Destiny's Road

Furtive creatures were looking him over from within the brush. Maybe his scent would keep them clear... but it wasn't stopping the birds.

A lovely, brilliant creature posed on a rock to watch him crawl toward it.

In the sputtering blue-white light it stood out like a bonfire, scarlet and yellow with bands of electric orange. When he came close it stood upright and spread short wings, and now there were threads of blue in the pattern. It looked too big to fly. It was patterned like a butterfly, iridescent in this light. It turned its head sideways to look at him, and snapped a beak like needle-nosed pliers.

He stopped a few meters away, wondering what defense could give it such confidence. It never gave ground. Destiny birds veered clear of it, and so did Jemmy.

He was crawling blind along a curve like a huge snake. He forced his eyes open and found he'd run up against a smoothly curved surface, a tube of rock.

He crawled into it, out of the rain.

It ran for meters before it became too narrow. As soon as he stopped moving, he was asleep.

Thunder shaped nightmares. He'd wake with a scream he couldn't hear, and remember where he was, and sleep again.

Later, slept out and hungry in a black coffin of rock, he wondered what built tubes. Human engineers built pipes, aquaducts... but here? He pictured huge worms that ate rock.

He crawled out into a world much like the one he'd left, and kept moving. Water had drained from his pack. It was lighter, briefly.

Starvation and battered senses left him light-headed. It was only a day since he had eaten, but many days since he'd eaten anything but fish. Fruit and vegetables were a fading memory. There were potholes in the rock everywhere he went, and he drank rainwater to fill his belly.

He had no idea what he was crawling toward.

An orange glow....one now, as he crawled along the edge of a patch of forest... there again, orange to his left and a touch of heat on his cheek. He crawled toward that.

The warm rain wasn't warm enough. It was draining the heat out of him, easing him into death. He was shuddering with fatigue and hunger. Lightning sputtered continually: the world was dark and blue-white, and it wasn't much better than being blind. He couldn't recognize a single plant or tree in the Destiny forest. The air stank. But orange flashed and drew him.

Until warmth bathed him, and he turned himself like a roasting boar carcass to soak it in. The wind went up, carrying the rain away from him.

For a while, then, he could stop.

Curiosity brought him closer to the heat. Crawling over naked slippery rock, he looked down into a sea of red-orange light. It made him back up. He'd found what was only found in teaching programs. Lava- molten rock-volcano.

Destiny's crust had ripped here. That happened often on Earth, but nowhere else on Destiny.

An alien place indeed, where no food grew for Earthlife such as himself. He should go while he still had strength.

Wind howled in his ears beneath the crackle of lightning. It wasn't easy to walk; but he just couldn't crawl any more. His whole body screamed if he tried.

He walked directly into the wind, peeking between his fingers. He didn't remember why. He'd figured something out... he couldn't exactly remember, but this was right. Keep the wind in his face.

Plants drew him, color against the dark.

They covered the shallow slopes ahead of him. They stood out like settler-magic paint: green, orange, black. Black stalks split and split again to become orange thorns whose tips divided down to tiny green needles. Bristly plants hugged the ground, knee high and twice as wide as they were tall. Nothing grew around or between them.

There were paths between the rows. The slope was gentle, and the rain had eased. Suddenly everything was easier.

Jemmy was too far gone even to be thankful.

The plants tore at his legs when he wobbled off the path. He bore it twice or thrice, then bellowed in rage and tried to pull one up. The plant's roots clung like a demon. He tried another, and a third, then quit.

And now he'd found a wider path, rock not too slippery to walk on. The broad band of smooth rock continued level, maintaining a constant width alongside the hip-high forest. Even blinded by rain, he couldn't lose his way.

Plants all in one variety, like something tended. If there were Otterfolk on the sea, could there be sapient natives on land? Farmers? A world older than Earth might have had time to father more than one sapient species.

He walked, his mind dreaming, disco

He'd done this before.

It didn't dawn on him; it seeped up into his mind. From magma spilled from a ripped planet, he had wandered onto rock melted by fusion flame and refrozen. He was on the Road again.

Above the wind and thunder he heard his own wild laughter.

A pulsing yellow-white light began to intrude on the lightning, growing bright as he followed the Road. He couldn't even feel surprise when he found the door.

Someone fed him broth.

Later, a bowl of rice with vegetables in it.

In between he must have slept.

The stone walls felt thick as mountains. They blocked the thunder down to a suggestion, a background. It was one big room. Bunks ran away from him in an infinite rectangular array. The occupants slept, or talked quietly; he heard nothing of that. One moaned and protested in her sleep, just audible above the whisper of thunder, and Jemmy knew that he could hear again.

He kept falling in and out of sleep.

He half-woke when the lights brightened. He was too tired to move, but he watched as men and women rolled out of their beds. They all wore shorts, scarlet and yellow with a narrow orange stripe, and nothing above the waist. Most of them pulled voluminous slick-ski

They went out in little clumps. Storm sounds rose, then fell as the door shut, rose again and fell.

Two doors. Airlock.

"Who are you?"

He blinked up at a half-bearded, half-naked man. Had he slept? The man shook him. "Who are you?"

"Jemmy Bloocher."

"From now on you're Andrew Dowd. Remember that."

"Andrew Dowd."

"No, no, Andrew Dowd. Have you been getting enough speckles?"

"Andrew Dowd." He tried to imitate the man's pronunciation. It wasn't quite Tail Town speech, but closer to that than anything else. Dowd was not quite Dawd, not quite Dode. Andrew, not Ander.

The man was hairy everywhere, a pelt of tightly curled black hair over chest and arms and face and head. His beard was half a finger joint long, too short to be a real beard. His hair was the same length. His ribs and muscles stood out like an anatomy diagram: wiry strength and no fat at all.

He listened carefully to Jemmy's pronunciation, then said, "Better."

"Why? Why am I Andrew Dowd? Why do you want to know I was Jemmy Bloocher?"

"Tell you later. When you were out there, did you see anything like pools of water glowing blue?"

"Nothing like that."

"Good!"

"Why?"

"There are pools where the water acts as neutron traps for uranium. We call 'em [?}0kb[?] pools. They're radioactive as hell. We'd have to put you outside if-Willametta?" Half-beard stood up. He too wore shorts in screaming colors, and a stick shoved through a loop at the small of his back.

Willametta wore shorts just like Half-beard's, and the same brush haircut in blond, as he saw when he managed to pull his gaze away from her fits. She'd be Senka ibn-Rushd's age: late thirties. But Senka ruled a merchant wagon. Willametta was master of nothing, as lean as Halfbeard, and worn out. He could see a sharp-faced patrician loveliness beneath the fatigue.

She lifted Jemmy's head and slid her knee underneath. In that position she fed him spoonfuls of vegetable stew. It was nice.