But then Senka ibn-Rushd must already know.
And he burned.
In the morning Rian was there, her back against his, sound asleep. He watched her for a time, savoring her touch without moving, smelling her hair, feeling good.
Rian was lean and flexible and smooth. She made love with her mother's ferocity... and her mother's perception for a man's erogenous zones and how they could be made to react. But Rian paid more attention to what she was doing. The taste of semen surprised her. He was ticklish just above both hipbones; she was delighted. She made momentary mistakes-an elbow whacking him just under the eye-and caught herself, like an apprentice.
Were merchant women trained somewhere? And the men too?
Faint noises told him other yutzes were awake.
Rian woke when he moved. Scrambling into his clothes, he asked her, “What's Spiral Town like?”
She looked at him sleepily.
“We wonder,” he said. “It's so close.”
“Why don't you go?”
He improvised. “I think the older people don't want the Spirals to know Twerdahl Town is that close.”
“Why?”
“Maybe the Spirals would want to tell us how to live.”
Rian yawned. “Maybe so. Anyway, I've never been in Spiral Town. They used to let us halfway in. They don't anymore, but they still buy from us. Not even Gran Shireen ever saw Columbia,” she said wistfully.
Damon andJoker weren't in the tent. Tim thought nothing of that. While turning bread out of the woks, he noticed how many men weren't staying around for breakfast.
There were times when a yutz might ask questions, and times when he must listen. A fresh yutz must be taught. This seemed different. This morning the merchants moved in a closed and purposeful pattern, and a yutZ could not make eye contact. Tim could see activity far down the Road, around Spadoni, the weapons wagon. Then men were moving uphill, and everyone was pretending not to notk~e.
Trader secrets.
It took longer to hitch up the chugs, of course, but-as yesterday- the caravan only moved one generous caravan length. Then all the women and yutzes (and no men) began a cleaning program. Wagons were emptied out and every compartment cleaned. Yutzes polished metalwork until, for the first time, Tim saw wagon trim gleaming. Clothing was laundered.
A handful of merchant women hung around Tucker wagon. They were still taking bandits seriously.
Dinner was skimpy again, but nobody seemed to mind. Everyone ate in a hurry, talking around mouthfuls of food. Tim never twitched anymore at the sight of men and women talking together. Still... something odd here.
Tim assembled a dinner for Shireen ibn-Rushd, who smiled down at one and all from her perch in the wagon's driver's alcove. She thanked him, and he said, “They all seem indecently cheerful.”
“Isn't it wonderful? There's always a time like this once on a circuit. All the men gone. Just the yutz men and the merchant women, and no locals.”
Oh.They were talking in couples, many of them.
The yutzes had cleaned up dinner before the sun dipped into evening clouds, with Quicksilver just behind. In fading dusk there was some singing, some storytelling, but a good deal of pairing up and disappearing into tents. Patriss Dole of Dole wagon sang with Tim, and taught him words and harmony to one of the ballads. Her own voice was very good. They'd never spoken until tonight.
They spent some time watching the sky. Patriss was sure she'd found Argos, a steady star with a blue tinge, in the plane of the planets. Wouldn't the Argos mutineers be carving up asteroids by now? Tim saw a meteor from the west, not blue-bright enough to match vids he'd seen of Cavorite rising to orbit, but still.
They went to Dole tent. Too late, too dark to be introduced to the other occupants. Just as well. They explored each other by touch in near-perfect darkness, made love, and talked, and loved again.
He'd hoped she would speak of where the merchant men had gone. She didn't, and he didn't ask.
Krista Wu had died of her wounds in the night. They buried her upslope, with a handful of apple seeds.
Thirty men didn't rejoin the caravan until near sunset the next night. They were tired and dirty and laughing among themselves, and again there was no eye contact for a yutz. They had shot a deer... or killed it with something stranger; it seemed chewed almost in half.
Grilling venison in the dusk, Tim could watch the merchants gathering at Spadoni wagon. The tools they were carrying, that Tim had never more than glimpsed, were gone when they broke into twos and threes to get their dinner.
Shortly after dawn, the caravan was rolling through tilted grasslands.
Twenty merchants and yutzes walked past slowly moving wagons.
Though they all carried shark guns, nobody seemed to be worried about bandits.
Eight were hunters. They carried the long knives Twerdahls called “weed cutters.” The rest were fishers. Most of them carried line and poles, but Tim and Hal had been given long-handled nets.
When they were clear of the wagons, the hunters turned off, inland. The fishers continued. Now lifeless melted-looking bluffs loomed on both sides of the Road.
Cavorite must have crossed a ridge here, and recrossed and hovered, to carve a level path. When they reached the end of the cut, Tim peered over. He could see a path of gray rock leading steeply downslope through dense chaparraclass="underline" a waterfall of molten rock, long since cooled.
Merchants spoke a murky jargon among themselves. Even long-term yutzes used familiar words in strange ways. Joker ibn-Rushd and Eduardo Spadoni talked at length in low, angry voices, both of them waving ahead and shoreward. The few phrases Tim heard didn't tell him anything.
When Tim got tired of that, he dropped back among the yutzes. They were talking about catching fish: a great weight of words for a task that seemed exceedingly simple. Tim listened and tried to learn, while they marched for most of a morning.
The Road emerged from between the bluffs. Now it split- No, the Road ran straight ahead, miles from the sea. But just for a moment- Tim looked away to rest his eyes. At the edge of vision, a curve off to the left suggested itself. A cut through the low scrub forest, away from the Road. Sparse vegetation was what he'd seen, nothing more; but he knew.
Cavorite had curved from its path, rising into the sky. Had flown downslOpe to explore, charring the soil. Returned and continued the Road.
They were approaching a river and a bridge. The wagons were two hours behind them. Hal was telling Dannis Stolsh, “We ran back as far as Doheny wagon. I had two bites in me the size of walnuts. Not one of us went past Doheny. We just swarmed up and in, you wouldn't believe how fast. It was crowded in there, and all men, too, and Bryne Doheny trying to bandage the holes. We could hear the little monsters batting against the walls-”
Tim didn't know enough to get a handle on this, and he didn't want to interrupt.
The merchants were still quarreling. Eduardo Spadoni waved downslope and barked something sharp. He strode away fast, and Joker lagged to give him room. In a minute that put him alongside Tim.
Tim wanted to see his face. He asked, “Joker. Is it a nickname?”
Now Joker's anger wasn't showing. He wore that bland look: secrets. He pronounced his name, differently from what Tim had been saying, and spelled it out: “D-Z-H-O-K-H-A-R. An old name, not meant to be laughed at. My uncle's name is the same, but the family calls him Joe.”
“Dzhokharr,” Tim tried to imitate Joker's pronunciation. “What did Hal mean, bites the size of walnuts?”
Joker stared, then barked sudden laughter. “I remember that. Some turkey hunters ran into a hive of firebees in the salt dunes ten days down the Road from here. I could see men running back and climbing all over Doheny wagon and wedging their way in. Then the chugs, they all folded into their shells in a wave that ran right down the caravan. I just gaped, but Father, he got us inside. We all had to hide in the wagons, and some of us got bit. Stopped us for three hours. So, Tim, are you glad you joined a caravan?”