Destiny's Road

5 On the Road

Where the wall of ancient lava converged to a point, there was a shine of water, then leafy Earthlife trees. From high up it appeared that the forest ran right to the Road. As Jemmy descended, it became clear that he was approaching a swamp.

He wasn't eager to wade into that.

The trees were cypress and mangrove on a wide spread of shallow water. There were no competing Destiny trees, but the trees were festooned with what he first thought were snakes. Snakes everywhere... motionless black snakes winding through webs of yellow-green lace.

Vines. One was a variety he didn't recognize, but the others wereJulia sets, the same vine the elder Hanns cultivated. The Hanns must have played the bonsai trick, stunting the plant by pruning and by keeping it half starved. These were huge. In places they were strangling the mangroves.

Something rippled along the water. A snake, a real one this time. Another moved among the vines. Something bigger shied from it: a man. Jemmy sank slowly into a crouch, then tried to ease behind a tree.

The man-boy-broke through to the open with evident relief. Looked around. Didn't see Jemmy. Jemmy stepped out of hiding, and Thonny jumped.

'You all right?”

'Fine,” Thonny said. “How was it?”

“Easy going. How did you make out?”

“There are merchants at the bridge!” Thonny was excited, enjoying himself immensely. “They asked about a merchant that got killed in Spiral Town. We changed the story a little.”

Fear rose up in Jemmy's throat. “Changed how?”

“Uh, well, we talked it over. Curdis says I'm the traders' best witness. I mean Thonny Bloocher is. I'm your oldest brother and I saw it all. Brenda wouldn't see as much because it was all men and Brenda's a girl-”

And so she wouldn't have watched men quarreling. “Right. So?”

“So they would have turned us back and how would you find us on the Road? So I didn't say I'm Thonny Bloocher. I'm Tim Hann.”

“With those eyes?”

“One of the merchants said that. I got insulted.”

“Curdis's idea?”

“Yeah. The real Tim Hann would have been Curdis's older brother, but he died a year old.”

“Tim Hann. I'm Tim Hann. Great. Anything else?”

Jemmy's fury rendered Thonny mute.

If he couldn't get Thonny talking any other way, Jemmy was ready to hold him under water. This was his lffe they were playing for! He said, “Look, if I'm Tim Hann, I have to sound like Tim Hann. Did Tim Hann see the killing?”

Thonny nodded.

“Where were you?”

“Across the room, near the fireplace.”

“Did Jemmy Bloocher do it? Fine. With the merchant's gun? What does he look like? What did you change?”

“I didn't lie. It was just a better fight.”

“Curdis was listening? I can ask him?”

“Yeah.”

“What were they like, these merchants you met?”

“We saw three men at the bridge, with a woman. They searched us. We bought some stuff from them. They lost interest when we said we were broke. You're still broke going back, okay?”

“They'll expect me to know them coming back?”

Thonny thought it over, then shrugged.

“Okay. Where are we? What are all these people doing here?”

“I don't know. Living here. I peeled off before we got close to anyone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Four or five of them saw us together. Older people, Mom's age. They dress like, well, like Jael Harness.”

“Did they wave? Throw rocks? Do they think we're weird?”

“They pointed at us and started shouting, maybe at us, maybe at the houses. Women too. Curdis and Brenda went on toward them, but I did what Curdis told me. I peeled off. Didn't let any of them get a close look. Tied the bike to a tree. You just go through the swamp, get on the bike, and go join them.”

Jemmy began to wonder if he sounded properly grateful. He said, “Sounds like it all went like somebody planned it,” and smiled and hugged his brother.

That pleased Thonny. He asked, “How did you make out?”

Jemmy tried to tell him. “There's practically nobody on the Road. I mean at night, I only went at night. Stay with the frost line and you won't be seen. There's plenty of water, springs. If you see a bird flapping in a fool cage, that's your dinner. If it isn't moving, leave it.”

“We trading backpacks?”

They did that. Jemmy said, “I made some fIres. Did you see anything? Smoke?”

“Tiny fires in rock pits. I left some fire pits. You break them up when you finish with them.”

They looked at each other.

Jemmy said, “Thonny, thanks.”

“It's okay.” Thonny adjusted his backpack, grinned at his brother, and began to climb.

