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looked as big as Jemmy's head.
    The silence was ending, and men were starting to stand up.
    Jemmy ran.
    The near door was past several merchants, and they were all getting up. Jemmy ran through tables of Spiral women instead. A lone merchant gaudy in gray and yellow had his belt for an instant before Jemmy ripped loose.
    He almost took the stairs; pictured how many guns would pick him off if they all had a clear shot; ran around and out the Warkans' front door.
    The window above the front door was one that opened. He remembered Addard and Sandy and Telema Warkan shouting through it, heads together, long ago.
    Jemmy jumped and had the sill; pulled himself up, pulled the window open and was back inside on the landing halfway up. Flat on the floor, catching his breath, while traders and Spiral men swarmed below him and outside.
    He crawled the rest of the way to the second floor. Through Addard's room to the balcony, down the outside stair to the truck garden.
    The truck garden was a jungle in spots. Killer was busy at one end. Jemmy worked his way through shadow and weeds at the other end, into the less cultivated regions of the Warkan farm, making away from the Road.
     
     
     

4
    Leavetaking
    Probes have gone before. We expected an Earthlike world, Norn, and from orbit it seems all that we hoped. I've renamed it Destiny.
    -Daryl Twerdahl, Defensive Ecology
     
     
     
    Warkan farmland trailed off toward the sea. The land was barren rock and sand. It would barely support Destiny life and it barely hid Jemmy Bloocher.
    The old fence was another ancients' miracle. Corrosion had not touched it in more than two centuries. It ran for over a mile between Bloocher and Warkan land, all the way into the shallow waves. The fence was three grades of mesh laid over each other, filters to stop anything from seeds to sharks to chugs.
    Spiral children learned early: those fine strands would cut flesh.
    The first settlers must have been anal-retentive about property rights. Or was this another attempt to confine Destiny?
    The fence would cut a chug's mouth. Merchants never released chugs close to the fence.
    But the fence didn't stop Destiny seaweed.
    Here at the shoreline a grove of black and yellow-green devilhair ran into the sea and out as far as Carder's Boat. Weed had nearly swallowed the boat; had entirely swallowed the fence. By using the fence as a frame, the weed gained access to sunlight and the sea's nutrients too.
    Jemmy reached the beach at a run. He swarmed over the humped weed onto Bloocher turf and kept running. Adrenaline raged in his blood. He wanted to run until the breath seared his lungs....ut every Spiral knew where he must come. Any of them might tell a merchant.
    He spared a moment's glance for the settler's miracle offshore. They'd never find him there! and for good reason. A swimmer would never reach Carder's Boat. He'd be tangled in the weed and drowned.
    He stopped, his chest heaving. Then he made himself crawl through the rows of wheat, uphill toward the house.
    It seemed quiet. Merchants would have flooded the house with light and noise.
    Jemmy went in through the root cellar, then up into the kitchen, softly, softly.
    Loaves of bread were still in the oven. He left them for the moment.
    More stairs, well lighted. There was light under his parents' door, and under Junior's. Margery's. Margery and Curdis. He reeled into his room and stood in the dark, thinking.
    The Warkans had their reasons to let the fence go like that, but the Bloochers had no excuse for such slovenliness.
    Not his business, now. Jemmy Bloocher wasn't going to be running Bloocher Farm after all. What could he take? Just the backpack and the hiking gear in it. Real shoes. A flash, a canteen, blankets; thick hiker's gloves, because much of Destiny life was armed with thorns or poison. He added underwear and socks and shirts, going by feel in the dark. He was already wearing a jacket. What else? Anything he left behind now was gone forever. Pen