Brenda began to turn pink. Harlow asked, "Shake you up?" She was not quite amused, and not shocked.
"You knew."
"Every child learns that."
"Brenda? You? The other kids too?"
"You all got well. Daddy, you haven't changed."
But Jeremy Winslow's children knew him as a Crab shy who worked the pit at Wave Rider. The wonder was that they gave their father any respect at all.
"You'd have died without us," Lloyd said casually.
"Sure, we owe you. My ancestors owe yours. But I think they robbed us too."
"Robbed-?"
Dinner came: communal dishes, separate plates. Lloyd waited until they had served themselves. Then he repeated, "Robbed you?"
Jeremy pointed up at the hologram chandeliers. "Settler magic all around us. Megas of electric power-"
"That's from Quicksilver," Lloyd said.
Jeremy said, "That's power beamed from Quicksilver to relay satellites to guide spots all over Destiny Town and way beyond. They could be sending power to Spiral Town too, couldn't they?"
"We could reset them," Harlow admitted.
"I see a lot of tugs-"
"There's just one factory, Jeremy."
"Lloyd, it's nearly the same design as the power plants on Quicksilver, or a Begley cloth weaver unit seen under a microscope, or Destiny Town's Varmint Killer. It's unmistakable. Your tug factory was designed in Sol system. More to the point, it will accept a signal to reproduce itself."
"I don't actually know that."
"Cavorite made a lot of trips in eleven months. Speckles to Spiral Town, home with a loaded cargo hold every time, right?"
His family was embarrassed. Jeremy kept his voice down. "I can see it. Your ancestors stripped us. There's nothing of settler magic left in Spiral Town but," now he came to think of it, "a handful of computers, a paint machine, thousands of electric lights, the Road, Varmint Killer, and a cave in a hillside where Begley cloth comes from," and he couldn't suppress the smile.
Lloyd smiled back. "Quite a lot."
"Well, that cave was just too big to steal, I guess, and the rest isn't valuable enough."
Harlow said, "Jeremy, suppose you're right, suppose Cavorite carried some communal supplies away from Base One. You did survive."
"So far. Harlow, they took too much. Everything's wearing out."
"Mmm."
Was he annoying his family without reason? It wasn't as if he'd evolved any kind of answer. He turned his attention to dinner.
The food resembled Spiral Town cuisine, with an emphasis on sauces and potatoes and a variety of salads, light on the speckles. Hey, this wasn't a potato. Shreds of black in the pork-and-broccoli, yellow-green in the duck dish, were certainly Destiny spices. There were spiky yellow-green disks in a brown sauce: more Destiny plants, and his family was careful cutting off the rind.
Jeremy's taste and belly and intellect feasted all together. What flavors has Simonsen matched here?
It became a lively family discussion. He's done something to these almonds. How can our kitchen do this? and this?
He could see their relief. Jeremy was being difficult, but we got him to change the subject.
But who else could he ask?
He had questions. His family had pieces of answers, if there were answers. His family would protect him, knowing that Jeremy Winslow was fiction.
"Otterfolk," he said. "They drove Cavorite's crew crazy. Leaving Haunted Bay kills them. Here's an intelligent species that can't explore. What's intelligence for if not for seeking knowledge?"
"They're happy," Brenda said.
"Jeremy, we all read those old records," Harlow said. "One point Daryl Twerdahl made. The Otterfolk knew some of them were dying, but they kept coming back for more. The ones who lived had tales to tell... however they tell tales."
"So they'd die to learn more, but they can't," Jeremy said.
"Daddy, they've got us. We can show them things."
"Here's my point. Feeling the way they did about the Otterfolk, and knowing what Argos had done to them, how could Cavorite's people take away our access to space and leave us marooned?"
Lloyd said, "We had Cavorite. You had Columbiad."
Jeremy thought it over... and Lloyd was right.
He said little after that. He listened to in-group chat from his family, and a few tantalizing snatches of conversation from tables nearby.
Dessert was a mountain of fruit and sorbets. Chef Simonsen brought over a bottle of a sweet wine and poured them thimble-sized glasses. "Tasting wine isn't one of my skills," Jeremy admitted.
"You should start," the chef said severely.
Jeremy heard a big bell's bong before they had finished. "Ten minutes to bus time," Harlow told him.
He paid the bill just like a citizen, by speaking his name and a number to their waiter. Then he tried to get up. No birdfucking- Forgot. They had to help him to his feet, hut he was all right with crutches under him. He wondered if a tablespoon of wine (and a fortified fruit drink) could have thrown his balance off so badly.
In the morning the house was empty. But Jeremy remembered Harlow standing over his futon, looking down at him from what seemed a vast distance.
"Tomorrow, look up hydraulic empire," she'd said.
Karen turned just her head with a delighted smile. "Hi!"
'Hi. Did Nogales take you off the Novabliss?" She seemed far more alert than she had yesterday.
"Don't know. Nogales ... Rita? My doctor? She says I've got to stay out of the sun for a while. And the water. Till autumn!"
"Long time."
Karen said, "It means I can't help you with the pit."
Her hands were still bound but her shoulders moved restlessly. Karen still looked patchy. Better along her ribs and hip, but her shoulder and breast were worst. One big grayish patch of skin had sloughed off her shoulder onto the sheet. Jeremy wondered if he should remove it, or put it back. What was underneath was puffy and red touched with purple.
He said, "You can't talk to the Otterfolk either, and that's the fun part. I should have my knee back before the next caravan. I want to try some things in the kitchen. If any of it works out, we'll be working there instead of the pit-"
"Ah-hah! Brenda got you to Romanoff's!"
"Lucky guess."
"Yeah?"
"Brenda and Lloyd and Harlow took me last night. We're all staying at Harlow's-" except that Lloyd and Brenda went back this morning, and he chose not to tell his wife that.
"We had a good life, didn't we?"
What? Where did that come from? "So far so good," he said cautiously. And every bit of it stolen. He could put off telling her that for a little while yet.
"I used to wonder. Did you and Harlow?"
He didn't ask, Did we what? He spoke the truth while he had the chance. "Yes, while you were carrying Mustafa. We were careful. Your father never caught us."
"Mmm."
"But never after we were married, Karen."
"Good." She shifted a little. "It itches." She shifted again. "Burns. What did you call it? Novabliss? If you run across Dr. Nogales, I need some."
He found someone with a label and told him that Karen needed a doctor. That might get something done, but Rita Nogales should see her.
He looked into some rooms. He stopped at Reception and spoke with Lisa Schiavo. Then he went to the library, the obvious place to wait for a doctor.
CARAVAN
Again, a multitude of entries.
CARAVAN*MAP
Three klicks of the Neck and a twelve-klick stretch of land between the Road and the ocean were all shaded in tan. Call it twenty square klicks: all property of the caravans. A scatter of rectangles and a sprinkling of square dots just the far side of the spaceport (yellow), and another scattering just short of the Neck, and no other buildings in between.