“Hats!” Jemmy shouted.

He sailed Thonny's hat up to Thonny. Thonny sailed his down to Jemmy. It flew over his head and settled on the water.

Jemmy waded into the gloom. The water was knee-deep and tepid.

Jemmy's hat was sinking out of sight. Jemmy retrieved it and put it on. It streamed water, soaked like a sponge, but he had no other way to carry it. He was glad to have it back.

The air smelled alien: wet and thick with greenery and rot. He crawled over tremendous roots. The water was thigh-deep now, icy around his ankles.

Crotch-deep. Was this the right direction? Seen from overhead, the grove hadn't seemed this big. Now he feared he'd never reach the Road.

Something limbless slid through the water. Again, nearer now. Julia sets hung thickly from the branches. From time to time a vine lifted a wedgeshaped head and flickered its tongue, to watch and sniff for clumsy prey.

Bright and colorful they were, and they shied from him too. Some snakes described in teaching programs were poisonous. Interstellar travelers wouldn't have brought poisonous snakes, would they? These were Earthlife, brought for decoration. Someone in Sol system's planning section must have liked snakes.

But Jemmy didn't, and the thought of being touched by such a thing- He'd reached the Road. But the dark water was waist-deep, and the Road was a smoothly curved rim of gray rock at eyebrow level. His hands slid over it. He couldn't get the grip that would pull him out.

Cursing, he wrestled his way up a banyan, then far enough along a branch to drop to the Road.

He rested on his knees, panting and dripping, his hands on its warm surface. The Road. He was home. By its look, by its feel, this was the Road that ran past Bloocher Farm.

But the houses on the far side were angular little boxes with drastically peaked roofs.

Three girls were coming toward him. They looked much alike, pale skin and narrow noses and hair the color of butter. Sisters or cousins, Jemmy's age. They dressed in older clothes of mismatched color that didn't quite fit.

Who were these people? Where had they come from?

Exiles from Spiral Town? When?

And where had Thonny left his bike? The girls shouldn't get the idea that this new Tim Hann didn't know.

Could be worse: boys would ask him embarrassing questions.

Tied to a tree? That would be down in the swamp! But Thonny wouldn't have left his bike that way. And if he'd peeled off as soon as they saw locals, he must have left the bike up the Road toward Spiral Town.

Up the Road by nearly a mile, it tilted. Four big robust trees seemed to be right up against it. Jemmy walked toward them, followed at a distance by the girls.

The huge roots of five... seven banyans were actually lifting the edge of the Road.

There:Thonny's bike.

“Hello,” one of the girls called. “Are you Timmy Hann?” Jemmy freed the bike and wheeled it around. He didn't know what to do. But they'd spoken, they couldn't be much surprised if he talked back. He said, “Tim Hann,” correcting their pronunciation.

“I'm Loria. Everybody's down by the beach.” She wasJemmy's height, the tallest of the girls. Narrow nose, narrow chin, wide eyes that held his oWfl. Her clothes looked like she'd dressed in the dark, in garments borrowed half from Spiral Town, half from merchants. “Can I ride your thing?”

“Bicycle.”

She waited.

They'd never seen a bike before, had they? On whim Jemmy handed it over to her. He held it steady while she got on, and showed her how to set her feet on the pedals. He avoided touching her. They talked to boys, but they might take that more seriously.

He rolled the bike forward, gave her a chance to find the feel of it, then let go. She stayed up. He ran alongside. Still up, learning to steer but not quite fast enough. She was going to fall into the swamp!

He lunged for the seat of the bike, brushed her where she sat, tried again and had it. Pulled back, leaning into it, and stopped her short of the edge. His fingertips burned. “I f-forgot to talk about b-brakes,” he said.

Loria listened, looked where he pointed, nodded, and tried again. A few false starts and she wobbled in among the houses, laughing, faster than he could follow.

One of the girls said, “I'm Tarzana. That's Gl-”

“Glind Bednacourt. We're all Bednacourt-“

“The Bednacourt sisters.” Narrow noses, narrow chins, wide dancing eyes. Tarzana took his arm, Glind took his other arm, and they walked him between the houses.

The houses were two deep, with truck gardens between. The mudflat beyond grew black Destiny sandweed that thinned out near the ocean.

