Destiny's Road Part 37

"If we can get there," said a voice. Another told him to shut up.

Jemmy stopped listening. He was half-asleep, and so were the rest of them, and anyone still awake wouldn't be making sense.

He dozed. The voices had all gone quiet. All but- "It's at Swan Lake, between the Road and the sh.o.r.e." Duncan. "Daddy wouldn't let you in the Swan." Barda, scornful. "Harold Winslow? He wasn't there."

"Who was?"

"n.o.body. Barda, it's just a sh.e.l.l. They took out the ovens even, and the chairs and tables. I hid out in the Swan while they were looking for me after, you know."

"How'd they catch you?"

"Got careless. Twice. I mean, I thought I'd hide out for a while and then hit the Road with the money and settle down in Terminus. But I didn't think of speckles. So I got speckles-shy and careless and got caught fis.h.i.+ng off the dock."

Jemmy asked, "Duncan, do you have any idea where the Winslow family went?"

"How would I?"

"Well, the proles might have said something."

"Nope."

"Barda, it strikes me that maybe your daddy just left the Swan and went off to finish Wave Rider."

Silence.

Jemmy asked, "Who else would take the ovens?" "Is Andrew awake?"

"I don't think so."

"We'll tell him in the morning."

*24*

The Ridges We could b~~ld clocks that keep a Destiny calendar and Destiny time, but there's no point. The Spirals sell clocks by wagonloads, and we all use them. On 1~arth it's some slightly different date plus the lightspeed gap, and that doesn't matter either.

-Hillary Miller, first mayor 0f Terminus In the morning they crossed the ridge and found another valley. They hacked and waded across.

And another behind the next ridge, but Cavorite must have seared and seeded this land. They yelled like maniacs to see green trees and gra.s.s covering the slopes. Black and yellow-green ran along the bottom, Destiny life seared away and then returned.

Felons scattered to hunt. Andrew kept others to dig a pit with their hands and to cut Destiny wood with kitchen knives. Jemmy Bloocher and Barda Winslow fought sporadic flurries of rain to make fire.

Before night fell they had cooked a pig, four rabbits, a small bird Ansel caught by leaping at it, and a man's weight of green bananas.

Gorged stupid, the dozen escapees lay on a sloping hill and looked at each other. Andrew Dowd said, "It can work."

Someone was talking about staying here.

Jemmy could have slept through that if Andrew hadn't begun shouting. Where will the Parole Board look first? where. . . more speckles? crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d.. . had a plan...

He tried to ignore the sounds, but now Ansel was shouting back.

"Not forever! We stay here till the Board gets bored looking for us."

Andrew: "I know where the caravan is now! When they get to the Swan we've got to be ready. Merchants won't wait."

"If we settle here, the Board will quit after a month. They don't know we've got a speckles stash-"

"Speckles rots!"

"What? What are you saying?"

Barda: "Ansel, speckles gets a splash of radiation before it goes on the Road. They do it in the Parole Board complex. Didn't you know?''

"You planned this knowing-? Wait a minute. Andrew, how long does speckles last if n.o.body zaps it?"

"No idea."

"You don't even know it's to preserve the speckles, do you? It might be they don't want fertile seeds getting out-"

"That's birdf.u.c.king crazy!"

"Who died and made you prole?"

"Shut up! Shut your face or I'll turn it inside out for you!"

Barda was on Andrew's arm, whispering, while Willametta stalked off in a rage.

Jemmy spoke as she pa.s.sed. "w.i.l.l.ya."

She dropped beside him. She said, "They're all crazy." Jemmy said, "Sure."

"Andrew too. Idiot. If he'd just let them talk." "He still thinks he's a trusty, w.i.l.l.ya."

"What's your take on this, Jeremy?"

Jemmy said, "We had a plan. Then we had another plan. Plans are cheap. I've thrown away a lot of plans. I like-" His arm swept about himself. "-this. We can hunt!"

"You'd stay?" The ragged clouds permitted glimpses of stars, but it was too dark to see more than shadows. She moved closer, to see his face.

"No, I mean we can keep a restaurant supplied. If they seared this valley, Cavorite must have seared and seeded every valley between here and the Road. They're all ready to be hunted. I saw-"

"Ah." Relieved, she nestled against him.

