He couldn't quite see how it was done. Loose a line from its knob on the rim of the driver's alcove, snap it like a whip, then retie it. It looked easy; it looked purposeless. Senka and Rian moved briskly along the arc of knobs. When they met at the center, several chugs could be seen to be loose and moving toward the beach.
The younger women stepped daintily down to the Road, then helped Shireen down. Damon and Tim stayed to open the wagon's side, then dropped to join them. Damon and the women were all armed, even Shireen,
All of ibn-Rushd's chugs were loose now. The other wagons, spread far apart up and down the Road, had released theirs.
“We've got time to set some fire pits,” Damon said. He pulled shovels from the wagon. “Tim, come on down to the beach. The labor yutzes know what to do.”
The sea was two hundred meters away. Most of the women, and not many men, walked down to the beach, taking no notice of two hundred and fifty chugs rolling down behind them in two slow waves. The chugs veered wide of the freshwater flow and its delta mouth.
There were old fire pits to be dug out. Men dug. Women supervised. Chugs flowed around them and into the waves.
Yutzes brought dry vegetation, Earthlife and Destiny trees and weeds. Tim saw two men dragging a lace-festooned log, and jumped to help. They set it on tinder in a dug-out pit.
One of the men asked, “You're Tim from ibn-Rushd? I'm Bord'n from Lyons wagon. Bord'n, not Boardman, whatever the merchants tell you. This's Hal, from Lyons too, but he's a chef.”
The women were starting their fires.
“Hello, Bord'n, Hal. Are all yutzes men?”
Bord'n laughed. Hal said, “All I ever saw. A pregnant yutz could be awkward. You don't see children either on a caravan.”
Still talking, the two men had him by the elbows and were walking him up toward the wagons before he could quite catch on.
With no discussion and no sign of haste, every human being in sight was ambling uphill toward the wagons. They climbed onto roofs and settled in. Senka, Damon, and Joker were already in place. Hal and Bord'n urged Tim up, and followed.
Damon greeted them; Senka passed around a pitcher of water flavored with lemons. Rian ibn-Rushd wasn't in sight. She must be visiting another wagon.
A forest rolled out of the water, black and bronze and yellow. A forest of seaweed, and motion working within it. Chugs.
Thrashing fish were dropping out of the weed, and chugs left the line to snap them up before they could reach water. Half-seen chugs were steadily pulling the beached forest apart, eating the crabs and fish and shellfish as they were exposed.
Tim watched in fascination.
As if at a signal, the chugs all began moving inland, leaving the weed behind.
Then things began coming out of the water.
They didn't look particularly scary. They were heavy and flat. The waves didn't topple them. They crawled onto land, paused a moment, then moved after the chugs faster than a walking man. There were twenty in sight when the first reached the beached seaweed.
The family ibn-Rushd, and their visitors, took their positions. “Save your bullets,” Damon told Tim. “You too, Joker.”
Tim had only been given six. It must be very natural, he thought, for a new yutz to waste bullets. So Tim held his pose and his fire.
A shark was three or four times the size of a chug, and flatter, built lower to the ground. Its shell was smaller and more simplified than the ornate points and edges of a chug shell. Its big head was mostly beak and shell cap and a backward-pointing prong for counterbalance. The beak was all points and curved edges, built for ripping. The eyes faced forward in deep recesses.
Even so, these were clearly the chugs' relatives. Chugs carried shields with edges and points that could gash a predator. Sharks carried weaponry.
The sharks paused at the seaweed forest. They were nosing into the weeds, seeking the same prey that served the chugs. The chugs were halfway to the wagons, moving as fast as Tim had seen them move.
One, then several sharks crawled over the weed in pursuit of the receding chugs.
Guns began to fire. Bullets thudded into the few sharks in the lead, poking holes in their shells or spraying seawater and blood from the rough gray-green skin below.
“Not many this time,” Damon said. “That near one in the middle? That's your target, Tim.”
Flat-footed, leaning forward just a bit, hands pulling against each other with the gun butt between... Tim fired. Bullets thudded into the beast's shell. Maybe one or two were his. He saw a shark still coming, swiveled, and used up his bullets on that one.
Four sharks were down, and the rest were running for the water. They weren't fast. A man could outrun them; but who would tire first, man or shark?
“You all stopped shooting,” Tim noticed, “as soon as they turned tail. Why not kill them all?”
The yutzes looked to Damon, who said, “If we killed off all the sharks, who knows what we'd get instead? We don't know what goes on under the water.”
“Think of us as priests of evolution,” Senka ibn-Rushd said. “Another twenty years, they'll run at the first sound of a gunshot. Maybe they won't chase chugs at all.”
“Here, Tim.” Damon held out a handful of bullets. “You've got good self-control. Take some time tomorrow, get some practice. For now, we don't have much daylight.”
Most of the merchants and yutzes began setting up tents. Those of ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons set up to cook dinner. The evening was turning misty.
Marilyn Lyons glowed in the evening light. She was two centimeters taller than Tim and weighed more too. She dressed in brilliant greens and lavenders, dramatic against her white skin and black hair. She pulled cookware out of the storage compartments of Lyons wagon, hefting gear with no visible effort while she rattled off directions a little faster than Tim could follow.
“Teapot. Cook pot. Randall, Hal, get these on the fire and fill them with water. Add the turkeys when the big pot boils. You cleaned them? Good. Wok. Wok. Tim, you want both of these? And take this.” She didn't hand it to him; she pointed.
Two flattened cylinders half a meter tall, both glossy glaring red, in a niche beneath Lyon wagon. Tim wrapped his arm around one and caught a familiar scent.
“The speckles always comes back here. Always.”
Tim said, “Right.”
“That fire, that's yours to work on. The yutzes have the eggs and the veggies are in Dodgson wagon. Boardman, you're with Tim. Tim, any questions?”
“Why did the founders thaw these flies?”
Laughter shook her whole body. “They must have been crazy. Anyone want ovens?”
Randall took the pots and moved briskly away. Bord'n gathered up cooking tools, forks and knives and spoons and spatulas, and set them in a flat shell that must have come off the back of a record-sized shark. He followed Tim, towing the shark shell.
Cookware stored aboard ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons was little different from what Tim had practiced with in Twerdahl Town. That was a relief. Vegetables were what the merchants could buy in towns and carry in wagons. Meat was what they could kill. Yutzes and merchants had been out hunting while the wagons were in motion.
Lyons wagon's two woks were bigger than he was used to. No problem: a big wok could cook the same omelet as a small one. He was given oil. Yutzes from other wagons had the vegetables he needed. Bord'n had brought knives, spatulas, a whirring thing to whip eggs.
But the eggs were tremendous. He asked, “Bord'n, is this some Destiny sea thing?”
Bord'n grinned. “Ostrich eggs. Big bird supposed to be from Earth. Lot of 'em running around here. You maybe saw the mom, and maybe you'll eat her tonight, 'cause we shot three this afternoon.”