Destiny's Road

35
Spiral Town

Electric wagons brought them back to the light and noise at Warkan's Tavern. Jeremy walked in behind Govert Miller. Harlow was with six other women on the women's side of the room. She saw him; he smiled; she dove back into animated conversation.

Jeremy looked around for company. He'd completely forgotten that he couldn't just sit down with his wife.

“There, Jeremy.” Govert Miller meant a table of merchants, all men in their twenties, with one empty chair. Jeremy fielded one from another table and they sat.

Jeremy flagged a waiter and ordered drinks for the table, far too skillfully. The waiter was puzzled. Nobody else noticed. The elder Miller began an animated description of events at dinner for merchants from Miller and Hearst. Jeremy listened, picking up more than he'd been able to witness.

The Council had capitulated. They'd kept some tattered shreds of dignity, kept some surface concessions. Some had to be silent for the depth of their fury.

The caravans would roll into Spiral Town tomorrow. Begley cloth would be loaded. Speckles would be delivered to the Hub and sold to Spiral women. The gate? That was being dealt with.

Drinks appeared. Jeremy paid, fumbling a bit with the coins. He sipped vodka and grapefruit, being cautious with it.

“You're quiet,” Govert said.

Jeremy jumped. He said, “I was wondering. We set things back the way they were... when? Twenty years ago? Two hundred and twenty years ago the caravans were a going concern. Already self-supporting, weren't they?”

Heads nodded, don't really know, and Glen Hearst at another table barked, “Right!”

“Self-supporting, and they carry the speckles, and even the Otterfolk get what they want out of it. That's what everyone hoped for in the first place. Isn't it about time we dismantled the Overview Bureau?”

The table burst into laughter. Jeremy looked down at his empty glass. No birdfucking- Angelo Hearst said, “And we could raise the price of speckles through the roofi”

Govert Miller reproved him, elder to youth. “Angelo, each wagon puts its own price-“

“Couldn't we all set one price? Or, wait, let's say eleven wagons up our prices and only Miller wagon stays low? Govert, you'd sell all your speckles before we got to the Shire. After that they'd pay whatever the rest of us want.”

Govert laughed. 'Jeremy, he's got a point.”

On another night they might have argued. How would Destiny Town cope if the Road communities knew the truth? Tonight wasn't that kind of night. Jeremy said, “Angelo, you win. I never thought of that at all!”

He saw the merchant women's table breaking up. He made his excuses and left in a cluster of elders.

Harlow saw him and waited. When he'd caught up she said, “I wondered if I'd see you again.”

“You know why I couldn't get you in on this. Ever. Harry's Bar is men only. Remember the gate guard?”

She was ticked, that was sure. “Do women have places too?”

“Now, how on birdfucking Earth will I ever know that? You've been surrounded by Spiral woman all night! You'll he selling them speckles tomorrow. Ask. Then lie to me if you like!”

“What a concept.”

“Fair's fair.”

'Selling speckles?”

“Yes, the old ones came to some kind of agreement. I was too far to hear details.”

“You enjoyed yourself?"

“Oh, yes. I took a whole big pouch of festivity, right? For sixteen of us and the chefs at Harry's Bar. Impressed hell out of them, and we spent some time talking shop. Pit chef Jeremy. They sat me at the far end from Greegiy-”

“Greegry?”

“My younger brother, Greegry Bloocher, the Council Chairman. The tall guy-”

Harlow started to laugh. Then she said, “No offense, dear, but why did the Spiral Council wantJeremy Winslow?”

“They didn't! They held their tempers, but it was pretty plain.”

She waited.

“Like making them come all the way out here with wagons. The caravans are playing mind games. Table for fifteen, we'll all sit down and pretend we're equals and talk business, only they've got to ride out here and get us, and then Glen Hearst rings in a loose cook! Now the table's a little crowded, and there are things no cook should hear-”

“What is this all about?”

“I was as far from the action as they could get me, and that suited me just fine. But the new gate is too much. They're tearing it down. The elders are talking like the Council rolled belly-up.”

“Good.”

“And I've been invited to visit the graveyard tomorrow. I can take my wife.”

He felt her freeze under his hand. “Why did you-? Jeremy, I'm being obtuse, you must have people buried there. No, how can I come? Both of us can't be gone when the caravan leaves tomorrow! You'll... have to catch up later.”

He saw in her eyes: You've escaped.

The burly Councilman was chewing a barely conceale4 rage. He couldn't make hi mself talk to the caravan elders. At least the chef could be kept occupied. He was Gwillam Doakes, and he didn't recognize Jemmy Bloocher.

Jeremy leaned on his Destiny Town accent. “You have a Carolyn Hope Hearst buried in your graveyard, William. I was a Hearst before I married. I want to visit my ancestor's grave.”

Gwillam Doakes dithered, then called down the table to Greegiy Bloocher. Greegiy's downsweeping hand chopped off the request. “Yes, yes. Give my name to the gatekeeper. Get directions from him if you need them.”

“No, dear, the caravan's going in tomorrow. Not very far, just around the first turn as far as the Outer Circle. The chugs can get down to the beach between the Tucker and Coffey holdings, along the runoff strip. The caravans used it for access when I was young. We'll let the chugs clear away some of their devilhair weed while they're there.”

She relaxed: softened under his hand.

He said, “I'll go visit the graveyard afterward. Come or don't.”

