Tim had been tiptoeing toward the center, toward his pack. He"d gambled his life when he brought a butchered boar to the Shire, and the bet still stood. He asked, "What"s it all about?"
A third voice, much calmer, didn"t speak directly to him. "We can hope he"d like some company?"
Tim said, "Sit down with me. I have a thousand questions. Shall we make a light?"
Laughter and protest. "Oh, no!" The rustling came close; circled him.
It was seriously dark. He guessed at anywhere from four to a dozen.
He slid his weed cutter under his pack and sat on that.
He said, "I know not to touch you, but I"m wondering how this all started. People along the Road don"t all do as you do."
Silence. Ragged breath. Then, "The merchants tell us we can"t rub up against a stranger."
"Ever since the first caravan came."
"And Rash.e.l.l Star turned down Wayne the speckles man."
"Rash.e.l.l the Star. And she slapped him."
"Bobbitted."
"A hundred years ago."
"More."
"So we keep ourselves to ourselves, men and women both, and we teach our children too. We know what happens if the merchants don"t bring speckles." The woman who had spoken was quite breathless, and a silence followed.
Tim said, "Look, they told me you don"t mix with strangers."
Four hands reached out of the dark. Tim jumped at the first touch.
Then he patted the hands (five, six!) and asked, "It"s the merchants"
idea?"
Laughter. Someone took his hand, and guided it under clothing, and that was a woman"s breast, big.
What on Earth-?
They were swathed in layers of clothing. It came off in great soft piles that made a fine extensive bed. They stripped him insistently, and explored him first with their hands, whispering to each other. He never knew if he would touch clothing or skin, and now it was mostly skin.
Once he got the idea, Tim began searching shapes in the dark. His wandering hands found delight-and perfection. No twisted spine or twisted foot. Here a nose like the prow of a ship; here an ear that pro-truded interestingly; he knew them both, women-without-children who had served his food without meeting his eyes. Regular features, no strangeness, no flaws.
Wasn"t that what they were looking for too? No point in making babies with a flawed or twisted visitor.
He counted six. And they still wouldn"t talk to him, though they whispered to each other.
Tomorrow he wouldn"t know them. Tonight the shapes and scents of the women were his whole environment. Tonight they were taking his genes.
Maybe he dreamed it. A hand shook his shoulder and a voice whispered, "Merchant man. Why did the Founders wake the flies?"
Without opening his eyes he asked, "Am I supposed to know?"
"You"re supposed to know everything."
He"d thought that about caravaners. He"d thought about flies too.
"Meat has to rot," he said, and was asleep again.
He woke alone, and stiff everywhere.
He dressed in customary haste, as if he must bake and serve breakfast. Then he took the time to search out a second entrance. It was set in a corner, a miniature maze baffled against light from outside.
He hesitated before going out.
The first caravan, she"d said. There never would have been a first caravan without customers already in place. So the first caravan found this isolated community halfway along the Crab- Rash.e.l.l the Star? Wayne the speckles man? Likely two or three or six merchants had tried to make babies with the wrong people. In Spiral Town men and women married before they got pregnant, and it might have been that way in the Shire. Then, merchants hadn"t yet earned their current reputation. The Shire"s need for external genes didn"t show yet.
Somebody got slapped, or bobbitted, whatever that was. Then what?
Today the Shire was not dying, but Tim had seen some effects of inbreeding here. The merchants and yutzes weren"t getting laid. What did anyone gain by continuing this nonsense?
He stepped outside knowing that there would be n.o.body to ask. The men were gone. The women wouldn"t meet his eye, any more than they ever had, and they wouldn"t let him help with breakfast. They fed him fruit and speckles bread, then watched him walk off along the beach.
Along the beach until it curved out of sight. Then up into Earthlife trees, a tiny version of the graveyard grove in Spiral Town. He stuffed his pack with citrus fruit and kept moving.
He retrieved his gun and speckles-filled bullet bag. He hadn"t stopped moving for an instant. Anyone who tried to follow him would be blowing hard. If someone was waiting above him, well, now he had the gun.
Speckles was in his system. He expected to feel more alert, and he did. Just his imagination? Too much of that could make him careless, make him miss something.
So think it through- Four days up the Road, that was where the spring caravan had been attacked. Two days at the rate he was traveling. It now seemed that bandits" turf ran all the way from there to the distillery.
Two pairs of thief-takers ran ahead of him, traveling by the Road and by the frost line.
He might have tried a boat, or gambled that they couldn"t swim.
Instead, he climbed. He climbed until he"d reached the crest. Bandits might know the blind side of the Crab, but he"d seen no sign of them.
He"d travel that way until he was past Farther.
16.
T w e r d a h 1 T o w n Columbiad is losing temperature, ionization, and humidity controls. We"ll have to h0ld public meetings elsewhere.
We feel betrayed when a subsystem fails us. Anything worth bringing across interstellar s.p.a.ce was meant to last forever.
-Ansel Milliken, landholder He traveled at the frost line. At dusk he dipped into the snarl of plants below for fruits and any vegetables he could eat raw. A fool cage gave him a pigeon the second night: he risked a fire, and a gunshot for some spiny Destiny beast that thought he looked edible.
Two days, two nights, and at noon he"d reached the naked V of frozen lava above Twerdahl Town.
Two lines of houses ran for several klicks between the mudflat and the Road, with acres of cultivated land between. Twerdahl Town hadn"t looked this big the first time he"d seen it, coming straight from Spiral Town.
