So Tim Bednacourt pretended to be something he was not, and it seemed he had the knack. But Jemmy Bloocher had never had the chance! Most men, most women, in Spiral Town and anywhere on the world of Destiny, would live among a few hundred people. All would see them growing up; all would know their every secret.
Loria knew who Tim Bednacourt was.
He missed Loria terribly.
Rian ibn-Rushd was in a cluster of Home cousins, looking hemmed in. Tim wondered if she needed rescue. She caught his eye, and he went to join them.
By morning light Rian looked hungover and disheveled, but her smile was enchanting, conspiratorial. “You look like something pulled out of a pickling vat,” she told him.
Tim felt fine. Rian was seeing what she expected.
Last night had been wonderful. D~fferent. He had thought man would end up with one of the locals, but they'd wobbled off to the tent together. Then Rian had forgotten that she was a skilled... was there a word? Sexist? She'd lost a bit of dexterity, and she'd lost herself in sensation. Sex was a game nobody lost.
She helped him into his clothes, and he enjoyed being just a little clumsy.
Yutzes and merchants and locals all looked a bit seedy. The caravan got a late start. They left a variety of goods behind: new tubing for the still, melons and rice, pouches of speckles. They went away with fruit brandy and little clear bottles of alcohol antiseptic, and big wheels of yellow cheese. Mason Home from Dionne wagon stayed; Anthon Wilson joined Milasevik wagon as a yutz.
When next Tim saw Rian she was asleep on the roof.
Above and below the Road were shallow grass slopes dotted with sheep, the source of the cheese they'd eaten last night.
The Road had angled inland since before they reached the Shire, three days ago. They were a good two klicks inland now, and half a klick above sea level. The shore ahead and below curved around in a vast half-circle. Tim couldn't judge its actual size.
“Rian,” Tim asked, “what if you got pregnant on the Road?”
“Then I get a baby.”
“Raised by the caravan?”
Her eyes opened. “Tim, it's a secret.”
By now he knew better than to probe further. “Rian, do you think Cavorite was avoiding the sea?”
Rian mulled the question and presently said, “Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Maybe not. Go get us some tea, Tim.”
Being this far inland gave access to the grassland, grazing for sheep and/or forage for goats on the hills beyond, whatever goats might be. Last night he'd eaten what he was told was goat cheese.
But this must have been a blackened, lifeless slope until Cavorite seeded the land with grass, and returned to leave half-grown sheep and goats.
Tim reached back into memory for the map of the Crab. A composite photograph from eleven hundred klicks high, the text called it, with sketches of Spiral Town and the Road overlaid. Those added lines were fiction, though, drawn by people long dead who never knew where Cavorite had gone. It was worth remembering that Cavorite had flown, that the crew had seen patterns a bicyclist or merchant could only guess at.
What had they seen, that they put the Road so high? Level terrain here, suitable for the Road. Bluffs at the sea's edge, or a color in the water that matched a breeding ground for lungsharks, or worse. The lessons said that you could see sea-bottom contours through many meters of water, if you were high enough, looking straight down.
Two hundred-odd years ago. Best to keep that in mind too. Was the sea higher in that age? Were there storms to make the shore a death trap?
Something had persuaded Cavorite to leave the sea.
Water and tea leaves and a glass jar were kept on the wagon roof. During the day it would be warm and fragrant and ready to drink. Tim filled five big mugs and shared them out, then refilled the jar.
Merchants had their secrets, and questions about Cavorite were not welcome. Tim kept his silence. He'd learn about Cavorite. He'd learn why merchants would rub up against anyone along the Road, except in the Shire and Spiral Town. The secrets in Spadoni and Tucker wagons didn't interest him, but he'd learn why merchants kept them hidden. There were questions he hadn't thought of asking yet, and he'd learn those too.
A river ran in S-curves, broad and shallow, across the caravan's path. Tim could see no sign of a bridge.
Tim lay on the roof with his head over the driver's alcove. He pointed ahead and asked, “How do we pass that?”
Damon looked up from where he was cleaning their guns. “The Spectre? You'll see.”
They were all clutching big mugs of sun-warmed tea. Joker was driving, Shireen beside him, their heads a little below his. Neither looked up as the old woman prattled.
“Lucia Doheny? She doesn't have a family. It's just her-”
“She did, though,” Joker said.
“Oh, yes. Doheny wagon was the infirmary before I was born, but it used to be at the tail, until Lucia's man and father and boy and girl were killed by... I can't recall.”
“An animal?” Tim asked. “Bandits?”
“Bandit town, I suppose-”
“Wasser Township!” Damon snapped without turning around. A few moments later he said, “They're gone now, of course. That's their graveyard upslope. It's what reminded me.”
There was nothing to mark a graveyard here, and nothing to mark a town ahead or behind, unless... a certain linearity to the chaos downslope.
“Yes, Wasser,” said Shireen. “They were buying stuff as we went past.
Not buying much. All crowded around Doheny there at the tail, but we didn't notice anything until they all pulled knives. Lucia was on the roof. That saved her. Brenda Small saw what was happening back there and we came. They killed Morris and Boris and tore ~their way in and got Wendy and, and, I can't remember, the little boy. But we got there in time to save Lucia.”
Damon: “So Lucia reinforced Doheny wagon. Built it like a safe. Turned it into a refuge. Oh, and it's heavier than the rest of the wagons, so Doheny always has twenty chugs even if they have to come off another wagon.”
Shireen: “A lot of Wasser Township got away. They bothered us for years after.”
Damon: “We burned their village, though. Most of their graves weren't marked, but we flattened those too.”
Both front wheels went over a bump.
When the rear wheels bumped, Tim was at the roof's edge to see what happened. The Road humped, just a bit, in a little ridge. Cavorite must have stopped here and then resumed, and what was the ship doing in between?
But Doheny wagon was arcing around, off the Road. Spadoni wagon's chugs were following Doheny around one curved arm of the river. That seemed far more interesting to Tim.
“Damon, what are they doing?”
Damon looked around. “Turning off for Haunted Bay.”
“Damon, is that whole stretch of coast Haunted Bay?”
“Sure. Baytown is just downslope.”
The bay stretched around in a ragged arc, and Tim remembered the maps. He suddenly realized what he was seeing.
The arc was a hundred and ten klicks around, he remembered that. The middle of that arc, unseen, was the Neck. Beyond that... he was looking at the mainland.
The trail down didn't match the curves of the Spectre River, but it had its own switchbacks. It was unplanned, not made by Cavorite's flame. The Road ran straight beneath the river and on out of sight, as if there had been no river when the Road was made.
Tim wondered if they would leave the wagons. But the chugs must be fed, and they were two klicks uphill from their clientele, so the whole caravan came picking their way down.
There was a bridge. Doheny's chugs were already plodding past it. The river was wide here, and the bridge was too, with two sturdy feet in midstream. This didn't look like Cavorite's work. Impressive, but crude.