Destiny's Road Part 19

Tim asked, "Why are they only on this side of the river?"

She stared at him, astonished. An older boy said, "We can't build houses on the other side. That's where the Otterfolk come to trade.

Mother says they like the water near river mouths. Salty, but not real salty."

Tim watched, and nodded. Houses along the river had access to fresh water. Southeast, that stretch of beach would feed the chugs. In between was the delta: diluted salt water. "Is that where the Otterfolk live?"

The girl nodded vigorously. An older girl said, "There, and there,"

waving toward thousands of square klicks of water, west and northwest.

Joker was suddenly among them, dropped from the wagon roof. "Won't have to worry about sharks here," he said. "Water's too fresh for 'em.

Hi, Carlene!"

"Hi, Joker!"

Joker set to stowing items that ibn-Rushd wagon was getting in trade. Tim asked the little girl, "You know Joker?"

"Since I was little. Mom says he's my father. What's it like, being a yutz?"

"So far so good. I haven't really had time to find out. Carlene, what's that huge dish?"

"Dish?"

He pointed. "On the other side-"

"Oh, Meetplace!" The girl laughed so hard that all the other children started laughing too. "Meetplace is where we trade."

"In the dish itself?"

"Yes. Kids get to go too sometimes."

"Where're the Otterfolk now?"

The oldest boy pointed at the bay. "Watch," she said.

They watched. Boats running back and forth, and riffles of white, and "There!" cried the boy, and Tim saw nothing. Then a white riffle appeared and Tim saw a black dot in its center, only for a moment, just as the boy said, "Their heads pop up and make a little wave."

He asked, "When do you trade? Is it soon?"

"Oh, no, not while the caravan's in." d.a.m.n!

Merchants and yutzes, local women and children all pitched in to dig out fire pits and fill them with twisted wood from upslope. Coals were burning nicely, and vegetables were cooking, when the boats came in.

It all happened in some haste. Thirty-odd boats ran aground while the men pulled the sails down, then jumped into waist-deep water to pull them up onto the sand. That looked like fun, and Tim plunged in to help.

There were men on either side and he did what they did: grip one of four handholds set at water level, lift, and pull. Fish flopped around two peculiar objects in the bottom of each boat: a flat wooden fin with a bar for a handle, and a bigger heavy fiat thing with no handle.

You couldn't sail a boat with those things lying in the bottom.

They'd get in the way. Hmm?

The merchants and yutzes only watched as the sailors, and Tim, pulled the boats ash.o.r.e.

Now the sailors pulled straight up on the masts, pulled them out and set them on the sand, and set the big wooden fins there too, to get at the fish. They spread the sails on the sand and began scooping fish onto them.

The smell of fish was everywhere.

The women began to clean fish and array them in fire pits.

The men flocked off, not toward the houses but toward the mudflats below. Two came jogging back to get Tim, who stood dripping wet.

Two fishers, mid-teens, jogged up toward the houses. The rest plunged into the several channels of clear water that ran through the delta.

The boys came back with armfuls of towels. Fishers were taking off their clothes, dipping them, and wringing them dry.

The boys were setting their towels on. . . trays? Not on the mud.

Tim hadn't seen that as a problem. And the fishers were setting their wrungout clothes on those same trays, narrow things near a meter wide, scores of them sitting everywhere along the flats. They didn't look carved and they weren't quite flat, and Tim manfully resisted the urge to turn one over.

The fishers were staring at him, not unfriendly, just curious. Tim looked back. They were built like he was, and they must have seen the same, because they were turning away, curiosity satisfied.

d.a.m.n, he'd guessed right: he was the first naked man they'd ever seen from a caravan. What had the Haunted Bay women been telling their men?

The smell of dinner lured them back. As they pas~ed a boat Tim pointed at wooden fins lying on the sand. "What are those?"

"That's the rudder," one of the youngest fishers said. "You steer with that. That's the keel, it keeps the boat moving straight when the wind is from the side."

Tim had learned not to ask twice. He studied the boat instead. He could see that there were mountings on the bottom of the boat and hinges at the stern. Fins to guide the flow of water?

The locals cooked; the yutz chefs served. Tim found several merchant ladies in a crowd of local men, in the silver glare of Quicksilver. He served out the vegetables he was carrying. He took the chance to ask Senka, "Have you ever seen Otterfolk?"

Senka smiled at him. "Not close."

He went away, and thought, and came back with a sizable Earthlife fish deboned and cut up for serving. Senka and her grandmother were perched on dunes to eat. Tim asked Shireen, "You must have seen Otterfolk."

The old lady grinned at him. "Pictures."

Senka laughed suddenly. "You think they're a hoax? A joke?"

He hadn't. He remembered the grendel hunts in Spiral Town; the new kid was always told he would be the bait. . . but Tim Hann wouldn't know about those. He said, "Joker once told me I'd see Otterfolk."

"You did."

"From high up?" He'd seen a momentary black speck in a sudden white riffle on the bay, and a shape carved on a shark's sh.e.l.l.

He came back to serve a corn pudding. Senka ibn-Rushd studied him without humor, and this time he didn't speak.

"You don't go near Otterfolk," she said. "Fishers took you to the mudflat because you swam with them. Don't do that again, and don't think it means you can go there alone. Don't cross the river until the caravan does. Tim, we never have to say these things! Most yutzes are afraid of Otterfolk. Why aren't you?"

Tim shrugged that off. "I know people who are afraid of guns. And swimming." What tales did children hear about Otterfolk that never reached Spiral Town? Dangerous topic. Change it. "Senka, doesn't anyone go near the Otterfolk?"

