Destiny's Road

by Larry Niven

  "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.. . crap 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-damned 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, damn, 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 wangled 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. "Nobody 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 grass. 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 sparsely 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.

  Some pointed structure poked up from the Road, too far ahead to make out.

  Jeremy looked downslope, a mere half-klick to a strip of sand and then water dark with Destiny devilhair weed. It all looked strangely familiar. He still didn't know where he was until somebody far ahead shouted, "Warkan's Tavern!"

  Angelo Hearst climbed up from the sales window to see. The word bounced down the caravan's length to Hearst wagon, and Angelo's bellow sent it on, while Jeremy stared ahead in befuddlement.

  -Oh, of course, he'd been looking for Carder's Boat! which had been there forever, until-He'd last seen Carder's Boat moored offshore of Tail Town. Haunted Bay fishermen used it as a dock. It had swarmed with children on the day the caravan rolled through.

  He'd come home. . . but fifty meters past the just-visible façade of Warkan's Tavern, a slender triangular arch stood above the Road. In the Road. A gate, or a barrier.

>   Harlow was bringing the wagon to a stop. It took a while for the chugs to get the idea, but the message was welcome. Wagons behind were stopping too. The lead wagons wanted a little more space first. If you made chugs bunch up, they wouldn't bring in as much weed and wouldn't get enough to eat.

  Locals were gathering on the hills above Warkan's Tavern. They knew: merchants did no business now.

  Hearst wagon (#6) was at a halt. Harlow and Jeremy gave the reins the practiced flip, flip, flip that freed the chugs. A good trip: they still had all twenty.

  The spring caravan had come back somewhat shot up. They'd found and obliterated a bandit nest, they said. Obliterated: maybe. Bandits hadn't bothered the autumn caravan.

  The chugs drifted downslope.

  Angelo dropped straight from the roof, showing off for his wife.

  Jeremy eased on down, then gave a hand to Harlow, who didn't need it, and Tanya, who didn't either. Wave Rider's pit chef always did that. It irritated Angelo and amused Steban.

  On the roof Steban threw open the sides of the wagon, then came down to help the others deploy cookware. Miller wagon's people (#8) were doing the same.

  The dark line of chugs had reached the sand.

  Hearst wagon carried Tanya and Angelo Hearst, Angelo's grandfather Glen, and the Winslows. Five merchants meant room for only one yutz.

  Miller cookwagon carried three yutzes to make up for that. Glen Hearst made small concessions to pay off the debt.

  Thus: the caravan would be here two nights. Not all could afford to dine at Warkan's Tavern or go into town, but it didn't take both cookwagons to cook dinner. Hearst wagon would cook on the first night.

  The line of chugs flowed into the waves.

  Jeremy and Harlow moved well together, unloading and deploying tools, hanging an ostrich and four chickens the hunters had shot. At this their steady efficiency and decades of practice made them the best in the caravan. Yutzes from all the wagons were gathering Destiny firewood and digging out the pits.

  Something was bothering Glen Hearst. He spent less time supervising than in looking toward town, or the Tavern, or- Far up the Road, two electric wagons approached. Jeremy glanced that way from time to time as he worked. Atop one he picked out the glitter of Begley cloth. The wagons stopped short of the pointed structure, and men began unloading them.

  The barrier stood just at the border between Warkan's Tavern and Bloocher Farm.

  "Glen, what is that thing?"

  "Never saw it before."

  Hearst and Miller wagons had made all reasonable preparations for dinner, and no sign of chugs. The fires in the long pits were beginning to catch.

  "Mind if I go look?"

  "Set up the tents first."

  Jeremy and Harlow exchanged glances. Jeremy hadn't meant now! There was time to break out the tents and set them up, but not to walk most of a klick, almost as far as Warkan's Tavern! Glen knew that. What had made him so touchy?

  They busied themselves setting tentpoles and deploying tents and inflating pillows, until a long black line of devilhair weed rolled out of the sea. Then all the traders and yutzes dropped their work and returned to their wagons. As the chugs emerged pushing devilhair ahead of them, Hearst wagon's crew settled on the roof with a liter of lemonade and their guns.

  The chugs fed placidly. Then they all broke off at once and rolled uphill.

  Six long low shapes darted from the water, all at once and wide apart. Only six. A few guns sounded: overeager yutzes, quickly silenced.

  Four sharks stopped at the black weed.

  Two came on. The caravan fired, one long roll of thunder. The two fell. Four sharks darted from the weed and into the next wave.

  Two lay dead. Jeremy was pretty sure he'd hit one. A few yutzes were still firing into the shredded bodies.

  It wasn't just Glen Hearst. The elders were in a fury. At dinner they gathered in a small, tight circle. They fell silent when yutzes came to serve them.

  Harlow and Jeremy approached the circle and were rebuffed.

  Yutzes did most of the work of serving dinner. Jeremy only had to get it off the fire while it wasn't yet charred. In dying orange light he stopped to look at one of the dead sharks. They were too chewed up to show detail. He'd look up LUNGSHARK if he ever reached another library.

  The light was dying, and so were the coals. Jeremy set his pan of pureed cherries and gelatin where the.heat wouldn't char it. He'd practiced that, and ruined several batches during the training period.

  He'd brought gelatin and honey and twenty pounds of seeds to roll it in.

