Larry Niven - Destiny's Road

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.”

A proud oak stood above the hillside, easily a quarter-century old. Duncan Nick's oak, where the women's cesspit had been. What was that growing around its base? To Jeremy's eye it stood out like settlermagic paint: greenery tinged with yellow, and orange flecks on black.

From the oak he traced narrow paths to a thicket of growth, greenand-black shadows with touches of orange. The other ancient cesspit. Broader paths led from Duncan Nick's oak down to the lodge, and to the lake, and east to the ridge-' 'Another way out,” he said, pointing- and to a stand of fruit trees that must have replaced the old spice garden, with a hint of orange in the shadowed green-black around the trunks.

“You think Barda got away,” Harlow said.

“She could have. I can... could've.

Harlow hugged him from behind, chin on his sfioulder. He plunged on: “Could've told it to Karen that way. Still can. Karen had... Barda has brothers.” Suddenly he knew what to do. “We've got four hours. Shall I show you how to fish?”

Alexandre Chorin stored their backpacks behind the desk for them, and rented them fishing gear all assembled for instant use. “Do you use flies?”

Harlow stared. Jeremy knew just enough to say, “Harlow, it's a lure you float. Mr. Chorin, have you got actual bait?”

“No. Try digging in the orchard.”

“Okay.”

The graveyard-turned-spice-garden had turned fruit orchard. Speckles grew all through it, sparsely, as if a gardener had failed to weed them out. Jeremy studiously ignored them while he dug for earthworms.

There were children all along the near shore, fishing, throwing frisbees, batting at a ball tethered to a pole. A worn, transparent tent sprawled loosely along the south side of the lake, with room for twenty or thirty underneath. Six growing Earthlife trees had become the tent poles. Destiny trees had been chopped down to make room.

Harlow said, “The way the buses run-“

“Yeah.” Kids would have to stay overnight; hence the tent.

By silent agreement they walked around the north shore until most of the activity was out of sight and hearing. They took off their shoes. Harlow didn't flinch from putting worms on a hook. “You can use anything organic, but we didn't bring anything,” he told her. They flung the lines a fair distance out, and waited, drowsy in the sun.

Reasonable time passed, and nothing struck.

Bare white rock stretched far into the lake, coming to a point a meter above deep water. Jeremy walked out onto it, set his cane down, and, carefully balanced, flung out his line.

Waited.

A fish struck. He pulled it in.

Harlow came to join him. She maneuvered to put them nearly back to back.

Moving to make more room, he stumbled, started to fall, arms windmilling. She reached and had him, and pulled. He backed into her hip, hard. She lost her balance and splashed into the lake. He barely saved himself from going after her.