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His family need never know. Jemmy never came to meet us.
What had sent his thoughts straying toward suicide?
Jemmy realized with a start that he was sleeping in the shade of a fool cage.
There were fool cages growing among the manzanita, all around him. Four feet of trunk flared into a
thorny oval cage of black wicker decorated with bronze and scarlet lace, and a few tiny bones in the
cage.
A Destiny bird could perch on any of a number of Destiny plants and find lace to eat. Some plants
grew gaudy lace displays so that birds would transport their seeds. But the lace within a fool cage was a
lure and a trap. A bird could perch on the upper branches of a fool cage, but any breeze that rattled the
branches would cause them to trap a bird's feet, pull it in.
Most Destiny birds had learned to stay away. These bones belonged to Earthlife.
Curdis and Thonny and Brenda would expect to find him on the Road. Jemmy rolled his mattress,
got his pack on, and crawled until the plants were thick enough to hide him walking upright.
The water table was lower now: the plants reached no more than three hundred meters above the
flatland and the Road. Jemmy traveled by night. By day there were plants to hide him. He slept away
from water. A stream might make him a target.
At night the star fields were gaudy, gorgeous. Quicksilver was brilliant but tiny and only showed for a
few minutes after sunset. Kismet, Destiny's massive little moon, cast no more light even at the full. Any
meteor might be Cavorite in reentry, or Argos among the asteroids, making a
few seconds' burn. The land at night was black; a man could hurt himself thinking he saw more detail
than was there.
He could only glimpse the Road in patches, and the sea far beyond. Once he saw a boat moving
parallel to shore. Once, a house or shed that looked abandoned. He hadn't yet seen a human being. Then
again, he didn't intend to.
There were Earthlife birds everywhere, a hundred varieties of song at morning and evening, hawks
hovering on updrafts by day, owls hunting by night. He'd seen the shells and bones the predators had
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made of Destiny birds. And he'd seen fool cages everywhere, with Earthlife bones and beaks in them.
The coming of Columbiad and Cavorite had been good for the fool cages.
They were good for Jemmy. Any bird still flapping inside a fool cage must be fresh and edible. He
found a smallish turkey on the second night, and he pulled on his thick gloves and reached in through the
thorns and strangled it. After dawn he felt safe building a tiny fire in a circle of rocks. The perpetual wind
was enough to whip the smoke away.
On the third night he collected three little birds, pigeons maybe.
At the fourth dawn he crossed above a waterfall, then crawled downhill into brush. The stream had
cut a gorge that ran down to the Road and through it. Someone had built a little bridge over the water.
Three men and a woman had set up camp near the bridge. The chugs were gone-in the water,
likely-but the wagon nearly blocked the bridge.
Jemmy slept away from the water. From time to time he crawled back to the waterfall to spy on the
merchant guards. Their eyes would see only the falling water; a tiny, distant moving man would be lost in
all that motion. Right?
They weren't cheerful as merchants usually were. The woman was middle-aged and snappish; the
younger men obeyed her with little grace.
He was moving back to the stream in midafternoon, careful as ever, when he heard a familiar shout.
"Brenbrenbrendaa!"
He crawled to the edge of the falls and looked down.
The falls drowned out speech. Thonny and Curdis were talking to the guards, to the men. The
woman was talking to Brenda. The merchants' manner had grown cordial.
He crawled closer, staying in the thicket of fool cages. He got down to where the water wasn't so
loud. Then sage and tumbleweed were
growing too close together and he feared merchant guards would see them wiggle.
He heard Thonny shout, "Curdcurdcurdis! That's the last coin we've got!" And the sound of merchant
laughter, and Brenda's laugh too.
Three bicycles moved on, across the bridge and down the Road. Now all Jemmy had to do was catch
them.
They would have gained from better planning. How on Earth was he going to catch bicycles?
Jemmy was seething with impatience, but he'd have to be crazy to move now, in daylight, with
merchants just below him. He crawled back among the fool cages and tried to sleep.
They must know they'd have to wait.
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The next stream. They were past the merchant guards; why not stop? They'd wait at the next stream,
and he'd see them and know it was safe to come down. And if he didn't see them?
No way could he sleep. He crawled up to where plants thinned out to bare rock, and he kept
crawling.
Where water next crossed the Road, they weren't waiting. Jemmy made sure of that, then moved on.
What stopped him next was more than a stream.
The plant interface dipped, an arrowhead shape pointing at the Road. Jemmy's gaze followed the tree
line down along rock that had run like wax. Frozen lava ran up to the ridge a thousand feet above him,
and down almost to the Road itself, ending in a broad patch of green Earthlife trees and water gleaming
between.
Interesting.
Jemmy could picture the giant landers Cavorite and Columbiad hovering on either side of the crest,
moving parallel on pillars of violet flame bright enough to blind any witness, burning off the life of Destiny.
Then return to seed the slopes with Earthlife. One of the ships must have paused here. . . yes, and he
could see why. Above him the ridgeline bent by forty degrees.
Cavorite on the broad side had waited for Columbiad on the narrow side (or vice versa) to round the
curve.
Water at the point of the lava triangle, then a thick stand of Earthlife trees, then the Road. The far
side of the Road was a thriving village. There were shops along the Road, and a setback wide enough
and long enough for a whole caravan, and a wide stream running to the sea, spreading into a delta at the
end.
Who were these people? It had never occurred to Jemmy that there was this much of civilization
beyond Spiral Town. Somewhere the merchants went for their goods, and to trade what they got from
the Spirals. And in between...?
And how could he cross bare and slippery rock?
He couldn't. He was going to have to go down.
5
On the Road
Twerdahl and h~5 ~d~0t crew are running away. We isolated ourselves on th~5 island for a reason.
Whatever our problems, we'll solve them here.
-Julius Radner, Council Chairman
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Where the wall of ancient lava converged to a point, there was a shine of water, then leafy Earthlife
trees. From high up it appeared that the forest ran right to the Road. As Jemmy descended, it became
clear that he was approaching a swamp.
He wasn't eager to wade into that.
The trees were cypress and mangrove on a wide spread of shallow water. There were no competing
Destiny trees, but the trees were festooned with what he first thought were snakes. Snakes everywhere...
motionless black snakes winding through webs of yellow-green lace.
Vines. One was a variety he didn't recognize, but the others wereJulia sets, the same vine the elder
Hanns cultivated. The Hanns must have played the bonsai trick, stunting the plant by pruning and by
keeping it half starved. These were huge. In places they were strangling the mangroves.
Something rippled along the water. A snake, a real one this time. Another moved among the vines.
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