Destiny's Road

In a time now lost, Carder's Boat would carry a child anyplace he could dream. Now there were only the caravans, and that too was a dream.

They were all on the ridge when the dust plume arrived.

This had changed since Jemmy was a boy: caravans no longer came into Spiral Town. Merchants did, but not with their wagons. Caravans stopped about where Bloocher Farm began, where the Road turned. It was better for everyone. Here the chugs had a straight run down to the ocean, and chug droppings need not soil civic pavement.

The wagons began stopping along a kilometer of Road. They stopped well apart. Then the wagonmasters went among the chugs and released their harness.

Twenty chugs pulled most wagons, with here and there a chug missing. From his high perch Jemmy was able to count eighteen wagons. Close to four hundred chugs streamed across black salt grass, then sand, toward the ocean and in.

There was not much to be seen after that. The merchants were opening their wagons. That was of interest if you had money. The teens on the ridge were generally disappearing in the direction of di

Jemmy took the speckles shaker down. He measured a careful half-jigger and kneaded it into the bread dough, pulled it into two loaves, and put it in the oven. He shook the speckles jar again, reached up, and put it away.

"Curdis," he said, "we need more speckles."

"Margery?"

She'd heard. "It's a big caravan this time. Wait till tomorrow. They'll go cheaper."

Mom had three pots on the fire. She asked, "Margery? Can you handle this?"

"Yeah."

Mom went into the dining hall and sat beside Dad.

Margery reached for pot holders. Curdis moved up beside her and whispered something. She moved aside so that he could pull the heavy casserole out of the oven and take it to the table.

Dad said, "Saw the dust plume."

"Caravan's in town," Curdis said, and talked about moving Varmint Killer.

Dad nodded and nodded and presently asked, "Master Granger there?"

"I saw him," Jemmy said. Master Granger was an older man, proprietor of the lead wagon, though a younger woman drove. He and Dad had been friends. Jemmy and Dad had taken Granger and his driver to Harry's Bar, before Dad's accident.

Dad nodded and didn't suggest doing that again. Some days his mind worked better than others. Dad could barely get out of the house.

He wanted to know everything about today. Jemmy talked, with some help from Tho

The New Ha

Mom and the girls were talking about marriages, crops, weather, prices.

Jemmy had heard this too often, endless permutations, endlessly the same. He waited for an instant's pause and jumped into it. "Dad, how far down the Road have you gotten?"

"Oh, hell, Jemmy. Not far. We used to visit the Warkans, swim there, when the Warkans were the farthest. I hear tales, but.... don't think I ever got as far as where you were today."

The Road. He might never learn more of the Road than he'd learned from the schooling programs.

"Your uncle Eezeek had to go down the Road for awhile. Folk at Haven took him in-"

"Eezeek died years ago," Mom said.

But the merchants knew. Maybe somebody could get them talking.

Quicksilver glowed among lesser stars, just on the horizon.

A cart moved silently past the Bloocher clan toward Warkan's Tavern, moved by electricity and an old motor. It carried huge rolls of Begley cloth sheeting from the cavern in Mount Apollo: the most important product Spiral Town had to sell. It ghosted past the tavern and stopped by the lead wagon.

Normally roomy for the crowd it pulled in, Warkan's was just adequate When a caravan was in town. It wasn't just the merchants. Every human being between fifteen and twenty-five was at Warkan's Tavern tonight.

The older Spirals wore dancers on their feet. No room to dance in here. Outside, later, on the Road, in the dark rooms normally closed had been opened. The big bar would be inhumanly crowded, and Jemmy led his brethren into one of the outer rooms. They'd be able to breathe here, and Varmint Killer was sparkling, darting, spitting threads of green light, and putting on a fine show outside the big windows.

Tunia Judda was here, far across the big room. Tunia and Jemmy had been watching each other for years. Their parents were friends, and something might come of that, but they hadn't spoken of anything permanent. They'd dance on the Road later tonight.

Jemmy played at catching her eye. Never worked. Women probably did the same thing men did: get a friend to do the looking.

A few merchants were already here. Jemmy knew he shouldn't stare, but... They dressed in layers, in bright colors and patterns. Each man carried a gun, and each woman too.

Rachel Harness had grown up lovely and a little twisted. She'd been feeding herself and her speckles-shy mom since she was a little girl. When the rest went to their homes for di

"We didn't see a trace of the chugs for over an hour," she told the girls at her table, unmindful of the clear fact that boys were listening too. "The merchants were all settling in, pitching tents, setting up cookfires. They didn't look worried at all. Then here came the chugs, a great long wave of them, all the chugs at once. The merchants all dropped what they were doing and climbed up on their wagons! They settled on their bellies and pulled their guns out."

The merchants waited for service with more patience than locals did. They were listening to Rachel Harness with discreet amusement, men and women both.

"Now here came-I don't know any word for them," Rachel said. "They look like big toothy fish swimming through sand-"

A merchant, a man, turned in his chair and spoke to Rachel. "Sharks. They're all along this coast."

Rachel didn't quite know how to handle that. She pretended she hadn't heard, but she was blushing. "-Fins all along both sides of them, low down along the belly. Nasty beaks. They were faster than the chugs, but the chugs had a head start. They came plodding back to the wagons and hid under them. The merchants started shooting. For ten minutes they shot at the, the sharks. They killed maybe ten before the rest turned tail. Warkan's Beach is going to stink in three days' time."

Next to the man who had spoken, a merchant woman spoke to Rachel. "Willy's new to the train. Forgive him."

Rachel nodded graciously. "But sure. I'm Rachel."

"Hillary. It's a good bargain for the chugs, Rachel. Pull our wagons, get our protection. The lungsharks are the reason we carry guns-"

"Will anyone sell me speckles?"

The merchant woman turned in some a

Everyone knew that merchants didn't sell when they were at di

But everyone knew Evleen. She was nine when her dad died. After that she didn't get enough speckles, until someone noticed. Deprived late like that, she didn't have the look of a speckle-shy. She looked like any eighteen-year-old girl. But it had touched her mind.

The merchants were trying to ignore Evleen. So were the Spiral women. Wouldn't any of them stop her? But no man could speak to her, so Jemmy turned back to his table. Look for conversation, start a quarrel, any kind of distraction.

But his attention snagged on a familiar face-a merchant, he'd seen that man before!-as the man reached out and pulled Evleen into his lap.

The merchant was big and brawny. His speech was slurred by a merchant's accent, and something more. Hard to believe that he could get himself drunk so soon after shooting down a pack of, what had the woman called them? Sharks?