"Well, yes, here and at Tail Town. But they know the rules."

''Can't I-''

Shireen spoke. "Not rules you write down. Rules you learn from when you're a baby, if you live along this sh.o.r.e. Boy, it isn't the locals who make the rules. It's the Otterfolk. Stay clear of the Otterfolk."

12.

Tail Town Cavorite blew up on the Neck. Half the crew got out in time, and they moved back up the Crab. Yes, it's only a story, b~t can't you see h0~ the whole Neck was fused?

-Tail Town tale Tim crawled around the tea table and out of the tent. His sleeping hosts didn't stir.

Why had Senka a.s.signed him the alcove farthest from the entrance?

Come morning, a yutz chef had to crawl past everyone else. He hadn't wondered until now, but- Had there been yutzes who robbed merchants? Dawn flamed off the mirror-smooth water of the bay. The mirror broke in a frothy wave as an army of chugs pushed a jungle of weed onto the beach.

No sharks appeared. Only the Tucker and Spadoni merchants even bothered to draw their guns.

The chugs finished feeding and straggled into position.

The wagons began moving away from Baytown. Their sides dropped open to welcome the younger men and women of Haunted Bay. Older folk must be staying with the children. Chefs moved bread, yutzes moved merchandise, merchants bought and traded.

The locals weren't holding out for bargains today. The upward slope was robbing them of breath.

It didn't slow the chugs. It didn't slow Tim, though once it would have.

The locals followed the caravan onto the bridge and across the Spectre. Thirteen wagons and hundreds of people, but the bridge never quiv ered. At the far end they turned back, every one. The caravan continued along a rising path.

In the afternoon, merchants went out to hunt. A dozen yutzes were sent to harvest what was to be found. The chefs went with them, armed with shovels.

The way continued gently upward. It might have been a cow path widened by wagon wheels, but picks and shovels had shaped it in places, and here a landslide had been cleared away.

Along the way were fruit trees and fields of grain half-strangled by Destiny weeds. Without weeding parties, Destiny life would have won.

Tim was sure they must exist. He was glad not be drafted into one.

The chefs didn't stay with the pickers. Hal held rank here, and it was Hal's task to make ready for dinner.

They stopped at a spring-fed stream. They found wood for fires.

They found traces of old fire pits on the slope, dug them out, and shaped the detritus into seating arrays. Beds of coals were glowing orange by late afternoon, when the yutz and merchant parties arrived.

The chugs pulled to a halt and the drivers turned them loose. The beach was more than a klick downhill, with a two-hundred-meter drop. The chugs seemed to crawl forever before they reached the sea.

n.o.body followed them down to guard them.

Cooking on a slope of rock and dirt was awkward. None of the current crop of chefs had done it before, save Hal. Mistakes were made.

Dinner was late. They served some potatoes raw in the center. Bord'n fell while carrying a haunch of boar. The meat rolled until it disappeared into chaparral, and Bord'n's ankle swelled to the size of a grapefruit.

Most merchants didn't seem angry or even surprised.

Tim watched dying red light on the bay. A school of lungsharks would find a good meal here, if they could tolerate diluted salt water for a bit. But the chugs flowed out like a long wave breaking, and dined undisturbed in the ruins of a seaweed forest, and presently crawled uphill to the wagons.

Next day the path rose to rejoin the Road. They had to stop earlier because the chugs must travel farther. Otherwise-well, dinner went better for last night's practice, even with Bord'n incapacitated.

The slopes below the caravan were bare of houses and structures of any kind, for that whole day and the day following. Meals were red meat and chance-met vegetables.

The third day fizzed with suppressed excitement. Marilyn Lyons su pervised dinner and cleanup, then pulled Tim and Hal into the Lyons family tent.

She'd never touched either of them before, and Tim didn't ask why she chose to now. She no longer feared that rubbing up against a yutz or two would cost her respect or authority. They must be nearing the end of.

. . something.

On the fourth morning it was clear that the land was narrowing.

The~ Road dropped again. It could hardly do otherwise, though the wagons were riding the rocky crest of Crab Island as it sloped down toward Tail Town.

On the maps Crab Island had broad and narrow sides, unequally bisected by the Crest. The peaks here at the northwestern end of the mountain chain had melted like wax. The Road ran almost level, angling down; but its width pulsed like a heartbeat, wide where peaks had been, narrow where there had been a lower crest.

The range looked like a candle castle. It was ugly as sin, and Cavorite's crew must have known it even as they were melting mountains into Road.

Where lava had run from melting peaks, the Road's edges angled up.

In the narrow places the edges angled down to sheer cliffs. It would be easy to fall.

Heights didn't seem to bother chugs, low-built as they were. Tim, riding cross-legged on the roof, tried to put it out of his mind.

Below and ahead was a community bigger than the town of Haunted Bay. Houses sprawled off down the sh.o.r.e, but the bulk of the town crossed the ridge to touch both sh.o.r.es. Its pattern was angular and ordered. Tim couldn't make out individual features yet.

Yutzes ambled along the Road, stopped to talk, walked on. Others perched on rocks and let the wagons go past. Yutzes learned that from merchants. Let your goal come to you! Merchants didn't hurry, and a yutz worked hard enough.

But why were there so many?

A split boulder was moving placidly toward him, and Hal was on it.

Tim waved, but Hal was watching the town below. Hal would be getting off there.

-Oh, that was it. These five or six yutzes must be from Tail Town.