“Hmmm.”
“Can we get on a caravan? Will you come with me?”
She hesitated. “You know there are certain rules.”
“I double-damned don't seem to know what they are!”
“We'd both be rubbing up against locals, mostly younger locals who can make babies. We'll be trained for that at the camp. I don't really know more than that, but I hear jokes.”
“Sounds like fun?” He put a question in that, and she grinned. “We can still rub up against each other. I remember the ibn-Rushds did.”
She said, “You know how to cook, but they'll train you to sit behind a counter and sell cookware and speckles.”
“I've watched. Only watched.”
“The third rule is very important. Keep the caravan secrets. Never tell.”
“My darling, you seem to have learned a lot of what they never tell.”
“I listened to merchants at Wave Rider for years before you came. I've spent more years talking to shopkeepers. A lot of them retired from the wagons, you know. Even so, I don't know anything deep. We'll have to persuade a wagonmaster that we can be trusted.”
He thought. Smiled. “I could persuade someone that I have kept a secret. I could ask, 'What would happen if Spadoni wagon fell into the hands of, bandits?' Better to trust me than someone who hasn't been tested.”
“What does it mean?”
Doubtfully, “Should I tell you?”
'Jeremy!”
“Spadoni is where they keep the real guns. Tucker has the shark guns and ammo, the stuff the yutzes use. The yutzes don't see what's in Spa- doni, and locals shouldn't have it, let alone bandits. If bandits stopped Spadoni, the whole caravan would have to deal with it.”
“Any idea what those weapons are like?”
“Some-”
“Don't tell me. Don't tell anyone.”
“Can we get in?”
“I don't know. Best if there's an opening on one of the wagons. Sometimes they're shorthanded. We can ask Walther Simonsen at Romanoff's. He knows you're the real thing. The spring caravan won't be back in time to do us any good, so there's no point in you talking to them. Talk to the suppliers.”
“Yes. Harlow, thank you.”
“Can Wave Rider do without us both?”
“We'll hire someone. I'd better tell someone where the extra speckles are. Brenda.”
She was searching for something in his eyes. “I don't see why it's so important to you. Oh, damn, of course I do. I forget who you are. You want to go home.”
That was true, and he nodded.
“Jeremy, promise me you won't do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Don't run away home when you get to Spiral Town. Disappearing from a caravan rouses all kinds of excitement. They wouldn't leave until they found you or your corpse. They could cut off the speckles to Spiral Town! Promise?”
“Harlow, I promise.”
“Then I'll get us on a caravan.”
From autumn to summer was a happy time. Jeremy Winslow paid attention. Look again, it might he gone.
No way could he board a caravan without a background check. He'd made a whimsical choice twenty-seven years ago, and flOW the computer had him as Jeremy Winslow born Hearst. What might Willow and Randall Hearst have to say to that?
He went hack to Medical to get his knee looked at, and wangled two hours in the library.
Willow Hearst was dead: killed by overweight.
Randall Hearst had become an alcoholic. His periodic treatments were a matter of record.
Risk it.
Jeremy Hearst, born on the Road, was not a terribly happy child in
Destiny Town. He dropped out of Wide Wade's in adolescence, got into cooking anyway.
He took long walks along the beach with anyone who would come. He swam. He didn't risk the board. Caravan merchants need their legs! Harlow said that the bus stopped at Baikunur Beach, where the shuttles were loaded; prospective caravaners walked twenty klicks further to where they'd be trained, and they dared not arrive limping.
There was a thing Harlow couldn't help him with. How could he get fertile speckles across the Neck?
Get them into a caravan: a chef must carry speckles. But nothing of Destiny Town technology crossed to the Crab. No caravan, no wagon, no man or woman crossed the Neck without a skin search, Harlow said.
Was that true?
He couldn't quite ask, but-“Harlow, they take speckles pouches. And the guns in Spadoni wagon aren't low-tech.”
She shrugged.
At a guess: the rest of a caravan might be destroyed, but the prole guns in the #2 wagon must not fall into bandit hands. So phones or superskin or anything of settler magic would be kept in the #2 wagon too. And if a man couldn't get a pouch of speckles in there, he sure couldn't get one back out.
Jeremy considered a hidden pouch in a backpack.
He considered a trip to the Neck by surfboard: hide a pouch of speckles, pick it up after the search and during the leavetaking banquet.
He began playing in Wave Rider's kitchen.
In early spring Jeremy was able to say to Harlow, “Close your eyes. Try this.” It was a sweet fruit jell cut to the size of a thumb and rolled in seeds.
“Delicious,” Harlow said. She considered. “Sesame? Sesame and speckles.” She laughed at his chagrin. “Nobody else would have guessed, Jeremy! I'm the only one who knows you get your speckles free.”
'It's the sesame and honey that costs.”
She looked at what she'd bitten in half. Pale brown sesame seeds, bright yellow speckles. “You should dye them.”
Jeremy used a dark blue food dye, dilute. The tiny yellow seeds came out green as Earthlife grass. He could put green dye in the jell, or make a rainbow of colors. He dyed the sesame seeds red. He called it festivity candy, and then just festivity.
His only question now was whether dyed speckles seeds would sprout.
In spring, in the lettuce patch, they did.
And the autumn caravan departed at the height of summer.
34
The Autumn Caravan
We've found some animals that look like little armored Volkswagens.
Something about the position of the sun on his cheek brought Jeremy Winslow gently awake.
He was dozing upright in the driver's alcove. Harlow was driving. Behind them on the roof, Tanya Hearst kept watch with Steban, the new yutz they'd picked up in Haven. They weren't paying much attention.
In this territory, they needn't. There was farmland on both sides, and large houses sparsely set. People who feared bandits didn't build like this.
It was all new. This must have been wilderness when last he'd seen it. Jeremy wondered if he would recognize the New Hann Farm.
The sun: it was midafternoon, almost time to quit. A caravan doesn't hurry. If they didn't reach Warkan's Tavern tonight they'd make it tomorrow.
Some pointed structure poked up from the Road, too far ahead to make out.
Jeremy looked downslope, a mere half-klick to a strip of sand and then water dark with Destiny devilhair weed. It all looked strangely familiar. He still didn't know where he was until somebody far ahead shouted, “Warkan's Tavern!”
Angelo Hearst climbed up from the sales window to see. The word bounced down the caravan's length to Hearst wagon, and Angelo's bellow sent it on, while Jeremy stared ahead in befuddlement.
-Oh, of course, he'd been looking for Carder's Boat! which had been there forever, until-
He'd last seen Carder's Boat moored offshore of Tail Town. Haunted Bay fishermen used it as a dock. It had swarmed with children on the day the caravan rolled through.