by Larry Niven
Jemmy could see past huddled gatherers, far down the Road to where two rainbow birds walked bike men. Two.
Willametta's hands closed like claws and she pushed her cheek against his and keened in terror. He whispered, "Not Rafik?"
"They're too soon! Where did they come from?"
"Isn't the Parole Board in that direction? No way could a runner get to them. Settler magic?" He remembered an old word from the lessons.
"Phones?"
"Quick, around the side!" Willametta ducked and lifted the hem of Jemmy's poncho nearly to his chin. He guessed what she had in mind. The rain was back, a waterfall now, and he had to shout into her ear.
"We can't do that."
"It's a distraction!" Her hand found the waistband of his shorts and dipped in to cup his genitals, and squeezed gently.
He stopped her, hand on wrist. "Nowlisten. There's a man dead and proles coming to look into it. 'Andrew Dowd' is alert and scared and waiting. He can't be around to the side rubbing up against a lovely woman when he could be having her all day tomorrow in dry comfort! It'd be suspicious as hell."
Her hand stopped moving. He had her attention. He had an erection too, so he'd best talk fast. "Rafik went that way? Then the probes passed him, right? He's behind them!"
"Yes. Yes."
"We have to give him a chance to join us. Okay. You get- Let go now."
She did.
"You get Amnon and the twins. Send them around that side while the rain holds." The Parole Board direction. "The gatherers stay huddled so they'll be harder to count. I'm at the Road, ready to serve my prole masters but looking in the wrong direction. I don't know anything about prole phones, right?"
She gaped.
"Willametta!"
"I never heard the word!"
"Good, then Andrew didn't either. You, behind me, ready to spot anything weird and tell me. And let's drape a pack or two over Shimon."
The next break in the rain showed two pairs of proles converging. The pair from the Board direction was nearest, and Jemmy let them see him suddenly discover them. They plodded up to him and one said, "Trusty, some of your gatherers are missing."
Jemmy looked around wildly. "Oh, man, they must be around to the side. Can I check that out? I had to stay here, man. One of my people got killed."
"Go get them. Where are the packs?"
"We piled-"
"You're missing some of those too!"
The other prole had drawn his weapon. Jemmy shrank back, raised his arms. "No, man, we spread some packs over Shimon, over the body. I thought you'd want to look him over, I didn't want the rain to wash anything away. I still can't figure why birds would tear him up like that." Walking backward, Jemmy led them to Shimon laid out on white rock.
There: two packs covering torso and face, and when Jemmy lifted them, there were the terrible holes in Shimon's poncho and Shimon's corpse.
For an instant Jemmy glimpsed a bird-shape with a pack in his hand, behind the probes. A moment later he'd merged with the other birdshapes.
The second pair of probes, the ones who had been in the field, were bird-shadows seen through slackening rain, and Jemmy could only hope that they hadn't seen Rafik. Rita and Amnon and Dolores were coming around the toolhouse, obtrusively straightening each other's clothing, and Jemmy shouted and went to yell at them. When he looked around again the piled packs booked to be the right height.
The four probes closed on Jemmy. "Tell us how this man died, now.
Don't leave anything out."
"I swear, man. The spectre bird jabbed him before he moved," Jemmy said, belligerent and tired.
Two probes shrugged and one had gone to open the toobhouse, but one, Redbeard, cursed. "What I saw was a bird getting curious and a gatherer losing his nerve!"
"Maybe you're right, man, but I saw what I saw." Jemmy had considered changing his story, but he judged this better.Just stubborn, that's all.
"Turn in your gear and then we're going to search the barracks."
The packs of speckles went in the cart. The gatherers returned their gloves to the toolhouse. Jemmy left his bird gun and bullets in there too. He watched the little smooth-shelled machine pull the cart away.
The three who remained directed their passage through the stormlock. They were too edgy for anyone's comfort. Jemmy and the redbearded probe went in with Willametta and Amnon.
Jemmy smelled stir-fry cooking. Barda Winslow looked around, and jumped.
"Go easy, Barda," Jemmy said. "It's a search." He pulled off his poncho and dropped it.
A woman moaned on one of the beds. Jemmy reflexively turned toward the sound.
