The Dark Design

  “Now, really, Miz Gulbirra,” your dauntless said, feeling his face heat up.

  “Bug off, little man,” the subject said.

  Your correspondent thought it was wise to obey this imperative. The interview, though not complete from our viewpoint, was terminated.

  Jill picked up next evening’s Leak from the distribution shack outside the press building. Some people who obviously had already read the news snickered or grinned at her. She opened the paper to the Newcomers page, suspecting what she would find there, angry before reading it.

  The pages rattled in her shaking hands. The interview was bad enough, though she should have known that a late-nineteenth-century man like Bagg would print such rot. What had he been, editor of some crummy yellow rag of some frontier town in the Arizona Territory? Yes, that was it. Tombstone. Firebrass had told her something about him.

  What really enraged her was the photograph. She hadn’t been aware of it, but someone in the crowd her first morning here had snapped her picture. There she was, caught in a silly-looking, almost obscene, posture. Naked, bending over, her breasts hanging straight down like a cow’s udders, the towel in one hand behind her and one before as she sawed it, drying her crotch. She was looking up, her mouth open, and she seemed all nose and buckteeth.

  Surely, the cameraman had taken other shots. But Bagg had chosen this one just to make her a laughingstock.

  She was so furious she almost forgot to pick up her grail. Swinging it from one hand, thinking how she was going to brain Bagg with it, the newspaper clutched in the other—it was also going to be jammed all the way up—she stormed toward the building. But when she got to the door, she stopped.

  “Come on, Jill!” she told herself. “You’re reacting just as he hoped you would, just as they all hope you will. Play it cool; don’t be a knee-jerk. Sure, it’d make you feel great to slam him around his office a little. But it might ruin everything. You’ve endured worse, and you’ve come out on top.”

  She walked slowly homeward, the handle of the grail looped over one arm. In the fading light, she read the rest of the paper. She wasn’t the only one Bagg had libeled, slandered, and mocked. Firebrass himself, though treated gently in the write-up on her, was severely criticized elsewhere and not only by Bagg. The vox pop page contained a number of signed letters from citizens outraged by Firebrass’ policies.

  As she left the plain and started her winding way through the hills, she was softly hailed. Turning, she saw Piscator. He smiled as he walked toward her and said in an Oxford accent, “Good evening, citizen. May I accompany you? We will be happier in each other’s company than alone? Or perhaps not?”

  Jill had to smile. He spoke so gravely, almost in a seventeenth-century style. This impression was strengthened by his hat, a tall cylinder sloping inward to the top and with a wide circular brim. It reminded her of the hats of the New England Pilgrims. It was made of dark-red leather from the scaleless redfish. Several aluminum alloy flies were snagged in its brim. A black cloth was over his shoulders, held together at the throat. A dark-green cloth served as a kilt, and his sandals were of redfish leather.

  Over his shoulder was a bamboo rod. In the other hand was the handle of his grail. A newspaper was clamped by an arm to his body. A wicker basket hung by a strap from the other shoulder.

  He was tall for a Japanese, the top of his head coming to her nose. And his features were attractive, not too Mongolian.

  “I suppose you’ve read the paper?” she said.

  “Unhappily, most of it,” he said. “But don’t be grieved. As Solomon says of scoffers, Proverbs 24:9: They are an abomination to mankind.”

  “I prefer humankind,” she said.

  He looked puzzled. “But what… ? Ah, I see, you obviously object to man in mankind. But man means man, woman, and child in this usage.”

  “I know it does,” she said as if she were repeating this for the thousandth time, which she was. “I know it does. But the use of man conditions the speaker and the hearer to think of man as the human male only. The use of humankind, or personkind, conditions people to think of Homo sapiens as consisting of both sexes.”

  Piscator drew breath in through his teeth. She expected him to say, “Ah, so!” but he did not. Instead, he said, “I have in this basket three of the savory tench, if I may call them that. They are remarkably similar in appearance and taste to Terrestrial fish of that name. They are not quite as delicious as the grayling, if I may call them that, which are caught in the mountain streams. But they are much sport, a cunning and lusty fish.”

  She decided that he must have learned his English from The Compleat Angler.

  “Would you care to share some of the fish with me tonight? I’ll have them baked piping hot at 16:00 by the waterclock. I will also have a plentiful supply of skull-bloom.”

  This was the local name for alcohol made from the lichen scraped off the mountain face. It was watered down, three parts to one, and then blossoms from the irontree vines were dried, crushed, and mixed with alcohol. After the blossoms had given a purplish color and a roselike fragrance to the liquid, it was ready to be served.

  Jill hesitated for several seconds. She did not mind being alone—most of the time. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she did not get desperate, panicked, if she were thrown on her own resources. But she had been her only company for too long. The voyage up The River had taken four hundred and twenty days, and during most of that time she had been utterly alone by day. At night, she had eaten and talked with strangers. She had passed an estimated 501,020,000 people and had not seen one face she had known on Earth or Riverworld. Not one.

  But then she had seldom gotten close enough to the banks during the day to have recognized facial features. Her socializing at night was limited to a few people. What was mental agony, or would have been if she permitted herself such an emotion, was that she might have passed by some people she had loved on Earth, or, at least, liked. There were some she wanted very much to see again.