He asked, "Does Andrew-?"

"Too many men, not enough women, and a woman who gets pregnant goes free. Any man who tries to hold on to a woman gets taught different."

"Unless he's a trusty?"

"By that time, he knows." Somehow they'd come to be lying side by side, their backs against the long damp gra.s.s. Willametta said, "I haven't seen stars in two years."

"Me. . . well. Days."

"Be a restaurant. It sounded crazy when you said it."

"Caravans build a new restaurant every evet~iing, and I was the one who did the building. When I see the Swan I'll tell you what I think.

Maybe it's fallen down."

"What do we do then?"

"I can't stop until I've seen Destiny Town."

She sat up abruptly. "Crab s.h.i.+es aren't allowed on the mainland,"

she said. "You know better than to go into town without an ident.i.ty, Jeremy."

Crab s.h.i.+es?

"How would I pick up an ident.i.ty? What ident.i.ty? I mean, with this accent."

"You could be a merchant child."

Jemmy chewed that. He'd have learned the Crab accent while traveling with the caravan. . . wait. "w.i.l.l.ya, there weren't any children on the caravans."

"No. Jeremy, if a merchant gets pregnant on the Road, she's bound to be home before she has the baby."

"Then what are we talking about?"

"Well, merchant men make children along the Road too. The children stay where they're born unless something happens. You could have been picked up at two or three years old."

"That ever happen?" It sounded like a children's story.

"Ask Duncan Nick. Nicholls."

"Duncan doesn't have any accent."

"He lost it." She rolled over onto him. "You going to talk all night?" He did wonder, afterward, why he had been so favored. But w.i.l.l.ya, her breath easing, whispered, "What did you see?"

"When?"

"You said-"

He remembered, and smiled. "I saw green beans growing up cornstalks over most of a hillside, but they're not ripe yet. In a few months we'll get our veggies here too. I've been looking for potatoes. We can bake bananas-"

At dawn the felons were all over the place. Andrew whistled to gather them up.

Winnie was talking to Barda, low and fast.

Barda listened, then summoned Andrew.

The rest straggled in. Winnie looked exhausted already, and two were still missing: Ansel Tarr and Asham Mandala. Andrew looked like b.l.o.o.d.y murder.

This would be easier, Jemmy thought, if he had bread to offer instead of leftover pork. He said, "They'll catch up. Once we're on the ridge they'll see us. Being seen from the sky is the problem."

"Always ready to spot the problem, aren't we, Jemmy?"

"Mmm? What am I missing?"

Barda said, "Tell him, Winnie."

The slender dark woman spoke in a fast monotone. "They wanted me to go with them. Asham had my arms but I bit Ansel's hand and started screaming, I think I kicked him a good one too, and I pulled loose. They wanted me to stop yelling and let them go, and I saw Asham had one of the knives so I just ran back here. But they're gone."

"And you didn't tell me," Andrew said venomously.

"We can't wait," Barda said.

"Barda, they've deserted me!"

Andrew and Barda were still keeping their voices down, though Amnon and Henry had moved into earshot. Jemmy risked saying, "Some of us still think you're the trusties, you know? And some of us have noticed that there aren't any proles to say so. Andrew, when you tell all of us to stop talking about anything but the plan, who is it that stops talking?

Just the ones who say you're right, right?"

"Your point?"

"Keep us talking or you'll lose more."

Andrew sighed. "But if I let these birdf.u.c.kers go-"

"Did they get our speckles stash?"

"What? Turn around."

Jemmy turned. Andrew opened Jemmy's pack and looked in. "Still there. Wait." He fished the bag out, opened it, looked, sniffed. "Still there. What are you playing at? Did you think they could get it away from you?"

"It was the only thing they could take that's worth anything, and they don't have it. Let them go."

"No!"

Henry said, "We can't catch them. Earth's sake, would you have chased them in the dark? When they do show up in a few days, speckle sshy and begging for their brains back, they'll be a horrible example."

Andrew snorted. Barda said, "We'll be restaurateurs by then.

They'll have to be hidden fast."

Jemmy saw Andrew bite back his answer. Killed! We're planning a charade, and a speckles-shy might blurt out something deadly. Jemmy looked for alternatives. . . and Andrew saw his nod.

Ten were left.