“Sure-ah,” Mikkal said. “He has a look of new songs and jokes in him.”
“Your keeper won’t have much to spare,” Samlo warned. “If you use up supplies and give no return—well, maybe after we’re back in the green and you dismissed, he’ll track you down.”
“He won’t want to, sir … King,” Ivar promised.
“Better make sure of that,” Samlo said. “Mikkal, the shooting gallery’s still assembled. Go see how many lightsweeps he can hit with that rifle of his. Find some broken-down equipment for him to repair; the gods know we have enough. Run him, and if he’s breathing hard after half a dozen clicks, trade him back, because he’d never get across the Dreary alive.” He rose, while telling Ivar: “If you pass, you’ll have to leave that slugthrower with me. Only hunting parties carry firearms in a Train, and just one to a party. We’d lose too many people otherwise. Now I have to go see the animal acts get properly bedded down. You be off too.”
VI
In a long irregular line, herd strung out behind, the caravan departed. A few persons rode in the saddle, a few more in or on the vehicles; most walked. The long Aenean stride readily matched wagons bumping and groaning over roadless wrinkled hills. However, the going was stiff, and nobody talked without need. Perched on rooftops, musicians gave them plangent marches out of primitive instruments, drums, horns, gongs, bagpipes, many-stringed guitars. A number of these players were handicapped, Ivar saw: crippled, blind, deformed. He would have been shocked by so much curable or preventable woe had they not seemed as exhilarated as he was.
Near sundown, Waybreak was out on the undulant plain of Ironland. Coarse red soil reached between clumps of gray-green starkwood or sword trava, dried too hard for there to be a great deal of dust. Samlo cried halt by an eroded lava flow from which thrust a fluted volcanic plug. “The Devil’s Tallywhacker,” Mikkal told his protege. “Traditional first-night stopping place out of Arroyo, said to be protection against hostile gods. I think the practice goes back to the Troubles, when wild gangs went around, starveling humans or stranded remnants of invader forces, and you might need a defensible site. Of course, nowadays we just laager the wagons in case a zoosny wind should blow up or something like that. But it’s as well to maintain cautionary customs. The rebellion proved the Troubles can come again, and no doubt will … as if that’d ever needed proof.”
“Uh, excuse me,” Ivar said, “but you sound, uh, surprisin’ly sophisticated—” His voice trailed off.
Mikkal chuckled. “For an illiterate semi-savage? Well, matter o’ fact, I’m not. Not illiterate, anyhow. A part of us have to read and write if we’re to handle the outside world, let alone operate swittles like the Treasure Map. Besides, I like reading, when I can beg or steal a book.”
“I can’t understand why you—I mean, you’re cut off from things like library banks, not to mention medical and genetic services, everything you could have—”
“At what price?” Mikkal made a spitting noise, though he did not waste the water. “We’d either have to take steady work to gain the jingle, or become welfare clients, which’d mean settling down as even meeker law-lickers. The end of the Trains, therefore the end of us. Didn’t you know? A tineran can’t quit. Stuff him into a town or nail him down on a farm, it’s a mercy when death sets his corpse free to rot.” “I’d heard that,” Ivar said slowly. “But thought the tale must be an extravaganza, hey? No, it’s true. It’s happened. Tinerans jailed for any length of time sicken and die, if they don’t suicide first. Even if for some reason like exile from the Train, they have to turn sitter, ‘free workers’ ”—the tone spoke the quotation marks—"they can’t breed and they don’t live long … That’s why we have no death penalty. Twice I’ve seen the king order a really bad offender cast out, and word sent to the rest of the Trains so none would take him in. Both times, the felly begged for a hundred and one lashes instead.” Mikkal shook himself. “C’mon, we’ve work to do. You unhitch the team, hobble them, and bring them to where the rest of the critters are. Dulcy’ll answer your questions. Since I’ve got you for extra hands, I’ll get my tools resharpened early, this trek.” He performed as juggler and caster of edged weapons and, he added blandly, card sharp and dice artist.
Men erected a collapsible trough, filled it from a water truck, added the vitamin solutions necessary to supplement grazing upon purely native vegetation. Boys would spend the night watching over the small, communally owned herd and the draught animals. Besides spider wolves or a possible catavale, hazards included crevices, sand hells, a storm howling down with the suddenness and ferocity common anywhere on Aeneas. If the weather stayed mild, night chill would not be dangerous until the route entered the true barrens. These creatures were the product of long breeding, the quadrupeds and hexapods heavily haired, the big neomoas similarly well feathered.
Of course, all Ironland was not that bleak, or it would have been uncrossable. The Train would touch at oases where the tanks could be refilled with brackish water and the bins with forage.
Inside the wagon circle, women and girls prepared the evening meal. In this nearly fuelless land they cooked on glowers. Capacitors had lately been recharged at a power station. To have this done, and earn the wherewithal to pay, was a major reason why the migrations passed through civilized parts.
Virgil went down. Night came almost immediately after. A few lamps glowed on wagonsides, but mainly the troop saw by stars, moons, auroral flickers to northward. A gelid breeze flowed off the desert. As if to shelter each other, folk crowded around the kettles. Voices racketed, chatter, laughter, snatches of song.
Except for being ferociously spiced, the fare was simple, a thick stew scooped up on rounds of bread, a tarry-tasting tea for drink. Tinerans rarely used alcohol, never carried it along. Ivar supposed that was because of its dehydrating effect.
Who needed it, anyway? He had not been this happy in the most joyous beer hall of Nova Roma, and his mind stayed clear into the bargain.
He got his first helping and hunkered down, less easily than they, beside Mikkal and Dulcy. At once others joined them, more and more till he was in a ring of noise, faces, unwashed but crisp-smelling bodies. Questions, remarks, japes roiled over him. “Hey-ah, townboy, why’ve you gone walkabout? … Hoping for girls? Well, I hope you won’t be too tired to oblige ’em, after a day’s hike … Give us a song, a story, a chunk o’ gossip, how ’bout that? … Ayuh, Banji, don’t ride him hard, not yet. Be welcome, lad … You got coin on you? Listen, come aside and I’ll explain how you can double your money … Here, don’t move, I’ll fetch you your seconds … ”
Ivar responded as best he dared, in view of his incognito. He would be among these people for quite a while, and had better make himself popular. Besides, he liked them.
At length King Samlo boomed through the shadows: “Cleanup and curfew!” His followers bounced to obey the first part of the command. Ivar decided that the chaos earlier in the day, and now, was only apparent. Everyone knew his or her job. They simply didn’t bother about military snap and polish.
Musicians gathered around the throne. “I thought we were ordered to bed,” Ivar let fall.
“Not right away,” Dulcy told him. “Whenever we can, we have a little fun first, songfest or dance or—” She squeezed his hand. “You think what you can do, like tell us news from your home. He’ll call on you. Tonight, though, he wants—Yes. Fraina. Fraina of Jubilee. Mikkal’s sister … half-sister, you’d say; their father can afford two wives. She’s good. Watch.”