The Dark Design

  They were talking in somewhat slurred English. Either they had been drinking or English was not their native tongue. No. The voice now booming through the fog belonged to an American.

  “No!” the man bellowed. “By the holy flaming rings of buggered Saturn, no! It’s not sheer ego, downright stinking hubris! I want to build the biggest ever built, a fabulous ship, a true queen of the skies, a colossus, a leviathan! Bigger than Earth or The Riverworld has ever seen or will ever see again! A ship to make everybody’s eyes bug out, make them proud they’re human! A beauty! A wondrous behemoth of the air! Unique! Like nothing that ever existed before! What? Don’t interrupt, Dave! I’m flying high, and I’m going to keep on flying until we get there! And then some!”

  “But, Milt!”

  “But me no buts! We need a big one, the biggest, the grandest, for purely logical scientific reasons. My God, man, we have to go higher, further, than any dirigible ever has! We have to range 16,900 kilometers maybe, depending upon where the boat is! And God only knows what winds we’ll run into! And it’s all one vast one-shot! Do you hear me, Dave, Zeke, Cyrano? A one-shot!”

  Her heart would not quit racing. “Dave” had spoken with a German accent. They must be the very men she was looking for. What luck! No, not luck. She had known how many kilometers distant, counted by the grailstones spaced along the bank, her destination was. And she had been told exactly where the headquarters of Milton Firebrass was. And she knew that David Schwartz, the Austrian engineer, was one of Firebrass’ lieutenants.

  “It’ll take too much time, too much material,” a man said loudly. His speech was that of a native of Maine. There was something, or was it just her overactive imagination, of the shriek of the wind in rigging, the creaking of rope and wood in a rolling ship, the thunder of surf, the flapping of sails, in his voice? Imagination, of course.

  “Stop that, Jill,” she told herself. If Firebrass had not called him Zeke, she would not now be imposing open-sea-sailing-ship images on the voice. He would be Ezekiel Hardy, captain of a New Bedford whaler, killed by a sperm whale off the coast of Japan—1833?—and he had convinced Firebrass that he would make an excellent helmsman or navigator for the airship. After suitable training, of course. Firebrass must really be hard up for a crew if he signed on an early-nineteenth-century whaling ship skipper. The man had probably never even seen a balloon, maybe not even a steam-driven riverboat.

  The grapevine had it that Firebrass had had little success so far in finding experienced airshipmen. Men, of course. Always men. So, he had accepted candidates who seemed most likely to benefit from training. Airplane pilots. Balloonists. Sailors. Meanwhile, the word had spread up and down The River for 60,000 kilometers, perhaps 100,000, that Firebrass wanted lighter-than-air men. Always men.

  What did Firebrass know about building and flying a gasbag? He may have journeyed to Mars and Ganymede, orbited Jupiter and Saturn, but what did that have to do with dirigibles? David Schwartz, it was true, had designed and built the first truly rigid dirigible. It had also been the first to have a structure and skin made completely from aluminum. This was in 1893, sixty years before she had been born. He’d then started to build a better airship—in Berlin, 1895?—but work had stopped on it when Schwartz had died—January, 1897?

  She was not sure now. Thirty-one years on The River had dimmed much of memories on Earth.

  She wondered if Schwartz knew what had happened after he had died. Probably not unless he’d met some gasbag freak, a layman Zepfan. Schwartz’s widow had carried on his work, and yet no book Jill had read had bothered to note her first name or her maiden name. She was only Frau Schwartz. She had gotten the second ship built, despite being only a woman. And some male jackass had flown the aluminum ship (which looked more like a thermos bottle than anything else), had panicked, and had wrecked it.

  All that was left of Schwartz’s dream and his wife’s devotion to it was a crumpled mass of silvery-looking metal. So much for dreams in a high wind when a big phallus, lilliputian brains, and mouse courage were at the controls. Now, if the jackass had been a woman, her name would have been recorded. See what happens when a woman leaves the kitchen? If God had intended…

  Jill Gulbirra trembled, a hot ache in her chest. Get hold of yourself, she murmured. Cool does it or you blow it.

