Voices in the dark, men and women talking together. That was Loria:
“You're good people. You have things to teach us. Some of what comes off the Road are parasites.”
“We all do farm work,” Curdis said. “We learn to look for what needs doing.”
Glind: “We don't let anyone stay a minute if he's alone. Any man alone must be running from something.”
“A woman?” Curdis.
“A woman alone might be running from, well, a man.” Tarzana's voice.
Loria: “The only women we've ever seen on the Road were merchants. But there was a man called himself Haines-” And he was a murderer who hid in the swamp. He stole from the truck gardens when he could, until Destiny food and no speckles turned him into a skeletal zombie, and then they flushed him out.
“Sounds like Mattoo Haine,” Curdis said. “He killed his wife and oldest son when I was little.”
Nobody wanted to tell Twerdahls that if criminals could get past where the Road straightened, Spiral Town let them go. There was a silence Jemmy savored. Then he spoke into the dark. “It must have started this way.”
“Tim?''
“Tarzana, grown men and women don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. When your grandparents came, maybe they didn't bring lights. They could talk together in the dark where they could be just voices.”
“Mmmm.”
He must have fallen asleep soon after.
Jemmy taught bicycle riding all morning.
Cooking over a grill fascinated him. He helped some, but watched more.
In midafternoon they retrieved their bikes from Twerdahl riders. Again Curdis said, “Time to leave.”
Jemmy said, “I'm not going.”
“What?”
“Tell the merchants Tim wants to know where Cavorite went. Tim Hann is on the Road.”
He saw Curdis studying him and guessed his thoughts. Is Jemmy crazy? How crazy? He didn't know Jemmy like a brother, and the Jemmy Bloocher he thought he knew wouldn't have killed a merchant. ~
Curdis said, “They'll take a harder look at Tim Hann if Tim comes back alone.”
“I don't think I'm coming back, Curdis. I can't run Bloocher Farm. I can't talk down a merchant's price while I'm hiding my face! And if Spiral Town gets in another face-off with the caravans- You see?”
Curdis did. “They'd have to stand without the Bloochers. You'd stand for the Bloochers, but you'd be hiding.”
“Curdis, it's unacceptable. Give Thonny two years, he'll be fine running Bloocher Farm. Thonny doesn't have to hide anything.”
“That's two years before Margery and I can get our own farm.”
“Forgive me.”
“Uh-huh.” Curdis's eyes were unfocused: still thinking. “Okay, the caravan'll be starting back this way tomorrow or so. I figured we'd meet them just when they were getting organized, and we'd get you through that way. If you stay, they'll be here in, oh, four days. Tim, are you staying here or pushing on?”
“I don't know.''
“You could keep ahead of a caravan. Even on foot.”
“Sure.”
“Or let them catch you in a few weeks, but now you're a Twerdahl with itchy feet.”
“Mmm.”
“Is this really your choice?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too,” Brenda said.
Curdis blew his top. Brenda shouted back, then cried.
Jemmy watched them dwindle, pedaling hard, up the Road.
When he returned to the House of Healing that night, Loria came with him.
6
Oven Maker
The northwest coast is mountainous. The southeast coast is wider, and rich in beaches. We'll set clown at the far end of the peninsula and explore.
Twerdahl Town didn't seem to know about bread.
There was grain growing along the Road. There were rocks about. Children of all ages found Tim Hann strange and interesting, and some would do what he suggested.
He showed the younger children how to gather grain. The older helped him carry rocks. Upthrusting banyan knees had flaked a great flat shelf of lava from the Road. Four were able to move that. It became the base of Tim Hann's oven.
His first experiments came out scorched, but two days after his sibs left him, Tim Hann served bread at dinner.
The morning of the third day- The first of the board riders took their boards from where they were propped against the long wall of the House of Healing. Tim Hann trailed the others, watching them, trying to balance the board on his shoulder as they did.
The board was a few inches shorter than Tim himself, carved from wood that grew in the swamp. It was heavy and awkward. Playful gusts of wind kept swinging it about.
Far up the Road toward Spiral Town, there was dust.
Jemmy stopped and squinted. A plume of dust, far off. He thought he knew what it meant.
Wend Bednacourt carried her board like a wand. She wasn't stronger than he was, but she had the balance. The other riders were running, but Wend trailed back a little. She said, “My daughters have taken an interest in you, Tim.”
“I know. But all the others-” It had taken Jemmy two days to notice that the Bednacourt women were the only womeh who would talk to him. In Spiral Town that was normal, but here? “Is it something I'm doing?”
“Tim, do they say marry in Spiral Town?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Wend shied back a bit to avoid the wild swinging of his board. “How's it done?”
“There's a ceremony. You invite-”
“Tim, how do you decide?”
This was no casual conversation. Jemmy set his board down and sat on it, thinking it through.
“We kids all pretty much know each other, time the girls stop talking to us. If I'm interested in a girl-” He decided not to mention Tunia Judda. ”-why, maybe I've got a friend who dated her, or knows her, or a friend of a friend.” He'd learned quite a lot about Tunia and the Judda family. “Or my sister or maybe a cousin probably knows her, can tell me-“
“You don't talk to her?”
“Her. No, not until we're dating. That's-“ He'd never thought of it this way. “-like a contract, like you're buying seed corn or a rooster. Like we buy each other on spec.”
The older woman also sat on her board. “So, two nights ago, Loria spoke to you-“
He could feel himself blushing. “She did.”
“What did she say?”
“She told you?”
“We talked,” said Wend.
He couldn't lie. He wouldn't know what to hide. He said, “Loria came with me back to the House of Healing. She brought a blanket. I rolled up in mine. I was tired. There wasn't any light, of course, so I couldn't see her face and she couldn't see mine. Talking's easier that way somehow. I just thought we'd talk until I fell asleep.
“She said, 'Do you want to make babies with me?'”
“What did you take that to mean?”
He looked at Loria's mother. “It means rub up against. F-fuck. How could it mean anything else?”
“Yes. Tim, we say that when we want to talk about marrying. Raising children. How to take care of them, how many you can afford-”
“No, look, she touched me. I would have, but I was a little slow, maybe. She was a little distance away and I couldn't see her face. I didn't see it coming. 'Do you want to make babies with me?' and then a hand came out of the dark and had my knee. I pulled, and she came to me, and we did it.”
The other board riders were all dut on the water. Leaving them alone. Pointedly?
Wend Bednacourt was smiling, but not at him. “And last night?”
“I couldn't find Loria. All day.”
“She went with some others, spice hunting.”