Destiny's Road

"I was expecting Earthlife," Jemmy said. He was surprised, now he thought about it, to find himself holding a knife. Twerdahi Town wouldn't trust a stranger so. "Where are the speckles?"

"You're go

"But is it all-"

"Sure. The wagons bring in Earthlife food, and we kill windbirds for the meat." He waved the cooking oil. "This is the only fat we get, and they don't give us enough.

"We were real glad to see you, Andrew. Just anyone wouldn't pass for one of us. It had to be someone who's been starved." Half-beard smiled. "I'd kill a probe for a rasher of bacon."

Willametta's lips twitched: a token of a smile. "Fletch. Say fletch of bacon. People will think you're easy."

The gatherers were piling their ponchos into the dryer, taking firebirdcolored towels and trooping back to the showers.

Before the lights went out, De

20

The Speckles Crop

You can't eat these seeds straight. On food they're almost salty, almost metallic. I hope we can get used to the taste.

-Dutton, #2 Hydroponics

Jemmy entered the stormbock first, with Shimon and four he hadn't met. He got their names: a trusty would know. Rafik, Shar, Denis, Henry- "Henry? You found me."

Henry gri

"Trusty!" Shimon snapped.

"-Trusty," Henry said.

"Door, Trusty." That was Shimon again, reminding "Andrew" that the trusty was always first through a door.

He walked into pulsing yellow-white light.

It stopped him for an instant. A flood of raindrops flared irregularly as the light waxed and waned. Somewhere in his murky memory... hadn't he seen this before? Flashing yellow rain. Too tired to look up. A pair of skeletons took him by the arms and told him "Don't say birdfucking aloud!" and led him out of hell....ome kind of hallucination?

He didn't look up now either, because two bird-shapes and a cart waited outside in the rain. A cart pulled by a little smooth-shelled machine.

Jemmy lifted his hood and, as hood and arm hid his face from them, shouted over the thunder. "Probes?"

Shimon nodded violently.

Jemmy had thought they'd wait in the toolhouse, where it was dry.

The gatherers were all pulling their hoods up. Jemmy wiped his eyes and looked around and had to throttle a laugh. The hoods had eyes and beaks!

The proles came near, one behind the other and a little to the side. The orange stripes on their ponchos were broader than a trusty's. Weapons dangled at their sides, belted over ponchos. Jemmy had seen merchants returning such things to Spadoni wagon after a bandit hunt.

They bore another clear sign of their power. Half-beard hadn't told him that probes would wear pants! Big loose pants and boots to keep legs and feet dry. Luxuries beyond your wildest dreams.

Jemmy stepped forward, eagerness over fear. "Yes, man?"

The lead probe's voice was rusty, and male. "Get on with it." He waved, and Jemmy saw the toolhouse, like the short arm of an L built onto the barracks building.

The gatherers were cinching the strings on their ponchos. None of them moved, not even Shimon, until "Andrew" took the handles on the high-wheeled cart and pushed it toward the toolhouse.

Wooden bed, metal wheels. A crude piece of work, very different from the low-built machine that had been pulling it, but it robbed easily. It held empty backpacks painted in the colors of a firebird, and one that held something massive.

The probes maintained their staggered position. Attack one, you'd be shot by the other.

The door was blocked by a thick metal beam with a big crude metal lock. A probe opened it. His sleeve hid the key; he returned it to a zipped poncho pocket. Jemmy pulled the cart inside, and the gatherers filed in after him.

He lifted out the heavy backpack. It was full of bullets. Lungshark bullets (yutz bullets) were this size, but these looked wrong and felt light. Jemmy didn't pause to study them. He found the ammo bin where Andrew had said it would be. He unlocked it. It was near empty. He poured most of the bullets in. A handful went into a pocket in his poncho. He returned the pack to the cart.

The gatherers were picking up empty packs and big duck-foot- shaped gloves. There was a pack with a bigger orange patch. Jemmy took that, and glanced in before he do

The half-dozen bird guns were shark guns, yutz guns, and nothing but. Jemmy loaded a gun and got his first good book at the bullets. The business end was a cluster of little pellets, not a slug. The gun took eight.

Shimon never stopped watching him. Jemmy wished he would lose that grin: it called attention to them both.

Still moving briskly, as if he had been here too often to find it interesting, Jemmy followed the last gatherer. He glanced back once. Blacksmith-level technology here; settler magic in the barracks- "Snap it up, Trusty."

"Sorry, man." "Andrew Dowd" stepped briskly into the Road, leading his gatherers to their work site. Amnon took last place. The proles stayed to lock the toolhouse.

Twenty meters down the Road, Jemmy turned to book back. Above the barracks, pure light flapped like a ba

You couldn't get lost with that bight to guide the way. But how much power was being burned here? How long had it been burning? Cloth that burned like a lightbulb, that was settler magic!

From the begi

There wasn't enough Begley cloth to power a fraction of all this. Where were they getting their power?

A sudden downpour turned it all into a great half-globe of yellowwhite rain. Rain hid the last of his line of gatherers, and the proles weren't in sight. Jemmy turned and walked on.

He looked back rarely. Rain and mist hid stragglers. He assumed the probes were mounting rear guard. They couldn't watch him fumbling with the strings of his poncho, snarling them in knots, until he finally managed to cinch wrists and neck and waist against the rain.

Shimon kept pace behind him. When he caught Jemmy's eye, Shimon's casual pushing gesture waved him straight ahead. Jemmy gri

Probes might guess something if he stopped where speckles plants had already been stripped, or led them past plants ready to harvest. But Half-beard was out with the gatherers yesterday, and he'd guided them to the end of the Road at day's end.

He felt/heard the rain stop. For a long moment the air cleared, and when Jemmy looked back, the last plodder was a shape too big to be anyone but Amnon Kaczinski. No probes.

And the rain resumed, and they marched on.

The Road ended in a muddy pond: a shallow crater. Cavorite had hovered here. When Jemmy was sure where he was, he waved into the plants. The gatherers moved in. They knew where they'd stopped last night. Shimon looked back once before he followed the rest.