Destiny's Road Part 39

"No wind? No rain? And they left us a rug. I like it."

*25*

The Swan Quicksilver's year runs three months and a bit. It rises as much as an hour before sunrise, or sets up to an hour after sunset: as bright as Mercury from Barth. I miss the Moon.

-Henry Judd, Planetologist Andrew hailed him from the crest. Jemmy stopped on the bridge and waited while Andrew bounded down.

"We tracked you," he said. "Thought you might need help. And we watched a bus go past."

The others were already climbing down. Three more in windbreakers, followed by four scrambling down in naked haste, exposed in brilliant sunlight. Become a restaurant? We're kidding ourselves- "How's it look?"

"Lot of work," Jemmy said. "I don't see everything Barda says needs doing, but there's a lot."

By morning the damage was easier to see.

The bridge might have been a century old. It was new enough that big trees had been cut to build it. On Earth there had certainly been lifeforms that ate wood, but here it would last forever. The wood was sound, and thick, and moored in poured stone: st.u.r.dy enough to support a caravan. It sagged in the middle. Water had poured over it in a spring storm, or several, and taken the handrail and some paint. Patches of paint lined the edges, still glare-bright.

"Needs propping," Andrew said. "One big beam right in the middle."

A wide sheet of clear gla.s.s wrapped the front of the inn in a halfcylinder, framing the dining area. Several smaller windows were broken.

The bed left behind in the Captain's Suite would have been too big to move. They could clean up the Captain's Suite for display. The thick rug in Barda's room would be bed for them all.

"And of course the sign is out," Andrew said.~ There were outhouse toilets. The one with a woman's silhouette stank. "These have to be dug out," Barda said. "Daddy must have just let the fern's go."

A much bigger outbuilding was barred from the inside. Barda showed them how to slide a sawblade through the crack and lift the bar. "Daddy thought this would keep us out, but my brother Barry figured it out.

Daddy's hiding place, right?" She opened the door and yelped in delight.

Harold Winslow hadn't taken everything.

They wandered through the place as if entering an ancient Texas politician's treasure trove. There were tools: no little stuff and nothing powered, but...

They put Amnon into the big set of coveralls and gave his trunks and windbreaker to Rafik Doe. Rafik claimed a long, vicious weed cutter, then reluctantly traded it to Andrew for one of the shovels; Amnon took the other.

There was a roll of cloth! A tablecloth with the logo of the Swan, a fluffy white bird sailing a pond that reflected the blue sky. Blue and green and pure white. Andrew's weed cutter sliced it into broad strips: loincloths for the nudes. Clothing at last.

They looked at half a dozen fragile wands as tall as a man. Barda wondered, "Now, why didn't Daddy take these?"

Jemmy said, "I've never seen anything like them." A breath would have broken them.

"Fis.h.i.+ng rods," Rafik said.

"Not for ocean fis.h.i.+ng!" Jemmy told them. "Barda, you dealt with the Otterfolk? Your daddy wouldn't throw a hook into somebody's dining room."

"Daddy might."

Rafik and Arnnon dug a pit. Then six men picked up the old outhouse, h.o.a.rding their breath, and moved it to the new pit.

They were all wolfishly hungry by midafternoon, and Barda was trying to get them to dig out the other outhouse. Jemmy got her attention. "Pit. Fire. Hunt. Cook," he said. "Now."

"We can lose a meal, Jeremy."

"That's not it." Though he was getting hungry. "w.i.l.l.ya, Henry, give me a sanity check here? The day anyone sees this restaurant going, we've been here for half a year. Yes?" Jemmy waved at a flat patch of ground.

'just look at our fire pit, sir! We cleaned it out last week and it's already full of ashes. We were so busy two days ago, it's no wonder we've run out ofafew things. "He saw a few grins, and persisted: "But we don't have a fire pit. What if someone comes by today?"

"No chairs either. No tables. No silverware," Barda said.

"Start a list. We don't need silverware. No forks at a caravan stop, Barda. Everyone carries his own knife."

Andrew asked, "What about the buses?"

Barda waved it off. "A bus ride costs money. People don't take them very often. So, there's a restaurant here. Last time anyone went past, he didn't notice... . Jemmy, two months we've been here."

"Fine. But I've got to teach you people how to cook!"

The nudes had skirts and/or loincloths now, but that wasn't quite like being clothed. It seemed best to send them off to hunt and keep the others for digging.

They dug a fire pit long enough to feed ten. Extend it tomorrow.

The men's ancient outhouse could imply an ancient restaurant, so that could wait. The fem's had been too rank.

Barda showed them where the truck garden had been, and sure enough, potatoes and carrots were growing in a maze of weeds that had been (and still were) spices. The patch was clean of Destiny life.

They watched Barda choosing spices for dinner. The rest got bored and wandered away, but Jemmy stayed and made her identify every spice for him. He waited until they were alone before he asked.

"Barda, isn't this a graveyard?"

"Sure. Three generations of Winslows."

"It must have half-killed your father to move."

She looked up. "One day I'll have to ask him. Heya, Jemmy, if I said, 'No birdf.u.c.king allowed,' do you think he'd answer?"

