Destiny's Road

Tim drained the rice, Brown rice with flecks of color in it, bell peppers and onion and bits of bacon. No speckles today: they'd all had enough last night.

Lunch for four including Wend, who was somewhere about, or five, if Tarzana showed up.

The Bednacourts were a close family. Loria was closer to her mother and sisters than to her husband. It didn't bother him. Spiral men were cliquish too. That was Tim's problem: he was a clique of one. He didn't have quite the same concerns, didn't speak quite the same language, as Twerdahl Town.

Had he chosen Loria? Or had the Bednacourt women played some complex game with Tim Bednacourt as the prize? Loria had taught him surfing as he'd taught her the bicycle, while Tarzana drifted with other men. Glind had never been alone with him at all. Loria had become the default option.

"Caravan's in sight," Glind said.

Tim felt Loria stiffen. "We've already got our speckles," she said.

"You didn't wait?"

No answer. Glind turned from the Road and said for Tim's benefit, "They like to travel at harvest time. The feasts are wonderful."

"Where's Tarzana?"

"Met a merchant man, I think."

He asked, "Not a labor yutz?," to see if she knew the term.

"Merchant."

"How will Gerrel feel about that?"

Loria looked at him queerly. Glind, serving out salad, didn't notice. "Feel? Tim, anyone can mix it up with the merchants. Hey-" She looked up. "They tell us about something called hybrid vigor. We get better babies if we don't make babies with just each other. Did they teach you about that in Spiral Town?"

"Sure, hybrid vigor and gene drift." Tim gri

She blushed. Glind, gri

"No, I read about hybrid vigor and gene drift in the teaching programs. I could go off with a merchant woman? And nobody will care? And I wasn't supposed to know that?" He was watching his wife's face. She was irritated and unamused. "Loria, you know why I can't get close to merchants."

She nodded.

"Even so, I'm glad we lock up the knives," he teased her. His mind ran on. When did Twerdahis start doing that? Why? Was there a time of knives and blood? And now they pass them out to cooks every evening, and count them- Better not ask.

Abruptly, Loria asked, "Where did you hear that? 'Labor yutz.'" "Last summer."

"Have you ever talked with Haron Welsh?"

"What, the old surfer? The one who does stunts?"

"He was a labor yutz. Twice. Once before I was born. Talk to him."

Haron Welsh wasn't cliquish. Tim hadn't seen him at the vine-slash. He lived alone; he worked his own patch of garden; he surfed alone.

In late morning he was a small dark silhouette in a cold drizzle, alone on the water Tim waited on the beach. The old surfer let several good Waves pass. He must be watching the endless passage of the caravan.

Haron caught a wave. Finally! As the old man stood up in the shallows

Tim shouted and waved: a towel in one hand, a fat mug of silver fern tea in the other.

The old man thought it over, then pulled his board to land. He used the towel and dropped it, then took the mug.

"You were a labor yutz," Tim said.

Haron drank the hot tea down straight and handed back the cup. Only then did he speak. "Who're you?"

"Tim Bednacourt."

"You don't know anything." Haron picked up his board and turned toward the water. Stopped. "Spiral?"

"Yes."

"They got teaching things in Spiral? You learn?"

"That's right."

"Huh. What do you know that I don't?"

''Well-''

"I've been as far as the Neck!"

"Tell me about it."

The old man started to turn away. Tim said, "Ever seen Columbia?"

The rest of Twerdahl Town had no interest in Columbia or Cavorite.

"...No. Tell me about Columbia."

Tim spoke to the back of Haron's head.

Columbia was a huge squat tower in a nest of cables, with a brick building against its side to protect the join. The original cables were as thin as angel hair pasta. Replacement cables were as thick as a man's fingers, made of copper or silver bought from merchants. Clusters of black conical pits each the size of a boy were attitude jets. Once they had spit fire. The hatch ten meters up, and the old stairway built to reach it, were made of poured rock, wonderfully precise.

Power had flowed from Columbia for two and a half centuries. Tim spoke of Spiral Town's machines all wearing down, getting less and less power as Columbia's energy grew more sluggish.

The old man listened and gave nothing back, and Tim spoke more than he intended. He spoke of boyhood dreams: studying engineering and plasma physics, ru

The eldest Bloocher boy, the one who would inherit, could never do any of that.

The old man's attention was wandering. From some attic storage in his memory Tim pulled something random.

"Did you know that Earth's sun was hotter than ours?"

Haron's eyebrows arced. "Why didn't they fry?"

"Earth was farther away, of course. The sun probably looked smaller, and brighter, so it'd dazzle you quicker, and the light would have been more blue. Maybe the sky had more blue in it.'~' Tim was guessing at some of this. "But Destiny's sun is a little smaller than Sol, and maybe two billion years older."

"Huh. And why would any of this crap make a fingernail's difference ~ to anyone?"

Jemmy Bloocher had asked that too. There were answers. "Earth took almost twice as long to go around Sol. We have eight months in a year, they had twelve, but theirs were longer. The clocks still measure Earth days and Earth years."

"Yeah, the Spiral Town clocks. Can't anyone make a clock for Destiny time?"

"Nobody I know. Hey, have you ever been sunburned?"

Haron considered. "Few times, I've stayed out all day surfing. Next day I'm bright red and everything hurts. Can't wear clothes. Can't go outside. Next day, itch. Two days after that I'm peeling like a snake in spring."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"On Earth you could do that in a hour," Tim said. "They had to wear hats and spread goo on their skins to thin the sunlight or they'd get cancer. Too much-" He'd never quite got this straight. "Too much of the light that's too blue to see."

Haron seemed to find that fu

"Did you ever see Cavo rite?"

"No,"

"Did you ever find out where Cavorite went? Do the traders know?" Haron's eyes went distant. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

"The Neck," Tim prodded.

"We got to the Neck. The Road goes right across."

"Is that where the Otterfolk are?"

"Them. They're all along the shore of the big bay. They don't talk. They can't go anywhere."

"You went twice? You must like it."

"Not so much that."

Tim waited.

"They don't know anything here. Surf in summer, gather and eat in fall, huddle hungry in winter. Time of year tells them what they're doing, everything they're doing. It feels so cramped." Haron's voice was rising, but he caught himself. "Doesn't matter anyway. The merchants asked, I had to go."

"Why?"

"First time, they gave us two knives." Haron gri

Ah, he'd been bought.

"The Otterfolk, they can't go anywhere," Haron said. "There's only the bay. Anywhere else, they die. That's one reason. I'd go again, because the Otterfolk can't."