  She started from her reverie. While she had been dreaming of Frau Schwartz’s dream, she had allowed the canoe to be carried downRiver. The fire had become smaller, and the voices fainter, and yet she had not noticed. Better bloody watch out, she told herself. She had to be ever alert, or she would never convince the powers-that-be that she was qualified to be one of the airship crew. To be captain?

  “There’s plenty of time!” Firebrass thundered. “This isn’t any government-contract, low-fund, high-pressure project! It’ll be thirty-seven years or more before Sam gets to the end of The River. It’ll only take two—maybe three—years to complete the beast. Meanwhile, we’ll use the blimp for training. And then we’re off, heigh ho for the wild blue yonder, the misty sea of the north pole, where no Santa Claus, but somebody who’s given us gifts that make Saint Nick look like the world’s worst tightwad, lives! Off to the Misty Tower, the Really Big Grail!”

  The fourth man spoke up now. He had a pleasant baritone, but it was evident that English was not his natal speech. What was it? It sounded like a French accent in some ways but… Yes, of course. That could be Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, if she could believe what she had heard at about hundredth hand. It just did not seem possible that she would soon be talking to him. Perhaps she wouldn’t be, since there were so many phonies on The River.

  There was silence for a moment, the silence that only the Rivervalley knew—when people kept their mouths shut. No birds, no animals (especially no barking dogs), no mechanical monsters roaring, bellowing, buzzing, screeching, no tooting horns, no whooping or screaming sirens, no shrieking brakes, no loud radios, no blaring loudspeakers. Only water lapping against shore and then a splash as a fish leaped out and fell back. And the crackle of wood in the fire.

  “Ah!” Firebrass said. “Smooth! Better’n anything I ever had on Earth! And free, free! But when, when will the airmen show up? I need more men with experience, real gasbaggers!”

  Schwartz made a smacking sound—Jill could see the bottle tilted above his lips now—and he said, “So! You are not so unworried!”

  The canoe touched shore, and she got out of it without tipping it. The water was up to her waist, but the magnetically sealed cloths kept the cold liquid out. She waded closer and lifted the long, heavy canoe, moving forward until she was on shore. She let the craft down and dragged it until its entire length was out of the stream. The bank was only about 30 centimeters above the water level. She stood for a moment, planning her entrance, then decided not to go armed.

  “Oh, I’ll get them eventually,” Firebrass was saying.

  She stepped closer, sliding her feet over the short grass.

  “I’m the one you’re looking for,” she said loudly.

  The four whirled, one almost falling and grabbing another. They stared, their mouths and eyes dark holes in paleness. Like her, they were covered with cloths but theirs were brightly colored. If she had been an enemy, she could have put an arrow into each one before they could grab their weapons—if they had such. Then she saw that they did have guns, placed on the edge of the mushroom top of the grailstone.

  Pistols! Made of iron! So, it was true!

  Now she suddenly saw a rapier, a long, steel sharp-pointed blade, in the hand of the tallest man there. His other hand brushed his hood back and revealed a long, dark face with a big nose. He had to be the fabled Cyrano de Bergerac.

  Cyrano reverted to seventeenth-century French, of which she could understand only a few words.

  Firebrass pushed his hood back, too.

  “I almost crapped in my britches! Why didn’t you warn us you were coming?”

  She lowered her hood.

  Firebrass ste
pped closer and looked keenly at her. “It’s a woman!”

  “Nevertheless, I’m your man,” Jill said.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Don’t you understand English!” she said angrily.

  Her displeasure was more at herself. She had been so excited, though pretending to be composed, that she’d reverted to her Toowoomba dialect. She might as well have spoken in Shakespearean English for all they understood. She repeated, in the standard Midwestern American she’d learned so painstakingly, “Nevertheless, I’m your man. My name, by the way, is Jill Gulbirra.”

  Firebrass introduced himself and the others, then said, “I need another drink.”

  “I could use one myself,” Jill said. “It’s a fallacy that alcohol warms you up, but it does make you think you’re warmed up.”

