Destiny's Road (45 page)

Nothing.

You wouldn't just hail a caravan and buy a ticket. Caravans weren't transport. They were a way of moving speckles, and they'd be filed that way.

Meanwhile, try

PASSENGER*BUS

One set of buses moved around the city, back and forth along the Road. You stopped it where you liked, the usual gesture and a lot of flex in the schedule.

Two buses ran from Destiny Town all the way to the far end at fifty klicks per. One started at dawn on alternate days, the other at noon. Both returned the next day, over and over.

NECK*MAP

He'd seen these pictures as a child: maps made in orbit by Argos, before the mutiny. A black-bronze-yellow forest ran thickly down the fat side of the Crab, sparsely down the narrow side, joined at the Neck and ran on into the mainland.

But this next was more recent, taken by the Cyclops telescope. The Road was in place. Chugs were pulling thirteen wagons. Amazing, how much detail showed below the water. Crude Otterfolk cities, built hefty to withstand currents....ot cities at all, the text said, but walls to guide currents and precipitate sand, to provide refuge for Destiny fish and extend the Haunted Bay environment by a little.

The back of the Crab was all cliffs. The sea bottom dropped straight down.

What had he hoped to see? There was no way across the Neck save with a caravan.

SWAN*INN

Open: May 2651. See crime files case 2708-10. License terminated: May 2713. Current site: Corso's Camp Waikiki, children ages 5 to 12 Earth.

Those dates: Harold Winslow must have noticed he was paying for too much electricity. He'd terminated the Swan's power license a year after Jeremy reached Wave Rider. How had Barda and her crew survived that? And now it was a children's camp.

And buses stopped. He'd seen that.

CRIME*27O8~1 10

That was the record of Duncan Nick's arrest. Caught hiding out at the Swan, sent to the Windfarm, the loot never found.

What Jeremy had in mind seemed possible.

He'd started to cry.

They were all looking, and the hell with them. He let it come. Karen, I don't want to go!

A doctor got him onto his crutches and led him out and sat him down in an empty room.

Rita Nogales found him there.

"All right," he said, "what happened?"

"That's still under debate. We lost her, Jeremy, but the problem may not stop there. If Batch One-"

"As I-''

"-went bad-yes?"

"-understand it, Karen rejected Batch One, so another batch was found-"

"Hope Batch, from Hope Clinic. Last night she rejected that and went into a coma. They loaded her with antihistamines, but she was dead by the time I could get here. We couldn't resuscitate her.

"Jeremy, there might be something atypical about Karen. Too much sunlight for too many years, too much of something in Destiny seafood or just Haunted Bay Destiny seafood, or... something genetic. Anything. Then again, maybe Batch One is bad. Karen reacted to it, and it set her up for a reaction to any breed of superskin. We need to know. Jeremy, we're doing an autopsy."

In Spiral Town there would be no question that the community held title to a lifegiver. "Do what you need to. Can I see her?"

"Of course, but-" She hesitated. "-I don't recommend it."

Of course it was his duty to... but Rita Nogales was shrinking back in her chair, withdrawing from him. With that for a clue, his mind showed him more than he wanted to see of what Karen must look like.

''All right.''

"Shall we take that cast off you?"

"Fine."

He rested on his stick for a time, looking across the Road, considering how he might get inside Cavorite. Then he flagged the bus and boarded it.

Back at Harlow's he called Wave Rider immediately, getting Harlow to place the call.

Brenda picked up. "She's dead, isn't she?"

"How did you know?"

"Oh, Daddy!" and she wept.

"The damn trouble," he said, "is Medical looks like the power of life and death written in stone. Brenda, Nogales still doesn't know just what killed her. I should come home-"

"No, Jeremy, you'll have to stay a few days." That was Harlow. He looked around. "Why?" "Legal reasons, and to bury Karen." "Brenda, I have to stay a few days."

"All right, Daddy. Call and tell us when the funeral is." Harlow showed him how to hang up. He said, "Legal. Why?"

"Because you'll inherit Karen's piece of Wave Rider." That jolted him. "I never asked about a will." "She told Brenda and Lloyd where to find it." "What does Karen own?"

"I think one-quarter, but it wasn't any of my business."