Redbeard said, "You go nowhere, Dowd. Stay with the cooking, Winslow. Who's that?"
Barda Winslow answered defensively. "Miledy Waithe is pregnant and overdue. My assistant, Ansel Tarr, is standing by as midwife."
Ansel Tarn was a good-booking sixteen-year-old boy, white skin, straight black hair, just a touch of sullen. He was plausible enough as Barda Winslow's love slave.
Redbeard grimaced. "When the rest of the Parole Board gets in we'll do our search. I believe we'll start by searching under Miledy Waithe."
He was watching Barda's eyes, and he wasn't pleased when she laughed out loud.
The stormlock door opened and he said, "All right, here come-Hell."
Here came two gatherers and a dead bird. Jemmy commanded them,
"Take the bird to Barda and help her cook."
Miledy Waithe screamed again. Ansel Tarr murmured in her ear.
Otherwise the storm-free silence was heavenly.
"You don't give orders when we're here, Dowd," the red-bearded probe said quietly.
Jemmy said, "We're all going to run late tonight, man. Last chance to search the bird?"
"Did."
"What are you looking for? Something you can talk about?"
"Hidden tools. Hidden speckles. Dyes. Any kind of cloth that isn't," the probe's fingers rubbed the cloth of Jemmy's shorts, "this kind."
Three gatherers and a second probe entered. Redbeard said, "Dowd, stay! Marta, when Horace gets in we'll search the bathrooms. Cover me, will you?"
"Go for it," the second probe said.
Redbeard pulled his wet poncho over his head and was bare to the waist. He ran fingers through his hair and flung the water away. "Ah!
Better."
"My turn."
"Go.
Marta stripped off her poncho. She was, in Jemmy's judgment, exquisite. Males gaped at her, and she hoisted the gun and grinned.
Redbeard caught Jemmy's smile, and glared. "Men's room," he snapped. They began their search there.
The men's bath was bare of anything suspicious.
The women's bath was very like the men's.
When they emerged, the gatherers were all inside along with a third probe. He was a stocky, muscular man, and he stood guard while the probe Marta and the gatherer Ansel examined Miledy. Mibedy certainly seemed about to give birth.
Jemmy ignored that. Moving clockwise around the room, he opened every door and drawer he could find.
He missed two that the probes knew were there. They took that seriously. The probe he'd nicknamed Muscles held him at gunpoint, Marta took position in a corner and covered the whole room, while Redbeard emptied a cabinet in the medical stores and tapped it for secret corn-partments, all in the sullen communal glare of wet and uncomfortable gatherers. They did the same later with a kitchen storage bin.
They watched carefully while Barda and Jemmy poured the elements of dinner slowly from one container to another. Nothing hidden.
Then Redbeard gestured toward Miledy, and wet and uncomfortable gatherers began to murmur.
Do this fast, Jemmy thought. He summoned Amnon with a gesture. They lifted the bed next to Miledy and invited the probes to examine that.
Then, together, Amnon and Jemmy and Muscles lifted Mibedy Waithe. They set her on the other bed before she could begin to protest.
For M
iledy that was the last straw. Redbeard and Muscles examined Mibedy's bed, ignoring the sounds behind them; but Miledy was giving birth. Ansel Tarr and Marta helped them tend to that. At the end they were holding a squirming red infant girl, and Miledy had gone from screaming into monotonous cursing.
Marta said, "So, there's your free ride out."
Miledy wasn't listening. She moved the baby a little, said, "Girl,"
in tones of wonder, and went to sleep.
The search was over.
But while the rest of the gatherers served themselves and ate, the probes questioned Barda and "Andrew" about housekeeping details. That was hellish. Jemmy didn't know most of the answers. He and Barda found a routine: he'd start to answer, then Barda would interrupt.
It seemed forever before the proles trooped into the stormlock and were gone.
Then jemmy sagged and sighed, and Barda called, "Get your showers now. The Parole Board can check our water flow. Did anyone save us anything?"
There was still food. Jemmy was ravenous.
Most of the gatherers were showering. Miledy was asleep with the tiny new baby in her arms. Jemmy and Barth ate in silence for a time, in a silent hall.
Barda said, "Good routine, domineering bitch, wimpy male."
