They hadn't done that when he was with a caravan. The elders and the young men and the children would meet his eye. The women would not. But they lingered near when no task called, listening.
He told of dropping into the bay and swimming back to Tail Town. That made even the women stare for just a moment.
He wasn't being treated as a caravan yutz. The women were watching him askew, not a gaze, just a mutual awareness, as with women and men in Spiral Town. Did the merchants see Spiral Town this way? Genders and cliques forming defense perimeters against the stranger?
'I think the boats are for giving rides to Otterfolk,' he said. 'Then the Otterfolk pay off in fish.' And he told of shells along a beach, and newborns crawling into the world while Otterfolk warriors swam ashore to defend them.
In the dark of Quicksilver there was only firelight. Women-with children had gone to their beds. Older children were gone too, and women-without drifted off to the river to clean cookware, and the few remaining elders were all men.
Tim taught them a song he'd learned on the Road. Then the men escorted him off to the big building in the crater.
It was one big room. Seventy merchants and yutzes had all slept on the floor in a tangled pile when the caravan was here. Now he had it all to himself. He stretched out in the middle of it all with his pack for a pillow, until the men bade him goodnight and were gone.
Then he left his pack and moved himself into a remembered corner. He lay down again with two walls to guard him and his weed cutter under his hand.
He'd slept some during the day. For the first in many nights, he wasn't cold. The painted Otterfolk shell no longer scratched his back. It had served his need.
The question was whether to run now.
The Shire seemed uncommonly friendly to a man alone.
From the midpoint of the Crab Peninsula to the corner of Haunted Bay, there were no dwellings. Single men or women, couples, whole families running from failure or crime or politics or boredom, must have filtered down the Road in the wake of Cavorite. The distillery/dairy was as far as they'd got except for two sizable communities on Haunted Bay.
But that was one serious leapfrog.
Why wasn't he finding a house or three every step of the way?
Because only strong communities could treat with bandits as equals?
Bandits didn't seem to bother the Shire. And the Shire was friendly to a man on the run, though they watched him like a possible thief. Had they been similarly friendly to messengers from the distillery?
When he heard the rustling, bandits! was his first thought. He stood up in a crouch. They were in here with him!
The giggles-two, three?-didn't sound dangerous. But he hadn't heard the door or seen moonlight. There must be another door, hidden.
A woman's voice spoke with just a trace of impatience. 'Runner?'
Another voice: 'He's gone,' bitterly disappointed.
'No. Why would he?'
A nearly incoherent wail. 'Oh, who knows what lives in a stranger's brain? He knows the merchant women! We don't dress like they do-'
Tim had been tiptoeing toward the center, toward his pack. He'd gambled his life when he brought a butchered boar to the Shire, and the bet still stood. He asked, 'What's it all about?'
A third voice, much calmer, didn't speak directly to him. 'We can hope he'd like some company?'
Tim said, 'Sit down with me. I have a thousand questions. Shall we make a light?'
Laughter and protest. 'Oh, no!' The rustling came close; circled him.
It was seriously dark. He guessed at anywhere from four to a dozen. He slid his weed cutter under his pack and sat on that.
He said, 'I know not to touch you, but I'm wondering how this all started. People along the Road don't all do as you do.'
Silence. Ragged breath. Then, 'The merchants tell us we can't rub up against a stranger.'
'Ever since the first caravan came.'
'And Rashell Star turned down Wayne the speckles man.'
'Rashell the Star. And she slapped him.'
'Bobbitted.'
'A hundred years ago.'
'More.'
'So we keep ourselves to ourselves, men and women both, and we teach our children too. We know what happens if the merchants don't bring speckles.' The woman who had spoken was quite breathless, and a silence followed.
Tim said, 'Look, they told me you don't mix with strangers.'
Four hands reached out of the dark. Tim jumped at the first touch. Then he patted the hands (five, six!) and asked, 'It's the merchants' idea?'
Laughter. Someone took his hand, and guided it under clothing, and that was a woman's breast, big.
What on Earth-?
They were swathed in layers of clothing. It came off in great soft piles that made a fine extensive bed. They stripped him insistently, and explored him first with their hands, whispering to each other. He never knew if he would touch clothing or skin, and now it was mostly skin.
Once he got the idea, Tim began searching shapes in the dark. His wandering hands found delight-and perfection. No twisted spine or twisted foot. Here a nose like the prow of a ship; here an ear that protruded interestingly; he knew them both, women-without-children who had served his food without meeting his eyes. Regular features, no strangeness, no flaws.
Wasn't that what they were looking for too? No point in making babies with a flawed or twisted visitor.
He counted six. And they still wouldn't talk to him, though they whispered to each other.
Tomorrow he wouldn't know them. Tonight the shapes and scents of the women were his whole environment. Tonight they were taking his genes.
Maybe he dreamed it. A hand shook his shoulder and a voice whispered, 'Merchant man. Why did the Founders wake the flies?'
Without opening his eyes he asked, 'Am I supposed to know?'
'You're supposed to know everything.'
He'd thought that about caravaners. He'd thought about flies too. 'Meat has to rot,' he said, and was asleep again.
He woke alone, and stiff everywhere.
He dressed in customary haste, as if he must bake and serve breakfast. Then he took the time to search out a second entrance. It was set in a corner, a miniature maze baffled against light from outside.
He hesitated before going out.
The first caravan, she'd said. There never would have been a first caravan without customers already in place. So the first caravan found this isolated community halfway along the Crab- Rashell the Star? Wayne the speckles man? Likely two or three or six merchants had tried to make babies with the wrong people. In Spiral Town men and women married before they got pregnant, and it might have been that way in the Shire. Then, merchants hadn't yet earned their current reputation. The Shire's need for external genes didn't show yet.
Somebody got slapped, or bobbitted, whatever that was. Then what? Today the Shire was not dying, but Tim had seen some effects of inbreeding here. The merchants and yutzes weren't getting laid. What did anyone gain by continuing this nonsense?
He stepped outside knowing that there would be nobody to ask. The men were gone. The women wouldn't meet his eye, any more than they ever had, and they wouldn't let him help with breakfast. They fed him fruit and speckles bread, then watched him walk off along the beach.
Along the beach until it curved out of sight. Then up into Earthlife trees, a tiny version of the graveyard grove
