Destiny's Road (36 page)

"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 accumulated 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. Nobody 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, lO tonnes

glass 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 clothes!

Buses passed twice a day.

On the fifth evening they sat around the fire pit and spoke their plans. "It's a wonder nobody's ever tried this before," Barda caroled. "It could work. Unless it rains."

Was she fooling herself? Nobody 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....ike 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. Nobody 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?"

"Whoever did it must have climbed down afterward."

"Brian! He would've! And then Daddy never got around to unblocking it!"

Jemmy lifted the bar away and tried to pull the door open. "Stuck." There was no chimney. From this height you could see... well, you could see enough Road from here to prepare for visitors, get the nudes under cover, and put Amnon on display in his coveralls. From the roof's back edge, through a notch in the ridge, water gleamed through a fringe of slender, straight Earthlife trees. Swan Lake.

He called down. "Still there, Barda? I'm thinking. If a client never sees us except in swimsuits and windbreakers, we have to serve fish."

"Daddy left because Swan Lake was fished out."

"Worth a try. Barda? You've got electric power." Beneath a surface of accumulated dirt, he was standing on a dark silver-gray surface.

"Did something light up?"

"No, I only mean half the roof is Begley cloth."

"Of course. How's it look?"

"It's covered with goo; we'll have to clean it off. And there's..." A metal structure as high as his head was sited on the silver-gray surface, where the sharp corner of the restaurant pointed toward the Road. Like the prow of a boat, Jemmy thought. He put his hand on the stained metal casing and asked, "What is this?"

"What's it look like?"

"Casing out of a foundry. It looks like an open hand, round base, splayed fingers."

"Antenna."

"I can open it... the inside looks like settler magic. Is this your sign?"

"It's the sign and the lights and anything else that takes power. See if there's anything missing."

"Oh, come on, Barda, I've never seen anything like this.....ll right, here's a slot. Like it takes a great big three-pronged key."

"Fuck my bird! I'm coming up."

So Amnon pushed the door open and they all trouped out on the roof to see what everyone except Jemmy knew all about. They hovered around Barda while she opened the shell and looked in.

She said, "He took it with him!"

"It?"

"Birdfucker!"

Andrew said, "It isn't as if we could go off to town and open another account."

"That birdfucking list is getting big," Barda said. "Andrew, whose name would we use? Not mine!"

Andrew laughed. "We're all wanted felons except Jeremy. Jeremy doesn't have a name."

"Well, without a guide spot we don't have a sign, and without a sign we don't have an inn."

Guilda's Place in Spiral Town had never needed anything but paint. Jemmy asked, "Guide spot?"

He wasn't heard. "Maybe I can rig something," Duncan Nick said.

Barda made way for him. The shell opened at the edge of the roof. Two could look inside; no more.

"I was up here before, but I did not want lights," Duncan said. "Mmm."

"Let me see." But Winnie Maclean wasn't heard either, and she wasn't strong enough to push her way in.

SoJemmy asked her. "Guide spot?"

"It sends back a reflection," Winnie said. "The power beam from Quicksilver goes to four orbiting relays. The relays flash a beam, and all the guide spots flash back. Then the beams focus on all the guide spots. It's a frequency Begley cloth can turn into power. But you buy your guide spot from City Hall and then you're in the records and City Hall keeps track of how much power you use."

"So there's a record in a City computer, and it says this is the Swan," said Denis. "But these things can be hacked."

Barda edged away from the power collector so that others could look it over. Duncan's and Denis's heads and shoulders disappeared inside.

"The Winslows must have retired the account when they moved," Winnie said.

Barda laughed suddenly. "Not Daddy. All the way to Destiny Town, when he's going the other way? I bet he just took the guide spot along and bought someone else's power collector."

Most of this was beyond him, but Jemmy caught that datum as it went by. "You mean the City thinks he's still the Swan."

"I'm guessing, you know."

"So if you got it going again-"

"I worked for a power company," Winnie said. "Let me try."

"The City would just see the Swan using more power? Your daddy would pay a bigger fee. Would he notice?"

"Oh, sure, and complain. But... couldn't complain to the City, could he? They like things neat in the City."

"If he didn't switch accounts."

Duncan Nick moved out. "It's hopeless," he said. "I could make it work if I had some number-four line wire."

Winnie moved in beside Denis. They whispered crypticisms, their heads hidden. "Don't need number four....ny gauge line wire... isn't that what they use to wire a kitchen? No, it's thinner. .

