you'll make. Something distracts you, you pull, shoot a hole in something. Here-' Damon took the gun. He set himself. The fisher tree was far behind them now. Damon fired and the chewed tip jumped. 'Like that.' He gave the gun back. 'Pick something closer.'
The Road swerved gradually inland and the land was drying out. Tim chose a lone thick-holed Destiny teapot, aimed for the bole, braced his feet, his arms, BLAM. Dust and splinters sprayed from the edge. He aimed above the bole, at a smaller target, the spout. He scored another hit.
'Good! and enough,' Damon said. 'Come sunset you can shoot sharks.' He bent and lifted. A square patch of roof came up. 'All the wagons have attic storage. If a predator ever got this far, here's refuge. We'll stow your pack here. And-' He reached into the hatch and brought out a transparent speckles pouch. 'Here.' Tim took the pouch.
Damon dropped a handful of bullets into it. 'Close it like this. Keeps water out.'
The space below the trapdoor might hold four or five friendly people, but it was packed with bedding, pillows, clothing, tarpaulins, and a big square box. Tim had to push to get his pack in. 'Refuge? Damon, do I throw stuff out to make room for persons?'
Damon laughed. 'It's never happened. We got used to using it for storage, but it's supposed to be a hidey- hole. All right, yes. Throw it to the sharks if they get this far.' He thumped the box. 'Don't throw away the bullets.'
Damon showed Tim how to manipulate ropes on the wagon's roof to open the sides. Tim took it through the full routine while Damon watched.
'What's next?'
'Cooking. What do you do best?'
'Omelets. Stir-fry vegetables.'
'Takes eggs?~' Damon looked down the Road. Ground cover had grown sparse.
Tim asked, 'Would there be nests around here?'
The old woman spoke unexpectedly. 'Oooh, I'd think so!'
Why was that funny? But Damon smiled. 'We'll send out some yutzes.'
In midafternoon the wagons rolled drunkenly across wide, fiat stones in a shallow stream. When the seventh wagon was across, they all stopped. Tim watched the women release the chugs.
He couldn't quite see how it was done. Loose a line from its knob on the rim of the driver's alcove, snap it like a whip, then retie it. It looked easy; it looked purposeless. Senka and Rian moved briskly along the arc of knobs. When they met at the center, several chugs could be seen to be loose and moving toward the beach.
The younger women stepped daintily down to the Road, then helped Shireen down. Damon and Tim stayed to open the wagon's side, then dropped to join them. Damon and the women were all armed, even Shireen,
All of ibn-Rushd's chugs were loose now. The other wagons, spread far apart up and down the Road, had released theirs.
'We've got time to set some fire pits,' Damon said. He pulled shovels from the wagon. 'Tim, come on down to the beach. The labor yutzes know what to do.'
The sea was two hundred meters away. Most of the women, and not many men, walked down to the beach, taking no notice of two hundred and fifty chugs rolling down behind them in two slow waves. The chugs veered wide of the freshwater flow and its delta mouth.
There were old fire pits to be dug out. Men dug. Women supervised. Chugs flowed around them and into the waves.
Yutzes brought dry vegetation, Earthlife and Destiny trees and weeds. Tim saw two men dragging a lace- festooned log, and jumped to help. They set it on tinder in a dug-out pit.
One of the men asked, 'You're Tim from ibn-Rushd? I'm Bord'n from Lyons wagon. Bord'n, not Boardman, whatever the merchants tell you. This's Hal, from Lyons too, but he's a chef.'
The women were starting their fires.
'Hello, Bord'n, Hal. Are all yutzes men?'
Bord'n laughed. Hal said, 'All I ever saw. A pregnant yutz could be awkward. You don't see children either on a caravan.'
Still talking, the two men had him by the elbows and were walking him up toward the wagons before he could quite catch on.
With no discussion and no sign of haste, every human being in sight was ambling uphill toward the wagons. They climbed onto roofs and settled in. Senka, Damon, and Joker were already in place. Hal and Bord'n urged Tim up, and followed.
Damon greeted them; Senka passed around a pitcher of water flavored with lemons. Rian ibn-Rushd wasn't in sight. She must be visiting another wagon.
A forest rolled out of the water, black and bronze and yellow. A forest of seaweed, and motion working within it. Chugs.
Thrashing fish were dropping out of the weed, and chugs left the line to snap them up before they could reach water. Half-seen chugs were steadily pulling the beached forest apart, eating the crabs and fish and shellfish as they were exposed.
Tim watched in fascination.
As if at a signal, the chugs all began moving inland, leaving the weed behind.
Then things began coming out of the water.
They didn't look particularly scary. They were heavy and flat. The waves didn't topple them. They crawled onto land, paused a moment, then moved after the chugs faster than a walking man. There were twenty in sight when the first reached the beached seaweed.
The family ibn-Rushd, and their visitors, took their positions. 'Save your bullets,' Damon told Tim. 'You too, Joker.'
Tim had only been given six. It must be very natural, he thought, for a new yutz to waste bullets. So Tim held his pose and his fire.
A shark was three or four times the size of a chug, and flatter, built lower to the ground. Its shell was smaller and more simplified than the ornate points and edges of a chug shell. Its big head was mostly beak and shell cap and a backward-pointing prong for counterbalance. The beak was all points and curved edges, built for ripping. The eyes faced forward in deep recesses.
Even so, these were clearly the chugs' relatives. Chugs carried shields with edges and points that could gash a predator. Sharks carried weaponry.
The sharks paused at the seaweed forest. They were nosing into the weeds, seeking the same prey that served the chugs. The chugs were halfway to the wagons, moving as fast as Tim had seen them move.
One, then several sharks crawled over the weed in pursuit of the receding chugs.
Guns began to fire. Bullets thudded into the few sharks in the lead, poking holes in their shells or spraying seawater and blood from the rough gray-green skin below.
'Not many this time,' Damon said. 'That near one in the middle? That's your target, Tim.'
Flat-footed, leaning forward just a bit, hands pulling against each other with the gun butt between... Tim fired. Bullets thudded into the beast's shell. Maybe one or two were his. He saw a shark still coming, swiveled, and used up his bullets on that one.
Four sharks were down, and the rest were running for the water. They weren't fast. A man could outrun them; but who would tire first, man or shark?
'You all stopped shooting,' Tim noticed, 'as soon as they turned tail. Why not kill them all?'
The yutzes looked to Damon, who said, 'If we killed off all the sharks, who knows what we'd get instead? We don't know what goes on under the water.'
'Think of us as priests of evolution,' Senka ibn-Rushd said. 'Another twenty years, they'll run at the first sound of a gunshot. Maybe they won't chase chugs at all.'
'Here, Tim.' Damon held out a handful of bullets. 'You've got good self-control. Take some time tomorrow, get some practice. For now, we don't have much daylight.'
Most of the merchants and yutzes began setting up tents. Those of ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons set up to cook dinner. The evening was turning misty.
Marilyn Lyons glowed in the evening light. She was two centimeters taller than Tim and weighed more too.