"He might know. Maybe the proles caught your brother. It's the law." Barda stood and dusted herself off. "That should do it." She left, carrying spices in her rolled-up windbreaker.

When she was gone, Jemmy reached into his pack.

The hunters returned at dusk with something piglike, still alive and struggling. They left it tied up and settled for root vegetables. Can't cook in the dark.

In the morning Jemmy and a few others built up the fire and killed and roasted the non-pig. They got a cheer from the late risers. Afterward they extended the fire pit into an arc seven meters long.

The men got tired of sharing their outhouse. They dug another pit and moved the men's outhouse to that. "We'll call this place the Pits,"

Jemmy suggested. They jeered him.

He took men uphill to collect rocks. A Roadside caravan stop had to have an oven. He'd walk the Road and look for grain, and find a way to grind it. If that birdf.u.c.ker Harold Winslow had only left some pots, they could have set a stew going! There were flowerpots in the toolhouse, but no pa.s.serby would accept those as cookware.

They cleaned the long hall, and the first pair of rooms leading off it, and the Captain's Suite. On Barda's insistence they cleaned the suite of rooms at the end too, because someone might want it. There were indoor toilets! and old signs on the doors that said OUT OF ORDER "These have been down since I was a little girl. Daddy got tired of digging up the pipes, or else he ran out of money," Barda said. "There's a Destiny plant that just loves to block pipes."

In Barda's old room were chairs and a desk. They took the chairs down to the dining area. The desk was too big.

Looking up at the inn, you could see through the picture window, but you saw only ceiling. So it didn't matter that the place was an echoing emptiness. "Daddy took all the curtains," Barda told them. "They should be there. If you don't close them the sun can fry the diners."

Andrew shrugged. "We just don't let anyone in."

"Might work. But the window's filthy."

There was soap, but no rags. They cleaned the picture window with their swim shorts, amid considerable horseplay, then used more soap to get the shorts clean. The shorts came out of that amazingly well. Settler magic. Some machine in Spiral Town, some relic of Argos and Sol system, must have continued making clothing after Carder's Boat stopped moving.

Jemmy found a tree big enough to serve as a centerpost for the bridge. That could wait. They found endless useless junk acc.u.mulated in the dining hall and moved that out, and made brooms and swept the place out. But there were no tables and no chairs!

Barda's list was growing. "I really wish we had any kind of money.

n.o.body in his right mind would start an inn without funds."

"As long as it doesn't rain," Jemmy said.

"What?"

"We'll drag some logs down here for seats."

It took them all the next day. They chopped down trees, split the logs, set them around the fire-pit arc and adzed them flat on top. It felt decidedly fancy, a sanitized wimpy mock-up of a Roadside caravan stop, when they dined around the coals that night.

"Napkins," said Barda. "It doesn't work without napkins. Clean napkins."

There was no light but the coals and, briefly, Quicksilver. They felt their way to their beds. But in the morning Jemmy got Barda to show him the list.

poured stone,-S-lO tonnes 1000 2000.

gla.s.s panes 700.

silverware 200-1000.

paint 400.

chairs up to 2000 tables up to 4000 line wire 4000.

soap

100.

curtains 500-1000.

advertising ???.

napkins, paper 50/week OR.

napkins, cloth logo? 200 + washer 5000.

cookware: stew pots teapot tea "I'm guessing at the cost, most of the time. Even so, some of this doesn't cost much. Cloth napkins, we don't need to buy a washer if one of us will wash them out."

Five days after their arrival, the Pits was starting to look more like the picture in Barda's mind.

The felons too were starting to look less gaunt. Less pale, too. A day of sporadic sunlight wouldn't give anyone a sunburn, but they no longer looked like they'd been living under an endless black thunderstorm.

Of course they were too many, and three were in kilts chopped from a tablecloth. And if Jemmy Bloocher had thought of robbing their first customers for their clothes, and never mind the friends and relatives and proles who might come looking for them. . . then nine people who had been imprisoned for violent crimes would all have thought of the same thing.

Something had better be done about clotljes!

Buses pa.s.sed twice a day.

On the fifth evening they sat around the fire pit and spoke their plans. "It's a wonder n.o.body's ever tried this before," Barda caroled.

"It could work. Unless it rains."

Was she fooling herself? n.o.body could see the flaws in the inn as well as Barda, not even Jemmy, who still saw only a mask over chaos.

Andrew asked, "What else do we need to be a restaurant?"

Barda said, "Well, the sign, of course."

Jemmy asked, "Paint?"

She laughed. "Paint? No. We have to turn the sign on.. . like the Windfarm barracks sign. We need lights too. Jemmy, there's a way out to the roof, but it's blocked. Can you climb up there?"

The roof was three stories up. n.o.body but Jemmy wanted to climb it, but it wasn't difficult. He found a weathered and muddy elegance.

He called down. "Barda? Three tables, twelve chairs. You didn't say it was a dining area."

"We never got crowded enough to use it. That's why Daddy closed it off."

"I don't see how to get them down."

"We'll get the door unblocked."

"Barda, I can see the door. It's barred on this side."

"What? Really?"