R.W. III - The Dark Design

  Loghu said, "Isn't it about time the Indians attacked?"

  "Past time, I would say," Monat replied.

  The canoe loaded, they paddled away. Their destination was the south bank, which they intended to follow up-River until just before dawn. Burton was worried about the extra grails. If the local authorities saw them, they might seize them. Even if they didn't, greedy individuals would try to steal them.

  There was only one way to hide them. The extras were filled with water. Sections of leather line were cut, and one end of each was tied to a handle. The other end was tied to the upper part of the canoe framework through a hole punched in the skin.

  The drag on the canoe was heavy, but fortunately they were very close to the bank. They stopped at a dock complex near a grailstone and tied the canoe to a piling under a dock.

  They sat down under the stone and waited. Dawn and hundreds of citizens came. Burton's group introduced itself and requested permission to use the stone. This was given gladly, since the south-bank locals were peaceful. In fact, they welcomed strangers, a source of news and gossip.

  The fog burned away. Burton got on top of the stone and looked toward the spire. Its base was about 2.5 nautical miles distant, which, from his altitude, put the horizon 4 miles away. He could see the larger buildings and the idol but the flames he had expected to be rising from them were nonexistent. Perhaps the Shaawanwaaki had not set them afire. After all, they might have wanted to keep the raft intact until it could be taken to the shore and dismantled. Its logs were valuable.

  Instead of pushing on that day, he decided that they would rest. That afternoon a Ganopo party landed, the chief among them. Burton questioned him.

  The chief laughed. "Those Shaawanwaaki turtleheads completely missed the raft. They couldn't see the fire, though how they could not, I don't understand. Anyway, they paddled around for hours, and when the fog lifted they found that the current had taken them five stones below the island. What a bunch of bums!"

  "Did the Babylonians say anything to you about their missing canoe? Not to mention the guards we had to rough up?"

  Burton thought it best not to say anything about the grails.

  The chief laughed again. "Yes, they came storming ashore before the stone flamed. They were very angry, though they did not say why. They knocked us around a little, but the bruises and the insults did not bother us because we were happy that you had made fools of them. They searched the island thoroughly, but they did not find you, of course. They did find the ashes of the fire and asked us about it. I told them that it was a ceremonial fire.

  "They didn't believe me. I think they must have guessed the truth. You won't have to worry about them sending out search parties for you. Every one of them, .including Metuŝael, is straining to get the raft off today. They must expect another attack tonight."

  Burton asked the chief why the Shaawanwaaki didn't attack in the daylight. They could easily overwhelm the Babylonians.

  "That is because there is an agreement among the states in this area to protect strangers. So far, it has been honored and with good reason. The other states would be compelled to go to war against the aggressor. However, the Shaawanwaaki were hoping to keep it a secret. If they were to be found out, they would say that the raftspeople had refused to pay compensation for the damage done to us.

  "I don't know. Perhaps the Shaawanwaaki will give up the idea.

  Still, there are many among them who would like to make a raid just for the sake of excitement."

  Burton never found out what happened to the Babylonians. He decided that they should leave that day. After the canoe was on its way, the grails were pulled up, emptied, and placed in the bottom of the canoe.

  Chapter 21

  * * *

  After traveling 200 kilometers, Burton found an area suitable for boat construction. It was not determined by the wood available, since all places had plenty of pine, oak, yew, and bamboo. What was now difficult to find was flint and chert for cutting timber. Even in the beginning, these stones were restricted to certain sites, some being rich in them, others comparatively poor, and many lacking them entirely. Wars for flint had been common in the old days.

  The minerals were even rarer now. Hard as they were, flint and chert wore out, and new supplies were almost unheard of. As a result, the end of 32 A.R.D. (After Resurrection Day) was also the near end of large-vessel construction. At least, it was in the countries through which Burton had passed, and he presumed that it was the same everywhere.

  The area at which he stopped was one of the very few that still had a plentiful store. The locals, a majority of pre-Columbian Algonquins and a minority of pre-Roman Picts, were well aware of the value of their stones. Their chief, a Menomini named Oskas, haggled fiercely with Burton. Finally, he stated that his rock-bottom price was seven thousand cigarettes of tobacco, five hundred of marijuana, twenty-five hundred cigars, forty packages of pipe tobacco, and eight thousand cupfuls of liquor. He also suggested that he would like to sleep with the blonde, Loghu, every five days or so. Actually, he would prefer that it be every night, but he did not think his three women would like that.

  Burton took some time to recover from his shock. He said, "That's up to her. I don't think either she or her man would agree to it. Anyway, you're asking far too much. None of my party would have booze or tobacco for a year."

  Oskas shrugged and said, "Well, if it isn't worth it to you . . . ?"

  Burton called a conference and told his crew what Oskas demanded. Kazz objected the most.

  "Burton-naq, I lived all my life on Earth, forty-five summers, without whiskey or nicotine. But here I got hooked and if I go a day without either, I am ready, as you put it, to climb the wall. You know that I tried to quit both at different times, and before a week was gone I was ready to bite my tongue off. I was as mean as a cave bear with a thorn in his paw."

