Destiny's Road

Bandits didn't seem to bother the Shire. And the Shire was friendly to a man on the run, though they watched him like a possible thief. Had they been similarly friendly to messengers from the distillery?

When he heard the rustling, bandits! was his first thought. He stood up in a crouch. They were in here with him!

The giggles-two, three?-didn't sound dangerous. But he hadn't heard the door or seen moonlight. There must be another door, hidden.

A woman's voice spoke with just a trace of impatience. "Ru

Another voice: "He's gone," bitterly disappointed.

"No. Why would he?"

A nearly incoherent wail. "Oh, who knows what lives in a stranger's brain? He knows the merchant women! We don't dress like they do-"

Tim had been tiptoeing toward the center, toward his pack. He'd gambled his life when he brought a butchered boar to the Shire, and the bet still stood. He asked, "What's it all about?"

A third voice, much calmer, didn't speak directly to him. "We can hope he'd like some company?"

Tim said, "Sit down with me. I have a thousand questions. Shall we make a light?"

Laughter and protest. "Oh, no!" The rustling came close; circled him.

It was seriously dark. He guessed at anywhere from four to a dozen. He slid his weed cutter under his pack and sat on that.

He said, "I know not to touch you, but I'm wondering how this all started. People along the Road don't all do as you do."

Silence. Ragged breath. Then, "The merchants tell us we can't rub up against a stranger."

"Ever since the first caravan came."

"And Rashell Star turned down Wayne the speckles man."

"Rashell the Star. And she slapped him."

"Bobbitted."

"A hundred years ago."

"More."

"So we keep ourselves to ourselves, men and women both, and we teach our children too. We know what happens if the merchants don't bring speckles." The woman who had spoken was quite breathless, and a silence followed.

Tim said, "Look, they told me you don't mix with strangers."

Four hands reached out of the dark. Tim jumped at the first touch. Then he patted the hands (five, six!) and asked, "It's the merchants' idea?"

Laughter. Someone took his hand, and guided it under clothing, and that was a woman's breast, big.

What on Earth-?

They were swathed in layers of clothing. It came off in great soft piles that made a fine extensive bed. They stripped him insistently, and explored him first with their hands, whispering to each other. He never knew if he would touch clothing or skin, and now it was mostly skin.

Once he got the idea, Tim began searching shapes in the dark. His wandering hands found delight-and perfection. No twisted spine or twisted foot. Here a nose like the prow of a ship; here an ear that protruded interestingly; he knew them both, women-without-children who had served his food without meeting his eyes. Regular features, no strangeness, no flaws.

Wasn't that what they were looking for too? No point in making babies with a flawed or twisted visitor.

He counted six. And they still wouldn't talk to him, though they whispered to each other.

Tomorrow he wouldn't know them. Tonight the shapes and scents of the women were his whole environment. Tonight they were taking his genes.

Maybe he dreamed it. A hand shook his shoulder and a voice whispered, "Merchant man. Why did the Founders wake the flies?"

Without opening his eyes he asked, "Am I supposed to know?"

"You're supposed to know everything."

He'd thought that about caravaners. He'd thought about flies too. "Meat has to rot," he said, and was asleep again.

He woke alone, and stiff everywhere.

He dressed in customary haste, as if he must bake and serve breakfast. Then he took the time to search out a second entrance. It was set in a corner, a miniature maze baffled against light from outside.

He hesitated before going out.

The first caravan, she'd said. There never would have been a first caravan without customers already in place. So the first caravan found this isolated community halfway along the Crab- Rashell the Star? Wayne the speckles man? Likely two or three or six merchants had tried to make babies with the wrong people. In Spiral Town men and women married before they got pregnant, and it might have been that way in the Shire. Then, merchants hadn't yet earned their current reputation. The Shire's need for external genes didn't show yet.

Somebody got slapped, or bobbitted, whatever that was. Then what? Today the Shire was not dying, but Tim had seen some effects of inbreeding here. The merchants and yutzes weren't getting laid. What did anyone gain by continuing this nonsense?

He stepped outside knowing that there would be nobody to ask. The men were gone. The women wouldn't meet his eye, any more than they ever had, and they wouldn't let him help with breakfast. They fed him fruit and speckles bread, then watched him walk off along the beach.

Along the beach until it curved out of sight. Then up into Earthlife trees, a tiny version of the graveyard grove in Spiral Town. He stuffed his pack with citrus fruit and kept moving.

He retrieved his gun and speckles-filled bullet bag. He hadn't stopped moving for an instant. Anyone who tried to follow him would be blowing hard. If someone was waiting above him, well, now he had the gun.

Speckles was in his system. He expected to feel more alert, and he did. Just his imagination? Too much of that could make him careless, make him miss something.

So think it through- Four days up the Road, that was where the spring caravan had been attacked. Two days at the rate he was traveling. It now seemed that bandits' turf ran all the way from there to the distillery.

Two pairs of thief-takers ran ahead of him, traveling by the Road and by the frost line.

He might have tried a boat, or gambled that they couldn't swim. Instead, he climbed. He climbed until he'd reached the crest. Bandits might know the blind side of the Crab, but he'd seen no sign of them. He'd travel that way until he was past Farther.

16

Twerdahl Town

Columbiad is losing temperature, ionization, and humidity controls. We'll have to hold public meetings elsewhere.

We feel betrayed when a subsystem fails us. Anything worth bringing across interstellar space was meant to last forever.

-Ansel Milliken, landholder

He traveled at the frost line. At dusk he dipped into the snarl of plants below for fruits and any vegetables he could eat raw. A fool cage gave him a pigeon the second night: he risked a fire, and a gunshot for some spiny Destiny beast that thought he looked edible.

Two days, two nights, and at noon he'd reached the naked V of frozen lava above Twerdahl Town.

Two lines of houses ran for several klicks between the mudflat and the Road, with acres of cultivated land between. Twerdahl Town hadn't looked this big the first time he'd seen it, coming straight from Spiral Town.

Falls ran down the V, converged in streams, then ran across the flats into green and black swamp. Tim hadn't noticed, the first time he'd seen this place, how gradually the swamp formed. A wide band of dark, wet topsoil bloomed sparsely in a flood of sunlight, black touched with bronze and yellow-green.

Rice. Rice would grow well here. He'd tell them to plant rice, if he could find seed rice or buy it from the caravans. Pulling up Destiny weeds would be no trouble. They didn't like this much light.

He found a memorable place to hide a gun and bullets. He secreted his three speckles pouches in the hidden pockets a merchant favored. For the rest of the day he watched.