R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth

  Göring waved his hands imploringly.

  "That is the burden I must carry. I deserve it, and I won't be able to put it down until every person who knows my evil deeds has truly forgiven me. But that is not the issue now. What is, is that I can be of great help. I am quick and strong and very determined and not unintelligent. Also . . ."

  "Also, you're a Second Chancer, a pacifist," Burton said. "What use would you be if we have to fight?"

  Göring said, fiercely, "I won't compromise my principles! I will not shed the blood of another human! But I doubt very much that you'll have to fight. The area upstream is thinly populated and becoming thinner every day. Haven't you seen the many boats coming through the strait? The news is out that the Virolanders are leaving. The people up-River are deserting their cold land to settle down here."

  "There may well be a fight," Burton said. "If we catch up with those agents, we'll try to make them talk. And when we get into the tower . . . who knows what we'll find there? We may have to battle for our lives."

  "Will you take me?"

  "No. That's final! I don't care to discuss this anymore. Ever!"

  He strode away while Göring roared, "If you won't take me, I'll go alone!"

  Burton glanced back then. The man's face was red, and he was shaking his fist. Burton smiled. Even the ethically advanced bishops of the Church could get angry.

  When Burton looked back once more, he saw Göring walking swiftly toward the temple, his face set. Evidently, he was on his way to tell La Viro that he was not obeying his orders to go down-River.

  That night, the eleven, headed by Burton, overpowered the guards on the Post No Bills. They came up from The Riverside, having swum silently to the railing, and boarded the port side. Two of the guards were sitting on the starboard railing and talking. These were grabbed from behind, and their noses and mouths were gripped until they passed out from lack of air. At the same time, Joe Miller entered the launch from the bankside. After a few words with the remaining sentinel, he seized him and carried him struggling to the bow and cast him into the water.

  "Jethuth!" he called out to the yelling guard. "I hate to do thith, Thmith, but I got a higher duty! Give my regretth to Kimon!"

  After the guards had been thrown off, Burton's group carried aboard their grails and other possessions and some long ropes and tools which had been brought up by divers from the Not For Hire. Aphra Behn turned on the electricity. As soon as the last of the supplies had been thrown onto the deck and the tie lines loosed, she took the boat away. It was shortly going at its top speed while behind them torches flared and men and women yelled.

  It was not until the launch had gotten through the strait that Burton felt they had really begun the next-to-last stage of the long, long journey.

  Burton thought briefly about X. According to Cyrano's story of X's visit to him, X had told him to relay to the recruits that they should wait a year for X at Virolando. Burton didn't want to do this and neither did his colleagues. They were going on now.

  Traveling against the shoreline current at thirty miles per hour and only stopping for two hours each day, the Post No Bills averaged 660 miles every twenty-four hours. When they had to abandon the boat, they still had some distance to go, the most difficult part of the journey. Before that, they'd have to stop and catch fish to smoke and make acorn bread and collect bamboo tips. These would not be all they'd have to eat, though. They carried twenty "free grails" some of which they'd owned and some of which they'd stolen. They planned to fill these before getting to the final grailstone in order to have extra provisions. The food which would decay swiftly would be kept in the launch's refrigerator or dragged behind in a cask in the cold water.

  As they went north, The Valley became broader. Apparently the Ethicals had made it wider so that it might receive more of the weak sunlight. The temperature was tolerable during the day, which was longer than those in the regions behind them, reaching as high as sixty-two Fahrenheit. But it would get ever colder the farther north they went. The fogs lasted longer, too.

  Göring had been right about the scarcity of people. There were only approximately a hundred per square mile. This number was being cut down daily, as the many boats going down-River showed.

  Joe Miller, standing in the bow, looked longingly at the titanthrops they passed. When the launch landed for recharging, he went ashore to talk to any he could find. The conversations were in Esperanto, since none knew his native tongue.

  "Jutht ath vell," Joe said. "I've forgotten motht of it anyvay. Jethuth H. Chritht! Ain't I ever going to find my parentth and my friends, my own tribethpeople?"

  Fortunately, the titanthrops were amiable. They were by now far outnumbered by the "pygmies," and most of them had been converted to the Chancer faith. Burton and Joe tried to recruit some, but failed. The giants wanted nothing to do with the beings in the tower.

  "They all dread the far north," Burton said. "You must have shared their fear. Why did you go with the Egyptians?"

  Joe swelled his gorillalike chest. "I'm braver than thothe otherth. Thmarter, too. Though, to tell the truth, I came near thyitting down my leg vhen I thaw the tower. But any man vould. You jutht vait until you thee it."

  The tenth day, they stopped for a shore leave of several days. The locals were a few titanthrops with a majority of Scandinavians, ancient, medieval, and, modern. Among them were, however, people from any different times and places. The men who had no cabinmates immediately started looking for overnight stands. Burton walked around inquiring if anybody had seen the men and women who'd been forced to abandon the launch from the Rex. There were plenty, and all said that these had gone up-River in boats, all of them stolen.

