Destiny's Road

8 On the Road

The wagons were rolling steadily away from Twerdahi Town when three merchants and Tim Bednacourt walked into a haze of fine dust.

The morning wore on. Swamp trailed off into grass-covered hills. They crossed a wide and sluggish stream on stepping-stones too conveniently placed to be natural. Halida named it Whelan's Crossing.

The wagons didn't seem to he getting closer.

The merchants weren't hurrying. They ambled along, chatting among themselves. With his burden of possessions Tim was still hard put to keep up. Now they were asking questions about life in Twerdahl Town.

Tim tried to distract them with questions of his own. “I've never watched merchants cooking. What do you use?”

'You will see. I am Damon ibn-Rushd. Ibn-Rushd is eight from the lead, six from the tail. We and Lyons family carry the cookware.”

“Do you cook with the same kind of thing you sell to Twerdahl?”

'Yes.'

'Good. Is there always firewood?”

“Always, except at the Tail.”

A stone bridge arched over deep water. Tim asked, “Did you build all of these bridges?”

Laughter. “Who else?”

Gradually they drew alongside the last wagon. Now they were passing a line of chugs. Each chug spared Tim one long dismissive glance. They stood almost hip high. Those shells looked heavy. They'd weigh about half as much as Tim. The top of the beak was an extension of the skullcap shell, with a lower jaw to meet it. That beak would deliver a hell of a bite.

Tim suddenly realized that he was seeing the same odd blemish on each chug. They were marked with an E inside a D, carved into the shell on the right side.

“Dole,” Halida said. “Dole Enterprises.”

Nineteen chugs pulled Dole wagon.

Twenty pulled the next. They were marked with a bird of Earth, an owl.

Eighteen pulled the next, marked with an ellipse and a dot in the center. “Wu family had bad luck this trip,” Damon said softly as he smiled and waved at two men in the driver's alcove.

“The wagons,” Tim said, “they're all alike.”

Damon nodded; Halida smiled.

Spiral children noticed early. Eggs were alike, seeds were alike, babies were alike, but crafted things were not. Things that were all alike were ancient machines from the time of Landing, “settler magic” like computers and microwave ovens; or they were the wood-and-iron wagons of a caravan.

Wagons were painted in flamboyant fashion, a match for merchants' clothing. When the side opened to form a counter and sunscreen, each wagon became a shop different from every other shop. But the counters were up, the wagons were closed, and this was Tim Bednacourt's first good look at wagons. They were identical down to the last centimeter, as if made all at the same time, from identical components, by identical workmen.

The drivers' alcoves denied their similarities. They were painted too, and furnished with pillows and little shelves and niches that held mugs or pieces of carved wood. From arcs of driver's benches that would be roomy for four, merchants watched Tim pass. They didn't speak, but they smiled.

“They smile for you,” Halida said. “We might have had to eat our own cooking.”

The chugs weren't paying much notice to passersby, or the Road, or anything but their own steady motion.

Fourth wagon from the end: the chugs were marked with two vertical bars on an S. Halida climbed four shallow steps to the driver's bench. The drivers shifted to give her room. She looked down at Tim and said, “Milasevik. We carry tents and bedding.”

They walked on.

Ibn-Rushd was sixth from the end, out of thirteen wagons. A summer caravan would have been fifteen to twenty. Senka smiled at Tim from the driver's bench; Rian merely watched. The last chug was marked with a crescent and six-pointed star.

Damon ignored the steps. He was into the driver's alcove in a smooth pull-and-jump maneuver. A gesture invited Tim to do the same.

Tim dropped his pack into the alcove, then scrambled over the side. practice, he promised himself.

Milo called up to him. “Milo Spadoni. Second in line. We carry ammunition, we and Tucker.” He walked on.

The driver's bench would hold four, and it was full. Senka, Rian, an elderly lady Tim didn't know, and man's brother. Tim said, “Hello, Joker.”

“Tim,” Joker said.

Damon said, “Tim Bednacourt, this is Shireen ibn-Rushd. You obey her in all things. Mother, Tim is a wonderful cook.”

“Very pleased,” Tim said. The old lady smiled.

Tethers from each of the chugs were tied to knobs on a half-circle of rail, but the women weren't bothering with them. The chugs seemed to know what they were doing.

Damon ibn-Rushd said, “You're a yutz now, but not a labor yutz. Your rank is 'chef.' There are three other chefs and me and Marilyn Lyons. Lyons wagon carries the rest of the cookery. You take orders from me or Marilyn, but if any other merchant tells you to lift or carry something, you don't have to. You can draft a loose labor yutz if he'll put up with it, but any merchant might give him another job.