Fifty or sixty people were milling around braziers set on the bare mud.

Others were down by the water.

Jemmy felt the blood freezing in his arteries. They were all St rangers. He'd never seen so many strangers together. He hadn't guessed what that would do to him.

But the girls were urging him forward.

A few were examining Thonny's bike while Loria turned the pedals and the handlebars. Brenda- There! He'd found his sister.

Half a dozen men were out on the water, riding floating slabs. “Glind, what are those?”

“Boards.”

Brenda was with other girls at the shore, and a couple of men too, watching them. Some of those had boards, and two of the men on the water were women. It was confusing, an optical illusion. He'd seen them as all men because they were together, all wearing sleeveless shirts.

Curdis was in a group around one of the braziers. He waved enthusiastically and called, “Timtimtimmy!”

Thanks for the reminder. “Curdis! There's a thousand kinds of trees and a thousand kinds of snakes, and Destiny vines you could build a city on.” And that gives Timtimtimmy a reason for going in there.

“Typical. You dive into a jungle and ignore the people. Drew, you really surprised us. We had no idea you were here. Tim, this is Drew Bednacourt.”

“Pleased,” Drew Bednacourt said, smiling. He was white-haired and muscular, Dad's age, and a white scar ran down his dark chest into his short pants. “You surprised us too.” His handshake was hard, horny.

Curdis said, “You're not that surprised.”

Jemmy saw what he meant. Most of the locals weren't talking to the Spirals. They were fishing or cooking or floating on boards in the water.

Drew said, “We've seen merchants all our lives. The caravan went through two weeks ago. They'll be back in a week with whatever Haven and the Spirals leave.”

Tarzana looked Jemmy over. “He's already wet, Dad. Tim, want to go for a swim? Do you know how to ride?”

Jemmy asked, “Ride?” Then he saw two men stand up on their boards while a wave hurled them forward.

He had to try that.

They sat in a circle on the sand, eating in near darkness. The red of sunset had faded. The only light was Quicksilver, a brilliant spark at the ocean's rim.

Jemmy was exhausted. The long day might have worn him out, but the surfing lesson was the finishing stroke. In the morning he was going to hurt.

He listened, half-dozing, while Curdis and Brenda talked to the Bednacourt girls and Cloochi boys. The girls were sisters born a year apart, Tarzana nineteen, Loria eighteen, Glind seventeen. Drew, their father, was cooking over the brazier with their mother, Wend, who had been surfing. Harl and Susie Cloochi were older, Wend Bednacourt's parents.

The girls began passing out food. Jemmy didn't guess how hungry he was until he bit into a chicken leg. Then he ate like a starving wolf, whatever the girls brought him, chicken and corn and Earthlife fruit, Destiny crab and Destiny seaweed.

Quicksilver disappeared in a blink. Now the only light was stars, and a funny blue glow in the rolling waves.

Harl Cloochi said, “I'm an old man, Curdis. Is Quicksilver brighter than it used to be? I can never he sure. It's like Quicksilver disappears in a blink, and then the night's as black as inside my stomach.”

“I'm only twenty-two,” Curdis said.

“You're Spiral. You've still got machines that t~ach, they say.”

'They're wearing out. Tim? Brenda? Remember anything about Quicksilver? From the schooling disks?”

Brenda did. “Quicksilver's closest to the sun, that must he why it's so bright. It's not very big. Quicksilver, Destiny, Volstaag, Hogun, Hela.”

There was something else about Quicksilver. Something Jemmy had read and forgotten, and now it wouldn't come.

'How did you come here?” Curdis asked.

Susie Cloochi answered. “My father told me his family got in a fight with the Spirals. Mother was carrying me already. They took some seeds and stuff and came down the Road and found Twerdahi already here.”

Jemmy exclaimed, “Twerdahl?”

Laughter. Susie said, “This place, we name it Twerdahl Town. After the Founders. the ones who took Cavorite and disappeared.”

Jemmy laughed at himself. “I thought you meant the Twerdahls themselves.”

“Your turn. You're the first Spirals we've seen in ages. What are you doing here?”

The silence stretched. Brenda or Curdis might have answers ready, but Jemmy couldn't know that, and in the dark he couldn't see their faces. He took the chance and said, “Following the path of the Cavorite. I want to know where they went.”

