the gun swung too. One of the twins shied back.

“Just give me the gun for a breath,” she pleaded, laughing.

“I don't think so.”

“Then you do it. Shoot up the toolhouse a little.”

“Bad idea, Rita.”

“Dolores. But look-“

Willya shouted, “Barda, don't cut him, it's all right! Let him go. Now what, Andrew?”

Andrew snarled like a beast.

“Plan,” Jemmy said in disgust. Without Andrew the rest had no direction, but Jemmy Bloocher might as well be lost on another planet.

He said, “Push anyone stupid enough to trust you until he drops out, then kill him for it. Kill proles till they shoot everyone who's still with you. Keep it up till there's nobody left. Plan?”

Andrew wrenched himself loose, and they let him do it. He shook himself, and strode off shouting, “Follow me!”

The flapping yellow blaze dwindled into black rain.

In the rain and the thunder there was a rustling too, and motion that wasn't just trees in the wind. A big bird dropped from the sputtering sky and lifted again with a turtle-shape in its four sawtooth-edged feet.

Andrew had told them to keep their ponchos. He was right. The night was alive.

Rafik Doe recognized tree roots strangling a sharp-edged boulder, and fished Jemmy Bloocher's pack from underneath. Those on the short list stripped and donned the swim trunks and windbreakers from Carder's Boat, then wore their firebird colors over them. Jemmy gave his prole gun to Amnon before he pulled a windbreaker over his head, then his own old and battered pack. Amnon handed the gun back, somewhat to Jemmy's surprise, and got himself dressed.

They'd walked halfway back to the field where Shimon died. In a sputter of lightning they watched a battle between shadows of birds. Rafik complained in a continuous drone, until others took up the theme too.

“Here!” said Andrew.

He meant a line of spiky black-and-bronze foliage dug into the crack that ran up a near-vertical rock face.

There were exclamations and protests, and then they climbed. Jemmy waited to help the laggards.

Shar Willoughby got ten meters up and froze.

Jemmy climbed up to show her which plants would hold, where to place her feet. She shook her head and wouldn't look or move. “Get me down. Just get me down.”

Andrew and Barda were high above him. He couldn't ask: Do we need Shar? She was wearing shorts and windbreaker! But she'd never make it, and she was blocking the path.

A ten-meter fall would break bones. He guided her down, letting her stand on his shoulders when he had to. She knelt at the bottom, panting like a dog. He made her strip and took her shorts and windbreaker.

The others were climbing. Shar plodded back toward the barracks.

Jemmy pulled himself along a row of Destiny plants. Or was it all one plant? He couldn't see a break, just a line of roots prying a mountainsized rock apart.

Before that crack ran out there was another.

The world was all tilted surfaces, black and lightning-white, and roar of thunder. He remembered wandering in a daze, mostly blind and mostly deaf, pulling himself from nowhere to nowhere just because he wasn't dead yet...

But this night was very different from the night he'd abandoned Carder's Boat. He'd been fed and succored, and twelve people had given their lives into his hands... gloves. Nobody else had gloves.

The plants ended suddenly. Other climbers started having trouble. Jemmy had to double back a few times to guide the others to foot- and handholds. The prole gun's strap left Jemmy's arms free. He could see Andrew watching from far above.

If Jemmy slipped, Andrew would have the gun again.

“Here,” Andrew bellowed. “The ledge. Leave your ponchos here. Firebird shorts too. Use rocks to weigh them down.”

Rafik exclaimed, “Now what on Earth are you playing at, Andrew?”

“Do it right!” Andrew bellowed. He'd left his own clothing where he was, fifty feet above the ledge, sleeves spread and wedged in cracks. “They can't see through unless the clouds break!” He scrambled back and helped Rafik, then Willametta, then Amnon place rocks to display flame-colored ponchos and shorts against dark wet rock. The others were getting the idea.

Andrew was painting a picture of climbers scattered over a cliff face. “We're halfway up and frozen in fear, right? And that's the way it is until they get here themselves, and look. Right?”

“Andrew,” Jemmy asked, “do you think they can see us?”

Andrew's teeth flashed in lightning. “Not yet. All set? Come!”

“Andrew, there's too many!” Andrew looked at him, and Jemmy shouted, “Me! I'm one too many! They're looking for thirteen ponchos, not fourteen, and if we meet a spectre or something, someone has to pose!”

And after they found Shar they'd be looking for twelve ponchos, not thirteen... still one too many... unless Shar talked.

Andrew said, “One of us should have started naked. Damndamn. Ansel, you look cold-“

Ansel Tarr dressed again in flame colors.

Jemmy looked arouhd at them. “Willya?” He gave her Shar's swim shorts and windbreaker. She looked no more skeletal than the rest.

Andrew led off again, leaving twelve posed ponchos.

The ledge was straight, hard to lose in the flashing dark, but it wasn't a split in rock. It was a frozen flow of lava, naked of plants, and slippery. There were holes etched by rain for handholds and footholds. Jemmy stayed on hands and knees even where he could stand, because those behind him were copying his style.

