Destiny's Road

In a sputter of lightning they crawled into true dark. The tube was big. It might have held any kind of predator. Jemmy moved knife point first, ready to back up fast, though he was third in line behind Andrew and Willametta.

It was a big tube, as wide as two people; wider in spots. Jemmy sprawled out and let himself fade. .

"Let me out! Let me out!" far away and garbled; and then a rustle.

Barda: "Anything wrong down there?"

"Just Denis losing his di

The tube was quite smooth and comfortable, barring a little rainwater in the bottom. Wind blew through the big holes and kept it from being stuffy. Thunder roared from time to time, but he'd grown used to that. He could hear Willametta and Andrew making noisy love, both wild with the taste of freedom, their feet a meter from his head. That was almost restful.

Yet he couldn't sleep.

He heard Henry ask plaintively, "Did anyone see an Earthlife bird?"

"We'd have known." Barda, three centimeters from Jemmy's feet.

Henry: "I'd kill a prole for a duck."

Ansel, much closer: "There's good eatin' on a prole."

"Is he right, Barda?"

"Oh, shut it, Henry. Even so, you all listening? We've gotto find Earthlife food. If we still look like a dozen ghouls the first time any citizen finds us .

"That's kind of what I meant."

Willametta, from uptube: "Barda, tell us more about this i

"Wave Rider, we were going to call it. My older brothers, Barry and Bill, and I went off with a gang of workmen from Destiny Town. That left Daddy with Brian and Carol. We knew Daddy'd work them hard. We hated to leave them.

"The Overview Bureau used to be antsy about people messing with Otterfolk, but they've loosened up some. Daddy got permission somehow. We built not far from shore. We brought a specialist to teach us how to deal with Otterfolk for fish. I don't think Daddy could ever have loosened up enough. You have to swim with them. They like to play."

"You like that, Barda?"

"It beats what else we were doing. Digging a foundation. Pouring stone. We were starting to build the frame when Daddy sent me off to Romanoff."

"The other best restaurant."

"Jeremy, I grew up knowing how to cook the Earthlife fish from Swan Lake, but Daddy thought seafood must be different, and Destiny seafood anyway, I went. Wide Wade's School of Destiny Biochemistry and Cuisine is attached to Romanoff. The best students end up there.

"And while I was at Wide Wade's, I got word that Bill ran away with the money for the workmen! Daddy was in a rage and I was supposed to go back to the Swan. So I ran too. And I never saw any of them ever again until the tribunal."

"I've been in the Swan," Duncan Nicholls said.

"No way," said Barda.

Willametta asked, voice raised to talk past Jemmy, "Barda, how far away is this shoreline site you picked?"

"Seventy klicks from Destiny Town, where the Road dips almost down to the water. About that far from here, I guess. Willya, I don't know how much of it they built."

"Well, there's ten of us, and you tell us how to do it, and Jeremy can make us a pit barbecue."

"If we can get there," said a voice. Another told him to shut up. Jemmy stopped listening. He was half-asleep, and so were the rest of them, and anyone still awake wouldn't be making sense.

He dozed. The voices had all gone quiet. All but- "It's at Swan Lake, between the Road and the shore." Duncan. "Daddy wouldn't let you in the Swan." Barda, scornful. "Harold Winslow? He wasn't there."

"Who was?"

"Nobody. Barda, it's just a shell. They took out the ovens even, and the chairs and tables. I hid out in the Swan while they were looking for me after, you know."

"How'd they catch you?"

"Got careless. Twice. I mean, I thought I'd hide out for a while and then hit the Road with the money and settle down in Terminus. But I didn't think of speckles. So I got speckles-shy and careless and got caught fishing off the dock."

Jemmy asked, "Duncan, do you have any idea where the Winslow family went?"

"How would I?"

"Well, the proles might have said something."

"Nope."

"Barda, it strikes me that maybe your daddy just left the Swan and went off to finish Wave Rider."

Silence.

Jemmy asked, "Who else would take the ovens?" "Is Andrew awake?"

"I don't think so."

"We'll tell him in the morning."

24

The Ridges

We could build clocks that keep a Destiny calendar and Destiny time, but there's no point. The Spirals sell clocks by wagonloads, and we all use them. On Earth it's some slightly different date plus the lightspeed gap, and that doesn't matter either.

-Hillary Miller, first mayor 0f Terminus

In the morning they crossed the ridge and found another valley. They hacked and waded across.

And another behind the next ridge, but Cavorite must have seared and seeded this land. They yelled like maniacs to see green trees and grass covering the slopes. Black and yellow-green ran along the bottom, Destiny life seared away and then returned.

Felons scattered to hunt. Andrew kept others to dig a pit with their hands and to cut Destiny wood with kitchen knives. Jemmy Bloocher and Barda Winslow fought sporadic flurries of rain to make fire.

Before night fell they had cooked a pig, four rabbits, a small bird Ansel caught by leaping at it, and a man's weight of green bananas.

Gorged stupid, the dozen escapees lay on a sloping hill and looked at each other. Andrew Dowd said, "It can work."

Someone was talking about staying here.

Jemmy could have slept through that if Andrew hadn't begun shouting. Where will the Parole Board look first? where... more speckles? crazy bastard....ad a plan...

He tried to ignore the sounds, but now Ansel was shouting back. "Not forever! We stay here till the Board gets bored looking for us."

Andrew: "I know where the caravan is now! When they get to the Swan we've got to be ready. Merchants won't wait."

"If we settle here, the Board will quit after a month. They don't know we've got a speckles stash-"

"Speckles rots!"

"What? What are you saying?"

Barda: "Ansel, speckles gets a splash of radiation before it goes on the Road. They do it in the Parole Board complex. Didn't you know?''

"You pla

"No idea."

"You don't even know it's to preserve the speckles, do you? It might be they don't want fertile seeds getting out-"

"That's birdfucking crazy!"

"Who died and made you prole?"

"Shut up! Shut your face or I'll turn it inside out for you!"

Barda was on Andrew's arm, whispering, while Willametta stalked off in a rage.

Jemmy spoke as she passed. "Willya."

She dropped beside him. She said, "They're all crazy." Jemmy said, "Sure."

"Andrew too. Idiot. If he'd just let them talk." "He still thinks he's a trusty, Willya."

"What's your take on this, Jeremy?"

Jemmy said, "We had a plan. Then we had another plan. Plans are cheap. I've thrown away a lot of plans. I like-" His arm swept about himself. "-this. We can hunt!"

"You'd stay?" The ragged clouds permitted glimpses of stars, but it was too dark to see more than shadows. She moved closer, to see his face.

"No, I mean we can keep a restaurant supplied. If they seared this valley, Cavorite must have seared and seeded every valley between here and the Road. They're all ready to be hunted. I saw-"

"Ah." Relieved, she nestled against him.

He asked, "Does Andrew-?"