Tarzana breathed, “Cavorite!”

“But you've got the teaching machines,” old Susie Cloochi said. “Don't they tell you?”

All fatigue fled, Jemmy said, “Some. Cavorite left with forty crew. I know some of the names. Twerdahi, Tucker, Granger, Lyons, Doheny

Spiral Town was founded in 2490, but they called it Base One then. Cavorite left in 2498. You know they left a spiral of Road behind them? They never came home. Maybe they never planned to. Maybe something killed them.”

Susie Cloochi said, “My family never went home. A good many families here never did. Folk do leave Spiral Town from time to time. Might it be that the Cavorite crew just wanted to get away?”

“Snakes,” Jemmy said.

They looked at him. “Snakes, Tim?”

His mind had wandered, then closed its teeth on-“Snakes in the Swamp. It just came to me, Miz Cloochi. Cavorite must have left those. Someone aboard Cavorite must have liked snakes.”

“And swamps,” said Brenda.

Jemmy looked back toward the swamp. “Can't you see it? They're drifting along. Flame mushing out violet under the skirt.” He couldn't really picture that; he'd never seen a flame that hot; nobody had. “They could go faster if they were just trying to get away, but they're just drifting along, leaving a trail of melted rock behind them. Suddenly they're looking at a swamp.

“What can they do? They can boil the water, kill the Destiny weeds, but that won't make it into Road. They could go around it, uphill, but that wouldn't leave a Road for anything with wheels.”

“Rocks,” Brenda said. “They'd have to roll a line of rocks down across the water.”

Curdis said, “We had tractors in Spiral Town, big machines for pulling a plow or pushing down a tree. They don't go anymore. Cavorite might have taken one.”

Jemmy nodded, putting it into the picture. “Push a row of rocks across. Like stepping-stones. Then hover till the rock melts and the water boils. Wait till the swamp cools down, then seed-”

“No, T-Tim, that's a humongous thermal mass. You don't throw seeds in boiling water.”

He nodded. “Right. They go on, making Road. Week or two later they come back and seed some trees-“

“Maybe a year.”

“-and leave the snakes and anything else I didn't see. Damn.”

Curdis said, “All right, what damn?”

“They weren't just runaways, the Cavorite crew. I always knew forty crew was too tidy. When you're running away, you don't wait for your numbers to come out neat like that. The Road was the point. If Cavorite came back this far to seed a swamp, why not come all the way back to Spiral Town?”

The Bednacourt sisters led them to a structure that was all one big room. “A lot of us slept here after the storm washed away some houses two years ago,” Loria said. “Elsewise it's the House of Healing.”

There was nothing like a bed. The Bloocher clan slept on the wide expanse of floor, covered in their own clothes.

In a moment when Brenda was surely asleep, Curdis spoke in the dark. “I had to turn down an offer from Loria.”

Offer? Ah. “What did you say?”

“I said I'm married and Brenda's too young, but Timmy's not.”

Jemmy's ears burned in the dark.

The sun hadn't risen over the mountains yet. The morning was cold. The water was colder for the first moments; then Jemmy's body stopped noticing. He and Tarzana fought their boards through the waves and paddled out to where others were sitting six in a row.

They waited, talking little. Sound carried very well over the water.

Jemmy asked, “Don't you get sharks around here?”

The pause lasted long enough that Jemmy thought nobody had heard him. Then one boy said, “I don't think they like the taste of the river. Sometimes one comes around. We get a lot of sharks when a caravan stops and three hundred chugs get their attention.”

“Wave,” Tarzana said.

The idea was to be moving as fast as the wave when it arrived. Paddle without falling off. When the board catches the wave, stand up. Jemmy had tried standing up yesterday. Today he didn't. Kneeling on a board as a wave hurled it toward the beach was tough enough.

Curdis asked the Twerdahl folk for work, and work was found. He and Brenda and Jemmy (make that Tim, start thinking Tim) knew how to garden, knew how to pull Destiny weeds.

“If we leave about now,” Curdis said in midafternoon, “we'll get to the guarded bridge about sunset.”

“I think they like us here,” Brenda said doubtfully. “Uh-huh. I don't guess Margeiy's worried about us yet, but, Brenda, I told the merchants we'd be coming back today.”

