Destiny's Road Part 55

Some pointed structure poked up from the Road, too far ahead to make out.

Jeremy looked downslope, a mere half-klick to a strip of sand and then water dark with Destiny devilhair weed. It all looked strangely familiar. He still didn't know where he was until somebody far ahead shouted, "Warkan's Tavern!"

Angelo Hearst climbed up from the sales window to see. The word bounced down the caravan's length to Hearst wagon, and Angelo's bellow sent it on, while Jeremy stared ahead in befuddlement.

-Oh, of course, he'd been looking for Carder's Boat! which had been there forever, until-He'd last seen Carder's Boat moored offsh.o.r.e of Tail Town. Haunted Bay fishermen used it as a dock. It had swarmed with children on the day the caravan rolled through.

He'd come home. . . but fifty meters past the just-visible facade of Warkan's Tavern, a slender triangular arch stood above the Road. In the Road. A gate, or a barrier.

Harlow was bringing the wagon to a stop. It took a while for the chugs to get the idea, but the message was welcome. Wagons behind were stopping too. The lead wagons wanted a little more s.p.a.ce first. If you made chugs bunch up, they wouldn't bring in as much weed and wouldn't get enough to eat.

Locals were gathering on the hills above Warkan's Tavern. They knew: merchants did no business now.

Hearst wagon (#6) was at a halt. Harlow and Jeremy gave the reins the practiced flip, flip, flip that freed the chugs. A good trip: they still had all twenty.

The spring caravan had come back somewhat shot up. They'd found and obliterated a bandit nest, they said. Obliterated: maybe. Bandits hadn't bothered the autumn caravan.

The chugs drifted downslope.

Angelo dropped straight from the roof, showing off for his wife.

Jeremy eased on down, then gave a hand to Harlow, who didn't need it, and Tanya, who didn't either. Wave Rider's pit chef always did that. It irritated Angelo and amused Steban.

On the roof Steban threw open the sides of the wagon, then came down to help the others deploy cookware. Miller wagon's people (#8) were doing the same.

The dark line of chugs had reached the sand.

Hearst wagon carried Tanya and Angelo Hearst, Angelo's grandfather Glen, and the Winslows. Five merchants meant room for only one yutz.

Miller cookwagon carried three yutzes to make up for that. Glen Hearst made small concessions to pay off the debt.

Thus: the caravan would be here two nights. Not all could afford to dine at Warkan's Tavern or go into town, but it didn't take both cookwagons to cook dinner. Hearst wagon would cook on the first night.

The line of chugs flowed into the waves.

Jeremy and Harlow moved well together, unloading and deploying tools, hanging an ostrich and four chickens the hunters had shot. At this their steady efficiency and decades of practice made them the best in the caravan. Yutzes from all the wagons were gathering Destiny firewood and digging out the pits.

Something was bothering Glen Hearst. He spent less time supervising than in looking toward town, or the Tavern, or- Far up the Road, two electric wagons approached. Jeremy glanced that way from time to time as he worked. Atop one he picked out the glitter of Begley cloth. The wagons stopped short of the pointed structure, and men began unloading them.

The barrier stood just at the border between Warkan's Tavern and Bloocher Farm.

"Glen, what is that thing?"

"Never saw it before."

Hearst and Miller wagons had made all reasonable preparations for dinner, and no sign of chugs. The fires in the long pits were beginning to catch.

"Mind if I go look?"

"Set up the tents first."

Jeremy and Harlow exchanged glances. Jeremy hadn't meant now! There was time to break out the tents and set them up, but not to walk most of a klick, almost as far as Warkan's Tavern! Glen knew that. What had made him so touchy?

They busied themselves setting tentpoles and deploying tents and inflating pillows, until a long black line of devilhair weed rolled out of the sea. Then all the traders and yutzes dropped their work and returned to their wagons. As the chugs emerged pus.h.i.+ng devilhair ahead of them, Hearst wagon's crew settled on the roof with a liter of lemonade and their guns.

The chugs fed placidly. Then they all broke off at once and rolled uphill.

Six long low shapes darted from the water, all at once and wide apart. Only six. A few guns sounded: overeager yutzes, quickly silenced.

Four sharks stopped at the black weed.

Two came on. The caravan fired, one long roll of thunder. The two fell. Four sharks darted from the weed and into the next wave.

Two lay dead. Jeremy was pretty sure he'd hit one. A few yutzes were still firing into the shredded bodies.

It wasn't just Glen Hearst. The elders were in a fury. At dinner they gathered in a small, tight circle. They fell silent when yutzes came to serve them.

Harlow and Jeremy approached the circle and were rebuffed.

Yutzes did most of the work of serving dinner. Jeremy only had to get it off the fire while it wasn't yet charred. In dying orange light he stopped to look at one of the dead sharks. They were too chewed up to show detail. He'd look up LUNGSHARK if he ever reached another library.

The light was dying, and so were the coals. Jeremy set his pan of pureed cherries and gelatin where the.heat wouldn't char it. He'd practiced that, and ruined several batches during the training period.

He'd brought gelatin and honey and twenty pounds of seeds to roll it in.

All along the Road he'd found fruit to make jell. Every batch of festivity was different.

Harlow was watching him. She said, "I think your festivity candy was what really put us here. It made us just that extra notch more desirable."

"You're very desirable." He kissed her.

Harlow gestured toward the circle of elders; lifted one brow.

Harlow didn't like being treated as a child.

He said, "Maybe when you're older, dear."

"We're Glen Hearst's age! Let's eavesdrop?"

