Destiny's Road

33

The Spring Caravan

The natives are irrelevant to humankind on the Crab. They're not as madly versatile as men.

-Wayne Parnelli, Marine Biology

There was no winter in Destiny's year. Removing winter allowed the other seasons to be almost the right length for the Earthtime clocks.

In order for the spring caravan to reach Destiny Town in spring, it must reach the Neck in autumn. Wave Rider hosted the spring caravan in early autumn, and the previous summer caravan carrying goods acquired along the Crab, three weeks later.

It was autumn now: the nights were cooling. Dio

Old Wayne Dio

'Hello. Hester." Wayne's granddaughter had grown tall, and kept the quiet smile. "Will any of you be staying, then?"

"No, the tent's enough for us. Just meals tonight and tomorrow. We wouldn't miss your cooking."

"I have something for you." Jeremy showed Wayne what he'd found on the beach west of here: a flattish shell nearly a meter long. Rainbows played along its i

Wayne looked dubious.

Jeremy persisted. "It doesn't look like a back shell, does it? More like a skullcap? This at the end would be where the beak extension broke off."

"The beast would be huge."

Jeremy set it aside.

Wayne said, "No, sell it to me. Somebody might be interested, back in Destiny Town. Forty?"

Money changed hands.

Jeremy asked, "Wayne, what would you think of my joining a caravan?"

And he watched Wayne's slow grin. "Unlikely. Why would you want to at your age?"

"I never saw a caravan pit barbecue. Everything I know is secondhand."

"You do fine."

"Would I do better if I'd been up and down the Road?"

"Maybe."

"Would you want me in the cooking crew if you had to eat the result?"

"Maybe. Hester, what do you think?"

The girl smiled. Jeremy gri

Wayne wasn't a merchant.

Chloe and Harlow came out with the large salad bowl. Harlow stopped for a lingering kiss before going back in.

More merchants were gathering around the fire pit, or watching the sunset fade and the Otterfolk play. Merchants and suppliers did business here. Not many would bother to talk to the chef. Jeremy wore his pit chef's persona like a vividly painted mask, and of course the light hid him too.

Jeremy had persuaded Harold Winslow that he could run a pit barbecue. So Harold had run a strip of lighting along the deck's edge, above where Jeremy dug the pit. "My guests eat late," he'd said. In that electric blaze Jeremy hadn't been able to tell whether food was raw or cooked.

In two weeks it had become much easier than trying to judge by sunset-light. And in this blue-tinged light no merchant from Tim Bednacourt's past had ever recognized him.

"This is one thing you almost never get on the Road," an older man said, not to Jeremy. "Lettuce." He looked around for i

"Half our back garden is planted in lettuce," Jeremy said, and kept the neutral grin as he recognized Joker ibn-Rushd, aged and weathered and gone a bit soft. He babbled On: "After all, it'd be wilted mush before it got here from the Terminus farms."

Joker was frowning in the harsh, blue-tinged light. Better not give him time to think about where he'd seen this barbecue chef. "I'm Jeremy Winslow, part owner. You're new here?"

"Not quite new. I'm Dzhokhar Schilling. My wife Greta, my daughter Shireen."

Jeremy clasped his hand and said, "Dzhokhar Schilling," careful of his pronunciation, because Jeremy Winslow had never called this man 'Joker." "Hello, Greta. Hi, Shireen," more handclasps for the young woman and the ten-year-Old girl.

Joker was saying, "We're ibn-Rushd. You buy our cookware. I've spent time at Wave Rider, but usually I eat in the restaurant. I see enough of pit barbecues!"

"But it's a new thing to me," Greta laughed. "For twelve years we've worked Dzhokhar's shop in Destiny Town."

Joker had married a woman fifteen years his junior. She was small, pale of skin and hair, a bit plain, too easy to overlook. Jeremy asked her, "You've never been on the Road?"

"No. Dzhokhar has been trying to prepare me."

Jeremy, trying to picture that, said, "We hear interesting rumors," suspecting he already knew more than he was supposed to, and less. Had Joker explained- Joker gri

Jeremy asked Joker, "How was that?"

Joker ate a mouthful. "Skillful."

"I have to ask. Everything I know about pit cooking, I learn by asking. I've sometimes thought of joining a caravan."

"Yes, I see." Joker was amused. "Try grilling your fish when something has delayed the wagons. Cook and carve by dying sunset light, and Quicksilver already gone. You'll know then what a caravan chef's first law is. 'Get more lights!' Stick with the lights, Jeremy."

Turnover was high in the caravans, but there were still familiar faces. Put Jeremy Winslow under blue light, dress him in white, age him, scar him: no merchant would know him from the past. But, even dressed in a merchant's flamboyant garb, Tim Bednacourt still might be remembered in daylight.

Of course he'd be crazy to go now. It was the wrong caravan!

After the spring caravan moved on... Harlow had fallen in love with Wave Rider, not Harold Winslow, maybe not Jeremy either. If Jeremy married her, she'd have his fifth of the i

Come spring, speckles would be sprouting around the lettuce patch. He'd imposed that time limit on himself. Wave Rider was too public: a speckles crop couldn't be ignored for long. In early summer would come the outbound autumn caravan, and he must go.

But go how?

Hadn't he had this conversation once, long ago, with murderers trying to hijack a wagon? Nobody could cross the Neck alive, nobody could travel the Road, except with a caravan. Even a lone captured wagon would be attacked.

Tim Bednacourt had run the length of the Crab by keeping to the peaks no man had climbed. Now he was nearing fifty and he limped. Now he'd have a secure speckles supply; but could he still climb? Climb along the frost line, dip down for food and water, up and over to circle around any bandits. He'd even considered traveling up the narrow side of the Crab, but on the maps that looked lethal.

He'd need a way to cross the Neck. A boat, a surfboard: the currents ran the right way. He'd 'want a cockade, too. He hadn't found them growing anywhere.

What he was looking for was the least crazy way back.

And that was to talk himself aboard a caravan, if it was even possible. His family was serving di

The slow-cooking part of di

He knelt at the edge of the pier, water lapping just below his knees, and reached out with a slice of sweet potato. To the ten-year-old girl he said, "Shireen, go like this."