  Besst said, "I haven't forgotten."

  "If there was no alternative, we'd have to do it," Burton said. "It'd be cold turkey or no boat. But we do have the extra grails."

  He returned to Oskas and, after they had smoked a pipe, he got down to business.

  "The woman with the yellow hair and blue eyes says the only part of her you'll get is her foot, and you might have a hard time pulling it out of your ass."

  Oskas laughed loudly and slapped his thigh.

  When he had dried his tears, he said, "Too bad. I like a woman with spirit, though not with too much."

  "It so happens that some time ago I got hold of a free-grail. Now, I am willing to trade that for a place in which to build our boat and the materials to build it."

  Oskas did not ask him how he got it, though it was evident that he thought Burton had stolen it.

  "If that is so," he said, smiling, "then we have a deal."

  He stood up. "I will see that things are arranged at once. Are you sure that the blonde is not just playing hard to get?"

  The chief took the grail to the council's stronghouse, adding it to the twenty-one free-grails there. These had been collected through the years for the benefit of himself and his subchiefs.

  Here, as everywhere, special people made sure that they got special privileges.

  It took a year to build another cutter. When it was half-finished, Burton decided not to name it after its predecessors, Hadji I and Hadji II. Both had come to bad ends, and, though he denied it, he was superstitious. After some talk with his crew, it was agreed that Snark was suitable. Alice liked the name because of her association with Lewis Carroll, and she agreed with Frigate that it was most appropriate.

  Smiling, she recited part of the Bellman's speech from The Hunting of the Snark.

  "He had bought a large map representing the sea,

  Without the least vestige of land:

  And the crew were much pleased when they

  found it to be

  A map they could all understand.

  " 'What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and

  Equato
rs,

  Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?'

  So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would

  reply

  "They are merely conventional signs!

  " 'Other maps are such shapes, with their islands

  and capes!

  But we've got our brave Captain to thank'

  (So the crew would protest) 'that he's bought us

  A perfect and absolute blank!' "

  Burton laughed, but he was not sure that Alice was not obliquely insulting his abilities as a captain. Lately, they had not been getting along so well.

  "Let's hope the voyage in the new boat won't be another agony in eight fits!" Alice cried.

  "Well," Burton said, grinning savagely at her, "this Bellman knows enough not to get the bowsprit miffed up with the rudder sometimes!

  "Nor,'' he added, "is there a Rule 42 of the boat's code. No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm."

  "Which," Alice said, her smile gone, "was decreed by the Bellman himself. And the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one."

  There was a short silence. All felt the tension between the two, and they looked uneasy, dreading another violent explosion of their captain's temper.

  Monat, eager to avoid this, laughed. He said, "I remember that poem. I was especially struck by 'Fit the Sixth, The Barrister's Dream.' Let me see, ah, yes, the pig was on trial for having deserted its sty, and the Snark, dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending it.

  "The indictment had never been dearly expressed,

  And it seemed that the Snark had begun,

  And had spoken three hours, before any one

  Guessed

  What the pig was supposed to have done."

  He paused, rolled his eyes, and said, "I have it. That one quatrain which so impressed me.

  "But their wild exultation was suddenly checked

  When the jailor informed them with tears,

  Such a sentence would not have the slightest effect,

  As the pig had been dead for some years.''

  They all laughed, and Monat said, "Somehow, that verse squeezes out the essence of Terrestrial justice, its letter if not its spirit."

  "I am amazed," Burton said, "that in your short time on Earth you managed not only to read so much but to remember it so well.''

  "The Hunting of the Snark was a poem. I believe that you can understand human beings better through poetry and fiction man through so-called fact – literature. That is why I took the trouble to memorize it.

  "Anyway, an Earth friend gave it to me. He said that it was one of the greatest works of metaphysics that humanity could boast of. He asked me if Arcturans had anything to equal it."

  Alice said, "Surely he was pulling your leg?"

  "I don't think so."

  Burton shook his head. He had been a voracious reader, and he had an almost photographic memory. But he had been on Earth sixty-nine years, whereas Monat had lived there only from 2002 to 2008 A.D. Yet, during the years they had voyaged together, Monat had betrayed a knowledge that no human could have accumulated in a century.

  The conversation ended since it was time to go back to work on the boat. Burton had not forgotten Alice's seeming barb, however. He brought it up as they got ready to go to bed.

  She looked at him with large, dark eyes, eyes that were already retreating into another world. She almost always withdrew when he attacked, and it was this that heated his anger from red to white-hot.

  "No, Dick, I wasn't insulting you. At least, I wasn't doing so consciously."

  "But you were doing it unconsciously, is that it? That's no excuse. You can't plead that you have no control of that part of you. What your unconscious thinks is just as much you as the conscious is. It's even worse. You can dismiss your conscious thoughts, but what you really believe is what that shadowy thing believes."

  He began pacing back and forth, his face looking like a demon's in the faint light cast by the small fire on the stone hearth.

  "Isabel worshipped me, yet she was not afraid to argue violently with me, to tell me when she thought I was doing something wrong. But you . . . you harbor resentment until it makes an absolute bitch of you, yet you won't come out with it. And that makes things even worse.