  Perhaps the one she most longed to talk to was Marie. What had Marie felt when she learned that her senseless jealousy had been responsible for the death of her lover, Jill Gulbirra? Would she have been grief-stricken, perhaps have taken her own life because of guilt? After all, Marie was suicide-prone. Or, rather, to be exact, prone to taking just enough pills to endanger her but not enough so that she could not get medical assistance in time to save her. Marie had come close to death at least three times that Jill knew about. But not very close.

  No, Marie would have been plunged into gloom and self-reproach for about three days. Then she would have swallowed about twenty phenobarbitols and called her closest friend, probably another lover, Jill thought, her breast hurting—the bitch!—and the lover would have called the hospital, and then there would be the stomach pump and the antidotes and the long, anxious waiting in the lobby and then the attendance by the bed while Marie rambled on half-mindlessly, still fogged by the drug but not so fogged that she would not be deliberately working on her lover’s emotions. It would not just be sympathy that she would be evoking. The sadistic little bitch would also make a few wounding remarks to her lover, getting across some criticisms which she would claim later that she did not remember making.

  Then Marie would be taken to her apartment by her lover, and tenderly taken care of for a while, and then… Jill could not bear fantasizing that then.

  At these times she had to laugh, though grimly, at herself. It was thirty-one years after she had stormed out of the house and driven off, tires screaming, rubber burning, and raced recklessly through three stoplights and then… then the blinding lights and the blaring horn of the huge lorry and the savage wrenching at the wheel to turn the Mercedes-Benz, the frozen sickness inside her, the looming of the juggernaut, and…

  And she had awakened with countless others, naked, her thirty-year-old body restored to a twenty-five-year-old state—minus certain blemishes and imperfections—on the banks of the Rivervalley. Nightmare in para
dise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on making a hell of it.

  Thirty-one years ago. Time had not mended all hurts, not, at least, this one. By now she should have gotten over the mingled fury and grief. It should have receded beyond the horizon of things that mattered now. She should have no slightest emotion about Marie now. But she did.

  She was suddenly aware that the Japanese was looking at her. He evidently expected her to reply to something he had just said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes, I get lost in the past.”

  “I am sorry, too,” he said. “Sometimes… if one is using dreamgum as a means to rid oneself of painful or crippling memories or undesirable psychic states, one instead… gets lost.”

  “No,” she said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. “It’s just that I have been alone so long, I have fallen into the habit of reverie. Why, when I was sailing the canoe up The River, I would do so automatically. Sometimes, I would realize that I had put ten kilometers behind me and not even been aware, consciously anyway, of what had happened during that time.

  “But now that I’m here, where I have a job that requires constant mental alertness, you will see that I can be as much on my toes as anyone.”

  She added that because she knew that Piscator might report her to Firebrass. Absentmindedness was not to be tolerated in an airship officer.

  “I am sure you will,” Piscator said. He paused, smiled, and said, “By the way, do not be worried about competition from me. I am not ambitious. I will be satisfied with whatever rank or position I am given, because I know that that will fit my abilities and experience. Firebrass is fair.

  “I am curious about our goal, the so-called Misty Tower or Big Grail or the dozen other titles it bears. In fact, I am eager to journey there, to inquire into what may hold the secret of this world. Eager but not anxious, if you understand what I mean. I readily admit that I do not have your qualifications, and so I anticipate being ranked under you.”

  Jill Gulbirra was silent for a moment. This man belonged to a nation which practically enslaved its women. At least, in his own time (1886–1965), it had. It was true that after World War I there had been a certain amount of liberation. He would, theoretically, still have the attitude of the old-fashioned Japanese man toward women. Which was a terrible attitude. On the other hand, The Riverworld did change people. Some people.

  “You really wouldn’t mind?” she said. “Not really, deep down!”

  “I seldom lie,” he said. “And that only to spare the feelings of someone or to keep from wasting time with fools. I think I know what you are thinking. Would it help you to know that one of my masters in Afghanistan was a woman? I spent ten years as her disciple before she decided that I was not as stupid as when I had come to her and that I could go on to my next sheik.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I would be happy to discuss that some other time. As of the moment, let me assure you that I am not prejudiced against women or against non-Japanese. I was, but that foolishness was emptied out of me a long time ago. For instance, at one time, for some years after World War I, I was a Zen monk. First, though, do you know anything about Zen?”

  “There were many books written about it after 1960 or thereabouts,” Jill said. “I read a few.”

  “Yes. Did you know any more after reading these than you did before?” he said, smiling.

  “A little.”

  “You are truthful. As I was saying, I retired from the world after I resigned from the Navy and I resided at a monastery in Ryukyu. The third year, a white man, a Hungarian, came to the monastery as a humble novitiate. When I saw how he was treated, I suddenly acknowledged what I had known unconsciously but had resisted bringing to light. That was that many years in the discipline of Zen had not rid either the disciples or masters, no one in the monastery, except myself, of their racial prejudices. Their national prejudices, I should say, since they showed hostility and even contempt for Chinese and Indo-Chinese, fellow Mongolians.

