“Down the Road through the cleft, not far. If you go there you don't come back. Andrew, Barda says you've fired yutz guns? What the probes have is worse. Don't ever go up against the probes. And when you talk to them you say the Parole Board. Like their main job is to let us go.”
Jemmy bobbed his chin. His arms and shoulders were hurting now. He held his breathing deep, and reached.
“I'm going out tomorrow to farm in the rain,” he said. “I'm a trusty. Probes come to check on us? But they can't see anything about me but a big jacket with a hood and an orange stripe, unless there's something funny about your legs-“
Half-beard laughed, a full-throated bellow.
Jemmy said, “Right. But you have to tell me what they think you'll be doing-“
“Sit down. Lie down.”
Jemmy lowered his arms, then sat. “I don't know how to get speckles off a plant. Do I have a sack?”
“Backpack. You get your gear after you leave the stormbock. Gatherers get a pack and a scoop glove, this time of year. You get a bird gun. They strip the speckles with the scoop gloves. Come spring they'd be planting. Weeding takes a weed cutter. Probes don't give gatherers weed cutters, so you have to cut the weeds. But you still get the bird gun, and a pack too, but there's rescue gear in yours. You get your gun in the toobhouse and hang it back when you come home, and the probes replace the ammo while you're gone. They take the packs.
“Now, as far as the Parole Board is concerned, nothing, nothing stops us from gathering speckles, and that's how they pick trusties, so you better not show them anything else. Otherwise you don't have to know anything except to count gatherers and see they do the work.”
“Count?”
Half-beard grinned. He said, “You met Shimon. He'll help you. You watch Shimon, don't make it too obvious, and he'll point the way if you get confused-”
“And what will you be doing while Andrew Dowd is leading a work party?”
“Leading a shift.” Half-beard grinned. “And that's my problem.”
Twenty-two prisoners, Jemmy thought. The trusties are prisoners too. Firebird shorts and ponchos would mark them anywhere outside the Winds. Go out without them and you're naked in a storm, and birds tear you apart.
But now the storm gives up a stranger. The Parole Board doesn't know about a twenty-third gatherer carrying shorts and windbreakers that aren't red and yellow with an orange stripe.
Now the probes can count twenty-two while the other Andrew Dowd is off... where? Gathering whatever might be needed when six prisoners disappear wearing clothes they shouldn't own.
Barda Winslow and Andrew Dowd and four others. Not Jemmy Bloocher, unless he can talk his way in.
Do the rest know?
Half-beard was watching his face. “Do you think you can be me?”
“There's no telling what I might have to know. I got Barda talking yesterday. Tell me how you got here.”
Half-beard scowled and turned away.
Jemmy said, “The Parole Board knows how you got here, Andrew. When they ask me, I'd better know.”
Half-beard spoke without turning. “Murder twice. They don't want to know any more. If they do, you killed them when they tried to rob you, okay? The damn tribunal didn't believe you.”
“Transport?”
“Trans-? They walk us in. Felony tape around our wrists, crossed like this in front of us. There's a wagon sealed bike a safe, with gun slits, and tugs to pull it. We stick close to that. We're already wearing firebird colors. If we run, serve us right. Andrew, I got to start dinner sometime. Come along.”
“I was a caravan chef.”
“Barda said.”
He noticed more today. Food was stored in bins near the stove: grains, fresh and dried fruit, potatoes and carrots and other vegetables, a big bottle of cooking oil, some spices. Half-beard opened the bins with a key. Cookware was in there too, including heavy pans and cooking knives. The ovens and burners seemed to run continually, keeping the place warm.
Cooking was wonderfully relaxing. Jemmy helped where he could, peeling and cutting vegetables and feeding the fire, until he got tired. Then he watched. Wibbametta and Half-beard set up the wok.
Indoor cooking was most unlike the fire-pit cooking he'd learned on the Road. Suddenly, powerfully and painfully, Jemmy missed the kitchen in Bboocher Farm.
The gatherers brought a dead bird in with them and gave it to Halfbeard, who passed it to Jemmy and Willametta. Jemmy was startled to find himself holding two raptor-clawed legs while Willametta took the other pair. Big wings drooped between. Eight kilos of Destiny bird!
Half-beard shouted, “We don't stare at it, Andrew, we cut it up and cook it!” Willametta smiled and showed him how to slice under the feathers. The bird didn't seem to have a distinct skin. The feathers were narrow fractal spikes based in muscle tissue. The blood was rich, dark red. This was no relative of the shelled varieties Jemmy had encountered along the Crab.
“I was expecting Earthlife,” Jemmy said. He was surprised, now he thought about it, to find himself holding a l~cnife. Twerdahi Town wouldn't trust a stranger so. “Where are the speckles?”
“You're gonna love this, Andrew. Barda showed me how to stir-fry Destiny bird with potatoes and onions. Speckles? We don't need speckles. The birds and turtles around here concentrate the elements in the meat.”
“But is it all-“
“Sure. The wagons bring in Earthlife food, and we kill windbirds for the meat.” He waved the cooking oil. “This is the only fat we get, and they don't give us enough.
“We were real glad to see you, Andrew. Just anyone wouldn't pass for one of us. It had to be someone who's been starved.” Half-beard smiled. “I'd kill a probe for a rasher of bacon.”
Willametta's lips twitched: a token of a smile. “Fletch. Say fletch of bacon. People will think you're easy.”
The gatherers were piling their ponchos into the dryer, taking firebirdcolored towels and trooping back to the showers.
Before the lights went out, Dennis Levoy cut his hair to match Halfbeard's.
20
The Speckles Crop
You can't eat these seeds straight. On food they're almost salty, almost metallic. I hope we can get used to the taste.
Jemmy entered the stormbock first, with Shimon and four he hadn't met. He got their names: a trusty would know. Rafik, Shar, Denis, Henry- “Henry? You found me.”
Henry grinned. “You looked like a drowned dustbird.”
“Trusty!” Shimon snapped.
“-Trusty,” Henry said.
“Door, Trusty.” That was Shimon again, reminding “Andrew” that the trusty was always first through a door.
He walked into pulsing yellow-white light.
It stopped him for an instant. A flood of raindrops flared irregularly as the light waxed and waned. Somewhere in his murky memory... hadn't he seen this before? Flashing yellow rain. Too tired to look up. A pair of skeletons took him by the arms and told him “Don't say birdfucking aloud!” and led him out of hell... some kind of hallucination?
He didn't look up now either, because two bird-shapes and a cart waited outside in the rain. A cart pulled by a little smooth-shelled machine.
Jemmy lifted his hood and, as hood and arm hid his face from them, shouted over the thunder. “Probes?”
Shimon nodded violently.
Jemmy had thought they'd wait in the toolhouse, where it was dry.
The gatherers were all pulling their hoods up. Jemmy wiped his eyes and looked around and had to throttle a laugh. The hoods had eyes and beaks!
The proles came near, one behind the other and a little to the side. The orange stripes on their ponchos were broad~r than a trusty's. Weapons dangled at their sides, belted over ponchos. Jemmy had seen merchants returning such things to Spadoni wagon after a bandit hunt.