Destiny's Road

They spent some time watching the sky. Patriss was sure she'd found Argos, a steady star with a blue tinge, in the plane of the planets. Wouldn't the Argos mutineers be carving up asteroids by now? Tim saw a meteor from the west, not blue-bright enough to match vids he'd seen of Cavorite rising to orbit, but still.

They went to Dole tent. Too late, too dark to be introduced to the other occupants. Just as well. They explored each other by touch in near-perfect darkness, made love, and talked, and loved again.

He'd hoped she would speak of where the merchant men had gone. She didn't, and he didn't ask.

Krista Wu had died of her wounds in the night. They buried her upslope, with a handful of apple seeds.

Thirty men didn't rejoin the caravan until near sunset the next night. They were tired and dirty and laughing among themselves, and again there was no eye contact for a yutz. They had shot a deer....r killed it with something stranger; it seemed chewed almost in half.

Grilling venison in the dusk, Tim could watch the merchants gathering at Spadoni wagon. The tools they were carrying, that Tim had never more than glimpsed, were gone when they broke into twos and threes to get their di

Shortly after dawn, the caravan was rolling through tilted grasslands. Twenty merchants and yutzes walked past slowly moving wagons. Though they all carried shark guns, nobody seemed to be worried about bandits.

Eight were hunters. They carried the long knives Twerdahls called "weed cutters." The rest were fishers. Most of them carried line and poles, but Tim and Hal had been given long-handled nets.

When they were clear of the wagons, the hunters turned off, inland. The fishers continued. Now lifeless melted-looking bluffs loomed on both sides of the Road.

Cavorite must have crossed a ridge here, and recrossed and hovered, to carve a level path. When they reached the end of the cut, Tim peered over. He could see a path of gray rock leading steeply downslope through dense chaparral: a waterfall of molten rock, long since cooled.

Merchants spoke a murky jargon among themselves. Even long-term yutzes used familiar words in strange ways. Joker ibn-Rushd and Eduardo Spadoni talked at length in low, angry voices, both of them waving ahead and shoreward. The few phrases Tim heard didn't tell him anything.

When Tim got tired of that, he dropped back among the yutzes. They were talking about catching fish: a great weight of words for a task that seemed exceedingly simple. Tim listened and tried to learn, while they marched for most of a morning.

The Road emerged from between the bluffs. Now it split- No, the Road ran straight ahead, miles from the sea. But just for a moment- Tim looked away to rest his eyes. At the edge of vision, a curve off to the left suggested itself. A cut through the low scrub forest, away from the Road. Sparse vegetation was what he'd seen, nothing more; but he knew.

Cavorite had curved from its path, rising into the sky. Had flown downslOpe to explore, charring the soil. Returned and continued the Road.

They were approaching a river and a bridge. The wagons were two hours behind them. Hal was telling Da

Tim didn't know enough to get a handle on this, and he didn't want to interrupt.

The merchants were still quarreling. Eduardo Spadoni waved downslope and barked something sharp. He strode away fast, and Joker lagged to give him room. In a minute that put him alongside Tim.

Tim wanted to see his face. He asked, "Joker. Is it a nickname?"

Now Joker's anger wasn't showing. He wore that bland look: secrets. He pronounced his name, differently from what Tim had been saying, and spelled it out: "D-Z-H-O-K-H-A-R. An old name, not meant to be laughed at. My uncle's name is the same, but the family calls him Joe."

"Dzhokharr," Tim tried to imitate Joker's pronunciation. "What did Hal mean, bites the size of walnuts?"

Joker stared, then barked sudden laughter. "I remember that. Some turkey hunters ran into a hive of firebees in the salt dunes ten days down the Road from here. I could see men ru

"Oh, yes."

Water roared around rocks, plunging down toward a sea lost to distance and mist. The river was wide here. The massive bridge was watersmoothed boulders embedded in smooth, homogenous rock: poured rock, like several structures near the hub of Spiral Town. Tim showed his awe and hid his recognition.

Over the bridge they went, then downstream, spreading out.

After that nobody got much exercise. The men with poles dropped their lines into still pools in the white water. They sat on smooth rocks and talked or dozed. When anyone shouted, Tim or Hal moved briskly to get the net under whatever was flopping on a line. The fish were Earthlife, three or four species. Da

The mist cleared for an hour in the afternoon. Tim could see all the way to the sea. There was a rectilinear feature along the shore: houses, many.

"The Shire?"

"Right."

"Why didn't they build along the Road?"

"They don't like us," Joker said. "They'd die without us, so they keep their ma

He'd already heard that. Tim said, "A yutz wouldn't anyway."

"Here, a merchant doesn't either."

The Shire was spread along five or six klicks of shore, four klicks downslope from the Road. Over that distance a dozen men carried forty pounds of fish in a net hammock, following a worn dirt path that in no way resembled cooled lava.

There wasn't any beach. Waves smashed against rock cliffs, and only spray showed above the edge.

From a central building the houses reached two arms out along the bluff. They were squarish, with peaked roofs, like the houses of Twerdahl Town. Differences became clearer as they came near. These were smaller. Some had been shored up. They were all the same color: weathered wood. Roofs weren't as high. Walls leaned.

The hunting party beat them down. They'd killed something as big as a small man. Its head was shot to shreds, and puncture wounds showed along its body too. They were showing it to admiring Shire folk when the fishers arrived.

"Boar pig," Hal told him.

A score of children swarmed around the carcass and the hunters from the caravan. Adults hung back, except for a dozen elder men. Those elders came to meet the fishing party.

The merchants' bias against haste might have worked against them. Fresher fish would have made a better gift. The Shire elders chose not to notice. They exclaimed over the fish as they had the boar, gave both to the women's care, and took the merchants off to the big central building that Tim had already dubbed City Hall. It was older than the other houses, and better built; and it had once had windows.

The Shire women were setting up to cook di

Tim was starting to feel left out. The children didn't want to talk, only to look. He watched the women at work for a bit, ignoring Hal's grin. Did they think, did Hal think, would Rian think that he was interested in them?