Destiny's Road Part 54

"Oh." She thought a moment, then asked, "After you fillet the tuna, where do you take the bones and head?"

"Soup stock. Everything interesting goes into the cauldron. On the caravans. . . you won't carry that size cauldron."

"Why do you shudder?"

He shook his head, thinking that a chef could always break off conversation for some convenient urgency- "Is it true that we must get pregnant by men along the Road? And the men make the local women pregnant?"

"That's what they say. They say also that you merchants are almost inhumanly good at doing that with us mortals."

She dimpled. "I thought Dzhokhar might have been having fun with me. Well, I haven't had the training yet."

Most of the merchants had gone up the Road and the rest had gone to bed.

The Winslow family cleaned up after them to some extent, then quit.

Jeremy went up to bed. He could climb a flight of stairs, now, but not run up it.

He began stripping down, found he had some help. Harlow breathed in his ear. "So you want to join a caravan?"

She must have felt him lose his balance and wince as pain crunched in his healing knee. He said, "I've been thinking about it. Who told you?"

"Yvonne Dionne told me my husband was talking about hitting the Road. Yvonne and Wayne, the only thing between their shop and mine is a sandwich shop. Jeremy, were you serious? Is this a sudden thing?"

Still thinking as fast as ever in his life, Jeremy said, 'Not sudden, but I never could have talked Karen into doing it, and just to get away from here-"

"But with that limp-"

"Oh, I can wait for the autumn caravan. I'll be healed by then."

They were seated on the futon by now, and he took her face in his hands.

"Will you marry me after the spring caravan leaves?"

"Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?"

"What? Why?"

She laughed. "The caravans only take couples!"

"What?"

"You didn't know?" Still laughing. "But you asked me to marry you first. Good!"

He'd been thinking that she could vote his one-fifth share of Wave Rider. This blindsided him. "Everyone on a caravan is married?" What about Rian? and old Shireen? and Joker? Wait, Joker was married- "Well, no, not everyone. A woman in her teens or twenties, or a veteran who wants to die on the Road, but only if they're a caravan family, Jeremy.

Anyone else, it's couples. Otherwise there would be too many men, I guess. Local help is supposed to be all men."

He was still stunned. "Harlow, why didn't I think of coming to you before?"

"You may be an instinctive liar, Jeremy."

She was the answer all along, and he'd been dodging and weaving- "No, wait, I'm a Spiral. You're a girl. We almost don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. I thought I'd got that.. . c.r.a.p out of my head."

"Hmmm."

"Can we get on a caravan? Will you come with me?"

She hesitated. "You know there are certain rules."

"I double-d.a.m.ned don't seem to know what they are!"

"We'd both be rubbing up against locals, mostly younger locals who can make babies. We'll be trained for that at the camp. I don't really know more than that, but I hear jokes."

"Sounds like fun?" He put a question in that, and she grinned. "We can still rub up against each other. I remember the ibn-Rushds did."

She said, "You know how to cook, but they'll train you to sit behind a counter and sell cookware and speckles."

"I've watched. Only watched."

"The third rule is very important. Keep the caravan secrets. Never tell."

"My darling, you seem to have learned a lot of what they never tell."

"I listened to merchants at Wave Rider for years before you came.

I've spent more years talking to shopkeepers. A lot of them retired from the wagons, you know. Even so, I don't know anything deep. We'll have to persuade a wagonmaster that we can be trusted."

He thought. Smiled. "I could persuade someone that I have kept a secret. I could ask, 'What would happen if Spadoni wagon fell into the hands of, bandits?' Better to trust me than someone who hasn't been tested."

"What does it mean?"

Doubtfully, "Should I tell you?"

'Jeremy!"

"Spadoni is where they keep the real guns. Tucker has the shark guns and ammo, the stuff the yutzes use. The yutzes don't see what's in Spadoni, and locals shouldn't have it, let alone bandits. If bandits stopped Spadoni, the whole caravan would have to deal with it."

"Any idea what those weapons are like?"

"Some-"

"Don't tell me. Don't tell anyone."

"Can we get in?"

"I don't know. Best if there's an opening on one of the wagons.

Sometimes they're shorthanded. We can ask Walther Simonsen at Romanoff's.

He knows you're the real thing. The spring caravan won't be back in time to do us any good, so there's no point in you talking to them. Talk to the suppliers."

"Yes. Harlow, thank you."

"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, d.a.m.n, 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 flOW 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 w.a.n.gled 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. "n.o.body 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 gra.s.s. 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 f0~~d some animals that 100k 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 Hann Farm.

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.