Jemmy held up a hand. Hold it. “Sunset?”

“They saw Thonny around noon. Let's let them see you around sunset.”

At noon and sunset, two views of “Tim Hann” could look quite different. Curdis continued, “Sunset, not dawn. They'd never believe we marched in the dark.”

“Did the merchants tell you about Twerdahi Town?”

“Not a word,” Curdis said in some irritation.

“Nothing about people living down the Road? Big surprise?”

“Big joke.”

“So,” said Jemmy, “we found a surprise and stayed an extra day. That's what they'll expect. Give them another day to forget what Tim Hann looks like.”

Curdis grinned. “I like it here too. I didn't have the nerve to try those boards, Tim. How is it?”

Jemmy shook his head. “It's like, I can't tell a Twerdahl how to ride a bicycle. I can't tell you what surfing is like. Want us to show you? Brenda?”

“Yeah.”

Brenda showed an aptitude for surfing. Curdis gave up early. He didn't like falling off in front of strange males.

The Bednacourt girls returned to the House of Healing with them that night. When the Bloocher clan curled into their blankets, the girls didn't leave.

Voices in the dark, men and women talking together. That was Loria:

“You're good people. You have things to teach us. Some of what comes off the Road are parasites.”

“We all do farm work,” Curdis said. “We learn to look for what needs doing.”

Glind: “We don't let anyone stay a minute if he's alone. Any man alone must be running from something.”

“A woman?” Curdis.

“A woman alone might be running from, well, a man.” Tarzana's voice.

Loria: “The only women we've ever seen on the Road were merchants. But there was a man called himself Haines-” And he was a murderer who hid in the swamp. He stole from the truck gardens when he could, until Destiny food and no speckles turned him into a skeletal zombie, and then they flushed him out.

“Sounds like Mattoo Haine,” Curdis said. “He killed his wife and oldest son when I was little.”

Nobody wanted to tell Twerdahls that if criminals could get past where the Road straightened, Spiral Town let them go. There was a silence Jemmy savored. Then he spoke into the dark. “It must have started this way.”

“Tim?''

“Tarzana, grown men and women don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. When your grandparents came, maybe they didn't bring lights. They could talk together in the dark where they could be just voices.”

“Mmmm.”

He must have fallen asleep soon after.

Jemmy taught bicycle riding all morning.

Cooking over a grill fascinated him. He helped some, but watched more.

In midafternoon they retrieved their bikes from Twerdahl riders. Again Curdis said, “Time to leave.”

Jemmy said, “I'm not going.”

“What?”

“Tell the merchants Tim wants to know where Cavorite went. Tim Hann is on the Road.”

He saw Curdis studying him and guessed his thoughts. Is Jemmy crazy? How crazy? He didn't know Jemmy like a brother, and the Jemmy Bloocher he thought he knew wouldn't have killed a merchant. ~

Curdis said, “They'll take a harder look at Tim Hann if Tim comes back alone.”

“I don't think I'm coming back, Curdis. I can't run Bloocher Farm. I can't talk down a merchant's price while I'm hiding my face! And if Spiral Town gets in another face-off with the caravans- You see?”

Curdis did. “They'd have to stand without the Bloochers. You'd stand for the Bloochers, but you'd be hiding.”

“Curdis, it's unacceptable. Give Thonny two years, he'll be fine running Bloocher Farm. Thonny doesn't have to hide anything.”

“That's two years before Margery and I can get our own farm.”

“Forgive me.”

“Uh-huh.” Curdis's eyes were unfocused: still thinking. “Okay, the caravan'll be starting back this way tomorrow or so. I figured we'd meet them just when they were getting organized, and we'd get you through that way. If you stay, they'll be here in, oh, four days. Tim, are you staying here or pushing on?”

“I don't know.''

“You could keep ahead of a caravan. Even on foot.”

“Sure.”

“Or let them catch you in a few weeks, but now you're a Twerdahl with itchy feet.”

“Mmm.”

“Is this really your choice?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too,” Brenda said.

Curdis blew his top. Brenda shouted back, then cried.

Jemmy watched them dwindle, pedaling hard, up the Road.

When he returned to the House of Healing that night, Loria came with him.