caravan's chef, was a hunted bandit.
He couldn't remember when Jemmy Bloocher came back. It just felt right.
The land slid northwest, then away.
The current along Haunted Bay ran southeast toward Spiral Town. Jemmy had thought the water would carry him around the point and down the Crab's barren shore. Those cliffs were unclimbable-he'd seen that-but he could wait, drift down along the Neck, see what the shore was like along the mainland.
The mainland. There was nothing left for Jemmy Bloocher on the Crab Peninsula, but the mainland... Cavorite had gone there, leaving Road for others to follow. The caravan's home was in the mainland.
He came to understand that he'd guessed wrong.
He was far out at sea. Mist hid the land but for the projecting peaks of the Crest. Those slid northwest, then away-north and east-then, very distant now, drifted southeast again. He was moving in a great curve.
The sea flowed like a wide bathtub whirlpool of which Haunted Bay was only the drain.
None of this bothered Jemmy Bloocher. His speckles and the ocean would feed him for a while. As the days passed, he watched a vast sea and a serrated edge of land, and a towering black storm far down the coast. In his mind he traced Cavorite's path.
He was noticed, of course. On all of Destiny there couldn't be two objects like Carder's Boat.
One morning a few Otterfolk had him in view.
The next morning there were more. He couldn't tell how many because they spent most of their time underwater, but he could see five or six at a time. At noon they drifted away, or drifted deep to fish. He came to believe that Otterfolk didn't like direct sunlight.
On another morning he came on deck into a flurry of Earthlife flatfish. He ducked two and another smacked him on the cheek. There must have been a whole school flopping on deck. He stood at the edge of the deck and raised his arms and shouted, 'Stop!'
They stopped. He brushed flopping fish overboard, picking those who might live to swim away. He kept a dozen. Qtterfolk watched for half a day while he filleted and cooked the catch. He didn't have to fish for a while.
Another day, his line pulled a sub clam up to the surface. There were beaked faces all over the water, watching.
The thing was heavier than he was, too heavy to lift into the boat.
Did Otterfolk play practical jokes, or were they testing an alien intelligence? How was he to free his hook?
He pulled the sub clam onto the remaining patch of weed. It rested on its shell, its siphon/tentacle writhing as it fumbled at the slick fishing line, trying to tear it.
If he climbed down there, the weed would drown him.
Could he balance on the board while he worked? Weed surrounded the surfboard, but he could pull the clam into reach of it. But if he did find some way to get the sub clam up to the boat...
Otterfolk knew that humans ate sub clam meat. They might not know that it wouldn't keep him alive.
He used his four-meter weed cutter to chop at the meat around the hook until some of it came free. He pulled up twenty pounds of sub clam. Then he compromised. He sliced two pounds of it free and threw the rest back into the weed alongside the shell, where scavengers swarmed around it.
The Otterfolk got the idea, or else they didn't like waste. He was never offered another sub clam.
He could remember the sub clam shell in view beneath a blazing Quicksilver, long before dawn. An Earthlife duck was flapping in the shell with both its wings broken.
It took all of his will to cook it before he ate it.
Afterward he wondered if there was a way to teach mercy to Otterfolk using gestures alone. .
The Neck was where the peaks disappeared below the mist layer. Beyond they rose again, marching into the mainland toward a distant storm.
Storms formed and went away, didn't they? This one didn't. He was still drifting toward it after... he couldn't remember how many days. The clouds towered higher than the peaks of the Crest. At night he could see lightning playing within.
How old was that storm? He fantasized that it was a permanent feature of Destiny. Jupiter's Red Spot had lasted centuries. Destiny storms didn't normally do that, but if one had... then Cavorite would have gone to see.
He was passing the Neck, then, the morning he found that the picked clean shell of a sub clam held a neatly placed tuna still flopping. They couldn't have thrown such a mass, could they? They must have guided and chased it across the weed and precisely onto the shell.
Neat!
He was working out how to hook it when he saw sails.
He'd thought the mist would hide him. Maybe it only hid him from the Neck, while a fisher at sea could still see his mast. Maybe they hadn't told the merchant guards on the Neck. But Carder's Boat was conspicuous.
The fisher sails showed clearly now. They'd get here hours before sunset.
He raised the ladder.
From above, weed half-enclosed the surfboard. From a boat they'd never see it.
He'd left his mark in chopped-away weed, but a fisher might think it just grew this way.
He gaffed the tuna, pulled it up, took it into the cabin's shadow, and cleaned it. He threw the offal onto the weed to draw scavengers.
Lying on deck with only his eyes above the rim, he watched four sails come closer. He didn't know the men in the boats. None of them wore merchant's clothing.
Jemmy took his four meters of weed cutter to the cabin, and waited. He could hear them moving about. He heard their voices, querulous and awed. Otterfolk watched from afar.
The fishers were gone at sunset. They hadn't been able to find a way up.
More boats came the next day. Carder's Boat had drifted by then, but they'd come straight as arrows. They threw something over the side: a rope ladder with hooks on it. When one of them started to climb up, Jemmy cut the ropes and heard him splash.
They sailed off. The next day nobody came.
The land came near: an unfamiliar coast half-seen through mist. The storm came nearer too.
He'd eaten tuna until it went bad and he had to throw it overboard. Now he'd grown hungry enough to want it back. The Otterfolk had gone away. He'd caught nothing using tuna for bait. Earthlife fish must be scarce around here. But the current would carry him back toward the Neck, where Tail Town fishers didn't seem to go hungry.
But he'd be giving the fishers and the merchants another shot at him. He could hardly hear himself think for the howling of the wind and, often, the pounding of the rain. He had to shelter in the cabin most of the time. But he thought about drifting back along the Neck, conspicuous as any fifteen-meter craft from another world, and he thought of Ca vo rite flying into a storm that wouldn't go away.
He couldn't remember making a decision. It was just there.
He took all the clothes he'd found aboard, though it was only shortsleeved windbreakers and trunks and a pair of work gloves. It all went into his pack along with fishing line and hooks. He showered: no telling when he'd do that again. He drank all the water his belly would hold.
He knelt on the board in a pelting rain.
The devilhair hadn't actually eaten into the wood. He peeled it away in big patches, wearing the gloves he'd found aboard. Then gloves and shoes went into his pack and he began paddling with great overhand sweeps of his arms.
He had imagined the path of Cavorite, but it felt very real to him. Had he imagined the days aboard Carder's Boat? Events in his head were isolated; he had trouble connecting them. He'd been on this board forever.
Rain lashed at him and withdrew and fell again. It could not be much past noon, could it? But it was dark as night save for the slashing of the lightning. Thunder and rain filled his hearing.
Now there was another sound, growing.
He couldn't see sign of a beach ahead, but he could hear, above the thunder and the rain, waves rising and smashing down, throwing spume. Storm waves. If this storm had been here long enough to draw Cavorite- But he
