Destiny's Road

Harl Cloochi had managed to hook some huge delta-winged Destiny fish. Younger men came ru

The merchants returned on foot. They brought no wares, but some of them carried fruits and a great yellow squash: produce bought in Spiral Town.

The merchants had noticed Tim Ha

So he made them wait while he punctured the squash with a big fork to let steam out, and helped them roll the squash in, and built up the fire again, smiling like an idiot and trying not to shy away from Master Granger. Master Sean Granger was an older man, proprietor of the second wagon, though a younger woman drove. They'd shared di

Jemmy didn't dare not meet his eyes.

"That should do it. Thank you," Master Granger said to him.

"I should get back to cooking," said Tim Ha

He had set himself in charge of watching the great fish cook. He saw too late that in the cool of coming night the merchants were all standing around the cookfires. But their eyes passed right over Tim Ha

"What would you call this thing?" Master Granger asked of nobody in particular.

Berda Farrow said, "Hell's angelfish."

"Nice"

She said, "I didn't make it up. That's its name. We see them a lot."

"I miss sub clams," Granger said. "In a month the Otterfolk'll have a mess of them for us."

Jemmy smiled. More people, down the Road? He called to Wade Curdis, trying not to overdo the accent. "Berda, Wade, we should turn this monster."

Wade was a strong man in his thirties. He and Berda and Tim Ha

"We're lucky there," Granger said. "If Otterfolk were people, they'd eat the best fish themselves."

Wade turned to stare. Tim Ha

Twerdahls didn't like to interrupt merchants, but Wade spoke anyway. "These Otterfolk, who are they? We never see anyone but you and us."

The merchants laughed inordinately. Jemmy looked about him, at merchants mingling with Twerdahls-any of whom could blow his secret to bits-and contrived to be busy. Destiny fish was tough and chewy unless it was cooked slowly. Cooking was creation itself; it seemed to put the universe in perspective.

'The Otterfolk, they're not people," a younger merchant said. "They live in the ocean. We trade them tools and stuff for fish. There are some Destiny fish we can eat, and they tend the Earthlife fish too."

'You only come through three times a year," Wade persisted. "Why don't they come trade with us?"

"Can't. They hate sub clams, though. Used to kill them, till we came along. Sub clams eat Destiny turtles, but they're good eating, for us, that is.,'

Tim decided the fish was done. He'd never seen Hell's angelfish before, but like many Destiny fish, the meat came apart in layers. Tim Ha

A merchant's accent said, "... Criminals."

Tim Ha

And the other voice was old Harl Cloochi. "It's just a damn rumor, of course, but we almost never see a Spiral, so how do we know?"

"There's some truth in it," the merchant said. "Spiral Town takes care of their own criminals. I spoke as witness once at a trial in Spiral Town. They banged the yutz afterward."

"Ah. All right."

"But, Harl, if a killer gets to the Road before they catch him, how can they chase him down? Most Spirals never get out of town at all. A ru

"So they just let him go?"

"I suppose they chase him awhile. Longer if he did something sticky. Then they just tell us and let him go."

"And leave him for us! Let the Road towns deal with their dregs!"

"Well, that and speckles deprivation."

Appreciative silence.

The merchant's voice said, "A lot of the communities along the Road think the same way. Thing is, Harl, we're not executioners for someone else's dregs, and some of what they call crime isn't all that serious. When a yutz wants to ride the wagons, sometimes we see if he'll work Out."

"Even criminals?"

"A man on the run can make a damn good labor yutz And they'd walked out of range.

Late in the night, after the merchants went back to their wagons, Han Cloochi took Tim Ha

"I never heard the words until tonight."

"Well, there was a labor yutz killed in Spiral Town a few days ago." Jemmy waited.

"He came from way down the Road. Merchants won't talk about that, drunk or sober. But Kashi says he had the ma

"Labor yutz," Jemmy said, tasting the words.

"See the point? Nobody killed a merchant. They won't search that hard for whoever killed a labor yutz, and they may even think he earned

it.

"Uh-huh. Thanks, Harl. From bottom to top, thank you."

"So what're you going to do?"

Tim Ha

7

The old Surfer

Destiny circles a cooler sun. Our year is only three-fifths as long as Earth's. We've divided it into eight months 0f lour weeks each; the days run nearly twenty-five hours. Our descendants may well choose a different calendar.

-Henry Judd, Planetologist

Twerdahl Town's entire male population took twelve days to build them a peak-roofed house no bigger than the family room at Bloocher Farm. In Spiral Town a marriage was made by recording it in computer records; but here, the building of a house was a marriage. Tim Bednacourt saw how the house could expand under the overextended roof, once he and Lonia began having children.

Autumn moved into winter.

It was a busy time. Everything edible seemed to be ripening at once. Everything must be picked and stored or preserved. Working refrigerators were rare in Spiral Town, but in Twerdahl Town they didn't exist. Fruits could be boiled for preserves, vegetables blanched, meat smoked. And any of it could be eaten at once. They ate like chugs.

Winter was colder than winters in Spiral Town. They lost some of autumn's fat. They kept a cauldron simmering for tea on a small fire pit that never went out. There were blanched vegetables, smoked meat, snakes from the swamp (Tim never got used to that), and Destiny fish. A dozen kinds of jam were eaten straight or with meat or on bread from Tim's oven. The sea was too cold for swimming or surfing. The water of the cypress swamp stayed tepid.

There were three funerals that winter: two elders whom Tim had barely met, and a little girl who sickened and died in two days. Twerdahl

Town set them in the swamp, along the edge of the Road. The first time, Tim got the shivers. But the dead were feeding Earthlife trees and creatures; what matter if those were denizens of a swamp?