“And this is yours.” Damon stooped and dug under the bench. Senka ibn-Rushd slid aside for him. He came out with what Tim recognized as a gun, and a broad belt in his other hand.

He handed the gun to Tim. “Have you ever fired a shark gun?”

Tim Bednacourt said, “No.” He took the gun, suppressing the flinch, and held it as if he didn't know which part was the handle. It looked exactly like the gun that had killed Fedrick. He felt queasy.

“Hold it like this.” Damon showed him. “Never point at anything valuable, and never at a person. Keep your fingers off the trigger unless you're serious. These are bullets.” Bullets were the size of Tim's thumb: a ball of metal in a case made of what might be compressed vegetable fiber, “You load it like this. It doesn't work without bullets.” The gun took eight. “Never be caught with an unloaded gun. Twice never at sunset or sunrise! Let's get up on the roof and I'll give you some practice.”

Pull and jump, Damon was on the roof. Tim set his hands, pulled and jumped, lunged too far as the wagon rolled, and nearly fell off.

The roof was flat. At its corners were coils of rope. Cloth had been nailed along a ten-centimeter-high rim.

“Some of us like to get down on our bellies, prop up on our elbows and shoot that way,” Damon said. “I'm not going to teach you that. You can't swing far enough. Something could come at you from the side. See that tree?”

Not far inland, a slender Destiny fisher tree leaned far over, tip almost horizontal, lace blowing and shredding in a brisk breeze.

“Suppose you want to shoot the tip off that. Stand facing right by a little.” About thirty degrees right. “You're right-handed? Both hands on the gun. Fold your left fingers over the right, like this. Now your right arm is straight, but your left elbow bends. Lean forward a little, because the gun is going to kick back. Pull the trigger.”

The noise was an assault. The gun kicked in his hands. Something burst into view from trees nearby: a caricature of a bird, feathery and two-legged and big as a man. It ran in circles, squawking madly, then off down the Road.

Tim braced his arms, pointed, and fired again. The gun didn't snap up as high.

“Arms pull against each other,” Damon suggested.

Hmm? Tim tried that. It felt good, natural. The fisher tree was some distance behind him now, but he set his feet, held his aim on the tip of the tree, BLAM! it was flying dust.

He hadn't fired, the gun hadn't kicked.

“That Boardman yutz,” Damon said, “on Lyons wagon. He didn't throw you off, did he? That's the first mistake you'll make. Something distracts you, you pull, shoot a hole in something. Here-” Damon took the gun. He set himself. The fisher tree was far behind them now. Damon fired and the chewed tip jumped. “Like that.” He gave the gun back. “Pick something closer.”

The Road swerved gradually inland and the land was drying out. Tim chose a lone thick-holed Destiny teapot, aimed for the bole, braced his feet, his arms, BLAM. Dust and splinters sprayed from the edge. He aimed above the bole, at a smaller target, the spout. He scored another hit.

“Good! and enough,” Damon said. “Come sunset you can shoot sharks.” He bent and lifted. A square patch of roof came up. “All the wagons have attic storage. If a predator ever got this far, here's refuge. We'll stow your pack here. And-“ He reached into the hatch and brought out a transparent speckles pouch. “Here.” Tim took the pouch.

Damon dropped a handful of bullets into it. “Close it like this. Keeps water out.”

The space below the trapdoor might hold four or five friendly people, but it was packed with bedding, pillows, clothing, tarpaulins, and a big square box. Tim had to push to get his pack in. “Refuge? Damon, do I throw stuff out to make room for persons?”

Damon laughed. “It's never happened. We got used to using it for storage, but it's supposed to be a hidey-hole. All right, yes. Throw it to the sharks if they get this far.” He thumped the box. “Don't throw away the bullets.”

Damon showed Tim how to manipulate ropes on the wagon's roof to open the sides. Tim took it through the full routine while Damon watched.

“What's next?”

“Cooking. What do you do best?”

“Omelets. Stir-fry vegetables.”

'Takes eggs?' Damon looked down the Road. Ground cover had grown sparse.

Tim asked, “Would there be nests around here?'

The old woman spoke unexpectedly. “Oooh, I'd think so!”

Why was that funny? But Damon smiled. “We'll send out some yutzes.”

In midafternoon the wagons rolled drunkenly across wide, fiat stones in a shallow stream. When the seventh wagon was across, they all stopped. Tim watched the women release the chugs.