  All along the Road he'd found fruit to make jell. Every batch of festivity was different.

  Harlow was watching him. She said, "I think your festivity candy was what really put us here. It made us just that extra notch more desirable."

  "You're very desirable." He kissed her.

  Harlow gestured toward the circle of elders; lifted one brow.

  Harlow didn't like being treated as a child.

  He said, "Maybe when you're older, dear."

  "We're Glen Hearst's age! Let's eavesdrop?"

  "No safe way. Love, the yutzes know how to clean up. Let's go look at that gate."

  Warkan's Tavern was full of light and activity as they strolled past. At the edge of Bloocher Farm, they stopped beside the arch. It was poured stone in a cast-iron frame. It straddled the Road, narrower than a caravan wagon.

  The chair beneath it was made of iron and poured stone, though lined with pillows. As Jeremy approached the man in the chair stood up, tall and massive, though armed with no more than a stick at his belt.

  Harlow asked, "Are we barred from Spiral Town?"

  The man didn't respond. Jeremy touched Harlow's hand: Take it easy.

  He reached into his special pocket for three thumbs of candy. "Try this."

  When the man didn't react, Jeremy put one between Harlow's lips, ate one, then offered the other.

  The man ate it. "Oooh. What is it?"

  "Winslow's festivity candy. I'm Winslow. Are we barred from Spiral Town?"

  "The caravans are. Yes, sir, merchants are too, unless you have special business. But you can go to the Tavern."

  "There's a Carolyn Hope Hearst buried in your graveyard. I was a Hearst before I married. I'd like to visit her grave."

  Harlow stared.

  The guard missed that. He wasn't seeing Harlow. He said, "We haven't buried a lifegiver from outside in more than fifty years."

  Jeremy said, "More like ninety for Carolyn Hope. Way too old to visit

  the Tavern, sir. You have one of our men, too, more recent. Father wasn't so sure of him."

  The guard was massively embarrassed. "Sir, I don't doubt you'll be let visit your ancestors, but Ican't, and not at night."

  "When did the rules change? Since the spring caravan?"

  "Yeah."

  "If they did something awful, they never told us."

  "Sir, I'm not sure I could tell you anyway." The man was nervous.

  He must have watched a caravan repel sharks. Everyone did.

  The poured-stone triangle and the stone chair looked very permanent for so recent a thing. Cargo lay in piles just beyond, across the Road from the huge old elms that bordered Warkan Farm. A little heap of clocks. An array of pottery and glassware. Melons and squashes and oranges. Two great stacks of Begley cloth sparking with current. They must have brought it down from Mount Apollo in sunlight, uncovered.

  Jeremy turned away, leading Harlow. He murmured, "He can't talk to a woman he doesn't know."

  "It's birdfucking rude."

  "You sound like a felon."

  "I'll be one, after I murder the next birdfucker who treats me that way. What was that about a dead ancestor?"

  He told Harlow, "I found her on that last trip to Medical. The programs gave me a lineage for Hearst wagon. Why not? I'm a Hearst, courtesy of Harlow Winslow. Someone in a caravan family was bound to have died in Spiral Town."

  Quicksilver still
lit the night while the caravan's elders walked the length of the caravan, talking to whomever they found. They found Maiku Lall bedding down his family beside Lall wagon, the medical wagon, first in line; and Harlow and Jeremy Winslow just passing.

  "You sell no speckles tomorrow," Palava Lall said.

  Maiku gaped at his mother. Glen Hearst quickly said, "That goes for us too. Harlow, Jeremy, speckles are not to enter Spiral Town tomorrow."

  Jeremy didn't speak. Harlow asked, "Might one ask why?"

  "Later," Glen said, and the group of elders turned downRoad. Jeremy noticed Govert Miller among them, back early from the Tavern. The roster of elders was complete.

  The whisper of waves had a buzzing in it: the caravan was not asleep, but talking in their tents.

  Glen asked, "Where have you been?"

  Jeremy told Glen what they'd learned of the guarded gate.

  Harlow said, "Caravans were founded to move speckles, Glen. This violates a trust."

  "And so does that gate. We do more than deliver speckles," the old man said. "We supervise. The mainland takes risks, but these Crab shies live their lives the way evolution shaped us on Earth. Lots of farming, diet varies by season, not much medicine, not much industrial power-"

  "Short life spans."

  "Yes, all right, Harlow, shorter life spans," Glen Hearst said.

  "But they're safe."

  If Jeremy was going to get his say, Harlow was going to have to say it. She tried. "Glen, humanity on Destiny is two hundred and fifty years old. Do we still need a control group?"

  "You never do know in advance, Harlow. That's what a control experiment is for. Anyway, it's not just one anymore. When offshoot groups started moving down the Road from Base One, the caravans transported them. Whatever hurts any of them is a warning for the rest of us."

  "We know what kills on Destiny. Speckles, lack of! The threat to Spiral Town is us!"

  Jeremy feared she'd overdo it. In haste he asked, "Glen, what do we want from this?"

  "They've barred us. In stages, over these past fifty years. No merchants past Peach Street. No merchants in town at night. One wagon to the market and one to Mount Apollo, then none. Now this. How the hell can we supervise a control experiment if. . ." He waved his arms in frustration.

  "If the mice lock us out," Jeremy murmured.