Destiny's Road

The chugs pulled to a halt and the drivers turned them loose. The beach was more than a klick downhill, with a two-hundred-meter drop. The chugs seemed to crawl forever before they reached the sea.

Nobody followed them down to guard them.

Cooking on a slope of rock and dirt was awkward. None of the current crop of chefs had done it before, save Hal. Mistakes were made. Di

Tim watched dying red light on the bay. A school of lungsharks would find a good meal here, if they could tolerate diluted salt water for a bit. But the chugs flowed out like a long wave breaking, and dined undisturbed in the ruins of a seaweed forest, and presently crawled uphill to the wagons.

Next day the path rose to rejoin the Road. They had to stop earlier because the chugs must travel farther. Otherwise-well, di

The slopes below the caravan were bare of houses and structures of any kind, for that whole day and the day following. Meals were red meat and chance-met vegetables.

The third day fizzed with suppressed excitement. Marilyn Lyons supervised di

She'd never touched either of them before, and Tim didn't ask why she chose to now. She no longer feared that rubbing up against a yutz or two would cost her respect or authority. They must be nearing the end of... something.

On the fourth morning it was clear that the land was narrowing. The Road dropped again. It could hardly do otherwise, though the wagons were riding the rocky crest of Crab Island as it sloped down toward Tail Town.

On the maps Crab Island had broad and narrow sides, unequally bisected by the Crest. The peaks here at the northwestern end of the mountain chain had melted like wax. The Road ran almost level, angling down; but its width pulsed like a heartbeat, wide where peaks had been, narrow where there had been a lower crest.

The range looked like a candle castle. It was ugly as sin, and Cavorite's crew must have known it even as they were melting mountains into Road.

Where lava had run from melting peaks, the Road's edges angled up. In the narrow places the edges angled down to sheer cliffs. It would be easy to fall.

Heights didn't seem to bother chugs, low-built as they were. Tim, riding cross-legged on the roof, tried to put it out of his mind.

Below and ahead was a community bigger than the town of Haunted Bay. Houses sprawled off down the shore, but the bulk of the town crossed the ridge to touch both shores. Its pattern was angular and ordered. Tim couldn't make out individual features yet.

Yutzes ambled along the Road, stopped to talk, walked on. Others perched on rocks and let the wagons go past. Yutzes learned that from merchants. Let your goal come to you! Merchants didn't hurry, and a yutz worked hard enough.

But why were there so many?

A split boulder was moving placidly toward him, and Hal was on it. Tim waved, but Hal was watching the town below. Hal would be getting off there.

-Oh, that was it. These five or six yutzes must be from Tail Town. They were saying good-bye to friends.

Beyond Tail Town the land narrowed. Unmistakably he was seeing the isthmus and the mainland beyond. It was hidden in distance and mist, but he was seeing the mainland with his own eyes!

And missing an opportunity, too. He'd view Tail Town and the Neck in detail when the caravan drew near. Tim got up and crawled (the sheer drop was getting to him) to the wagon's aft edge, and that was his first sight of the narrow coast of the Crab Peninsula.

Cliffs ran straight to the sea, sheer rock in a sixty- to seventy-degree slope, with glossy ru

He was not seeing very much of the hidden coast. The Crest curved a little, and that curve hid everything but... hmm....orty klicks of beachless coast facing north. If it was all like this, then small wonder that the colony had set Spiral Town on the Crab's fat side. But he was seeing more than any Spiral had seen!

Springs flowed out of the mountainside; a hundred waterfalls merged on their way down. A big, blocky structure intercepted the biggest falls. At the mountains' base the falls joined in a river that flowed northwest into a tiny perfect circle of blue water, just inland from the bay.

Hal's rock was below. Hal got up. He spoke a few words to the ibn-Rushd family, then drifted back.

Tim waved ahead. "Hal? That's your home?"

Hal pointed along the shore. "There. They all look alike, but my home is tenth along Bayshore Ride from Tucker's Lake."

Tim looked. "The circle."

"Right, where the Last Drink runs."

Tucker's Lake was just the size of the crater across from Baytown: a landing crater left by a hovering Cavorite. The river must have filled it afterward. Tenth along the widest street... well, they did all look alike, peaked two-story houses, but they were bigger and finer than the houses of Baytown, with wider streets.

Tim chose his words carefully. "Don't other towns along the Road seem a little, well, crude?"

"Tim, they do. I thought I'd been had. But they're all different, you know, and I knew I'd get home with tales to tell."

"Those are boats, aren't they? Do you fish?"

"Some."

"Are the fish different outside Haunted Bay?" Tim's eyes flicked forward, just for an instant. No merchant was in sight.

"Sure. Cooking style's different too. You've noticed? And we don't get bandits here."

At this aft edge of the wagon he'd be out of earshot. He said, "Or sharks."

"Nope."

Not "The Otterfolk kill them. "So: "How about Otterfolk? No, hell, you live with Otterfolk."

"Well. Not live," Hal said, and caught himself.

Worth a try. Now change the subject. "Where do we camp? Who cooks?"

"I'm going home. You, you'll trade off this eye, and you'll eat with the autumn caravan. You go through town and camp on the Neck. We do the cooking, I mean the locals. The merchants, some of them like the restaurants-"

Autumn caravan? Puzzled, Tim looked toward Tail Town again, and then beyond.

The Road crossed the Neck, or became the Neck, and continued inland, following neither shore. Along the Road just beyond the Neck he saw a dark line.

The next caravan.

Tail Town didn't huddle like Haunted Bay. The streets were wide enough for thirteen wagons pulled by more than two hundred chugs, and customers to walk alongside. Along the low ridge that the Crest had become were structures bigger than any house. At the outskirts were big boxes with no windows: storage places. A lot of trading must go on in Tail Town. Nearer the center were public buildings with wide stretches of grass and gardens around them. Pipes, aqueducts must be fed by the Last Drink River.

Tim had come to expect that the level of civilization would drop with distance from Spiral Town. Tail Town was nearly a match for Spiral Town, and Hal seemed to take it in stride.

Tim didn't notice when Hal disappeared.

The houses ended suddenly, and the wagons were slowing. Inverted boats lay in a line along a beach of fine white sand. Twenty-two boats of the same type he'd seen in Baytown, with handholds at the waterline, and detached wooden fins lying beside them. Tracks ran out of the water into a shed, and the nose of a twenty-third boat poked out.

"We lose you here," Damon said.

Tim jumped, and the merchant laughed. He sat down cross-legged on the roof. "We'll cross the Neck, and the wagons will be repaired, and the chugs will be turned loose. You'll join the autumn caravan and go back. Tim, a yutz goes around the full cycle. You'll see some of Spiral Town before you turn back, if that's what you want. But you could just go as far as Twerdahl Town."