mingled in his dreams.
The smells of cooking woke him.
The man fed the bedridden woman, who appeared to be pregnant, not sick. At the big woman's orders he fed Jemmy and took Jemmy's bedpan.
There was no day or night out there. Jemmy (Andrew. Why Andrew? They could have picked a name closer to his own, and they had another Andrew.) 'Andrew' could hear thunder. It never quite stopped. But there was day and night in here.
He'd lost his sense of time aboard Carder's Boat. Maybe he could rebuild his memory of the voyage from the phases of Quicksilver.
He'd guessed right about the storm. Heated air rises from a sea of molten rock, a rip in the world's crust. Air at ground level flows in to replace it. Air moving inward on a spinning ball, must spin... a hurricane pattern that must have been running for centuries if Cavorite's crew had come to see.
Oh, that was it. Air flows in, so face the wind to get out. Take the easy way out and you'll end on the easiest path to run a Road... assuming that Cavorite's crew meant to lead the Road right into a storm!
Why would they do that?
He'd found plants arrayed in rows; then the Road; then a plantation house. What would be grown here? He could feel the answer tapping at his mind. It was right on the tip of his tongue. .
19
Prison Cuisine
stable storm, like Jupiter's Red Spot or Uranus's Dark Spot, but we haven't had as long to observe it. There's got to be a heat source under it, and it has to be geothermal. It may be a potassium source.
-Alan Waithe, Geologist
Morning. The big woman and her paramour stayed behind again. The man gave Jemmy a fist-sized chunk of bread, then water. They both sat on Jemmy's bed and watched him eat.
'Get up,' she said.
Jemmy rolled out of bed, landed on his hands and knees. Mostly he'd stopped hurting, but he was weak. She watched him pull himself to his feet. He asked, 'Where's the toilet?'
'Shimon, go with him.'
There were doors at this end of the room, marked with silhouettes of a man and a woman. Yesterday afternoon, these two had disappeared into the women's room for an hour or two.
The men's room was bigger than he'd guessed, with urinals, toilets, basins, towel racks, showers, and a tub. Partitions around showers, tub, and toilets had been ripped out and the marks painted over, badly. The walls were smooth stone like the rest of the barracks.
He turned a spigot. Burning hot water roared into the tub. Shimon was amused. He helped Jemmy climb in. He even got a towel for him; and then he watched as Jemmy got himself clean.
'How'd you get that scar on your hand?' he asked.
Jemmy tried to explain. His voice was rusty. He'd almost forgotten how to form words. He'd burned himself holding a gun wrong when he fired at an advancing line of sharks, and now there was a ridge of
pink between thumb and wrist... and Shimon nodded and gave every sign of being fascinated.
When Jemmy tottered back to bed Shimon was supporting him with a hand on his elbow, under the woman's critical eye. Lying down was bliss.
The woman said, 'I'm Barda. You do what I say. You do what anyone says if he wears the orange.'
'I call you Barda?'
'You call me Barda. I call you Andrew. Gatherers like Shimon, here, call me Trusty unless we're alone. They call you Trusty. You use their given names. It's good if you can learn their family names too. Barda Winslow,' she thumped her chest. 'Shimon Cartaya,' she thumped Shimon's. 'Willametta Haines. Amnon Kaczinski, the big guy. Duncan Nicholls, you call him Duncan Nick. Denis Bouvoire if you need some machine unjammed. There's a Dennis Levoy too, don't get them mixed up. Rita and Dolores Nogales, the twins. You noticed them.'
'The huge pale guy, yes. Amnon? Twins, no.'
'Most men notice Rita and Dolores.'
'There's a dark guy who looks young and old....rippled, maybe, but quick-'
'Rafik Doe. Came here at fourteen, near ten years ago. He won't give his real last name to anyone. Records say he killed a whole trader family with a yutz gun. You notice anyone else?'
'No.'
'What've you guessed?'
'The other trusty, he's Andrew Dowd.' Barda slurred her speech like Half-beard, and he tried to imitate that. It might buy his life. Prison workers who asked a stranger to lie would want to be sure he could!
'You wear the orange too. You're both bosses, trustees. I'm supposed to be him. Is he supposed to be sick?'
'If he gets sick they make someone else trusty. If someone finds you now, you're just someone we pulled out of the storm. Naked. Can you walk?'
He felt fifty feet high and made of glass, but Jemmy walked down as far as the box (which was bigger than Barda, and chugging again) and back. He set his hand unobtrusively on a bedpost to hold himself up, and asked, 'Pulled naked out of the storm, right. Where are my clothes supposed to have gone?'
'What d'you think?'
'Torn off by the wind?' Better-'Shredded by the plants.'
'Good.'
'What really happened to them?'
'Don't worry about it.'
'I saw a big bird the same color as your clothes-'
'Firebird,' she said.
'The biology lessons say that when something is colored like that, to stand out, it's a signal. Could be a horny bird making himself easy to find, or a flower calling a bee. Could be it's poison and it's warning all the bird eaters away. Stop, Jam inedible! You wear the firebird's colors so the Destiny predators won't bother you.'
She nodded. 'Now, 'Andrew,' I want to know all about you. Come on down to the kitchen.' She took his elbow and they walked.
Everything that wasn't beds or washrooms was down at the airlock end. There was considerable space here: the huge stove, a line of hanging cookware, locked bins, the dining table and benches, an enormous heap of black twisted logs drying for firewood, and the chugging box.
The box was bigger than a coffin. It was settler magic, but it bore signs of later crude repairs. Below a glass hatch was a churning storm of brilliant colors. It was a dryer for wet clothes.
Barda gestured, and he sat at the table. Shimon set out a heap of vegetables from a bin. Barda sat across from Jemmy and began to chop and peel.
'I can help,' Jemmy said. 'I was a caravan chef.'
'You just watch. I don't want you fainting.'
She listened while she worked. Her expression didn't give away much. He could watch her muscles tense and relax, and watch the knife move. She was very fast, running on automatic, and her emotions went straight to her knife hand.
He couldn't watch Shimon, who busied himself tending the stove, feeding the pregnant woman, and watching Jemmy suspiciously.