"This'll make me conspicuous, won't it, Harlow? Somebody will be putting new information in a file marked Jeremy Winslow, who is fiction."

"It's fiction, but I wrote it, Jeremy. Trust me."

The next day Medical released Karen's body. They arranged a funeral for the day after. Funerals weren't important events in Spiral Town.

But Brenda came, and Mustafa, and Rita Nogales. They buried her with black pepper and lemon trees at her head and feet.

The children and Harlow stayed with him while he talked to Nogales. "Thanks for coming. I know Karen would appreciate-"

Nogales rode him down. "The autopsy showed some abnormal chemistry going on," she told them with a touch of belligerence. "Some of us think it's Destiny seafood. People have been losing weight that way for a long time, we don't really know how long. I do it myself, but we damn sure didn't evolve to eat it. Have you any idea if she was eating-"

"Mother and I had lunch together," Brenda said quietly. "Avocado and seafood, surf clam and Earthlife crab."

"Mayonnaise?"

Jeremy listened as Morales quizzed his daughter like a felon. She went away mumbling to herself. Rita Nogales was a solver of puzzles, like Jeremy himself. If he'd known that...

Well, then what?

Two days later, Jeremy Winslow, horn Hearst, owned one-fifth (not one quarter) of Wave Rider.

Jeremy read through a thick file of data, and learned more of the restaurant than he'd learned in twenty-seven years. Karen's three siblings held another fifth each. The last piece rested with an entity that called itself Andy's Bank. "Investment outfit," Harlow said. "They bailed us out with some money just after we opened."

In Spiral Town the law would have dithered for much longer; sometimes years. He said so. "It's communication," Harlow answered. "That, and an attitude. The law doesn't like ambiguities. If they'd found any discrepancies in the history of Jeremy Winslow, they'd be on your tail already."

"So I'm real? "

"Real and a man of property. Let's celebrate."

"I want to be on the bus at dawn."

"Dawn?"

He couldn't sit still. He paced, leaning on the stick, careful with the knee. "Now, here's my plan. Dawn bus. I want to get off at the Swan, that'll be about midmorning. I'll flag down the noon bus and get to Wave Rider after someone else has finished making dinner."

"There's a noon bus?"

"Why don't you take that one, Harlow? Meet me at the Swan? We'll go on to Wave Rider. In a day or so we'll know if you and the rest of Karen's clan can get along."

"No, I'll....awn bus. Early dinner?"

"Good. What are the neighbors like?" But Harlow didn't have friends she could invite at short notice.

She had not repeated an invitation that might have been only his imagination. Nonetheless that seemed ominous.

His leg was healing nicely. He was able to get around the kitchen without the cane. He packed for tomorrow's bus trip, and then they spent the afternoon building a dinner for two.

(Speckles pouches all over the table. All the same size, big enough for a head of lettuce, sold with half a cup of speckles in the bottom. He'd thought the merchants were being stingy. Never wondered if they just didn't have a choice.)

She opened what she called a half-bottle of wine, and tried to make him see what made it superior to whiskey. It was weaker, anyway. Again, he thought he was being cautious.

Harlow hadn't played among Otterfolk in years, nor visited the inn, and he had stories to tell her. He told her what "It's the law!" was about. He got her to telling tales of Destiny Town, and he told her about playing with Varmint Killer in Spiral Town.

lie knew he'd drunk too much when he tried to stand up. Harlow got under his shoulder and led him to bed. She was weaving more than he was.

She got him down to the futon. Then she asked, "Shall I stay?" He said, "Of course, woman, it's your apartment," being more obtuse than should be required of any man; and he let his eyes close and his mouth fall open. He knew no more until morning.

The Windfarm

Inn keepers

Not you, not your family, your guests, passing strangers, nobody goes near the Otterfolk birthground. Understand me, Harold?

-Georges Manet, Overview Bureau

He'd leave without her, let her take the noon bus, if he found her asleep. Leave her a note.

But she was bright and perky and handing him a mug of tea in the predawn dark.

Backpacks. Cane. The walk to the Road loosened up his stiff knee. Apollo finished rising. They flagged down the bus. Harlow pointed out sights as they moved out of Spiral Town.