Falls ran down the V, converged in streams, then ran across the flats into green and black swamp. Tim hadn"t noticed, the first time he"d seen this place, how gradually the swamp formed. A wide band of dark, wet topsoil bloomed spa.r.s.ely in a flood of sunlight, black touched with bronze and yellow-green.
Rice. Rice would grow well here. He"d tell them to plant rice, if he could find seed rice or buy it from the caravans. Pulling up Destiny weeds would be no trouble. They didn"t like this much light.
He found a memorable place to hide a gun and bullets. He secreted his three speckles pouches in the hidden pockets a merchant favored. For the rest of the day he watched.
Surfers rode the waves. People worked the gardens, and fished. A man rode a bike along the Road. Three people came out of the swamp carrying a snake. Fires burned along the salt flats.
No sign of messengers from the distillery. Twerdahl Town might not be involved in that, but. . . wait for sunset.
After sunset Tim discovered that he wasn"t willing to go down.
Quicksilver gave no light; it was merely the brightest star. Climbing down slick lava in the dark could get a man killed, but wading through a snakeinfested swamp. . . insane.
He"d go down in the morning. He"d been hiding too long. It was becoming a reflex.
At dawn he started down. There was brush to cling to along the edge of the lava shield. He could see boards out on the water. He hadn"t surfed in a long time.
By the time he got down, sunlight penetrated even into the swamp.
He waded in.
Black Destiny vines were growing all over everything. High time for another weed cutting! Of course that only meant that the autumn caravan was coming soon. Meanwhile he must crawl through black vines and black water, slashing at snakes with his own weed cutter.
At the Road he washed as best he could. Then he climbed out and dripped.
The bicycle was coming back. Tim watched it come. Had it gone as far as Farther? He didn"t recognize the man on the bike, but he would when the man got closer.
The biker saw him. Tim called, "h.e.l.lo! I-"
The bike wheeled hard right and disappeared among the houses.
Tim strolled after it along a dirt path between houses. No chance of catching a man on a bike! He was yelling. Suddenly Tim knew the voice: one of the Grant boys, the oldest, a skinny nineteen-year-old. Two rows of houses, and cultivated land between. Tim turned downRoad, He knew his own house, there at the end, and he started to trot.
Loria came out. Tim called, "Loria-"
She froze. Behind her came a man, a big man carrying a baby. Behind them, Tarzana Bednacourt, pregnant; and then Gerrel Farrow.
The man touched Loria"s arm and spoke. The four moved briskly between houses and were gone.
Tim gaped.
Now what? Go into the house to wait? Whatever was going on, it would be over presently. Meanwhile Tim could clean himself up and get fresh clothes. He hadn"t given much thought to what he must look like.
But he had to know. This all felt very wrong. He walked between rows of orange and grapefruit trees, between houses and onto the mudflat.
He was facing half of Twerdahl Town. Most of them were carrying farming or fishing implements, and that wasn"t strange, but they carried them like weapons.
He thought again: what must he look like? He dropped his plumeless hat and combed his hair back with his hands. It might help.
"I"m Tim Bednacourt!" he shouted.
Men and women (no children, no elderly) moved to put Tim Bednacourt at the center of an arc. Loria and the man with the baby were standing way too close together, mutual protection in frieze. The man was Ander Cloochi, son of the town"s master farmer.
Tim was moving from exasperation toward panic. "Berda Farrow, you taught me to cook! Tarzana, don"t you know me? Loria!"
"We know you," Susie Cloochi said. "Tim, what happened to you?"
"Long story. But I-look." He dropped his pack and was about to open it when everyone took one step forward.
"It"s a sh.e.l.l," he babbled. "Scrimshaw."
Ander motioned him to go ahead.
Tim untied the pack, one-handed, and dumped it. He didn"t need to conceal anything in the pack. He fished out the sh.e.l.l and pointed Out the pictures. "Chug. Shark. This is done on a lungshark sh.e.l.l. That"s an Otterfolk. I had an Otterfolk sh.e.l.l too, but I gave it away. What happened to me? Everything you can imagine, Susie, and then some. I"ve sailed a boat. I can cook in styles you never imagined. I"ve seen the blind side of the Crab."
"You don"t seem to be speckles-shy," Susie Cloochi said.
And suddenly he knew what he looked like.
He was wearing a trader yutz"s glare-bright clothing, though it hung in rags and dirt. He"d traveled on the far side of the ridge for a long, hungry time. He was gaunt. Worst of all, he was here, with the caravan twenty days away. A wanderer not following a caravan was a bandit.
And a thief; but they couldn"t know about the stolen speckles can.
In a way that made it worse. A speckles-shy bandit might do anything.
The corner of his eye caught motion, way upRoad around the toolhouse. He couldn"t spare the attention. "Test my mind," he said.
"Test my memory. I gave you the bicycle Tedned Grant was riding. Ander, Gerrel, you helped me build that oven. I taught you bread! I remember getting married, Loria. Ander Cloochi, is there something you"d like to tell me?"
"We"re married."
"Now, I"m still new among you," Tim said, "so I have to ask-" Loria burst out laughing. It didn"t seem she could stop. Ander said, "No, Loria can"t have two husbands."
"But you both, you all knew I"d be back."
"But not now, d.a.m.n it, Tim! We"d-Loria would have had time to decide."
"Is this what happened to Haron Welsh?"