Destiny's Road

"Well," Harlow said, "I'd have thought one felon would have babbled stories. How many were there, a dozen?"

"Five, the caravaners say. All gone when the proles came. If you go up to Swan Lake, you can see how easy it must have been to get into the hills."

Jeremy had found a brochure. Day rates. Rates for stays of a week. List of what a child should pack. A map.

"What's it like, staying here? May we look around?" Harlow asked.

"Of course. Outside too. If you're going to the lake, take some fishing poles."

They went upstairs, pro forma. Harlow went into the nearest room and bounced on a tiny, carefully made bed.

"Nice move, but I didn't leave anything up here," Jeremy said. Her hands smoothed out the bed. "Any interest in anything?" 'Just the roof. Two floors up."

"You rest. I'll go up. What should I look for?"

"Well, the guide spot's working, but see if it got damaged. The floor's Begley cloth; see if it's been kept up. Look around at the view, all directions. Harlow, it's probably not worth the effort-"

She laughed and went, feet quick on the stairs.

Jeremy went into the men's bathroom. He tried the taps. They'd got the plumbing working again! He used a toilet, then stayed there, private, thinking.

Harlow was staking a claim.

Jeremy Winslow was in mourning! But set that aside, because it was twenty-seven years late to tell Harlow to get lost, and i

He'd see the hill from the roof.

She met him on the stair. "What?"

"I thought I'd look for myself."

"I never stared at a guide spot before. Somebody whacked the casing with a crowbar, looks like, but it must be working or there wouldn't be lights. The Begley cloth's new. What else?"

They walked out on the roof. Jeremy opened the powerhouse casing and looked in. "That's a new guide spot too. It was a snarl of line wire when I left here." He turned in a slow circle. "That way is Swan Lake. The proles think they went out that way. But that way-look across the Road." She nestled close to sight along his arm. "That's how we came, and there are valleys where we could survive for weeks. Mr. Chorin didn't say the caravan sold them clothing, but I bet they did, a lot."

A proud oak stood above the hillside, easily a quarter-century old. Duncan Nick's oak, where the women's cesspit had been. What was that growing around its base? To Jeremy's eye it stood out like settlermagic paint: greenery tinged with yellow, and orange flecks on black.

From the oak he traced narrow paths to a thicket of growth, greenand-black shadows with touches of orange. The other ancient cesspit. Broader paths led from Duncan Nick's oak down to the lodge, and to the lake, and east to the ridge-' 'Another way out," he said, pointing-and to a stand of fruit trees that must have replaced the old spice garden, with a hint of orange in the shadowed green-black around the trunks.

"You think Barda got away," Harlow said.

"She could have. I can... could've.

Harlow hugged him from behind, chin on his shoulder. He plunged on: "Could've told it to Karen that way. Still can. Karen had... Barda has brothers." Suddenly he knew what to do. "We've got four hours. Shall I show you how to fish?"

Alexandre Chorin stored their backpacks behind the desk for them, and rented them fishing gear all assembled for instant use. "Do you use flies?"

Harlow stared. Jeremy knew just enough to say, "Harlow, it's a lure you float. Mr. Chorin, have you got actual bait?"

"No. Try digging in the orchard."

"Okay."

The graveyard-turned-spice-garden had turned fruit orchard. Speckles grew all through it, sparsely, as if a gardener had failed to weed them out. Jeremy studiously ignored them while he dug for earthworms.

There were children all along the near shore, fishing, throwing frisbees, batting at a ball tethered to a pole. A worn, transparent tent sprawled loosely along the south side of the lake, with room for twenty or thirty underneath. Six growing Earthlife trees had become the tent poles. Destiny trees had been chopped down to make room.

Harlow said, "The way the buses run-"

"Yeah." Kids would have to stay overnight; hence the tent.

By silent agreement they walked around the north shore until most of the activity was out of sight and hearing. They took off their shoes. Harlow didn't flinch from putting worms on a hook. "You can use anything organic, but we didn't bring anything," he told her. They flung the lines a fair distance out, and waited, drowsy in the sun.

Reasonable time passed, and nothing struck.

Bare white rock stretched far into the lake, coming to a point a meter above deep water. Jeremy walked out onto it, set his cane down, and, carefully balanced, flung out his line.

Waited.

A fish struck. He pulled it in.

Harlow came to join him. She maneuvered to put them nearly back to back.

Moving to make more room, he stumbled, started to fall, arms windmilling. She reached and had him, and pulled. He backed into her hip, hard. She lost her balance and splashed into the lake. He barely saved himself from going after her.

The rock fell off steeply. Jeremy went down on his belly and reached for her hand. She could swim, of course. She swam over and, with his arms to anchor her, walked up the rock.

Her clothing clung to her like paint: The sight of her froze him like a rabbit in torchlight. The words he'd pla

She was furious. She started to say so. Instead she looked into the heat of his stare, and then began to pull his shirt open.

He pulled them together. No other response ever crossed his mind until much later.

He felt so incredibly good.

She curled against him and said, "Tell me you didn't throw me in the lake just to rub up against me."

He laughed like a maniac. Then he said, "I swear to you by everything I own, I did not.''

"Right. Good."

There were children just out of sight; they deemed it better to ignore them. They sorted through their clothes, looked them over critically, put them on anyway. Jeremy asked, "Did you bring a change?"

"Sure. You?"

"Course."

He used his pole to fish her pole off the bottom. They walked back down to the lodge, dripping. She'd got his clothes almost as wet and muddy as hers.

Alexandre Chorin's chuckle kept bubbling through his self-restraint. He had towels for rent. They retrieved their packs and went upstairs.

MEN WOMEN

Change together in one room? Harlow's suggestion was a wiggle of her eyebrow; his answer a quick headshake. They went in separate doors.

Jeremy spilled his pack, snatched up a shirt and shorts, stripped and put them on, rubbed a towel past his hair, stuffed his wet clothes into the pack, closed it, and was out. To hell with showering. Down the stair fast, but limp past Chorin and, "I think I want to see that oak."

'Just don't overdo it with that leg, Mr. Winslow."

He climbed the hill fast, digging his stick in and pulling himself up. He'd seen speckles growing around Duncan Nick's oak, but the oak was a bit conspicuous; and the graveyard grove, but that must get visitors.

His fragile plan had gone all to hell. Fall in the lake, go back to the

lodge to change, anything for a moment alone with the speckles crop. Anything, but he hadn't expected- He certainly hadn't expected- Hadn't fought her off, either.

Couldn't. She'd wonder at his motives! Harlow was doing quite enough of that already.

Yeah, right. Karen, I'm sorry. I have to do this.

Here: the ancient privy, the men's. Ground-hugging bristly plants, with black stalks that split and split again to become orange thorns whose tips divided down to tiny, tinier, microscopic green needles.