He couldn't quite see how it was done. Loose a line from its knob on the rim of the driver's alcove, snap it like a whip, then retie it. It looked easy; it looked purposeless. Senka and Rian moved briskly along the arc of knobs. When they met at the center, several chugs could be seen to be loose and moving toward the beach.

The younger women stepped daintily down to the Road, then helped Shireen down. Damon and Tim stayed to open the wagon's side, then dropped to join them. Damon and the women were all armed, even Shireen,

All of ibn-Rushd's chugs were loose now. The other wagons, spread far apart up and down the Road, had released theirs.

“We've got time to set some fire pits,” Damon said. He pulled shovels from the wagon. “Tim, come on down to the beach. The labor yutzes know what to do.”

The sea was two hundred meters away. Most of the women, and not many men, walked down to the beach, taking no notice of two hundred and fifty chugs rolling down behind them in two slow waves. The chugs veered wide of the freshwater flow and its delta mouth.

There were old fire pits to be dug out. Men dug. Women supervised. Chugs flowed around them and into the waves.

Yutzes brought dry vegetation, Earthlife and Destiny trees and weeds. Tim saw two men dragging a lace-festooned log, and jumped to help. They set it on tinder in a dug-out pit.

One of the men asked, “You're Tim from ibn-Rushd? I'm Bord'n from Lyons wagon. Bord'n, not Boardman, whatever the merchants tell you. This's Hal, from Lyons too, but he's a chef.”

The women were starting their fires.

“Hello, Bord'n, Hal. Are all yutzes men?”

Bord'n laughed. Hal said, “All I ever saw. A pregnant yutz could be awkward. You don't see children either on a caravan.”

Still talking, the two men had him by the elbows and were walking him up toward the wagons before he could quite catch on.

With no discussion and no sign of haste, every human being in sight was ambling uphill toward the wagons. They climbed onto roofs and settled in. Senka, Damon, and Joker were already in place. Hal and Bord'n urged Tim up, and followed.

Damon greeted them; Senka passed around a pitcher of water flavored with lemons. Rian ibn-Rushd wasn't in sight. She must be visiting another wagon.

A forest rolled out of the water, black and bronze and yellow. A forest of seaweed, and motion working within it. Chugs.

Thrashing fish were dropping out of the weed, and chugs left the line to snap them up before they could reach water. Half-seen chugs were steadily pulling the beached forest apart, eating the crabs and fish and shellfish as they were exposed.

Tim watched in fascination.

As if at a signal, the chugs all began moving inland, leaving the weed behind.

Then things began coming out of the water.

They didn't look particularly scary. They were heavy and flat. The waves didn't topple them. They crawled onto land, paused a moment, then moved after the chugs faster than a walking man. There were twenty in sight when the first reached the beached seaweed.

The family ibn-Rushd, and their visitors, took their positions. “Save your bullets,” Damon told Tim. “You too, Joker.”

Tim had only been given six. It must be very natural, he thought, for a new yutz to waste bullets. So Tim held his pose and his fire.

A shark was three or four times the size of a chug, and flatter, built lower to the ground. Its shell was smaller and more simplified than the ornate points and edges of a chug shell. Its big head was mostly beak and shell cap and a backward-pointing prong for counterbalance. The beak was all points and curved edges, built for ripping. The eyes faced forward in deep recesses.

Even so, these were clearly the chugs' relatives. Chugs carried shields with edges and points that could gash a predator. Sharks carried weaponry.

The sharks paused at the seaweed forest. They were nosing into the weeds, seeking the same prey that served the chugs. The chugs were halfway to the wagons, moving as fast as Tim had seen them move.

One, then several sharks crawled over the weed in pursuit of the receding chugs.

Guns began to fire. Bullets thudded into the few sharks in the lead, poking holes in their shells or spraying seawater and blood from the rough gray-green skin below.

“Not many this time,” Damon said. “That near one in the middle? That's your target, Tim.”

Flat-footed, leaning forward just a bit, hands pulling against each other with the gun butt between... Tim fired. Bullets thudded into the beast's shell. Maybe one or two were his. He saw a shark still coming, swiveled, and used up his bullets on that one.

Four sharks were down, and the rest were running for the water. They weren't fast. A man could outrun them; but who would tire first, man or shark?

“You all stopped shooting,” Tim noticed, “as soon as they turned tail. Why not kill them all?”

The yutzes looked to Damon, who said, “If we killed off all the sharks, who knows what we'd get instead? We don't know what goes on under the water.”

