Destiny's Road

cookware:

stew pots

teapot

tea

"I'm guessing at the cost, most of the time. Even so, some of this doesn't cost much. Cloth napkins, we don't need to buy a washer if one of us will wash them out."

Five days after their arrival, the Pits was starting to look more like the picture in Barda's mind.

The felons too were starting to look less gaunt. Less pale, too. A day of sporadic sunlight wouldn't give anyone a sunburn, but they no longer looked like they'd been living under an endless black thunderstorm.

Of course they were too many, and three were in kilts chopped from a tablecloth. And if Jemmy Bloocher had thought of robbing their first customers for their clothes, and never mind the friends and relatives and proles who might come looking for them... then nine people who had been imprisoned for violent crimes would all have thought of the same thing. Something had better be done about clothes!

Buses passed twice a day.

On the fifth evening they sat around the fire pit and spoke their plans. "It's a wonder nobody's ever tried this before," Barda caroled. "It could work. Unless it rains."

Was she fooling herself? Nobody could see the flaws in the i

Barda said, "Well, the sign, of course."

Jemmy asked, "Paint?"

She laughed. "Paint? No. We have to turn the sign on....ike the Windfarm barracks sign. We need lights too. Jemmy, there's a way out to the roof, but it's blocked. Can you climb up there?"

The roof was three stories up. Nobody but Jemmy wanted to climb it, but it wasn't difficult. He found a weathered and muddy elegance.

He called down. "Barda? Three tables, twelve chairs. You didn't say it was a dining area."

"We never got crowded enough to use it. That's why Daddy closed it off."

"I don't see how to get them down."

"We'll get the door unblocked."

"Barda, I can see the door. It's barred on this side."

"What? Really?"

"Whoever did it must have climbed down afterward."

"Brian! He would've! And then Daddy never got around to unblocking it!"

Jemmy lifted the bar away and tried to pull the door open. "Stuck." There was no chimney. From this height you could see... well, you could see enough Road from here to prepare for visitors, get the nudes under cover, and put Amnon on display in his coveralls. From the roof's back edge, through a notch in the ridge, water gleamed through a fringe of slender, straight Earthlife trees. Swan Lake.

He called down. "Still there, Barda? I'm thinking. If a client never sees us except in swimsuits and windbreakers, we have to serve fish."

"Daddy left because Swan Lake was fished out."

"Worth a try. Barda? You've got electric power." Beneath a surface of accumulated dirt, he was standing on a dark silver-gray surface.

"Did something light up?"

"No, I only mean half the roof is Begley cloth."

"Of course. How's it look?"

"It's covered with goo; we'll have to clean it off. And there's..." A metal structure as high as his head was sited on the silver-gray surface, where the sharp corner of the restaurant pointed toward the Road. Like the prow of a boat, Jemmy thought. He put his hand on the stained metal casing and asked, "What is this?"

"What's it look like?"

"Casing out of a foundry. It looks like an open hand, round base, splayed fingers."

"Ante

"I can open it... the inside looks like settler magic. Is this your sign?"

"It's the sign and the lights and anything else that takes power. See if there's anything missing."

"Oh, come on, Barda, I've never seen anything like this.....ll right, here's a slot. Like it takes a great big three-pronged key."

"Fuck my bird! I'm coming up."

So Amnon pushed the door open and they all trouped out on the roof to see what everyone except Jemmy knew all about. They hovered around Barda while she opened the shell and looked in.

She said, "He took it with him!"

"It?"

"Birdfucker!"

Andrew said, "It isn't as if we could go off to town and open another account."

"That birdfucking list is getting big," Barda said. "Andrew, whose name would we use? Not mine!"

Andrew laughed. "We're all wanted felons except Jeremy. Jeremy doesn't have a name."

"Well, without a guide spot we don't have a sign, and without a sign we don't have an i

Guilda's Place in Spiral Town had never needed anything but paint. Jemmy asked, "Guide spot?"

He wasn't heard. "Maybe I can rig something," Duncan Nick said.

Barda made way for him. The shell opened at the edge of the roof. Two could look inside; no more.

"I was up here before, but I did not want lights," Duncan said. "Mmm."

"Let me see." But Wi

SoJemmy asked her. "Guide spot?"

"It sends back a reflection," Wi

"So there's a record in a City computer, and it says this is the Swan," said Denis. "But these things can be hacked."

Barda edged away from the power collector so that others could look it over. Duncan's and Denis's heads and shoulders disappeared inside.

"The Winslows must have retired the account when they moved," Wi

Barda laughed suddenly. "Not Daddy. All the way to Destiny Town, when he's going the other way? I bet he just took the guide spot along and bought someone else's power collector."

Most of this was beyond him, but Jemmy caught that datum as it went by. "You mean the City thinks he's still the Swan."

"I'm guessing, you know."

"So if you got it going again-"

"I worked for a power company," Wi

"The City would just see the Swan using more power? Your daddy would pay a bigger fee. Would he notice?"

"Oh, sure, and complain. But... couldn't complain to the City, could he? They like things neat in the City."

"If he didn't switch accounts."

Duncan Nick moved out. "It's hopeless," he said. "I could make it work if I had some number-four line wire."

Wi

Watching them wasn't very interesting. They weren't doing anything. The men picked up chairs and tables and wrestled them inside and downstairs and into the main dining room.

There were chickens in the woods. They were fast, hard to catch. But on the fifth day Wi

On the seventh morning, Willametta saw the bus stop and let people off. Blind luck that she happened to be looking through the picture window. Andrew had set a guard, but he hadn't been taken seriously.

Two men, two women walked across the bridge carrying fishing poles.

Willametta moved about the house whispering the news. Nudes to the upstairs rooms. Amnon to work the garden.

The strangers were in their teens. They wore tiny swimsuits and skimpy vests with lots of pockets. What they saw was Amnon in coveralls, and four older folk in out-of-date short-sleeved windbreakers, carrying poles. Jemmy was one of those.

"Yes, we're reopening the restaurant. Just for di