Destiny's Road

The Neck was where the peaks disappeared below the mist layer. Beyond they rose again, marching into the mainland toward a distant storm.

Storms formed and went away, didn't they? This one didn't. He was still drifting toward it after... he couldn't remember how many days. The clouds towered higher than the peaks of the Crest. At night he could see lightning playing within.

How old was that storm? He fantasized that it was a permanent feature of Destiny. Jupiter's Red Spot had lasted centuries. Destiny storms didn't normally do that, but if one had... then Cavorite would have gone to see.

He was passing the Neck, then, the morning he found that the picked clean shell of a sub clam held a neatly placed tuna still flopping. They couldn't have thrown such a mass, could they? They must have guided and chased it across the weed and precisely onto the shell.

Neat!

He was working out how to hook it when he saw sails.

He'd thought the mist would hide him. Maybe it only hid him from the Neck, while a fisher at sea could still see his mast. Maybe they hadn't told the merchant guards on the Neck. But Carder's Boat was conspicuous.

The fisher sails showed clearly now. They'd get here hours before sunset.

He raised the ladder.

From above, weed half-enclosed the surfboard. From a boat they'd never see it.

He'd left his mark in chopped-away weed, but a fisher might think it just grew this way.

He gaffed the tuna, pulled it up, took it into the cabin's shadow, and cleaned it. He threw the offal onto the weed to draw scavengers.

Lying on deck with only his eyes above the rim, he watched four sails come closer. He didn't know the men in the boats. None of them wore merchant's clothing.

Jemmy took his four meters of weed cutter to the cabin, and waited. He could hear them moving about. He heard their voices, querulous and awed. Otterfolk watched from afar.

The fishers were gone at sunset. They hadn't been able to find a way up.

More boats came the next day. Carder's Boat had drifted by then, but they'd come straight as arrows. They threw something over the side: a rope ladder with hooks on it. When one of them started to climb up, Jemmy cut the ropes and heard him splash.

They sailed off. The next day nobody came.

The land came near: an unfamiliar coast half-seen through mist. The storm came nearer too.

He'd eaten tuna until it went bad and he had to throw it overboard. Now he'd grown hungry enough to want it back. The Otterfolk had gone away. He'd caught nothing using tuna for bait. Earthlife fish must be scarce around here. But the current would carry him back toward the Neck, where Tail Town fishers didn't seem to go hungry.

But he'd be giving the fishers and the merchants another shot at him. He could hardly hear himself think for the howling of the wind and, often, the pounding of the rain. He had to shelter in the cabin most of the time. But he thought about drifting back along the Neck, conspicuous as any fifteen-meter craft from another world, and he thought of Ca vo rite flying into a storm that wouldn't go away.

He couldn't remember making a decision. It was just there.

He took all the clothes he'd found aboard, though it was only shortsleeved windbreakers and trunks and a pair of work gloves. It all went into his pack along with fishing line and hooks. He showered: no telling when he'd do that again. He drank all the water his belly would hold.

He knelt on the board in a pelting rain.

The devilhair hadn't actually eaten into the wood. He peeled it away in big patches, wearing the gloves he'd found aboard. Then gloves and shoes went into his pack and he began paddling with great overhand sweeps of his arms.

He had imagined the path of Cavorite, but it felt very real to him. Had he imagined the days aboard Carder's Boat? Events in his head were isolated; he had trouble co

Rain lashed at him and withdrew and fell again. It could not be much past noon, could it? But it was dark as night save for the slashing of the lightning. Thunder and rain filled his hearing.

Now there was another sound, growing.

He couldn't see sign of a beach ahead, but he could hear, above the thunder and the rain, waves rising and smashing down, throwing spume. Storm waves. If this storm had been here long enough to draw Cavorite- But he had no reason to think that was true, did he? The storm might be only weeks old. But if he'd guessed right, then there had to be a beach. Waves like this, pounding rock cliffs for centuries or mille

The waves were lifting him and dropping him. He got to his knees. This oncoming mountain of water looked like it, and he paddled hard, then stood up and walked the board forward, sliding down, down. The nothing ahead was taking shape.

Alien-looking black cliffs.

He veered the board. The wave was trying to break.

Twerdahl Town surfers had given him a name for what he was doing now, but he couldn't remember. He rode the board parallel to shore with a wave breaking behind him and curling over him. He was losing ground, always closer to black rock, but that was sand, it had to be sand at the foot of those black cliffs. He veered straight toward land and ran ahead of the wall of water, as far as he could, before the wave broke over him.

He crawled onto a narrow band of black sand. He lay for a time, just breathing.

Choking on seawater, he'd still had the wit to hurl his pack at the rocks. It was beyond the waves. But the waves were playing with a shattered board, rolling it in and back out, shredding it. His four-meter weed cutter must be under the sea.

The border of sand had narrowed. When the moons lined up you could get tides a meter high. If this beach disappeared, he could drown yet.

The black cliffs loomed alien and dangerous, a type of rock he'd never seen on Destiny.

He do

18

The Windfarm

Something in the ocean is absorbing or precipitating potassium. What it is doesn't matter: we couldn't possibly counteract it in time. We'll have to 100k elsewhere.

-Cordelia Gerot, Xenobiology

Ferocious winds and stinging rain held him crouched and crawling and nearly blind. Lightning sputtered continually, like settler magic gone bad. It was all black and gray rocks tilted at all angles, and it had gone on forever.

He slid on slippery smooth surfaces. In places he found a surface like foamy rock. Traction was good, but it lacerated his knees and would have torn bare hands and feet to ribbons. His shoes and gloves were worth his life here.

It was another world, as alien as pictures of Volstaag and Hogun taken by crawler probes.

Yet there was life all around him. The rocks were cracked everywhere; and wherever there were cracks, wherever mud could accumulate, dwarf forest clung to the cracks and the flats.

Jemmy found he could cling to the spiky plants and follow the cracks.

Shadows blew past him on the wind, like kites with broken strings. He couldn't spare attention for what must be fragments torn from Destiny plants. But he had to keep ducking to protect his eyes, so he never got a good look. Now flurries of shadows dipped and darted about him as if a malevolent whirlwind sought his death.

He ducked a shadow and it slashed his pack.

He'd barely glimpsed its shape. It was not an Earthlife bird.

He could huddle close to the black-and-bronze plants. Birds had to veer from the plants, and Jemmy got a better look at them. What seemed to be feathers certainly weren't. They looked more like a chicken than an eagle: more compact, less likely to fly. He ducked slashing claws, and peered after the bird as it wheeled and came for him again. How many legs did that thing have?