Destiny's Road

Tim recognized these. The bottles held flavorless, nearly pure alcohol. Merchants sold them in Spiral Town as antiseptic. Kids too young for it watered it with fruit juice and drank at secret parties.

The Shire folk were paying off in scrimshaw.

One artist left a carved plate at Dio

Geordy Bruns had traded a plate for flour and dried meat and another for dental tools. Tim saw him dropping back as if tired. The trouble with the merchants' way was that some good customers hadn't the strength to keep up.

Tim joined him to see what he still had.

It was the plate with the skulls on it. Geordy pointed them out proudly: platyfish, juggernaut, chug, lungshark, sand trap shark, Otterfolk.

Tim said, "Wait," and jogged ahead.

Sixth from the end was ibn-Rushd wagon. Damon looked at Tim curiously as he clambered through the driver's alcove to the roof. Tim dug into the roof trap and had what he wanted.

Geordy looked through Tim Ha

He said, "This."

It was an old wooden toy model of Cavorite, vague in detail, worn by handling in places.

Tim said, "Done," and took the plate of skulls.

11

Haunted Bay

interesting rectilinear formations on the floor of this body 0f water, like a buried city nearly crumbled to dust. .

-Wayne DuQuesne, Systems Integration

In a clearing in a wood of beech and elm there lived two families and a still. The Homes and Wilsons lived on opposite sides of the Road. The Wilsons made cheese from sheep and goat milk. The Homes made alcohol.

They didn't bother with glasses. They passed around big wide mouthed jars of a whiskey as good as any Jemmy Bloocher had tasted in Spiral Town. It went fine with yellow cheese and roasted mutton. When it ran out, they switched to raw-tasting fruit brandies. That seemed to be in infinite supply.

Tim missed being drunk among drunken companions, but too much would set him talking. When a bottle passed, Tim tilted it to his mouth, gave it a few seconds, then talked nonstop while hanging on to the bottle until someone yelled for it. His cousin Farank drank like that, hogging the bottle.

Younger merchants were pairing off with younger Homes and Wilsons; the elders stayed to play host and hostess. Joker ibn-Rushd was finding pleasure in Layne Wilson's company. Astrid and Carol Wilson, sisters, were holding court among the yutzes. The two yutz surgeons from Doheny wagon were topping each other with stories of weird injuries they'd treated. Tim was, as usual, listening.

Bord'n noticed. He spoke of autumn rites in Twerdahl Town. He hadn't seen these himself, so he asked Tim for details and Tim obliged.

Good man, Bord'n. Tactful. He'd helped Tim's cause without meaning to. Tim gave the best description he could of Twerdahl Town's weedcutting and bathing ceremony, but he didn't know enough of the rationale behind it all to sound quite sober.

Tim enjoyed himself greatly as the hours passed. Being half-sober among drunken friends was a kick.

Younger merchants had gone off with Home siblings and cousins, but Layne Wilson and Joker were the heart of a raucous one-up pu

That was probably enough of that. He joined a singing circle among the yutzes. It covered sounds that were coming from the huts and tents and bushes, and it held until Astrid Wilson lost interest. Carol Wilson had gone off with....omeone. Where was Hal?

Tim showed off the scrimshaw plate he'd bought in the Shire, pointing out each skull for Astrid with help from several other yutzes, and listening contentedly as they described the creatures from life. Tim might look like he was drinking more than he was, but what he'd had still set his mind buzzing. He looked about him at yutzes and merchants and locals, and none of them seemed the least interested in just another yutz chef.

It could make a man wonder.

The guilty fly where no man pursues. Jemmy Bloocher had killed a yutz during a murderous quarrel. Did any merchant even remember? Did any care?

So Tim Bednacourt pretended to be something he was not, and it seemed he had the knack. But Jemmy Bloocher had never had the chance! Most men, most women, in Spiral Town and anywhere on the world of Destiny, would live among a few hundred people. All would see them growing up; all would know their every secret.

Loria knew who Tim Bednacourt was.

He missed Loria terribly.

Rian ibn-Rushd was in a cluster of Home cousins, looking hemmed in. Tim wondered if she needed rescue. She caught his eye, and he went to join them.

By morning light Rian looked hungover and disheveled, but her smile was enchanting, conspiratorial. "You look like something pulled out of a pickling vat," she told him.

Tim felt fine. Rian was seeing what she expected.

Last night had been wonderful. Different. He had thought man would end up with one of the locals, but they'd wobbled off to the tent together. Then Rian had forgotten that she was a skilled... was there a word? Sexist? She'd lost a bit of dexterity, and she'd lost herself in sensation. Sex was a game nobody lost.

She helped him into his clothes, and he enjoyed being just a little clumsy.

Yutzes and merchants and locals all looked a bit seedy. The caravan got a late start. They left a variety of goods behind: new tubing for the still, melons and rice, pouches of speckles. They went away with fruit brandy and little clear bottles of alcohol antiseptic, and big wheels of yellow cheese. Mason Home from Dio

When next Tim saw Rian she was asleep on the roof.

Above and below the Road were shallow grass slopes dotted with sheep, the source of the cheese they'd eaten last night.

The Road had angled inland since before they reached the Shire, three days ago. They were a good two klicks inland now, and half a klick above sea level. The shore ahead and below curved around in a vast half-circle. Tim couldn't judge its actual size.

"Rian," Tim asked, "what if you got pregnant on the Road?"

"Then I get a baby."

"Raised by the caravan?"

Her eyes opened. "Tim, it's a secret."

By now he knew better than to probe further. "Rian, do you think Cavorite was avoiding the sea?"

Rian mulled the question and presently said, "Maybe."

"Why?"

"Maybe not. Go get us some tea, Tim."

Being this far inland gave access to the grassland, grazing for sheep and/or forage for goats on the hills beyond, whatever goats might be. Last night he'd eaten what he was told was goat cheese.

But this must have been a blackened, lifeless slope until Cavorite seeded the land with grass, and returned to leave half-grown sheep and goats.

Tim reached back into memory for the map of the Crab. A composite photograph from eleven hundred klicks high, the text called it, with sketches of Spiral Town and the Road overlaid. Those added lines were fiction, though, drawn by people long dead who never knew where Cavorite had gone. It was worth remembering that Cavorite had flown, that the crew had seen patterns a bicyclist or merchant could only guess at.

What had they seen, that they put the Road so high? Level terrain here, suitable for the Road. Bluffs at the sea's edge, or a color in the water that matched a breeding ground for lungsharks, or worse. The lessons said that you could see sea-bottom contours through many meters of water, if you were high enough, looking straight down.