  Firebrass stopped and picked up a bottle—the first glass Jill had seen for years. He handed it to her and she drank the scotch without wiping the mouth of the bottle. After all, there were no disease germs on The River. And she had no prejudices about drinking from a bottle that had been in the mouth of a half-black. Wasn’t her grandmother an aborigine? Of course, abos were not Negroes. They were black-skinned archaic Caucasians.

  Why was she thinking such thoughts?

  Cyrano, his head stuck forward, his back bent, walked up to her. He looked her over, shook his head, and said, “Mordioux, the hair is shorter than mine! And there is no makeup! Are you sure she is a woman?”

  Jill moved the scotch around in her mouth and swallowed it. It was delicious, and it warmed all the way down.

  “We shall see,” the Frenchman said. He put his hand on her left breast and squeezed gently.

  Jill sank a fist into his hard belly. He bent over, and Jill brought her knee up against his chin. He fell heavily.

  Firebrass said, “What the hell?” and stared at her.

  “How would you react if he felt your crotch to see if you were a man?”

  “Simply thrilled, honey,” Firebrass said. He whooped with laughter and danced around while the other two men looked at him as if they thought he was crazy.

  Cyrano got onto his hands and knees and then onto his feet. His face was red, and he was snarling. Jill wanted to back away, especially after he picked up the rapier. But she did not move, and she said, her voice steady, “Do you always take such familiarities with strange women?”

  A shudder went over him. The redness faded away, and the snarl became a smile. He bowed. “No, madame, and my apologies for such inexcusable manners. I do not usually drink, since I do not like to cloud my mind, to become bestial. But tonight we were celebrating the anniversary of the departure of the Riverboat.”

  “No sweat,” Jill said. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

  Though she smiled, she was cursing herself for having begun in such a bad way with a man for whom she had a great admiration. It was not her fault, but she could not expect him to forgive her for having felled him so easily before witnesses. No male ego could survive that.

  The mist thinned. Now they did not need the firelight to see each other’s faces. Below their waists the gray-white coils were still dense, however. The sky was brightening, though it would be some hours before the sun cleared the eastern peaks. The great white gas sheets that covered one-sixth of the sky had faded away with the lesser stars. Thousands of the giants still flamed red, green, white, blue, but their intensity, like gas jets slowly being turned off, was diminishing.

  Westward, a dozen structures towered up from the mists. Her eyes widened, though she had heard about these through the grapevine and the drum-telegraph. Some were four-and-five-story-high buildings of sheet-iron and aluminum. Factories. But the colossus was an aluminum building, a hangar.

  “It’s the biggest I ever saw,” she murmured.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Firebrass said. He paused, then said, wonderingly, “So you have come to sign up?”

  “I said that once.”

  He was The Man. He could hire and fire her. But she’d never been able to conceal irritation at stupidity. Repetition was wasteful and hence stupid. Here was a man who had a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a master’s in electronic engineering. And the United States had not sent any dummies into space, though they may not have been brilliant. Maybe it was the liquor that made him seem stupid. As it did every man. And every woman, she hastened to remind herself. Be fair.

  He was close, breathing the whiskey fumes up into her face. He was a head shorter than she, his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and deep chest making a curious contrast with long, skinny legs. His large eyes were brown, the balls bloodshot. His head was large, his forehead bulged, his bronze hair was so curly that it was almost kinky, his skin was bronze-red. He was supposed to be a mulatto, but the Caucasian and Onondaga Indian genes seemed to be dominant. He could pass for a Provençal or Catalonian. Or just about anything South European.

  He looked her up and down. Was his bold stare supposed to challenge her to knock him down as she had Cyrano?

  Jill said, “What are you thinking of? My qualifications for airship officer? Or what kind of body is under these baggy towels?”

  Firebrass burst out laughing. When he had recovered, he said, “Both.”

  Schwartz looked embarrassed. He was short and slight, blue eyed and brown haired. Jill glared at him, and he turned away. Ezekiel Hardy was, like Cyrano, almost as tall as she. He was narrow faced, high cheekboned, black haired. He stared at her with hard pale-blue eyes.

