They were all Palm. It wasn't that people of other cords weren't allowed among them, but other cords get tired quickly of Palm cord's endless talk, which is full of qualifications and snake's-hands and complicated jokes other people don't find very funny. They go on: like I go on.
I was shy to speak up before all of them, and I asked Seven Hands if I could talk to him alone. He looked at me and grinned, but I guess I spoke so seriously that he got up with a grunt and went off with me around one of the big beams that supported the glass of the roof. He was still grinning; nothing embarrasses Palm cord more than intrigue, and secrets, and being asked about themselves and not about the world in general. So I asked him flatly:
"When you leave Belaire," I said, with a lump in my throat and all the little truthful speaking I knew in my words, "will you take me with you?"
"Well, big man," he said. He called me big man, which I knew was a joke, but I enjoyed it anyway. He pulled his skirts around him and sat down with his back against a pillar. He had a way of hanging his long arms over his knees when he sat, and holding the thumb of one hand in his other hand; and I did it too, in imitation of him.
He looked at me, nodding thoughtfully, waiting I think for me to ask again so that he could determine a little more of why I asked this of him; but I said nothing more. It had seemed important to Painted Red that I ask, even though she thought he wouldn't take me; so I only waited.
"I'll tell you," he said at last. "It'll probably be a long time till I go. Really go. There are - well, a lot of preparations to make. So. Maybe, when I'm ready to go, you'll be ready too."
There was something in what he said beyond what he said. I was truthful speaker enough to hear it, but not enough to know what it was. He reached over and slapped my thigh lightly. "I'll tell you what, though," he said. "If you're ever to go, you've got to make preparations too. Listen: we'll start by taking a little trip together."
"A trip?"
"Yes. A little hike. In preparation, sort of. Have you ever seen Road?"
"No."
"Would you like to?"
I said nothing, made a few shruggings that could mean I would like to if that was what was required of me.
"You ask Mbaba," said Seven Hands, "and if she says it's all right, and she will, we'll go tomorrow if it doesn't rain or something. I'll come find you early."
Painted Red had said I must do exactly as Seven Hands asked me; she'd said she didn't suppose he'd take me with him, but he hadn't said he wouldn't. I should have been pleased at that, and pleased he'd invited me to make his preparations with him; but still I felt troubled and uneasy. That's what it's like having a knot with someone. Nothing - not even the simplest feelings - seem to cross between you without somehow getting tangled.
Anyway, that's how it came to be that the next day I was in the middle of a bridge that goes across the river called That River, the bridge made of red rusted iron bars only, the only bridge there is since the one with the road that could be walked on fell down before I was born. There had been a frost the night before, and the cold wind was bitter over That River.
We went carefully from bar to bar across the bridge, looking down - or trying not to look down - through the gaps between the bars at the black, angry water. The ancient metal creaked and whined in a wind that was picking up. I followed Seven Hands, my hands taking hold where his did; our hands and clothes were covered with red rust, thick and grimy, and mine were dead cold from the iron.
Then there was a break. Seven Hands stopped ahead of me and looked. Soon the bridge would be no use: here, a beam had fallen out at last, and soon the whole bridge must follow. The wind whipped Seven Hands's long hair into his face and waved his long knotted sleeves as he looked up and down, thinking, and all the time the bridge was swaying and creaking and the black water was rushing by below. Seven Hands looked at me, grinning, rubbed his hands together and blew on them, poised himself and jumped.
I think I cried out. But Seven Hands had thrown his arms around the upright, and clung; he moved his hand to a better place slap on the cold metal, and pulled himself around to face me, his chest heaving and his face smeared with rust.
"Come on, Rush, come on," he said between pants, but I just stood there looking at him. He straddled the beam then, and hooked his feet under it. "Sit down," he said, so I did. I was shorter, so my feet couldn't get a grip. Seven Hands reached out his long arms toward me, his big hands motioning me to lean to him. I grabbed his wrists, hard with bone and tendon, and when he gave me the signal, pushed off. I kept my eyes on the beam and not on the water, and swung out over air, and felt a snap in my shoulders, and then up; one leg reached and slipped off the beam, and then I was struggling on and felt my balance return, and with my face pressed against Seven Hands's chest I held on tight till I knew for sure I was there, and even then I kept my hold on his wrists. I heard him laughing. His big face was close to my face, exulting, and I was laughing too between pants, and at last slowly let go of his wrists and sat there on my own.
"Preparations," he said. "You see? If you're going to go somewhere, you have to believe you can get there. Somehow, some way."
We got to the end of the bridge and let ourselves down its struts, and sat for a while not speaking but looking back up at the bridge we had beaten; and suddenly I wanted more than anything to go with him when he truly left, and share all his adventures.
"You will take me," I said, "if I'm grown up enough? When will it be?"
"Well, big man, well." Again I heard the shadow behind his speech, almost a regret; but I knew now that it wasn't for me. He stood up. "We have to get to Road while it's still day, if we want to see it," he said.
We were some time climbing upward, through woods filled with fallen leaves frosted and aged-looking, till the woods thinned and we climbed gray-lichened foreheads of stone onto stony uplands. The sky hung low, solid and gray above us; as we climbed, we seemed to come closer to it. When we had come out onto the crest of the hill, we could see that above the gray, spiky distant hills, a thin crack of blue sky lit the hem of the clouds with silver. Seven Hands pointed to a line of evergreens ahead. "Beyond there," he said, "we'll see Road."
The wind was boring an icy spot in my windward cheek and beginning to tear the solid fabric overhead as we broke through the line of evergreens and came out onto a rocky height that overlooked a valley. Above the hills across the valley, the sky was all pink and blue as the clouds moved fast away; as they rushed over our heads they left the sky high, infinitely high and deeply blue - what winds must be there! Soon the late sun reached where we stood, lighting the valley before us; and lighting, too, Road.
For there was Road. It followed the Valley, but curtly; it dug itself through the valley's gentle folds with an imperious, impossible straight sweep away that was the hugest thing I had ever seen. There were so many wonders about it: how can I tell you I saw them all at once?
First of all it wasn't one road, but two. Two roads, each wide enough for twenty men to stand easily across it. And matched to race away like two racing gray squirrels, and as gray as that. They ran together as far as you could follow, not varying their width or the distance between them, eye to eye to - where?
Miles down the valley it turned a somersault, curling in and out of itself, running up and down bridges and ramps, making of itself what looked, from where we stood, like an immense leaf of clover, just, it seemed for the fun of it, like a vast child doing a thundering, earthshaking cartwheel.