Destiny's Road

"Can Wave Rider do without us both?"

"We'll hire someone. I'd better tell someone where the extra speckles are. Brenda."

She was searching for something in his eyes. "I don't see why it's so important to you. Oh, damn, of course I do. I forget who you are. You want to go home."

That was true, and he nodded.

"Jeremy, promise me you won't do anything stupid."

"Like what?"

"Don't run away home when you get to Spiral Town. Disappearing from a caravan rouses all kinds of excitement. They wouldn't leave until they found you or your corpse. They could cut off the speckles to Spiral Town! Promise?"

"Harlow, I promise."

"Then I'll get us on a caravan."

From autumn to summer was a happy time. Jeremy Winslow paid attention. Look again, it might he gone.

No way could he board a caravan without a background check. He'd made a whimsical choice twenty-seven years ago, and now the computer had him as Jeremy Winslow born Hearst. What might Willow and Randall Hearst have to say to that?

He went hack to Medical to get his knee looked at, and wangled two hours in the library.

Willow Hearst was dead: killed by overweight.

Randall Hearst had become an alcoholic. His periodic treatments were a matter of record.

Risk it.

Jeremy Hearst, born on the Road, was not a terribly happy child in Destiny Town. He dropped out of Wide Wade's in adolescence, got into cooking anyway.

He took long walks along the beach with anyone who would come. He swam. He didn't risk the board. Caravan merchants need their legs! Harlow said that the bus stopped at Baikunur Beach, where the shuttles were loaded; prospective caravaners walked twenty klicks further to where they'd be trained, and they dared not arrive limping.

There was a thing Harlow couldn't help him with. How could he get fertile speckles across the Neck?

Get them into a caravan: a chef must carry speckles. But nothing of Destiny Town technology crossed to the Crab. No caravan, no wagon, no man or woman crossed the Neck without a skin search, Harlow said.

Was that true?

He couldn't quite ask, but-"Harlow, they take speckles pouches. And the guns in Spadoni wagon aren't low-tech."

She shrugged.

At a guess: the rest of a caravan might be destroyed, but the prole guns in the #2 wagon must not fall into bandit hands. So phones or superskin or anything of settler magic would be kept in the #2 wagon too. And if a man couldn't get a pouch of speckles in there, he sure couldn't get one back out.

Jeremy considered a hidden pouch in a backpack.

He considered a trip to the Neck by surfboard: hide a pouch of speckles, pick it up after the search and during the leavetaking banquet.

He began playing in Wave Rider's kitchen.

In early spring Jeremy was able to say to Harlow, "Close your eyes. Try this." It was a sweet fruit jell cut to the size of a thumb and rolled in seeds.

"Delicious," Harlow said. She considered. "Sesame? Sesame and speckles." She laughed at his chagrin. "Nobody else would have guessed, Jeremy! I'm the only one who knows you get your speckles free."

'It's the sesame and honey that costs."

She looked at what she'd bitten in half. Pale brown sesame seeds, bright yellow speckles. "You should dye them."

Jeremy used a dark blue food dye, dilute. The tiny yellow seeds came out green as Earthlife grass. He could put green dye in the jell, or make a rainbow of colors. He dyed the sesame seeds red. He called it festivity candy, and then just festivity.

His only question now was whether dyed speckles seeds would sprout.

In spring, in the lettuce patch, they did.

And the autumn caravan departed at the height of summer.

34

The Autumn Caravan

We've found some animals that look like little armored Volkswagens.

-Grigori Dudayev, senior M.D.

Something about the position of the sun on his cheek brought Jeremy Winslow gently awake.

He was dozing upright in the driver's alcove. Harlow was driving. Behind them on the roof, Tanya Hearst kept watch with Steban, the new yutz they'd picked up in Haven. They weren't paying much attention.

In this territory, they needn't. There was farmland on both sides, and large houses sparsely set. People who feared bandits didn't build like this.

It was all new. This must have been wilderness when last he'd seen it. Jeremy wondered if he would recognize the New Ha

The sun: it was midafternoon, almost time to quit. A caravan doesn't hurry. If they didn't reach Warkan's Tavern tonight they'd make it tomorrow.

Some pointed structure poked up from the Road, too far ahead to make out.

Jeremy looked downslope, a mere half-klick to a strip of sand and then water dark with Destiny devilhair weed. It all looked strangely familiar. He still didn't know where he was until somebody far ahead shouted, "Warkan's Tavern!"

Angelo Hearst climbed up from the sales window to see. The word bounced down the caravan's length to Hearst wagon, and Angelo's bellow sent it on, while Jeremy stared ahead in befuddlement.

-Oh, of course, he'd been looking for Carder's Boat! which had been there forever, until-

He'd last seen Carder's Boat moored offshore of Tail Town. Haunted Bay fishermen used it as a dock. It had swarmed with children on the day the caravan rolled through.

He'd come home... but fifty meters past the just-visible façade of Warkan's Tavern, a slender triangular arch stood above the Road. In the Road. A gate, or a barrier.

Harlow was bringing the wagon to a stop. It took a while for the chugs to get the idea, but the message was welcome. Wagons behind were stopping too. The lead wagons wanted a little more space first. If you made chugs bunch up, they wouldn't bring in as much weed and wouldn't get enough to eat.

Locals were gathering on the hills above Warkan's Tavern. They knew: merchants did no business now.

Hearst wagon (#6) was at a halt. Harlow and Jeremy gave the reins the practiced flip, flip, flip that freed the chugs. A good trip: they still had all twenty.

The spring caravan had come back somewhat shot up. They'd found and obliterated a bandit nest, they said. Obliterated: maybe. Bandits hadn't bothered the autumn caravan.

The chugs drifted downslope.

Angelo dropped straight from the roof, showing off for his wife. Jeremy eased on down, then gave a hand to Harlow, who didn't need it, and Tanya, who didn't either. Wave Rider's pit chef always did that. It irritated Angelo and amused Steban.

On the roof Steban threw open the sides of the wagon, then came down to help the others deploy cookware. Miller wagon's people (#8) were doing the same.

The dark line of chugs had reached the sand.

Hearst wagon carried Tanya and Angelo Hearst, Angelo's grandfather Glen, and the Winslows. Five merchants meant room for only one yutz. Miller cookwagon carried three yutzes to make up for that. Glen Hearst made small concessions to pay off the debt.

Thus: the caravan would be here two nights. Not all could afford to dine at Warkan's Tavern or go into town, but it didn't take both cookwagons to cook di

The line of chugs flowed into the waves.

Jeremy and Harlow moved well together, unloading and deploying tools, hanging an ostrich and four chickens the hunters had shot. At this their steady efficiency and decades of practice made them the best in the caravan. Yutzes from all the wagons were gathering Destiny firewood and digging out the pits.

Something was bothering Glen Hearst. He spent less time supervising than in looking toward town, or the Tavern, or- Far up the Road, two electric wagons approached. Jeremy glanced that way from time to time as he worked. Atop one he picked out the glitter of Begley cloth. The wagons stopped short of the pointed structure, and men began unloading them.