Destiny's Road

It might have been erotic too, but Jemmy was just too tired. His attempt to impress her by feeding himself got as far as trying to free his hands from under a sheet. Too weak. Too hungry to bother. He hadn't eaten much when his protesting belly made him stop.

He asked, "Where am I?"

"You're serious?" Smiling, Willametta curled over to see his eyes. "Yeah. This is the Windfarm."

"Who found me?"

"Henry saw you first," Willametta said. "I thought Andrew would be angry. He's a trusty. He keeps track of us. But then-" She stopped. "Maybe tomorrow you can feed yourself, Andrew."

Questions yammered in his head. Two Andrews? Trusty? Where are the toilets? "Where are my things?"

"Andrew, you were carrying speckles. Speckles means you're ready to run! The probes kill you if they catch you!"

He looked up at her.

"We stashed the speckles. Clothes too. The trusty will give you a poncho when you can work." She handed him an oddly shaped pan. "This you piss in until you can get up."

The room faded. When his strength came back he looked under the sheet and found that he was wearing scarlet-yellow-orange shorts, way too big, with a drawstring.

He woke when everyone came in glistening wet. They left their ponchos at the far end where the airlock was. The kitchen and tables were there too, and they ate without much talk, though Jemmy could sense eyes on him.

Willametta fed him again.

They dimmed the lights.

Jemmy snapped awake. The brightening of the lights was like dawn flashing through a curtain suddenly swept back. He'd never seen artificial lights this bright. The others were all tumbling out of their beds. A sudden whiff of bread: they were tearing a loaf apart. They ate fast while they dressed.

Voices: "I'd kill a probe for a jar of strawberry jam."

"What size?" and a trickle of laughter.

They pulled ponchos out of a box at the far end of the big room, a machine that had throbbed all night, just audible through the muted roar of the storm. There were glare-orange ovals on the backs of the ponchos, a blue thread along the sleeves. They weren't all alike, not quite. Half-beard's had a broader orange curve down the front, a bigger oval patch in back.

They flowed out through the massive airlock. Jemmy counted as they cycled through: five women and fourteen men including Half-beard. Three stayed behind. There was the woman who couldn't get out of bed and complained a lot. There was a small muscular man with straight black hair and a bristly-black angry jaw, and an older woman whose tunic markings matched Half-beard's.

The woman loomed over him for a time, studying him. She was tall and dark, broad across shoulders and hips. She must weigh more than Jemmy did, despite being just short of gaunt, her big breasts slack and empty. By her size and her air of command, she reminded him oddly of Marilyn Lyons and Willow Hearst of the spring and fall caravans. She was of their kind, but starved to the bone.

Jemmy found himself avoiding her eyes. He was just as glad when she and the angry man disappeared through a door.

He lost interest, and dozed. Later he remembered sounds like quarreling or lovemaking... or storm sounds mingled in his dreams.

The smells of cooking woke him.

The man fed the bedridden woman, who appeared to be pregnant, not sick. At the big woman's orders he fed Jemmy and took Jemmy's bedpan.

There was no day or night out there. Jemmy (Andrew. Why Andrew? They could have picked a name closer to his own, and they had another Andrew.) "Andrew" could hear thunder. It never quite stopped. But there was day and night in here.

He'd lost his sense of time aboard Carder's Boat. Maybe he could rebuild his memory of the voyage from the phases of Quicksilver.

He'd guessed right about the storm. Heated air rises from a sea of molten rock, a rip in the world's crust. Air at ground level flows in to replace it. Air moving inward on a spi

Oh, that was it. Air flows in, so face the wind to get out. Take the easy way out and you'll end on the easiest path to run a Road... assuming that Cavorite's crew meant to lead the Road right into a storm!

Why would they do that?

He'd found plants arrayed in rows; then the Road; then a plantation house. What would be grown here? He could feel the answer tapping at his mind. It was right on the tip of his tongue. .

19

Prison Cuisine

stable storm, like Jupiter's Red Spot or Uranus's Dark Spot, but we haven't had as long to observe it. There's got to be a heat source under it, and it has to be geothermal. It may be a potassium source.

-Alan Waithe, Geologist

Morning. The big woman and her paramour stayed behind again. The man gave Jemmy a fist-sized chunk of bread, then water. They both sat on Jemmy's bed and watched him eat.

"Get up," she said.

Jemmy rolled out of bed, landed on his hands and knees. Mostly he'd stopped hurting, but he was weak. She watched him pull himself to his feet. He asked, "Where's the toilet?"

"Shimon, go with him."

There were doors at this end of the room, marked with silhouettes of a man and a woman. Yesterday afternoon, these two had disappeared into the women's room for an hour or two.

The men's room was bigger than he'd guessed, with urinals, toilets, basins, towel racks, showers, and a tub. Partitions around showers, tub, and toilets had been ripped out and the marks painted over, badly. The walls were smooth stone like the rest of the barracks.

He turned a spigot. Burning hot water roared into the tub. Shimon was amused. He helped Jemmy climb in. He even got a towel for him; and then he watched as Jemmy got himself clean.

"How'd you get that scar on your hand?" he asked.

Jemmy tried to explain. His voice was rusty. He'd almost forgotten how to form words. He'd burned himself holding a gun wrong when he fired at an advancing line of sharks, and now there was a ridge of

pink between thumb and wrist... and Shimon nodded and gave every sign of being fascinated.

When Jemmy tottered back to bed Shimon was supporting him with a hand on his elbow, under the woman's critical eye. Lying down was bliss.

The woman said, "I'm Barda. You do what I say. You do what anyone says if he wears the orange."

"I call you Barda?"

"You call me Barda. I call you Andrew. Gatherers like Shimon, here, call me Trusty unless we're alone. They call you Trusty. You use their given names. It's good if you can learn their family names too. Barda Winslow," she thumped her chest. "Shimon Cartaya," she thumped Shimon's. "Willametta Haines. Amnon Kaczinski, the big guy. Duncan Nicholls, you call him Duncan Nick. Denis Bouvoire if you need some machine unjammed. There's a De

"The huge pale guy, yes. Amnon? Twins, no."

"Most men notice Rita and Dolores."

"There's a dark guy who looks young and old....rippled, maybe, but quick-"

"Rafik Doe. Came here at fourteen, near ten years ago. He won't give his real last name to anyone. Records say he killed a whole trader family with a yutz gun. You notice anyone else?"

"No."

"What've you guessed?"

"The other trusty, he's Andrew Dowd." Barda slurred her speech like Half-beard, and he tried to imitate that. It might buy his life. Prison workers who asked a stranger to lie would want to be sure he could!

"You wear the orange too. You're both bosses, trustees. I'm supposed to be him. Is he supposed to be sick?"