  "Have any others come along who've said they were on the Not For Hire?" Burton said. "That's the giant metal riverboat like the Rex, propelled by paddlewheels and driven by electric motors."

  "No, I've not seen or heard of anybody like that."

  Burton didn't expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.

  Nor would the agents who'd left Clemens' vessel before the battle be any more open.

  However, getting descriptions of those who had gone northward during the past few weeks, he recognized those who'd fled the Rex. De Marbot, who was also questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who'd deserted the Not For Hire.

  "We'll catch up with them soon," Burton said.

  "If we're lucky," the Frenchman said. "We may pass them at night. Or they might get word of our coming and hide while we go by."

  "In any event, we'll get there first."

  Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the locals, he could find none of those he sought.

  In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive physique and facial features of the Ethicals Thanabur and Loga. The man who called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky, hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton, these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn't know Sumerian or ancient Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan pronunciation and intonation.

  That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered the tongues. Or it meant that both were innocent and what they claimed to be.

  Twenty-two days after he'd passed through the strait in an area where there weren't more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a tall skinny woman with big eyes and a big mouth. Her white teeth shone in the black African face.

  She spoke in Esperanto affected heavily by a backwoods Georgia accent. Her name was Blessed Croomes, and she wanted
to go on the boat as far as it would go. Then she'd go on foot to the headwaters.

  "That's where my mother Agatha Croomes went. I'm looking for her. I think she must have found the Lord and is now living at His right hand, waiting for me! Hallelujah!"

  41

  It was difficult to stop her flow of talk, but Burton finally said, loudly and sternly, that she had to answer his questions.

  "Okay," she said, "I'll listen to the wise. Are you wise?"

  "Wise enough," he said, "and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you're not stupid. Let's start at the beginning. Where were you born and what were you on Earth?"

  Blessed told him that she was born a slave in Georgia in 1734 in the house of her master. Come early, caught her mother in the kitchen while she was helping prepare the evening meal. She'd been raised as a house slave and baptized into the faith of her father and mother. After her father had died, her mother had become a preacher. She was a very devout and very strong woman who scared her flock, though they also loved her. Her mother had died in 1783 and she in 1821. But both had been resurrected near the same grailstone.

  "Of course, she wasn't an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old momma a young woman. That didn't make no difference to her, though. She was as holy and righteous and filled with the spirit as when she'd lived on Earth. Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she converted them, and then they got in trouble . . ."

  "You're wandering again, Burton said. "That's enough of your background. Why do you want to go with me?"

  "Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird."

  "But why do you want to go to the end of The River?"

  "I would have told you if you hadn't interrupted me, man. You see, my mother being here didn't shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of us, because we were sinners on Earth. Some worse than others. This was really Heaven, the outskirts of it anyway. What sweet Jesus wanted was that the real believers should go up The River, the sweet Jordan, and find Him at the end. He was up there, waiting to embrace those who truly believed, those who'd go to the trouble of seeking Him out. So she went.

  "She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn't sure anyway that she knew what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that. It would've been like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway, it wasn't just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet man, and he wouldn't go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were. So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.

  "But things went bad with me and my old man. He started chasing other women, and I got to thinking that maybe this was judgment on me for not obeying my momma. Maybe she was right, maybe Jesus was waiting for the truly faithful. Besides, I really missed my momma even if we do go around and around like wildcats sometimes. So I lived with another man for a while, but he wasn't any better than the first. Then, one night while I was praying, I saw a vision. It was Jesus Himself, sitting on His diamond and pearl throne with the angels singing back of Him, all in a blaze of glorious light. He told me to quit sinning and to follow my mother's footsteps and I'd get to Heaven.

  "So I went. And here I am. It's been many years, brother, and I've suffered like one of God's own martyrs. I've gotten bone-weary and flesh-sick, but here I am! Last night I prayed again, and I saw my mother, only for a second, and she told me to come with you. She said you weren't a good man but you weren't bad either. You were in between. But I would be the one to bring you to the light, save you, and we'd go together to Kingdom Come and sweet Jesus would wrap His arms around us and welcome us to the glory throne. Hallelujah!"

  "Hallelujah, sister!" Burton said. He was always willing to throw himself into the form of a religion while laughing at its spirit.

  "It's a long long trip yet, brother. My back hurts from paddling my canoe against the current, and I hear that it's foggy and cold most of the way from now on and not a living soul to be seen. It'll be very lonely there. That's why I'd like to go with you and your friends."

  Burton thought, Why not?

  "There's room for just one more," he said. "However, we don't take pacifists since we may have to fight. We don't want any deadweight."

  "Don't you worry about me, brother. I can fight like an avenging angel of the Lord for you, if you're on the side of good."

  She put her few possessions on the boat a few minutes later. Tom Turpin, the black piano player, was happy to see her at first. Then he found out she'd taken a vow of chastity.

  "She's crazy, Captain," he told Burton. "Why'd you take her on? She's got that good-looking body and she'll drive me crazy her not letting me touch her."