  "There's nothing evil about a hammer-and-tongs, screaming, throwing argument. It's like a thunderstorm, frightening when it happens; but it clears the air after it's over.

  "The trouble with you is that you were raised to be a lady. You must never lift your voice in anger; you must always be calm and cool and collected. But that shadowy entity, that hindbrain, that inheritance from your ape ancestors, is tearing at the bars of its cage. And, incidentally, tearing at you. But you, you won't admit it."

  Alice lost her dreamy look, and she shouted at him.

  "You're a liar! And don't throw up your wife to me! We agreed never to compare each other's spouse, but you do it every time you wish to get me angry! It isn't true that I lack passion. You of all people should know that, and I don't just mean in bed.

  "But I won't go into a rage over every petty word and incident. When I get mad it's because the situation demands it. It's worth getting angry about. You . . . you're in a perpetual state of rage."

  "That's a lie!"

  "I don't lie!"

  "Let us get back to the point," he said. "What is there about my capacity as commander that you don't like?"

  She bit her lip, then said, "It's not how you run the boat or how you treat your crew. That's such an obvious matter, and you do fine at it. No, what troubles me is the command, or lack of it, over yourself."

  Burton sat down, saying, "Let's have it. Just what are you talking about?"

  She hitched forward on the chair and leaned over so that her face was close to his.

  "For one thing, you can't stand to stay in one place more than a week. Before three days are up, you get uneasy. By the seventh day you're like a tiger pacing back and forth in his cage, a lion throwing himself against the bars."

  "Spare me the zoological analogies," he said. "Besides, you know that I have stayed in one place for as much as a year."

  "Yes, when you were building a boat. When you had a project going, one which would enable you to travel even more swiftly. Even then, you took short trips, leaving the rest of us to work on the boat. You had to go see this and that, investigate rumors, study strange customs, track down a language you didn't know. Never mind what the excuse was. You had to get away.

  "You have a blight of the soul, Dick. That's the only way I can describe it. You can't endure to stay long in one place. But it's not because of the place. Never! It's you yourself that you can't tolerate. You must run so you can get away from yourself!"

  He stood up and began pacing again.

  "You say then that I can't endure myself! What a pitiable fellow! He doesn't love himself, which means that no one else can love him!"

  "Nonsense!"

  "Yes, all you're saying is pure rot!"

  "The rot is in you, not in what I say."

  "If you can't stand me, why don't you leave?"

  Tears slid down her cheeks, and she said, "I love you, Dick!"

  "But not enough to put up with my trifling eccentricities, is that it?"

  She threw up her hands. "Trifling?"

  "I have an itch to travel. So what? Would you taunt me if I had a physical itch, say athlete's foot?"

  She smiled slightly. "No, I'd tell you to get rid of it. But this isn't just an itch, Dick. It's a compulsion."

  She got up and lit a cigarette. Waving it under his nose, she said, "Look at this. In my time on Earth I would never have dared smoke, wouldn't even have considered it. A lady did not do such things. Especially a lady whose husband was of the landed gentry, whose father was a bishop of the Anglican church. Nor did she ever drink strong liquor to excess or curse. And she would never have considered bathing nude in public!

  "But here I am, Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves of the estate of Cuffnells, a most proper
Victorian female aristocrat, doing all that and much more. By much more, well, I'm doing things in bed that even the French novels my husband was so fond of reading would not even have hinted at.

  "I've changed. So why can't you?

  "To tell the truth, Dick, I'm sick of traveling, always moving on, cooped up inside a small vessel, never knowing what tomorrow will bring. I'm no coward, you know that. But I would like to find a place where they speak English, where the people are of my own kind, where there is peace, where I can settle down, put down roots. I'm so tired of this eternal voyaging!"

  Burton was moved by her tears. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "What can we do about it? I must keep going on. Now, my . . ."

  "Isabel? I'm not she. I'm Alice. I do love you, Dick, but I'm not your, shadow, trailing you wherever you go, present when there's light, gone when there's darkness, a mere appendage."

  She got up to put out the half-smoked cigarette in a baked-clay ashtray. Turning to him, she said, "But there's more! There's something else that bothers me – very much. It hurts me that you don't fully confide in me. You have a secret, Dick, a very deep, very dark secret."

  "Perhaps you can tell me what it is. I certainly don't know."

  "Don't lie! I've heard you talking in your sleep. It has something to do with those Ethicals, doesn't it? Something happened to you you didn't tell anyone about when you were gone all those years.

  "I've heard you muttering about bubbles, about killing yourself seven hundred and seventy-seven times. And I've heard names you never mention when you're awake. Loga. Thanabur. And you speak of Ecks and the mysterious stranger. Who are these people?"

  "Only the man who sleeps alone can keep a secret,'' Burton said.

  "Why can't you tell me? Don't you trust me – after all these years?"

  "I would if I could. But it would be too dangerous for you. Believe me, Alice, I have said nothing because I must say nothing. It is for your own good. No arguments now. I won't give in, and I'll get very angry if you persist in questioning me."