She was asleep before they reached Terminus.

Too soon, she woke. "Mount Canaveral!" she crowed. "We used to launch Cavorite from here. Land by the ocean, refuel, fly it back here to load up."

"Ever see this yourself?"

"No." She squinted up at the mesa rim. "How's the knee?"

"Not that good. That looks like quite a climb."

The bus rolled on. Harlow asked, "Whereabouts did you and... Andrew... ?" and didn't finish.

The bluff was in view. Andrew might still be there, bones picked clean and maybe scattered. Jeremy pointed well past it and said, "Far side of the Swan, on the same side. Andrew would have gone out the same way I did."

Here was the bridge. They signaled to stop the bus, donned packs, and got off, Jeremy leaning heavily on his stick.

Like the bridge, the Swan sagged a little. Lights glowed inside, though the hologram sign wasn't lit. The pit barbecue smelled of recent fire.

Children were all over the place, mid-teens commanding hordes of youngsters with moderate success. They looked too busy to talk. Jeremy and Harlow went in looking for an adult.

Alexandre Chorin was a little old, a little heavy, a little slow to be chasing after children. It was easy to see him as hiding from the noise, here in the shade of what had been the Swan's dining room and was now littered with games and toys. But he seemed glad to see them, or anyone.

"Jeremy's grandchildren will be old enough soon," Harlow told him. "We thought we'd stop off and look."

"I used to fish here," Jeremy put in.

"We still do," Chorin said quickly. "The lake perch are nice. There's a pit barbecue we use sometimes."

"But then there was that trouble and everyone stopped coming," Harlow said.

Jeremy: "My children missed this entirely. Fishing at Swan Lake- It's still Swan Lake?"

"Oh, yes."

Harlow: "Do the children know-?"

"Oh, yes, it's one reason they come. Duncan Nick? The city planted an oak over him. It's just up the slope."

"You can't miss it. And there are horror stories about the Windfarm innkeepers," in a hoarse whisper. "There's no knowing how many people stayed here overnight and weren't ever seen again."

"Well," Harlow said, "I'd have thought one felon would have babbled stories. How many were there, a dozen?"

"Five, the caravaners say. All gone when the proles came. If you go up to Swan Lake, you can see how easy it must have been to get into the hills."

Jeremy had found a brochure. Day rates. Rates for stays of a week. List of what a child should pack. A map.

"What's it like, staying here? May we look around?" Harlow asked.

"Of course. Outside too. If you're going to the lake, take some fishing poles."

They went upstairs, pro forma. Harlow went into the nearest room and bounced on a tiny, carefully made bed.

"Nice move, but I didn't leave anything up here," Jeremy said. Her hands smoothed out the bed. "Any interest in anything?" 'Just the roof. Two floors up."

"You rest. I'll go up. What should I look for?"

"Well, the guide spot's working, but see if it got damaged. The floor's Begley cloth; see if it's been kept up. Look around at the view, all directions. Harlow, it's probably not worth the effort-"

She laughed and went, feet quick on the stairs.

Jeremy went into the men's bathroom. He tried the taps. They'd got the plumbing working again! He used a toilet, then stayed there, private, thinking.

Harlow was staking a claim.

Jeremy Winslow was in mourning! But set that aside, because it was twenty-seven years late to tell Harlow to get lost, and innuendos were getting harder to miss, and that wasn't the problem anyway. He needed to get out of Harlow's sight! For... seven hours would have been great. Half an hour would do . might not. He'd be climbing all over a hillside.

He'd see the hill from the roof.

She met him on the stair. "What?"

"I thought I'd look for myself."

"I never stared at a guide spot before. Somebody whacked the casing with a crowbar, looks like, but it must be working or there wouldn't be lights. The Begley cloth's new. What else?"

They walked out on the roof. Jeremy opened the powerhouse casing and looked in. "That's a new guide spot too. It was a snarl of line wire when I left here." He turned in a slow circle. "That way is Swan Lake. The proles think they went out that way. But that way-look across the Road." She nestled close to sight along his arm. "That's how we came, and there are valleys where we could survive for weeks. Mr. Chorin didn't say the caravan sold them clothing, but I bet they did, a lot."