  "Perhaps she'll talk you into taking the vow, too," Burton said, and he laughed.

  Turpin didn't think that was funny.

  When the boat pulled out after a four-day, not a two-day, leave as planned, Blessed sang a hymn, then she shouted, "You needed me, brother Burton, to complete your number. You were only eleven and now you're twelve! Twelve's a good, a holy number. The apostles of Jesus were twelve!"

  "Yaas," Burton said softly. "And one of them was Judas."

  He looked at Ah Qaaq, the ancient Mayan warrior, a pocket-sized Hercules gone to pot. He seldom offered to start a conversation, though he would talk fluently if he was cornered. Nor did he draw back if someone touched him. According to Joe Miller, X, when visiting Clemens, had not wanted to be touched, had, in fact, acted as if Clemens were some sort of leper. Clemens had thought that X, though soliciting the help of the Valleydwellers, felt that he was morally superior and that if one touched him he was somehow fouled.

  Neither Ah Qaaq nor Gilgamesh acted as if they must keep others at a proper distance. In fact, the Sumerian insisted on being very close when conversing, almost nose to nose. And he touched the other speaker frequently as if he had to have flesh contact also.

  That insistence on closeness could be overcompensation, though. The Ethical might have found out that his recruits had noted his dislike for near proximity and was forcing himself to get close.

  Long ago, the agent, Spruce, had said that he and his colleagues loathed violence, that doing it made them feel degraded. But if that were so, they had certainly learned to be violent without showing any repulsion. The agents on both boats had fought as well as the others. And X, as Odysseus and Barry Thorn, had killed enough to satisfy Jack the Ripper.

  Possibly, X's avoidance of touch had nothing to do with a personal feeling. It might be that a touch by another human being could leave some sort of psychic print. Perhaps psychic wasn't the right word. The wathans, the auras that all sentient beings radiated, according to X, might take a sort of fingerprint. And this might last for some time. If so, then X would not be able to return to the tower until the "print" had vanished. His colleagues would see it and wonder how he'd gotten it.

  Was that speculation too bizarre? All X had to tell his questioners was that he'd been on a mission and had been touched by a Valleydweller.

  Ah! But what if X was not supposed to have been in The Valley? What if he had an alibi for his absences but it didn't include a visit to The Valley? Then he could not explain satisfactorily why his wathan bore a stranger's print.

  This speculation, though, required that an agent's or Ethical's prints be different from those of resurrectees and instantly recognizable as such.

  Burton shook his head. Sometimes, he got almost dizzy •trying to think through these mysteries.

  Deciding to abandon the wandering of the mental maze, he went to talk to Gilgamesh. Though the fellow disclaimed any of the adventures attributed to the mythical king of Uruk, he liked to boast of his unrecorded exploits. His black eyes would twinkle, and he would smile when he told his wild tales. He was like the American frontiersmen, like Mark Twain, he exaggerated to an incredible extent. He knew his listener knew he was lying, but he
didn't care. It was all in fun.

  The days passed, and the air became colder. The mists hung more heavily, refusing to dissipate until about eleven in the morning. They stopped more frequently to smoke the fish they caught by trolling and to make more acorn bread. Despite the thin sunshine, the grass and the trees were as green as their southern counterparts.

  Then the day came when they arrived at the end of the line. There were no more grailstones.

  From the north, borne by the cold wind, came a faint rumbling.

  They stood on the forward deck, listening to the ominous growling. The now ever-present twilight and the mists seemed to press upon them. Above the soaring black mountain walls the sky was bright, though not nearly as bright as in the southern climes.

  Joe broke their silence.

  "That noithe ith the firtht cataract ve'll come to. It'th big ath hell, but it'th only a fart in a vindthtorm compared to the one that cometh from the cave. But ve got a long hard vay to go before ve get to that."

  They were robed and hooded in heavy clothes and looked like ghosts in the thin fog. Cold moisture collected on their faces and hands.

  Burton gave orders, and the Post No Bills was tied to the base of the grailstone. They began unloading, finishing in an hour. After they had set all their grails on the stone, they waited for it to discharge. An hour passed, the stone erupted; the echoes were a long time stopping.

  "Eat hearty," Burton said. "This will be our last warm meal."

  "Maybe our last supper, too," Aphra Behn said, but she laughed.

  "Thith plathe lookth like purgatory," Joe Miller said. "It ain't tho bad. Vait until you get to hell."

  "I've been there and back many times," Burton said.

  They made a big fire of dried wood they'd been carrying in the boat and sat with their backs to the base of the stone while it warmed them. Joe Miller told some of his titanthrop jokes, mostly about the traveling trader and the bear hunter's wife and two daughters. Nut related some of his Sufi tales, designed to teach people to think differently, but light and amusing. Burton told some stories from the Thousand and One Nights. Alice told some paradoxical tales which Dr. Dodgson had made up for her when she was eight years old. Then Blessed Croomes got them to singing hymns, but she became angry when Burton inserted slightly off-color lines.