A breathy sigh. “Yes, of course, of course I'll come. Merchants never used to miss the Destiny Town graveyard. They say nothing grows there but Earthlife-”

“Right.”

Neither of them slept well that night.

At dawn, before even the yutzes were up, there was a chattering sound from up the Road, like an enraged squirrel as big as a building. Jeremy lay in the tent, listening, trying to recall- “Air hammer,” Harlow said.

They got up and joined the caravaners on the roofs. Seven lungsharks tried their luck. Tents were stowed, chugs were hooked up, wagons were set moving, the sales windows were opened to throngs of Spirals who had come to buy. Jeremy and Harlow drove.

The gate wasn't gone. It lay fiat in the Road, in a V-shaped recess cut into the old lava by an air hammer. Now it was hinged at the base. The wagon wheels bumped over it and rolled past.

“I just remembered,” Jeremy told Harlow, “one of the reasons we closed Spiral Town to the caravans. The Road isn't wide enough for a wagon and team to turn around.”

“That's going to be fun.”

“No, that's why we go to the Outer Circle. It's where Columbiad landed when the landers were still unloading from Argos. They always came down on the same spot. Plenty of room there.”

They rolled past houses Jeremy had known from his birth. “Warkan

Harness... Doakes.

“Shut up,” she suggested.

A quarter-turn around, ten klicks, brought them to another guard... the same guard. The wagons eased to a halt a little too bunched up, but that wouldn't matter today.

Inward, the shallow pool of refrozen rock was tangent to two loops of the Road. It was considerably larger than similar craters found along the Road. Cavorite and Columbiad had landed always within a centimeter of the same spot, guided down by settler magic.

Below was Columbiad 's runoff stream, a strip of bare rock that nobody had tried to farm in two hundred years. It ran a klick and a half to the sea. The sea was black with devilhair. The chugs would feed very well today.

Then again-“Today I think we'll get sharks,” Jeremy said.

The chugs didn't mind stopping early. Through the long afternoon they ambled on down into the waves, rolled a black forest out, and began to feast. Not a child in Spiral Town had ever seen wagons this far into town, and they crowded round to watch.

The chugs left their dinner and started uphill just ahead of a wave of sharks. Jeremy heard startled laughter and nervous chatter over the rattle of gunfire. Damn fools. They could lose a few chugs here. He emptied his gun and reloaded in haste.

The guns left twenty-odd sharks on the rocky beach, and an awed silence among the watching Spirals.

Then Harlow may have misread Jeremy's triumphant near-snarl. Or not. Jeremy had never been sure of Harlow. She made some minor changes in her dress-still in the vivid style of a merchant woman, but not so apt for shooting sharks-while he~ filled his lined pocket with seeds and festivity candy.

Once there had been a hydraulic empire in miniature: the mainland's stranglehold on speckles.

No more. The next time a caravan tried such extortion as they'd used these past few days, they'd find fertile speckles growing over every garbage heap, every manure pit, every graveyard along the Crab. Where there was potassium, speckles would grow.

Argos had robbed Crab and mainland alike. Destiny Town had only Cavorite, Spiral Town had only Columbiad; neither could reach farther than synchronous orbit. Spiral Town had all the knowledge that Cavorite had taken for Terminus and Destiny Town, and the equivalent in settlermagic tools.

Destiny Town had built shuttles that would reach orbit. That was the first step, had always been the first step to the stars. Spiral Town could have taken that step, and had not. Speckles-shy for a year or less, they'd recovered; but they'd never reached farther.

No more whining about birthrights, then, or what the mainland owed to the towns along the Crab.

Jemmy Bloocher would steal the stars.

When children passed them on the Road, Jeremy gave them festivity. A growing entourage of children followed them through Spiral Town.

“One each,” he told them. They didn't believe him. Maybe they just liked following a man and a woman walking together. It might have struck them-it would have struck young Jemmy Bloocher-as just a bit obscene.

At the gate that led to the graveyard, the children stopped. He gave them another piece each and escorted Harlow through the wroughtiron gate.

He saw newer graves marked not with holograms but with blocks of carved stone. The marker gun must have failed.

“People are staring at us,” Harlow said. “Isn't that dangerous?”

“Nobody's ever going to recognize Jemmy Bloocher talking with a lovely woman.”

“They might tumble if you don't stop acting like you've seen it all before!”

“I'll gawk a little then. How's this?”

He could guess where Carolyn Hope Hearst must be, from the date she'd died. Yes: here she was in the pecan grove, with a fading hologram to mark the trunk.

“Poor woman. The whole train was sick from malnutrition, and she was the one who died. The crops hadn't grown in yet, I guess."Jeremy pulled two thumbs of festivity out of his special pocket along with a smattering of seeds, and offered one to Harlow.

She said, “Is this respectful?”

“Sure. Collect some nuts too. There are lifegivers under those fruit trees: see the girls eating plums?”

They ate the candy. Seeds fluttered over Carolyn Hope Hearst's grave. Jeremy plucked two handfuls of pecans and pocketed them.

He chose a way out that led past a line of Bloocher graves. He didn't point out the names; he let Harlow discover them.

He noticed a boy and girl watching him, and offered them festivity. If he spoke to the girl she'd run, so he didn't speak to either. They both looked like... well, Bloochers.

So he didn't look up at their mother. She might know him. He watched them eat the festivity, and watched the seeds fall.