Watching them wasn't very interesting. They weren't doing anything. The men picked up chairs and tables and wrestled them inside and downstairs and into the main dining room.

There were chickens in the woods. They were fast, hard to catch. But on the fifth day Winnie found four nests: scrambled eggs for all, cooked in the pottery pots.

On the seventh morning, Willametta saw the bus stop and let people off. Blind luck that she happened to be looking through the picture window. Andrew had set a guard, but he hadn't been taken seriously.

Two men, two women walked across the bridge carrying fishing poles.

Willametta moved about the house whispering the news. Nudes to the upstairs rooms. Amnon to work the garden.

The strangers were in their teens. They wore tiny swimsuits and skimpy vests with lots of pockets. What they saw was Amnon in coveralls, and four older folk in out-of-date short-sleeved windbreakers, carrying poles. Jemmy was one of those.

"Yes, we're reopening the restaurant. Just for dinner. We'd be happy if you'd pass the word."

"What have you got for breakfast?"

"We don't have flour yet. Cold chicken? Tea?"

They turned that down. One man said, "You should open for breakfast too. They come to Swan Lake to fish, you know, and this is the only way in. Cook their fish for them in the evening."

Amnon stayed. Jemmy took the rest to the lake. Behind him he sensed frantic action held leashed.

At the shore they separated. The inlet to Swan Lake was easy to wade. Jemmy tried to keep an eye on the little group on the far shore, but they weren't spending all their time fishing. They let a little tent inflate and spent some of their time in there. They went exploring through the trees.

Earthlife bushes and grass and trees. Earthlife fish. Before noon the felons had caught two dozen fish of three varieties, none of which Jemmy recognized. It made sense to go home then, and they did.

Jemmy dreaded that Andrew would see what he saw: four teens on foot who might have disappeared anywhere between here and the City, with clothes on their backs in current styles and money in their pockets. But he couldn't stay to protect them.

They returned to a great light.

Above the restaurant's roof a flame rose and fluttered in the shape of a Swan.

Jemmy was relieved to see Andrew grinning up into the lighted dining hall windows. He lofted a mess of fish and got a nod. He asked, "How did you do it?"

"I don't know. Winnie and Denis pulled a nest of line wire out of the ceiling in one of the rooms. You know what that is, a thread of superconductor in a rubber tube? They'd have been electrocuted if the roof was clean, I think. Nothing worked till they found some silver thing Barda hid in her room and pounded it into shape. But-" He waved. "They got it going!"

"Shouldn't we turn it off? Or are we open?"

"We're open. Let's see, we'll keep that room locked, and clean up the

roof so we get more power. All the lights are way too dim. But you, Jemmy, you get a pit fire going. When those kids come back we want to cook their fish for them. And show somebody how to clean fish! Henry!"

The visitors stayed for dinner.

Jemmy was a chef on display, with a Road accent, self-consciously not a Spiral Town accent, and, "My merchant father picked me up from the dairy when I was a little boy.

What the Swan lacked became much clearer. Bread, potatoes, lettuce. They'd have asked for a room until Barda told them there weren't any working toilets. Then they opted for their tent by the lake.

Then they tried to pay the chef.

"You pay Barda. She prefers to keep track." Jemmy sneaked a peek at Destiny Town money before they turned away. It was a hologram imposed onto thin paper.

Barda took their money. They climbed uphill with Swanlight behind them. And Barda gave him an intensive course in how to identify, count, and change money before she let him go to bed.

The Last Climb

We were chosen for genetic disparity. Now our numbers are down by one third and we're scattered from Base One to the Winds! How are we going to avoid gene drift?

-Grigori Dudayev, senior M. D.

Next morning was a bleery-eyed scramble. They didn't have to look like a restaurant as long as they didn't look like a prison camp! Four visitors would be returning through here....ny minute now...

They appeared near noon. They'd stayed to fish up a breakfast. Jemmy guessed right: he had coals going, and he'd saved a dozen of Winnie's eggs and several big mushroom caps.

The fishers wanted tea, and were mildly put off because it was herb tea, licorice picked from the spice patch. There was, of course, no bread. Admitting that was embarrassing.

After they were gone Rafik told Barda, "You could have charged them more."

"They'll talk. We want customers," Barda said. "What is an inn with no guests? A birdfucking halfway house!"

Jemmy asked Rafik, "How much whole-wheat flour would that buy?"

"Sack and a half. Last night's take would buy five or six. But we could have charged more," Rafik said, and Andrew's face was growing red with his laughter.