Larry Niven - Destiny's Road

He heard Loria shout “Walk it forward!” and didn't have strength to laugh. He could feel what she meant, though. He was too high on the wave, he needed to point the board down to slide faster. The problem was that he couldn't move his feet!

He got a fair distance, he seemed to fly forever, before the wave rolled over and flipped him and the board.

He'd never glanced at the wagons.

The wagons parked far down the Road, nearly out of sight. The chugs were an ocher wave rolling down the sand, raising dust in a great khaki cloud.

“They'll stir up the sharks,” Loria shouted, and waved him toward the beach. The surfers were getting out of the water.

Jemmy went to help with the cooking. Faintly from down the Road they could hear the popping of gunfire.

Harl Cloochi had managed to hook some huge delta-winged Destiny fish. Younger men came running when they saw it flopping in the shallows, wrestled it into submission, and brought it up. It covered one of the grills from end to end.

The merchants returned on foot. They brought no wares, but some of them carried fruits and a great yellow squash: produce bought in Spiral Town.

The merchants had noticed Tim Hann's oven. Master Granger wanted to use it to cook the big squash. Jemmy guessed that they would ruin the oven if they weren't careful. It was nothing but lava chunks held together by their own weight.

So he made them wait while he punctured the squash with a big fork to let steam out, and helped them roll the squash in, and built up the fire again, smiling like an idiot and trying not to shy away from Master Granger. Master Sean Granger was an older man, proprietor of the second wagon, though a younger woman drove. They'd shared dinner with Dad and Jemmy at Harry's Bar, twice before Dad's accident.

Jemmy didn't dare not meet his eyes.

“That should do it. Thank you,” Master Granger said to him.

“I should get back to cooking,” said Tim Hann.

He had set himself in charge of watching the great fish cook. He saw too late that in the cool of coming night the merchants were all standing around the cookfires. But their eyes passed right over Tim Hann the cook, or through him. He'd made the right move after all.

“What would you call this thing?” Master Granger asked of nobody in particular.

Berda Farrow said, “Hell's angelfish.”

“Nice”

She said, “I didn't make it up. That's its name. We see them a lot.”

“I miss sub clams,” Granger said. “In a month the Otterfolk'll have a mess of them for us.”

Jemmy smiled. More people, down the Road? He called to Wade Curdis, trying not to overdo the accent. “Berda, Wade, we should turn this monster.”

Wade was a strong man in his thirties. He and Berda and Tim Hann turned the fish easily. The merchants backed up to give them room.

“We're lucky there,” Granger said. “If Otterfolk were people, they'd eat the best fish themselves.”

Wade turned to stare. Tim Hann didn't look around.

Twerdahls didn't like to interrupt merchants, but Wade spoke anyway. “These Otterfolk, who are they? We never see anyone but you and us.”

The merchants laughed inordinately. Jemmy looked about him, at merchants mingling with Twerdahls-any of whom could blow his secret to bits-and contrived to be busy. Destiny fish was tough and chewy unless it was cooked slowly. Cooking was creation itself; it seemed to put the universe in perspective.

'The Otterfolk, they're not people,” a younger merchant said. “They live in the ocean. We trade them tools and stuff for fish. There are some Destiny fish we can eat, and they tend the Earthlife fish too.”

'You only come through three times a year,” Wade persisted. “Why don't they come trade with us?”

“Can't. They hate sub clams, though. Used to kill them, till we came along. Sub clams eat Destiny turtles, but they're good eating, for us, that is.,'

Tim decided the fish was done. He'd never seen Hell's angelfish before, but like many Destiny fish, the meat came apart in layers. Tim Hann cut and other Twerdahls served.

A merchant's accent said, ”... Criminals.”

Tim Hann served a perfect strip of fish to an exotic and lovely merchant woman. “Boiling potatoes now and the big squash in a bit,” he said to her, precisely because Spiral men didn't talk to women. But Jemmy Bloocher had heard that younger merchant's voice before, barking some order at Fedrick.

And the other voice was old Harl Cloochi. “It's just a damn rumor, of course, but we almost never see a Spiral, so how do we know?”

“There's some truth in it,” the merchant said. “Spiral Town takes care of their own criminals. I spoke as witness once at a trial in Spiral Town. They banged the yutz afterward.”

“Ah. All right.”

“But, Harl, if a killer gets to the Road before they catch him, how can they chase him down? Most Spirals never get out of town at all. A runner doesn't have to stick to the Road, and even if he did, how far did he go? It's a long, long Road.”

“So they just let him go?”

“I suppose they chase him awhile. Longer if he did something sticky. Then they just tell us and let him go.”

“And leave him for us! Let the Road towns deal with their dregs!”

“Well, that and speckles deprivation.”

Appreciative silence.

The merchant's voice said, “A lot of the communities along the Road think the same way. Thing is, Harl, we're not executioners for someone else's dregs, and some of what they call crime isn't all that serious. When a yutz wants to ride the wagons, sometimes we see if he'll work Out.”

“Even criminals?”

“A man on the run can make a damn good labor yutz. And they'd walked out of range.

Late in the night, after the merchants went back to their wagons, Han Cloochi took Tim Hann aside. He asked, “Was the man you killed a labor yutz?”

“I never heard the words until tonight.”

“Well, there was a labor yutz killed in Spiral Town a few days ago.” Jemmy waited.

“He came from way down the Road. Merchants won't talk about that, drunk or sober. But Kashi says he had the manners of a shark, and that's why he got himself killed. They kept him around because he could lift his own weight in gear and shoot the teeth out of.a lungshark one at a time.”

“Labor yutz,” Jemmy said, tasting the words.

“See the point? Nobody killed a merchant. They won't search that hard for whoever killed a labor yutz, and they may even think he earned it.

“Uh-huh. Thanks, Harl. From bottom to top, thank you.”

“So what're you going to do?”

Tim Hann drew a deep breath of smoke-tinged salt air. He said, “Stay.”

Twerdahl Town's entire male population took twelve days to build them a peak-roofed house no bigger than the family room at Bloocher Farm. In Spiral Town a marriage was made by recording it in computer records; but here, the building of a house was a marriage. Tim Bednacourt saw how the house could expand under the overextended roof, once he and Lonia began having children.

Autumn moved into winter.

It was a busy time. Everything edible seemed to be ripening at once. Everything must be picked and stored or preserved. Working refrigerators were rare in Spiral Town, but in Twerdahl Town they didn't exist. Fruits could be boiled for preserves, vegetables blanched, meat smoked. And any of it could be eaten at once. They ate like chugs.