  “I’ll repeat this because it needs to be stressed,” she said. “I’m as good as any man and ready to prove it. And I’m a godsend. I have an engineering degree and I can design an airship from A to Z. I have 8,342 hours flight time in four different types of blimp. I can handle any post, including captain.”

  “What proof do we have?” Hardy said. “You could be lying.”

  “Where are your papers?” Jill said. “And even if you were skipper of a whaling ship, so what? What qualification is that for a dirigible man?”

  “Now, now,” Firebrass said. “Don’t let us get our bowels in an uproar. I believe you, Gulbirra. I don’t think you’re one of the many phonies I’ve had to put up with.

  “But let’s get one thing straight. You are a hell of a lot more qualified than I am—as of this moment, anyway—to command the ship. But nevertheless, I am the captain, the boss, the head cheese! I’m running this whole show from start to finish. On the ground and up there. I didn’t give up being chief engineer on Clemens’ boat so I could take a minor position in this project.

  “It’s Captain Firebrass, and don’t ever forget that. If that’s okay, signed and sealed in blood, then I’ll be jumping with joy to welcome you aboard. You might even be first mate—no sexual implications involved—though I can’t promise that. The roster is a long way from being filled.”

  He paused, cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes.

  “First thing off. You have to swear by your personal honor—and by God, if you believe in one—that you’ll obey the laws of Parolando. No ifs, ands, buts.”

  Gulbirra hesitated. She licked her lips, feeling their dryness. She desired—no, lusted for—the airship. She could visualize it even now. It hovered over them, casting a shadow over her and Firebrass, shining silvery where the imaginary sun struck it.

  “I’m not going to sacrifice any of my principles!” she said. She spoke so loudly that she startled the men. “Are men and women equal here? Is there any discrimination in sex, race, nationality, and so forth? Especially in sex?”

  “No,” Firebrass said. “Theoretically and legally, that is. Actually, that is, personally, there is, of course. And there is, as there has always been everywhere and everytime, discrimination based on competency. We have high standards here. If you’re one of those who think that a person should be given a job just because he—or she—belongs to a group that has been discriminated against, forget it. Or move your ass on out of here.”

  She was silent for a mo
ment. The men looked at her, obviously aware of the struggle inside her.

  Firebrass grinned again. “You’re not the only one in agony,” he said. “I want you in the worst way, just as you want in the worst way, that is, the best way, to be one of the crew. But I’ve got my principles, just as you have yours.”

  He jerked a thumb at Schwartz and Hardy. “Look at them. Both nineteenth-century. One’s an Austrian; one, a New Englander. But they’ve not only accepted me as the captain, they’re good friends. Maybe they still believe, way deep down, that I’m an uppity nigger, but they’d take a poke at anyone who called me that. Right, men?”

  They nodded.

  “Thirty-one years on The Riverworld changes a person. If he’s capable of being changed. So, what do you say? Want to hear the constitution of Parolando?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t make a decision until I knew what I was getting into.”

  “It was formulated by the great Sam Clemens, who left on his boat, the Mark Twain, almost a year ago.”

  “The Mark Twain? That’s pretty egotistical, isn’t it?”

  “The name was chosen by popular vote. Sam protested, though not very strongly. Anyway, you interrupted me. There’s an unwritten rule that nobody interrupts the captain. So here goes. We, the people of Parolando, do hereby declare… ”

  There was no hesitation nor, as far as she knew, any mistakes in the long recital. The almost total lack of the written word had forced the literate population to rely on memory. A skill that once had flourished only among preliterates—and actors—was now general property.

  While the words rose to the sky, the sky became brighter. The mists shrank to their knees. The valley floor was still covered with what looked at a distance like snow. The foothills beyond the plains were no longer distorted. The long hillgrass, the bushes, the irontrees, oaks, pines, yews, and bamboo no longer looked like a Japanese painting, misty, unreal, and far off. The huge flowers that grew from the thick vines intertwined on the irontree branches were beginning to collect color. When the sun would hit them, they would glow with vivid reds, greens, blues, blacks, white, yellows, stripes and diamonds of mixed colors.