"No safe way. Love, the yutzes know how to clean up. Let's go look at that gate."

Warkan's Tavern was full of light and activity as they strolled past. At the edge of Bloocher Farm, they stopped beside the arch. It was poured stone in a cast-iron frame. It straddled the Road, narrower than a caravan wagon.

The chair beneath it was made of iron and poured stone, though lined with pillows. As Jeremy approached the man in the chair stood up, tall and ma.s.sive, though armed with no more than a stick at his belt.

Harlow asked, "Are we barred from Spiral Town?"

The man didn't respond. Jeremy touched Harlow's hand: Take it easy.

He reached into his special pocket for three thumbs of candy. "Try this."

When the man didn't react, Jeremy put one between Harlow's lips, ate one, then offered the other.

The man ate it. "Oooh. What is it?"

"Winslow's festivity candy. I'm Winslow. Are we barred from Spiral Town?"

"The caravans are. Yes, sir, merchants are too, unless you have special business. But you can go to the Tavern."

"There's a Carolyn Hope Hearst buried in your graveyard. I was a Hearst before I married. I'd like to visit her grave."

Harlow stared.

The guard missed that. He wasn't seeing Harlow. He said, "We haven't buried a lifegiver from outside in more than fifty years."

Jeremy said, "More like ninety for Carolyn Hope. Way too old to visit the Tavern, sir. You have one of our men, too, more recent. Father wasn't so sure of him."

The guard was ma.s.sively embarra.s.sed. "Sir, I don't doubt you'll be let visit your ancestors, but Ican't, and not at night."

"When did the rules change? Since the spring caravan?"

"Yeah."

"If they did something awful, they never told us."

"Sir, I'm not sure I could tell you anyway." The man was nervous.

He must have watched a caravan repel sharks. Everyone did.

The poured-stone triangle and the stone chair looked very permanent for so recent a thing. Cargo lay in piles just beyond, across the Road from the huge old elms that bordered Warkan Farm. A little heap of clocks. An array of pottery and gla.s.sware. Melons and squashes and oranges. Two great stacks of Begley cloth sparking with current. They must have brought it down from Mount Apollo in sunlight, uncovered.

Jeremy turned away, leading Harlow. He murmured, "He can't talk to a woman he doesn't know."

"It's birdf.u.c.king rude."

"You sound like a felon."

"I'll be one, after I murder the next birdf.u.c.ker who treats me that way. What was that about a dead ancestor?"

He told Harlow, "I found her on that last trip to Medical. The programs gave me a lineage for Hearst wagon. Why not? I'm a Hearst, courtesy of Harlow Winslow. Someone in a caravan family was bound to have died in Spiral Town."

Quicksilver still lit the night while the caravan's elders walked the length of the caravan, talking to whomever they found. They found Maiku Lall bedding down his family beside Lall wagon, the medical wagon, first in line; and Harlow and Jeremy Winslow just pa.s.sing.

"You sell no speckles tomorrow," Palava Lall said.

Maiku gaped at his mother. Glen Hearst quickly said, "That goes for us too. Harlow, Jeremy, speckles are not to enter Spiral Town tomorrow."

Jeremy didn't speak. Harlow asked, "Might one ask why?"

"Later," Glen said, and the group of elders turned downRoad. Jeremy noticed Govert Miller among them, back early from the Tavern. The roster of elders was complete.

The whisper of waves had a buzzing in it: the caravan was not asleep, but talking in their tents.

Glen asked, "Where have you been?"

Jeremy told Glen what they'd learned of the guarded gate.

Harlow said, "Caravans were founded to move speckles, Glen. This violates a trust."

"And so does that gate. We do more than deliver speckles," the old man said. "We supervise. The mainland takes risks, but these Crab s.h.i.+es live their lives the way evolution shaped us on Earth. Lots of farming, diet varies by season, not much medicine, not much industrial power-"

"Short life spans."

"Yes, all right, Harlow, shorter life spans," Glen Hearst said.

"But they're safe."

If Jeremy was going to get his say, Harlow was going to have to say it. She tried. "Glen, humanity on Destiny is two hundred and fifty years old. Do we still need a control group?"

"You never do know in advance, Harlow. That's what a control experiment is for. Anyway, it's not just one anymore. When offshoot groups started moving down the Road from Base One, the caravans transported them. Whatever hurts any of them is a warning for the rest of us."

"We know what kills on Destiny. Speckles, lack of! The threat to Spiral Town is us!"

Jeremy feared she'd overdo it. In haste he asked, "Glen, what do we want from this?"

"They've barred us. In stages, over these past fifty years. No merchants past Peach Street. No merchants in town at night. One wagon to the market and one to Mount Apollo, then none. Now this. How the h.e.l.l can we supervise a control experiment if. . ." He waved his arms in frustration.

"If the mice lock us out," Jeremy murmured.

Glen glared. "It's bad for them too! They don't see any sapient creature outside their insular selves. It stunts their minds."

Harlow said, "They're inbred, too, but that is policy-"

"So, we know what we want," Jeremy said. "What if we don't get it?"

"Oh, we'll get it."

"That's good. Because we're here for two nights if we get it or not. Chugs can't forage in one place more than two nights running."

"The Spirals know it too," Glen said. "Remember, sell anything but speckles tomorrow." He crawled into the tent to sleep.

Jeremy kept walking, and Harlow followed.

Wagons were wide apart. Between tents they could not be overheard.

Jeremy said, "Thank you."

"It's a joy," she said, "watching you keep your mouth shut."