"Worked. We should practice."
"Yeah. It'd work better with a guy who wasn't so, mmm. Impressive.
Rafik? This could have gone on all night, you know. Cooking smells helped. Probes get hungry too."
"Redbeard found something in the men's," Jemmy said. "He hid it."
"Paper?"
"Not sure."
"Message from Shimon. That's all right, Jemmy. I found it and took out the part about you."
"What now?"
Barda took her bowl to the sink. She hadn't actually eaten much.
Nerves, maybe. "We wait for Andrew," she said. "Then maybe we run. I want to talk to Rafik, but let's get our showers first."
22
Plans
Destiny's ecology, after all, will have its own agenda.
-Dutton, #2 Hydroponics
He couldn't remember hitting the bed. Now something was pushing his toes down and the barracks was buzzing like a hive, and through his eyelids he felt the heat of a stare.
They were both watching him, the Nogales twins. They were on his bed, their weight pulling the sheet down on his feet. When his eyes opened one said severely, "Men don't turn us down. Most men like rubbing up against two women just alike."
Jemmy said, "You may be the best opportunity I never had. Who told you I needed distracting?"
"Wibbya. You weren't supposed to notice the pack or count heads-"
"-Just us," and a hand in his chest hair.
Jemmy felt damp and grungy. He'd been too tired to shower. He asked, "Am I getting another chance? Should I shower first?"
"Andrew's here. They want you."
"What time is it? Did I get any sleep?"
"They don't give us clocks."
They were down at the tables: Andrew, Barda, Rafik, and Willametta. The rest were staying clear. A few were asleep.
Andrew Dowd was wet and triumphant. "Jeremy Bboocher," he said- "Do I get to be Jemmy Bboocher now?"
"The rest of your life," Half-beard said expansively, "and I get to be Andrew Dowd. Jeremy, we need to know what the proles know. Did they get Shimon's note in the men's?"
"He, the one with the red beard, he didn't look at it. Barda, you said it mentioned me?" Because if that note didn't, then some other would.
"Yeah, it did. I copied it with that part missing."
Jemmy was still getting his brain up to speed. "They thought I was hiding something because there were two cabinets I didn't open, but they searched those. They'll look for bird blood on Shimon's poncho, but maybe the rain washed-" He saw the look that passed among them. "Barda?
Shimon's poncho?"
The big woman shuddered. "No. I sucked the poor bastard dry and kept him distracted. I set him to keeping you out of trouble so he couldn't talk to proles. I did not put a bloody poncho on him. But," she whispered, "I would have."
Andrew said, "Couldn't. Rain would wash off bird blood. Rafik?"
Rafik grinned. "We soaked the inside of a pack in bird blood. We gave that to Shimon. He had to open the pack to gather speckles, and that let out the smell. The birds were in place-"
"Shells," Andrew said suddenly. "Rafik, tell me you didn't leave a mock-turtle shell for proles to find!"
Rafik shrugged. "What of it? Trusty, they know there were spectre birds in the field. They have to guess the birds went after something they could eat. How a mock turtle got there, that's the part they'll never know."
Andrew Dowd was nodding reluctantly.
Rafik said, "When we got back I took Shimon's pack, took out the speckles, turned it inside out, and let the rain wash it clean. They'll be looking at the wrong pack anyway."
"You switched the speckles?"
"Sure. Then Wiliya and the yutz, they got me back in."
"See, Jeremy, there's bird blood soaked all through the speckles in Shirnon's pack. We can't bet the Parole Board have that, so those speckles went in the stash and Rafik put speckles from the stash in his pack. Rafik, you didn't scant that, I devotely hope-"
"No, Trusty. Generous."
Andrew saw the heat in Willametta's cheeks and the glare in her eyes. "Willya, I didn't want you to know exactly what you were hiding. Be too much of a pointer." He waved it off. "So. The spy is dead, we changed the only message he left, the probes don't know we've got clothes and they don't know someone was loose today. Are we clear on that? Have I left anything out?"
Jemmy asked, "Who wears seven windbreakers and six shorts and a merchant's pack?"
"Barda. Me. Amnon. Shar Willoughby. Henry. You. We had to throw away the one you were wearing on top. It was torn to shreds."