“Think of us as priests of evolution,” Senka ibn-Rushd said. “Another twenty years, they'll run at the first sound of a gunshot. Maybe they won't chase chugs at all.”

“Here, Tim.” Damon held out a handful of bullets. “You've got good self-control. Take some time tomorrow, get some practice. For now, we don't have much daylight.”

Most of the merchants and yutzes began setting up tents. Those of ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons set up to cook dinner. The evening was turning misty.

Marilyn Lyons glowed in the evening light. She was two centimeters taller than Tim and weighed more too. She dressed in brilliant greens and lavenders, dramatic against her white skin and black hair. She pulled cookware out of the storage compartments of Lyons wagon, hefting gear with no visible effort while she rattled off directions a little faster than Tim could follow.

“Teapot. Cook pot. Randall, Hal, get these on the fire and fill them with water. Add the turkeys when the big pot boils. You cleaned them? Good. Wok. Wok. Tim, you want both of these? And take this.” She didn't hand it to him; she pointed.

Two flattened cylinders half a meter tall, both glossy glaring red, in a niche beneath Lyon wagon. Tim wrapped his arm around one and caught a familiar scent.

“The speckles always comes back here. Always.”

Tim said, “Right.”

“That fire, that's yours to work on. The yutzes have the eggs and the veggies are in Dodgson wagon. Boardman, you're with Tim. Tim, any questions?”

“Why did the founders thaw these flies?”

Laughter shook her whole body. “They must have been crazy. Anyone want ovens?”

Randall took the pots and moved briskly away. Bord'n gathered up cooking tools, forks and knives and spoons and spatulas, and set them in a flat shell that must have come off the back of a record-sized shark. He followed Tim, towing the shark shell.

Cookware stored aboard ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons was little different from what Tim had practiced with in Twerdahl Town. That was a relief. Vegetables were what the merchants could buy in towns and carry in wagons. Meat was what they could kill. Yutzes and merchants had been out hunting while the wagons were in motion.

Lyons wagon's two woks were bigger than he was used to. No problem: a big wok could cook the same omelet as a small one. He was given oil. Yutzes from other wagons had the vegetables he needed. Bord'n had brought knives, spatulas, a whirring thing to whip eggs.

But the eggs were tremendous. He asked, “Bord'n, is this some Destiny sea thing?”

Bord'n grinned. “Ostrich eggs. Big bird supposed to be from Earth. Lot of 'em running around here. You maybe saw the mom, and maybe you'll eat her tonight, 'cause we shot three this afternoon.”

“Damn. What do the eggs taste like?”

“Better cook one first and find out. Hi, Rian!”

“Boardman.” The merchant girl nodded regally. “Tim.”

He smiled at her. “Evening.”

“How goes dinner?”

“Just another damn intelligence test,” Tim said. “I never saw ostrich eggs before.”

Rian smiled and moved on.

One ostrich egg was bigger than a ten-egg omelet. The taste was different, and Tim used more seasoning after his first attempt. Speckles, of course. A little lemon rind? Yes.

Veggies and eggs never stuck to the woks.

Other chefs were at work around other fires. Quicksilver winked out below the setting sun.

As in Twerdahl Town, people passed carrying food, gave him slices of fruit and big flat grilled mushrooms and ostrich meat, and carried away sliced-up veggie omelets. Ostrich was delicious. Heavier woks, heavier omelets: Tim was working harder than he was used to. He thought of himself as strong, big-shouldered, but this was wearing him out.

Shireen ibn-Rushd accepted a wedge of omelet. She tasted it. “Tim, isn't it? Yes. You have a nice hand with eggs.” She put something in his hand, smiled, and wandered off.

Dried cherries.

He noticed tents being pitched and beds laid within. The tents were many-lobed, and flaps were generally left open. Some of the merchants were already asleep before sunset.

As in Twerdahl Town, cooking ended at sunset. He'd wondered. But now cookware had to be carted to the river, washed, part-filled with water, and set back on the fires to boil clean.

Damon led him away to the ibn-Rushd tent. He would not have found it on his own, in the dark. It was a cross, four lobes meeting at a communal circle of cushions, Shireen snoring in one of the lobes. In the center, a low table. Damon and Senka wanted to talk, but they must have seen he was ready to collapse.

He rolled himself in blankets in one of the lobes and persuaded himself he was asleep.

But their voices ran through his dozing mind, telling merchant secrets, and the memories came back in later years.