Larry Niven - Destiny's Road

The rock fell off steeply. Jeremy went down on his belly and reached for her hand. She could swim, of course. She swam over and, with his arms to anchor her, walked up the rock.

Her clothing clung to her like paint: The sight of her froze him like a rabbit in torchlight. The words he'd planned to say evaporated.

She was furious. She started to say so. Instead she looked into the heat of his stare, and then began to pull his shirt open.

He pulled them together. No other response ever crossed his mind until much later.

He felt so incredibly good.

She curled against him and said, “Tell me you didn't throw me in the lake just to rub up against me.”

He laughed like a maniac. Then he said, “I swear to you by everything I own, I did not.''

“Right. Good.”

There were children just out of sight; they deemed it better to ignore them. They sorted through their clothes, looked them over critically, put them on anyway. Jeremy asked, “Did you bring a change?”

“Sure. You?”

“Course.”

He used his pole to fish her pole off the bottom. They walked back down to the lodge, dripping. She'd got his clothes almost as wet and muddy as hers.

Alexandre Chorin's chuckle kept bubbling through his self-restraint. He had towels for rent. They retrieved their packs and went upstairs.

MENWOMEN

Change together in one room? Harlow's suggestion was a wiggle of her eyebrow; his answer a quick headshake. They went in separate doors.

Jeremy spilled his pack, snatched up a shirt and shorts, stripped and put them on, rubbed a towel past his hair, stuffed his wet clothes into the pack, closed it, and was out. To hell with showering. Down the stair fast, but limp past Chorin and, “I think I want to see that oak.”

'Just don't overdo it with that leg, Mr. Winslow.”

He climbed the hill fast, digging his stick in and pulling himself up. He'd seen speckles growing around Duncan Nick's oak, but the oak was a bit conspicuous; and the graveyard grove, but that must get visitors.

His fragile plan had gone all to hell. Fall in the lake, go back to the lodge to change, anything for a moment alone with the speckles crop. Anything, but he hadn't expected- He certainly hadn't expected- Hadn't fought her off, either.

Couldn't. She'd wonder at his motives! Harlow was doing quite enough of that already.

Yeah, right. Karen, I'm sony. I have to do this.

Here: the ancient privy, the men's. Ground-hugging bristly plants, with black stalks that split and split again to become orange thorns whose tips divided down to tiny, tinier, microscopic green needles.

These plants couldn't be ignored, even if nobody here knew what they were. Children must have tasted the buds. A cook who found speckles in the spice patch might try it on food. Did it taste like sterile speckles?

He'd brought two bags. He'd forgotten to bring a glove. He wrapped his hand in a silk scarf and took a pinch of tiny seeds and put them in his mouth, and chewed as he stripped the speckles plants.

Fresh speckles was a bit different. Try mixing it with... salt?

He filled the first bag and pushed it deep in his pack, and heard a rustle and knew it was Harlow.

He didn't look around. Had she seen more than one bag? He began stuffing the second bag. She wouldn't find the other unless she dug deep in his pack.

She was nearly breathing in his ear now. He said, “We will never have to buy speckles again.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Don't you know speckles plants? Does anyone outside the Windfarm know what speckles looks like when it's growing?”

“There must be pictures in the teaching programs.”

“'Restricted material. Access code?' But prisoners do get released from the Windfarm.”

“You're evading.”

“We came out of the Windfarm with fertile speckles. We used them for cooking, so the chef got to carry them. I scattered them where I thought they'd grow. Now it's twenty-seven years later and I own a piece of a restaurant. Harlow, I never had to worry about how to keep a restaurant solvent, and now I know we lost a piece of the inn to people I never heard of-“

“They were there at the right time, Jeremy.”

“Next time might be worse. So I thought I'd fall in the lake and collect a bag of speckles on the way down to get myself changed.”

“Wasn't I supposed to get wet?”

“That would have worked too. If we both get wet, that doesn't work. If you get wet and then we rub all the water and mud into each other's clothes, that sends us both back together.”

She smiled now. He said, “Look, I only suspect it's illegal-“

“You speckles-shy idiot, of course it's illegal! We can't stop buying speckles and still run a restaurant!”

“Of course we'll have to buy speckles. We'll get them from the caravans, just like always. But if hard times come, there's a bag of speckles-“

“How many did you bring?”

She'd seen. 'Just the two.”

“One would have done. Any bus can get us back here for more.”

“Okay. Stashed where only you and I can find it. We don't tell anyone else.”

“You didn't think you'd tell me!”

“It's a crime, Harlow. I thought I'd tell Barry, but as long as you know, that's enough.”

That ought to get her.

And he saw that it had. Wave Rider had a secret, and none knew it save Jeremy and Harlow: the inner circle.

They arrived in time to scavenge the last of dinner. Three caravan suppliers had come early and were sharing a room. Otherwise the inn held most of Karen's siblings and children and in-laws. Everyone stayed po.lite, and presently carried Jeremy's and Harlow's backpacks up to separate rooms.

They'd discussed that on the bus.

Jeremy got to Lloyd before they gathered for breakfast. “What have you and Brenda told them about me?”

“About the Windfarm? Brenda and I won't tell them anything, Jeremy. We talked it over. It just wouldn't be good.” Lloyd laughed suddenly. “And then you show up with Harlow!”

“She can help when the caravan-“

“Sure.”

At least the timing was sweet. Whatever the Winslow clan remembered of their stepmother... however much they mourned Karen, now a lifegiver... whatever they thought of the pit chef who was probably rubbing up against his stepmother-in-law... they were shorthanded. It was late autumn. The outbound spring caravan was due in five days.

Over the next few days Harlow and the Winslow clan found some sort of adjustment. Jeremy didn't have to watch dominance and accommodation games. The trick was to stay outside. He tended the pit, and tried out some of what he thought he'd learned in Romanoff's, and upgraded his tools for the onslaught to come.

He tested his leg by swimming with the Otterfolk, reacquainting himself with them. If they noticed his game leg, that was all to the good: they'd guess why he wouldn't surf.

Harlow and Chloe surfed with them, riding waves in tandem. Harlow had returned to the board as if she'd never been away.

They'd need the Otterfolk's goodwill, to get fish to feed the merchants.

Harlow simply poured one bagful of speckles into their speckles shaker can. “It's the obvious place for it. The way we run the inn, everyone'll think someone else got us more speckles.” He stopped her from adding the second bag, but he had no excuse at all.

A day later he'd found one. “Taste this.”

She sipped. “Smooth. Grapefruit and vodka and... salt?”

“Secret recipe,” he said.

“Speckles. Sea salt and speckles?”

They called the drink a Salty Dog, and the last bag of fertile speckles stayed in the bar.

Rita Nogales phoned. She had answers. Fresh avocado reacting to speckles in the mayonnaise, in Karen's and Brenda's mixed seafood dish, produced a mild allergic reaction that disappeared without obtrusive symptoms. Only a patient already sick was threatened. Avocado picked two days earlier wouldn't react. Hardly surprising if nobody had noticed in two hundred years.