They were grinning at him. Rafik said, "You don't get it? It's anyone with a trace of fat on his cheeks."
Aghast, Jemmy booked about him. Of course. And we'll still look like- "Well, it only works if there's only one," Jemmy said. "Andrew, what happens to the rest of us?"
"We take all but eight," Andrew said. "It's nine now, I guess. The baby."
"You're leaving them-"
"Jeremy, we'd never get past the Parole Board, not by Road. We're going over the mountains. We'll pick up the Road on the other side. Eight of us don't want to try it."
"Winnie Maclean?" Too frail- "She wants to come. The Nogabes sisters don't." "I'll miss the twins," Rafik said soberly.
fe-re-my, not Jemmy. Have to practice. Later-"You're leaving eight people to describe how we did it?"
"The ones who aren't coming, I didn't tell them everything, and that's okay with them. They know there was a spy. Jeremy, we never could have taken Miledy Waithe and her baby, so what's the point? Too many of us are looking at a five-year hitch and four years gone already. If I tried to make them come along, they'd drop out somewhere in the rain and I'd never find them."
"That probe said something about a free ride-?"
Willametta said, "If you give birth in here, the baby goes back out and you go with her. Only twice, though. Then they char your tubes."
"But men don't get pregnant." Rafik laughed. "We're screwing for nothing."
"Fourteen of us."
"We're the maxers," Andrew said. "Destroy life support, it's seven years, and they're generous with that term, aren't they, Wibbya? Kill, it's seven years. I killed two, never mind why, the Board won't listen.
Now, I scouted the mountain today. That place you found, Rafik? It doesn't work. I had to go farther. Six klicks toward the fields, then up.
There's a channel up to a ridge that runs another two klicks back. Must be an old flow. Then another channel up, and that'lb take us over."
"And down to the Road!" Barda didn't see Andrew's shrug, or ignored it. "On the Road we can pass. If anyone comes, the rest hide, we do the talking. But Jeremy's right, Andrew. Two of us together
still look...
gaunt?"
Jemmy said, "Like so many liches risen untimely from our graves.
One of us at a time is only skinny, but two or three together- You can't see it? You've been together too long. Andrew, can we all climb?" He could. No thirteen felons could outclimb Jemmy Bloocher.
"Don't know," Andrew said. "I need as many as I can get. We're going to take over a caravan."
Jemmy sighed. They were crazy after all.
Barda said, "We need you to tell us what they're like. How they're armed."
Well, it had to be dealt with. He asked, "Where were you going to jump them? This side of the Neck? That way you're only fighting fifty or sixty merchants. Other way, you'd be fighting yutzes too."
"This side, sure. ~çe'll be lucky to get that far. But we'll only be facing bird guns."
"That's yutz guns, Andrew. They're the same as bird guns but with a solid bullet for putting holes in lungsharks and bandits. When bandits jumped us we shot them with yutz guns. But when the merchants went off alone to kill all the bandits, they took stuff from Spadoni wagon that they wouldn't let us look at. I saw just enough. Prole guns, Andrew!"
Silence.
"The toolhouse is locked till morning. You've got no guns at all."
Andrew stood, turned, opened one of the bins with a key. He lifted it just into sight: a prole gun.
A shudder ran through him. Jemmy said, "We looked in there." His hand reached out without consulting his forebrain.
Andrew pulled it away. "I came in after the proles left."
"Bullets?''
"Two chains." Andrew lifted those too, and Jemmy stood to look. He had never seen chains of bullets meant to feed into a prole gun; but, standing, he could see that both loops were part empty.
It was suicide, and, more than that, it was murder. They'd end up killing as many merchants as they could before the merchants killed all of them.
He could rave against spilling blood all over the Road, but would it persuade these already-murderers? Or would they only kill Jemmy Bloocher? Try something else. He asked, "Do you know how to make a caravan move?"
Andrew said, "You do."
"I know how to tend chugs," Jemmy said. "I'm a chef. I did a little mending. I never drove a wagon. I can't do it all." Jemmy wondered if they'd believe that. "What time of year is it? The date tells us if we'll get a caravan on its way to the Crab, or coming back, or nothing at all.
