Rian.
Just Rian. She asked, 'Did you wonder why I didn't come to you last night?'
'No.' She seemed to expect something more, so he said, 'I thought you must be with somebody in another wagon.'
She laughed. 'Be with?'
He said nothing. Did merchants say that another way? Maybe a Twerdahl wouldn't know either.
Rian said, 'It could have been you. I offered. Nobody turns me down more than once.'
Flash of annoyance. Gently, superciliously, he said, 'I'm a married man.'
He couldn't read her face in the dark. He only saw her turn and move into another room of the tent. Tim let his head fall on his arm, and slept.
Moving up and down the wagon train looked easy. Anyone could do it. But the wagons never stopped moving. Tim was tired all the time. The stored vegetables were running out. The only fruit left was apples. Chickens and ostriches were scarce in these parts.
The caravan's yutzes took the lack as opportunity. They fished or hunted, or went off into the chaparral to search for anything edible. It was more fun than the continual repair work on the wagons.
Where Earthlife grew, likely you could eat some part of it. Bord'n showed him roots to dig up, fruits to pick, spices. Sage and mustard, apples and pears and oranges, potatoes and yams. Watercress.
The Road ran a klick above the shore, more or less, never dipping very near. Sharks couldn't possibly get that high, and it wasn't convenient for tending the chugs. Cavorite's crew hadn't learned about chugs when they made the Road, hadn't planned for caravans either.
Afternoon of the fifth day they reached land that looked half-cultivated, and twelve houses clustered halfway between the shore and the Road.
You couldn't call it a town. Farther, they called themselves. They were friendly to the point of effusive. The merchants supplied food and the Farther folk cooked it. Their style of cuisine was more like Twerdahl Town than Spiral Town. The merchants supplied the speckles.
Several men and women of the caravan didn't use their tents that night, but none of them were yutzes.
On the sixth morning, Tim Bednacourt was no longer tired.
Late afternoon. No ostriches, no chickens, no eggs. Bord'n had killed four rabbits; others had caught fish. Hal showed Tim how to prepare and grill a Destiny shieldfish on a grill carried from ibn-Rushd wagon.
The fish massed thirty kilograms. Its canoe-shaped shell was probably the dorsal surface. The fins on its flanks and underside were shaped to move water, but they bent in the middle and at the base: little legs with elbow and shoulder joints, tipped with twenty centimeters of horn blade. With those and its long pointed beak and the shell for a shield, the creature might fight one enemy while another wasted its efforts on the shell- 'Tim! Snap out of it! Let's get this on the grill.'
They cut the fins off at the shoulders, but left the shell on. They set it on the fire, shell down, and trimmed off the fins while that side cooked.
'What's the Shire like?' Tim asked.
Hal said, 'Hundred people. Tiny, but they'll cook for us and we'll
trade our stuff for rice and nuts. Tim, do not try to sleep with any woman of the Shire.'
Tim just nodded.
'They're very serious about that.'
Tim didn't find that remarkable. 'What if a woman asks?'
'Won't happen. Yutzes don't ever get asked. It's merchants who get the action, but not in the Shire.'
'How far is it?'
Hal said, 'We'll be there in four days, barring bandits.'
'Bandits?'
'Guns aren't always for sharks.'
The way Hal was grinning, Tim wasn't sure how much to believe. He asked, 'How far away are the Otterfolk?'
'We get to Haunted Bay in another fifteen days. From Haunted Bay there are Otterfolk offshore all the way to Tail Town, another six or seven.'
'You've seen them? Otterfolk?'
'Yeah.'
Bord'n passed, handing out the last ear of corn. They ate, then turned the fish. The grills looked like iron, but they were frictionless settler magic stuff. Nobody but Tim ever worried that food might stick. It never did.
Tim expected the level of civilization to drop with distance from Spiral Town. But wherever there was humanity, there would always be a few ancient, hoarded miracles.
Ask Hal about Otterfolk. He's from Tail Town,' Bord'n said.
'Oh?'
Hal said, 'They're easy to like. Don't touch unless they invite you, because they bite. They can't help it. They like to hear us talk, or sing. They can't talk themselves... .' Once started on a topic, Hal tended to talk until some outside force stopped him.
Tim listened and wondered. Jemmy Bloocher was very far from his thoughts these days.
It had grown too dark to cook. Senka ibn-Rushd circulated with apples, and lingered to watch him eat. She said, 'Tim, the families don't like quarrels in the caravan. Are you angry with my daughter about something?'
'Mph? No! I think Rian's angry with me. I turned her away, that night on the beach.'
'Oh, Tim, that was just... I'll speak to her.'
'Senka, don't. Ibn-Rushd family found me a married man, and that's what I told Rian.'
She stared. 'Were you trying to annoy her?'
'She annoyed me! Does she think I'm stupid? She rubbed up against me to get me at a lower price!'
'I see. I- Now, Tim, do you mean you're thinking of not... rubbing up against anyone until you're back in Twerdahl?'
'I asked Loria if she could come-'
'Tim, where are you from?'
She knows.
Now wait, she can't be sure.
Could she? In the flicker of firelight, what could she see of his face? Or hear in his voice over the breaking waves? She was his youngest aunt's age, and wise with the wisdom of merchants, and he couldn't guess where he'd made his mistake. What did Twerdahls know, that Spirals did not, that Loria wouldn't have warned him about?
Tim hadn't thought so fast since Jemmy Bloocher killed a labor yutz. He made an intuitive leap and rode it. 'All right, I hear what they say.'
'What do they say?' Senka demanded.
'Love a merchant, never get over it.' He was guessing, but not wildly. It was a thing Loria might have concealed, and a thing a merchant woman might like hearing.
Senka was nodding. 'But you can't spend the whole circuit wondering about Cavorite and Otterfolk, can you? You'll wonder what you're missing.'
'Loria's wondering right now, back in Twerdahl Town.'
She searched his face. 'You asked her to come? She must be flattered, Tim. But we wouldn't take her.'
'I wasn't thinking.'
'Would you like a visitor tonight?'
She might not see his nod. 'Yes, very much.'
Her hand caressed his ear, and then she walked into the dark.
Haron Welsh had come home with no interest in Twerdahl women. That was Loria's fear.
A man wasn't expected to resist a merchant woman.
And Tim was burning to learn why. And yes, he was burning.
In the night a woman came to him. He knew a woman's rich scent that wasn't Loria's, that wasn't quite
