Destiny's Road

Then one of the riders flipped a big Earthlife bass over into the boat. Around midday the rearmost pair dropped off. The boat picked up a little speed, and then he had another pair of riders. Later the front pair dropped away and were replaced.

He was hungry. He was thirsty. He'd eaten and drunk as much as he could hold last night, and it wasn't enough. When Quicksilver blinked out his arms were racked by cramps. He tried steering with his feet and found he could make it work.

That left his agonized hands free to fillet the bass into sashimi.

The fleet came ever closer.

The sun sank, the sky darkened.

In an hour he couldn't tell the land from the sea. He could tell where the wind was. Once, staring into the dark, he perceived the land far too close. He steered hard about, and sensed that the wind was blowing straight at the land. He could keep himself aimed, if Destiny didn't change the rules on him.

Sailing an unfamiliar boat was dangerous enough in daylight. Sailing at night was suicide. Would he even know if the shore was about to smite him? If he'd seen a way, Tim would have surrendered. But the fishers would smash their boats and his if they caught him in the dark.

And in the morning, would they have him surrounded?

Quicksilver peeked above the mountains, a brilliant point against a sky already showing yellow-white.

Sails had come very near, but they hadn't surrounded him yet. With Quicksilver's added light, Tim angled closer to the beach. Closer yet, as the sun itself glared between peaks.

Tim didn't intend to be caught. He'd beach the boat and run when they came close enough.

The waves were tiny, twenty centimeters high, breaking only ten meters from shore. He was sailing only a few meters beyond that point,

and that was very near the beach. He could see an endless reach of sand without a shack or wall or footprint anywhere, nothing but sand and weed and painted shells.

Otterfolk shells. A score in view to left and right, now that he thought to look.

Tim edged the boat closer yet. That wasn't an Otterfolk graveyard, was it? Sharks had bones; chugs had bones; but there weren't any Otterfolk bones on that beach. Just shells painted in acrylic colors, all set on the beach beyond the tide line, like headstones maybe, until one shifted suddenly, and again.

The boat rocked. Damn, he was too close, his centerboard was grinding against sand! He turned hard, and back a bit as the sail tried to go slack. The centerboard wasn't grinding anymore because his four riders had dropped off and the boat was riding higher. He angled for open sea before he thought of the other boats.

They were all turning.

He had some sea room now, and he looked back for the particular shell that had moved.

It covered a hollow. Shapes too small to see crawled out from under the edge.

Otterfolk were riding waves to shore. He saw them clearly for the first time, four limber shapes with short fi

He worked it out later, thus:

Fishers were too skilled, and a fisher boat was too predictable. Boring. A thief in a boat he didn't know how to use, making mistakes and learning as he went, made for an exciting ride.

Four riders piling on a thief's boat would slow it. Fisher boats chasing it, being less interesting, would carry fewer riders. Of course the thief would be caught.

Otterfolk might choose to ride two at a time to give a thief a longer run; but Tim always believed that the Destiny natives had minds but no language. Negotiation had to be basic.

Threatened, the thief sent a basic message. Tim had threatened to beach his boat on the birthground.

The Otterfolk must respond. Perhaps they fouled the fishers' centerboards or tillers, or clung to the handholds in hordes, until the boats couldn't move.

At the time, Tim couldn't guess why the fishers had abandoned their chase. But sailing near shore now seemed a very dangerous thing.

Otterfolk shed their shells: that was clear. They made nests in sand, and left the shell to shade the emerging young: that was a likely guess. Otterfolk would kill any creature found on that shore: that seemed very likely.

He stayed well out to sea until he was nearly to Baytown.

The sky was red with after-sunset, and Quicksilver burned right at the water. Baytown fisher boats were at sea ahead of him. As he came nearer they all turned toward him.

Tim aimed his boat inland, toward where a dish-shaped crater lay on the beach.

The wind was blowing out to sea. He couldn't aim directly toward shore, but he could approach in a switchback pattern. When the centerboard grounded and heeled over, he went overboard. The lightened boat bobbed up and righted. He swam for shore with boats converging behind him. He crawled out winded, and ran for the crater on rubbery legs.

He paused once, and stooped to lift the rim of a painted shell that would almost cover his chest. His vision grayed and he went to his knees. But the cavity under the shell was empty; the Otterfolk children gone. He heaved himself up and kept ru

Arcs of wooden bench lined the inland half of the dish. The wood was ancient and weathered. Soft sand lined the bottom on the sea side, and the slanted rim had been painted with hieroglyphs in yellow, orange, green, scarlet, indigo.

The shell he was holding was very like those he'd found scattered over the mudflats that held towels and soggy clothes for the Baytown fishers. Would he have found paint, if he'd turned one over?

It was too big for his pack. He shoved it up between his shirt and rain tunic, against his chest.

He was burning priceless seconds. Fishers had gone overboard. They were in the water, trying to save his stolen boat by attaching lines: they meant to tow it. A few shouted at him, the words blurred, the tone unfriendly.

The five-color cartoons along the rim of Meetplace were old but still vivid. If he studied them he'd see what those simplified figures represented.

But Baytown women were wading the mudflat in his direction, and Tim thought it best to leave.

14

The Speckles Can

Think of us as priests of evolution.

-Caravan proverb

He climbed as far as the caravan trail before he looked back. They wouldn't follow him in the dark...?

It was already too dark to tell.

Thirst was near killing him.

Well, he was new at this. He followed the caravan trail to the Spectre River. He watched from cover while the last of the light died, before he crept to the water and drank his fill.

Then he kept climbing.

He woke sheltered in bushes, just below the Road, on the wrong side of the Spectre River. He woke joyful. He was free! Anyone could outrun a caravan.

He watched Baytown wake. He watched the boats put to sea. Any tiny fleck of white on the water might be Otterfolk. It was all a wonder, but the thing he wanted most was to go down.

Did he do wrong to run? He was frantic to question them. All those discarded Otterfolk shells! Fishers must be in constant contact with Otterfolk.

Why did the merchants let Baytowners inspect their wares the day before they bought? They didn't do that anywhere else along the Road, except in Tail Town itself. Did the Otterfolk tell the locals what they needed?

How?

All his traveling had only bought him more questions.

He saw no way across the Spectre. The bridge lay too close to Baytown. Baytown knew that he had stolen a boat. They knew he had landed on the forbidden beach. The shadow of the mountains was withdrawing from Baytown, and sunlight would soon touch the mountains where he hid.