  “After being honest for the first time with myself, I acknowledged to myself that the practice of Zen had not resulted in anything deeply worthwhile in myself or the others. Of course, you must realize that Zen does not have goals. To have goals is to frustrate the attaining of goals. Is that contradictory? It is.

  “It is also nonsense, as is that business of emptying oneself. Perhaps the state of being empty is not nonsense, but the methods used to achieve it were, as far as I was concerned. And so, one morning, I walked out of the monastery and took ship to China. And I began my long wanderings, called by some inaudible voice toward Central Asia. And from thence… well, that is enough for the time being. I can continue this later if you wish.

  “I see that we are getting close to our homes. I bid you adieu then until tonight. I will set out two torches, which you may see from your window, to announce when our little gathering begins.”

  “I did not say that I was coming.”

  “But you had nevertheless accepted,” he said. “Is that not true?”

  “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “It’s not telepathy,” he said, smiling again. “A certain posture, a certain relaxation of muscles, the dilation of your pupils, an undertone to your voice, undetectable except to the highly trained, told me that you were looking forward to the party.”

  Jill said nothing. She had not known herself that she was pleased with the invitation. Nor was she sure now. Was Piscator conning her?

  An irontree grew from the top of a hill 200 meters from Jill’s hut. Piscator’s hut was near the top, nestled between the upper parts of two roots. Its back rested upon a shelf of earth; its front was held up by bamboo pylons to keep it from slipping down the steep slope.

  Jill went up the hill without Jack, though there would be Jackasses at its top, she thought. She went under the house and up a bamboo staircase which entered the structure through the floor halfway along its length.

  The building was larger than most of those in this area, three rooms on the ground floor and two on the first story. According to a neighbor, it had once housed a commune. Like all such nonreligious organizations composed of Occidentals, it had dissolved after a while. Piscator had moved in then, though Jill did not know why one man wanted such a large house. Was it because it was a prestige symbol? He did not seem to be the sort of man who would care for such things.

  Along the railing were bright acetylene lamps behind white, green, or scarlet shades made from fish intestines. Piscator, at the top of the steps, smiled and nodded at Jill. He was wearing a kimonolike arrangement of varicolored towels. In his hand he held a bouquet of huge blooms plucked from the vines entwining the upper reaches of the irontree.

  “Welcome, Jill Gulbirra.”

  She thanked him, breathing deeply the strong odor of the flowers, reminiscent of honeysuckle with a very slight scent of old leather. A peculiar but pleasing combination.

  Gaining the top of the steps, she found herself in the largest room of the house. Its ceiling was about three times her height; from it hung a score of Japanese lamps. The bamboo floor was covered here and there with throw rugs made from bamboo fiber. The furniture was of bamboo, light, simple forms the seats of which were softened with cushions. Some of the chair arms and table legs and the posts supporting the ceiling were, however, of oak or yew. Heads of animals, demons, Riverfish, and human beings had been carved from these. They did not look as if they had been done by a Japanese. Probably, a previous occupant had sculptured them.

  Tall, wasp-waisted, bell-mouthed vases stood on the floor. Shorter versions stood on top of spindly legged round-topped tables. These were formed on a potter’s wheel, baked, and glazed or painted. Geometrical designs were on some vases; others bore marine scenes from Earthlife. The boats were lateens; the sailors, Arabs. Blue dolphins leaped from a blue-greenish sea; a monster opened its mouth to swallow a ship. However, since there were large fish called dolphins in The R
iver, and the colossal Riverdragon did bear a faint resemblance to the monster, it was possible that the artist had represented Riverlife.

  The doorways to the neighboring rooms were filled with dangling strings of white and red hornfish vertebrae; these emitted a tinkling when disturbed. Mats of woven fibers from irontree vines hung on the walls, and the transparent intestines of Riverdragons, stretched on bamboo frames, were above each window.

  All in all, though there were some things, such as the acetylene lamps, not found elsewhere, the room was a variation of what many called Riparian Culture; others, Riverine Polynesian.

  The lamp lights strove to pierce the heavy clouds of tobacco and marijuana. A band played softly on a small podium in a corner. It was providing its services in return for booze and a chance to please itself with useful work. The musicians were beating or brushing drums, blowing on a bamboo flute, a clay ocarina; stroking a harp made of a turtlefish shell and fish guts; sawing on a fiddle of fish intestines and English-yewlike wood with a yew bow fitted with the horsehairlike mouth cilia of the blue dolphin; hammering a xylophone; blowing a saxophone, a trumpet.

  The music was unrecognizable, at least for Jill. But she thought that it was derived from a Central or South American Indian piece.

  “If this were tête-à-tête, instead of a large party, I would be able to give you tea, my dear,” Piscator said. “But it is not possible. My grail does not provide me with tea daily, but only one small bagful once a week.”

  He had not changed so much that he did not miss the ceremony of tea, so beloved by all Japanese. Jill regretted the scarcity of the herb, too. Like most of her nation, she felt that something vital was missing if she didn’t get her tea at the proper time.