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"As I understand it," Jeremy said, "if I could get you past that fence, you wouldn't see a restaurant
here next year. That's the local birthground for the Otterfolk, Greta, and the Overview Bureau is very
serious about that."
"Oh." She thought a moment, then asked, "After you fillet the tuna, where do you take the bones and
head?"
"Soup stock. Everything interesting goes into the cauldron. On the caravans. . . you won't carry that
size cauldron."
"Why do you shudder?"
He shook his head, thinking that a chef could always break off conversation for some convenient
urgency- "Is it true that we must get pregnant by men along the Road? And the
men make the local women pregnant?"
"That's what they say. They say also that you merchants are almost inhumanly good at doing that with
us mortals."
She dimpled. "I thought Dzhokhar might have been having fun with me. Well, I haven't had the
training yet."
Most of the merchants had gone up the Road and the rest had gone to bed. The Winslow family cleaned
up after them to some extent, then quit. Jeremy went up to bed. He could climb a flight of stairs, now, but
not run up it.
He began stripping down, found he had some help. Harlow breathed in his ear. "So you want to join
a caravan?"
She must have felt him lose his balance and wince as pain crunched in his healing knee. He said, "I've
been thinking about it. Who told you?"
"Yvonne Dionne told me my husband was talking about hitting the Road. Yvonne and Wayne, the
only thing between their shop and mine is a sandwich shop. Jeremy, were you serious? Is this a sudden
thing?"
Still thinking as fast as ever in his life, Jeremy said, 'Not sudden, but I never could have talked Karen
into doing it, and just to get away from here-"
"But with that limp-"
"Oh, I can wait for the autumn caravan. I'll be healed by then." They were seated on the futon by
now, and he took her face in his hands. "Will you marry me after the spring caravan leaves?"
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"Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?"
"What? Why?"
She laughed. "The caravans only take couples!"
"What?"
"You didn't know?" Still laughing. "But you asked me to marry you first. Good!"
He'd been thinking that she could vote his one-fifth share of Wave Rider. This blindsided him.
"Everyone on a caravan is married?" What about Rian? and old Shireen? and Joker? Wait, Joker was
married- "Well, no, not everyone. A woman in her teens or twenties, or a veteran who wants to die on
the Road, but only if they're a caravan family, Jeremy. Anyone else, it's couples. Otherwise there would
be too many men, I guess. Local help is supposed to be all men."
He was still stunned. "Harlow, why didn't I think of coming to you before?"
"You may be an instinctive liar, Jeremy."
She was the answer all along, and he'd been dodging and weaving- "No, wait, I'm a Spiral. You're a
girl. We almost don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. I thought I'd got that.. . crap out of my head."
"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
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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."
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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.
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