But the girls were urging him forward.
A few were examining Thonny's bike while Loria turned the pedals and the handlebars. Brenda- There! He'd found his sister.
Half a dozen men were out on the water, riding floating slabs. 'Glind, what are those?'
'Boards.'
Brenda was with other girls at the shore, and a couple of men too, watching them. Some of those had boards, and two of the men on the water were women. It was confusing, an optical illusion. He'd seen them as all men because they were together, all wearing sleeveless shirts.
Curdis was in a group around one of the braziers. He waved enthusiastically and called, 'Timtimtimmy!'
Thanks for the reminder. 'Curdis! There's a thousand kinds of trees and a thousand kinds of snakes, and Destiny vines you could build a city on.' And that gives Timtimtimmy a reason for going in there.
'Typical. You dive into a jungle and ignore the people. Drew, you really surprised us. We had no idea you were here. Tim, this is Drew Bednacourt.'
'Pleased,' Drew Bednacourt said, smiling. He was white-haired and muscular, Dad's age, and a white scar ran down his dark chest into his short pants. 'You surprised us too.' His handshake was hard, horny.
Curdis said, 'You're not that surprised.'
Jemmy saw what he meant. Most of the locals weren't talking to the Spirals. They were fishing or cooking or floating on boards in the water.
Drew said, 'We've seen merchants all our lives. The caravan went through two weeks ago. They'll be back in a week with whatever Haven and the Spirals leave.'
Tarzana looked Jemmy over. 'He's already wet, Dad. Tim, want to go for a swim? Do you know how to ride?'
Jemmy asked, 'Ride?' Then he saw two men stand up on their boards while a wave hurled them forward.
He had to try that.
They sat in a circle on the sand, eating in near darkness. The red of sunset had faded. The only light was Quicksilver, a brilliant spark at the ocean's rim.
Jemmy was exhausted. The long day might have worn him out, but the surfing lesson was the finishing stroke. In the morning he was going to hurt.
He listened, half-dozing, while Curdis and Brenda talked to the Bednacourt girls and Cloochi boys. The girls were sisters born a year apart, Tarzana nineteen, Loria eighteen, Glind seventeen. Drew, their father, was cooking over the brazier with their mother, Wend, who had been surfing. Harl and Susie Cloochi were older, Wend Bednacourt's parents.
The girls began passing out food. Jemmy didn't guess how hungry he was until he bit into a chicken leg. Then he ate like a starving wolf, whatever the girls brought him, chicken and corn and Earthlife fruit, Destiny crab and Destiny seaweed.
Quicksilver disappeared in a blink. Now the only light was stars, and a funny blue glow in the rolling waves.
Harl Cloochi said, 'I'm an old man, Curdis. Is Quicksilver brighter
than it used to be? I can never he sure. It's like Quicksilver disappears in a blink, and then the night's as black as inside my stomach.'
'I'm only twenty-two,' Curdis said.
'You're Spiral. You've still got machines that teach, they say.'
'They're wearing out. Tim? Brenda? Remember anything about Quicksilver? From the schooling disks?'
Brenda did. 'Quicksilver's closest to the sun, that must he why it's so bright. It's not very big. Quicksilver, Destiny, Volstaag, Hogun, Hela.'
There was something else about Quicksilver. Something Jemmy had read and forgotten, and now it wouldn't come.
'How did you come here?' Curdis asked.
Susie Cloochi answered. 'My father told me his family got in a fight with the Spirals. Mother was carrying me already. They took some seeds and stuff and came down the Road and found Twerdahi already here.'
Jemmy exclaimed, 'Twerdahl?'
Laughter. Susie said, 'This place, we name it Twerdahl Town. After the Founders. the ones who took Cavorite and disappeared.'
Jemmy laughed at himself. 'I thought you meant the Twerdahls themselves.'
'Your turn. You're the first Spirals we've seen in ages. What are you doing here?'
The silence stretched. Brenda or Curdis might have answers ready, but Jemmy couldn't know that, and in the dark he couldn't see their faces. He took the chance and said, 'Following the path of the Cavorite. I want to know where they went.'
Tarzana breathed, 'Cavorite!'
'But you've got the teaching machines,' old Susie Cloochi said. 'Don't they tell you?'
All fatigue fled, Jemmy said, 'Some. Cavorite left with forty crew. I know some of the names. Twerdahi, Tucker, Granger, Lyons, Doheny
Spiral Town was founded in 2490, but they called it Base One then. Cavorite left in 2498. You know they left a spiral of Road behind them? They never came home. Maybe they never planned to. Maybe something killed them.'
Susie Cloochi said, 'My family never went home. A good many families here never did. Folk do leave Spiral Town from time to time. Might it be that the Cavorite crew just wanted to get away?'
'Snakes,' Jemmy said.
They looked at him. 'Snakes, Tim?'
His mind had wandered, then closed its teeth on-'Snakes in the Swamp. It just came to me, Miz Cloochi. Cavorite must have left those. Someone aboard Cavorite must have liked snakes.'
'And swamps,' said Brenda.
Jemmy looked back toward the swamp. 'Can't you see it? They're drifting along. Flame rushing out violet under the skirt.' He couldn't really picture that; he'd never seen a flame that hot; nobody had. 'They could go faster if they were just trying to get away, but they're just drifting along, leaving a trail of melted rock behind them. Suddenly they're looking at a swamp.
'What can they do? They can boil the water, kill the Destiny weeds, but that won't make it into Road. They could go around it, uphill, but that wouldn't leave a Road for anything with wheels.'
'Rocks,' Brenda said. 'They'd have to roll a line of rocks down across the water.'
Curdis said, 'We had tractors in Spiral Town, big machines for pulling a plow or pushing down a tree. They don't go anymore. Cavorite might have taken one.'
Jemmy nodded, putting it into the picture. 'Push a row of rocks across. Like stepping-stones. Then hover till the rock melts and the water boils. Wait till the swamp cools down, then seed-'
'No, T-Tim, that's a humongous thermal mass. You don't throw seeds in boiling water.'
He nodded. 'Right. They go on, making Road. Week or two later they come back and seed some trees-'
'Maybe a year.'
'-and leave the snakes and anything else I didn't see. Damn.'
Curdis said, 'All right, what damn?'
'They weren't just runaways, the Cavorite crew. I always knew forty crew was too tidy. When you're running away, you don't wait for your numbers to come out neat like that. The Road was the point. If Cavorite came back this far to seed a swamp, why not come all the way back to Spiral Town?'
The Bednacourt sisters led them to a structure that was all one big room. 'A lot of us slept here after the storm washed away some houses two years ago,' Loria said. 'Elsewise it's the House of Healing.'
There was nothing like a bed. The Bloocher clan slept on the wide expanse of floor, covered in their own clothes.
In a moment when Brenda was surely asleep, Curdis spoke in the dark. 'I had to turn down an offer from Loria.'
Offer? Ah. 'What did you say?'