Jemmy, Henry, Andrew, Willametta, Barda, and Amnon wore swim trunks and windbreakers. Ansel wore the last poncho. The rest were naked and not liking it.

He barely heard the scream, but he turned quick and shouted down. “Who fell?”

He heard: “I caught something. Caught a plant.” Amnon's voice. “Thorn.”

“Can you climb up?” Oh, Earth and Moon, Amnon was in a windbreaker and trunks! If proles found those on a gatherer's corpse, they'd guess there were more.

“I can't move! It's like two handfuls of hypo needles!”

“I've got rope, Jeremy.” Andrew hurled a coil of rope at him. He leered atJemmy and said, “Anchor me.” Plan? Where's your rope?

Jemmy tied the rope to a low, knotted Destiny tree. He could hear Amnon whimpering. The rope didn't seem to be finding him.

The sky lit like a sun.

It hurt the eyes... like the light that burned over the speckles field after Shimon's death. Jemmy blinked. “What on Earth-?”

“Quicksilver!” Andrew's bellow was all triumph. He trolled the rope toward Amnon, who was clinging to a double armful of thorn on a sixtydegree slope. The rope was too short. “Jeremy!”

It was long enough when Jemmy had untied it from the tree, but the only anchor now was himself and Andrew. Amnon didn't want to let go of the bush.

Andrew shouted, “Take it, you damned fool!”

Amnon moaned and snatched at the rope, lost his grip and had only the rope. He clung and swung while Andrew and Jemmy pulled hand over hand. At the end he lay sobbing at their feet, his hands full of needles and blood.

And Jemmy asked again: “The light?”

“It's Quicksilver, you Crab-shy dropout! And the date is late summer, and Quicksilver rises just an hour before sunrise. And we are right on schedule, Jeremy, but we should move!”

“Quicksilver's bright, but this bright?”

“Settler magic. That's what you call it, isn't it? Argos flew past Quicksilver. They dropped a metal and plastic turtle-I've seen pictures-it makes solar-electric plates, and lasers to beam the power, and more little mining turtles. Now it's hundreds of years later and Quicksilver's covered in solar collectors. That's why it's so bright.”

An entire planet covered in Begley cloth.

Jemmy began to understand that DestinyTown had power undreamed by the towns along the Crab. They could light up a mountain range. Launch ships into space. Andrew had known. Did they all know? Did they all take this for granted?

Lightning flickered dimly against a sky like a hazy noon. The rock slope was etched in detail. It looked to be four hundred meters to the ridge, and there, that crack might be a way up.

But-“They're looking at us. How?”

“Amnon? Got your nerve back? Ready to move?”

“Dammit, Andrew! How are they watching us? From the sky?” Light like this had burned behind them this afternoon, lighting the proles' investigation of Shimon's death.

The others gathered around Andrew and Jemmy and Amnon. Andrew said, “All right, Jeremy, but we don't have forever. Now, that light isn't for us. They're looking for firebird ponchos-Ansel, get that off now, ball it up and hide it!-and those are upRoad. They're looking through video-you understand video cameras?”

“In Spiral Town we still have a few that work.”

“Video from orbit. So they can't see us unless the clouds break, but there's a way to split light into colors. They'll look for firebird colors. They'll match every firebird in the area, but firebirds don't gather the way Our ponchos are gathered-“

Willametta said, “Andrew?”

“The light's on us. It isn't on the ponchos. Can't you see? The mountain's lit up all around us, but it fades going back toward the barracks. Fades toward the fields too.”

The others murmured. Jemmy saw that she was right. But Andrew said, “You're imagining that. Why would they be looking at us?”

“I thought they might be focusing on this.” Jemmy held up the prole gun.

“Why?”

But Willametta asked, “Jeremy, how long has that light been blinking?”

A blinking green light in the butt of the gun. Jemmy said, “It's been doing that all along. Why? Because they wouldn't want a gun like this wandering loose! If they've got phones-“

“Prole guns don't blink when we're harvesting. They didn't blink after the proles shot the birds,” Willametta said. “Andrew, when did it start blinking? After you killed a prole for it?”

“Maybe. Damndamndamn. It's sending a help call, isn't it, Willya?”

“Throw it away, Andrew!”

“Daaamn! Damn. Jeremy, do it.”

Jemmy hurled the evil thing back the way they'd come. It flew not far, struck bare rock and spun away downhill. Andrew screamed at the sky.

Andrew climbed as if possessed. This part of the range was new to them all. The plants were gone; it was naked rock. In the weird light they could see him far above, while Jemmy moved about helping the slower climbers and the ones who froze in fear.

Dennis Levoy was sliding. He'd lost the crack they were following. It was out of his reach now and he couldn't even scream. Jemmy scrambled down to reach him, but Dennis was sliding faster now, still silent, naked against a slick slope that wouldn't hold him. In the acid light Jemmy saw Henry flatten himself to avoid being knocked off. Dennis bounced against him and snatched at Henry's ankle. Henry kicked him free. He was falling, falling, gone.

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.”