Destiny's Road

"Too many men, not enough women, and a woman who gets pregnant goes free. Any man who tries to hold on to a woman gets taught different."

"Unless he's a trusty?"

"By that time, he knows." Somehow they'd come to be lying side by

side, their backs against the long damp grass. Willametta said, "I haven't seen stars in two years."

"Me... well. Days."

"Be a restaurant. It sounded crazy when you said it."

"Caravans build a new restaurant every evening, and I was the one who did the building. When I see the Swan I'll tell you what I think. Maybe it's fallen down."

"What do we do then?"

"I can't stop until I've seen Destiny Town."

She sat up abruptly. "Crab shies aren't allowed on the mainland," she said. "You know better than to go into town without an identity, Jeremy."

Crab shies?

"How would I pick up an identity? What identity? I mean, with this accent."

"You could be a merchant child."

Jemmy chewed that. He'd have learned the Crab accent while traveling with the caravan... wait. "Willya, there weren't any children on the caravans."

"No. Jeremy, if a merchant gets pregnant on the Road, she's bound to be home before she has the baby."

"Then what are we talking about?"

"Well, merchant men make children along the Road too. The children stay where they're born unless something happens. You could have been picked up at two or three years old."

"That ever happen?" It sounded like a children's story.

"Ask Duncan Nick. Nicholls."

"Duncan doesn't have any accent."

"He lost it." She rolled over onto him. "You going to talk all night?" He did wonder, afterward, why he had been so favored. But Willya, her breath easing, whispered, "What did you see?"

"When?"

"You said-"

He remembered, and smiled. "I saw green beans growing up cornstalks over most of a hillside, but they're not ripe yet. In a few months we'll get our veggies here too. I've been looking for potatoes. We can bake bananas-"

At dawn the felons were all over the place. Andrew whistled to gather them up.

Wi

Barda listened, then summoned Andrew.

The rest straggled in. Wi

This would be easier, Jemmy thought, if he had bread to offer instead of leftover pork. He said, "They'll catch up. Once we're on the ridge they'll see us. Being seen from the sky is the problem."

"Always ready to spot the problem, aren't we, Jemmy?"

"Mmm? What am I missing?"

Barda said, "Tell him, Wi

The slender dark woman spoke in a fast monotone. "They wanted me to go with them. Asham had my arms but I bit Ansel's hand and started screaming, I think I kicked him a good one too, and I pulled loose. They wanted me to stop yelling and let them go, and I saw Asham had one of the knives so I just ran back here. But they're gone."

"And you didn't tell me," Andrew said venomously.

"We can't wait," Barda said.

"Barda, they've deserted me!"

Andrew and Barda were still keeping their voices down, though Amnon and Henry had moved into earshot. Jemmy risked saying, "Some of us still think you're the trusties, you know? And some of us have noticed that there aren't any proles to say so. Andrew, when you tell all of us to stop talking about anything but the plan, who is it that stops talking? Just the ones who say you're right, right?"

"Your point?"

"Keep us talking or you'll lose more."

Andrew sighed. "But if I let these birdfuckers go-"

"Did they get our speckles stash?"

"What? Turn around."

Jemmy turned. Andrew opened Jemmy's pack and looked in. "Still there. Wait." He fished the bag out, opened it, looked, sniffed. "Still there. What are you playing at? Did you think they could get it away from you?"

"It was the only thing they could take that's worth anything, and they don't have it. Let them go."

"No!"

Henry said, "We can't catch them. Earth's sake, would you have chased them in the dark? When they do show up in a few days, speckle shy and begging for their brains back, they'll be a horrible example."

Andrew snorted. Barda said, "We'll be restaurateurs by then. They'll have to be hidden fast."

Jemmy saw Andrew bite back his answer. Killed! We're pla

charade, and a speckles-shy might blurt out something deadly. Jemmy looked for alternatives... and Andrew saw his nod.

Ten were left.

Over the ridge was another valley, Destiny rife along the bottom, Earthlife ru

Ten felons hunted and feasted on burrowing creatures. It seemed strange to be eating at noon. Merchants and yutzes didn't do that either. Their intestines had forgotten about meat, and some were having trouble. They talked as they lay about the slopes, and continued as they moved on.

"I signed a contract I shouldn't have," Andrew Dowd said. He was walking off his anger. He walked fast, and Jemmy matched his pace just to see if he could.

"Didn't you say you were being robbed?"

"Robbed, yeah. They were my partners."

"I had the idea they were holding you at gunpoint."

Andrew only gri

But he'd certainly implied... "Were they trying to kill you?"

"The courts are screwy, Jeremy. I wasn't sure I'd get justice."

Jemmy dropped back by a little. Andrew was half-smart and dangerous....nd maybe his own record was no better.

"I don't remember any of it," Duncan Nick told Jemmy. "My mother got killed when someone got careless with a weed cutter. My aunt and uncle, they already had Marie. Now Momma was dead and suddenly they've got four, and I didn't look like the others. Daddy already knew about me. When the summer caravan came by, he took me. Carnot wagon. Maria wasn't any too pleased."

Jemmy guessed: "Your stepmother?" "My older sister."

"Is that when you saw Mount Canaveral?"

"Oh, I wasn't much past two. Fu

"So the restaurant was still going?"

"Then. I was only thirteen." Duncan looked around him. Barda Winslow was trailing, well out of earshot. "So me and my two friends, we went back to the Swan six years later. But it was empty. So we went through three of the big houses on the Nob and hid out in the Swan. I suppose you'd think I was crazy, a Crab shy forgetting about speckles."

"I can't imagine it."

"But I grew up here. Hereabouts, not just in Destiny Town but everywhere, speckles is free. We don't need much. Earthlife animals have nerves too, you know."

"So?"

"Hey, Willya?"

"What?"

"You told me once. Why is it that we don't have to worry so much about speckles? The Earthlife and Destiny life grow together...."

"Yes. Jemmy, these valleys are all Earthlife and Destiny mixed. It's like that around Destiny Town too. Earthlife animals learn to eat Destiny plants that secrete potassium. The ones that don't, get stupid and die. The Crab isn't like that. Nothing's like that unless it's near the Winds. See, the potassium has to be there."

"Willya, how did caravans get started?"

"Don't know. Lucky for the Crab shies, though, eh?"

Barda thought it over while she walked. "I know some of what's in the lessons," she said. "A little. Daddy didn't give us much time to learn."

"But you've got tapes and computers? Like in Spiral Town?"

"Sure. You can't get to them, though. They're in the libraries, and you don't have identification."

"The caravans-"