R.W. III - The Dark Design

  Rohrig rallied. He refused to go down without his flags flying, the band playing Nearer My God to Thee. He smiled as if the gold in the pot at rainbow's end had not suddenly been transmuted into turds.

  "I don't know how you did it, but you got me! O.K. I never said I was perfect. What happens now?"

  Verdict: failed. Sentence: six months of probation with another and final inquisition at its end.

  Later, when he and Rutherford were alone in the hall, she said, "I suggest you study geography, too, Rohrig. I'll give you a clue. Wales is near England. But I doubt my advice will help you. You couldn't find your ass if it was handed to you on a silver platter.''

  His friend, Pete Frigate, was waiting at the end of the hall for him. Pete was one of the group of older students dubbed "The Bearded Ones" by a sophomore girl who liked to hang around them. They were all veterans whose college education had been interrupted by the war. They and their wives or mistresses led a life which was then called "Bohemian." They were the unknown forerunners of the beatniks and the hippies.

  As Rohrig drew near, Frigate looked questioningly at him. Though Rohrig was near tears, he put on a big smile and then began laughing uproariously.

  "You won't believe this, Pete!"

  Frigate did find it difficult to believe that anyone past the sixth grade of grammar school did not know where Wales was. When he was finally convinced, he too laughed.

  Rohrig shouted, "How in hell could that white-haired fox have found out my weak spot?"

  Frigate said, "I don't know, but she's magnificent. Listen, Bob. Don't feel so bad. I know a distinguished surgeon who doesn't remember if the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun. He says it's not necessary to know that when you're digging into people's bodies.

  "But an English major . . . he ought at least to know . . . ooh, haw, haw!"

  In one of those non sequiturs the Dream Scripter so often writes, Rohrig found himself elsewhere. Now he was in fog and chasing a butterfly. It was beautiful, and what made it so valuable was that it was the only one of its kind and only Rohrig knew that it existed. It was striped with azure and gold, its antennae were scarlet, its eyes were green emeralds. The king of the dwarfs had fashioned it in his cave in the Black Mountains, and the Wizard of Oz had dunked it in the waters of life.

  Fluttering only an inch beyond his outstretched hand, it led him through the mists.

  "Hold still, you son of a bitch! Hold still!"

  He plunged after it for what seemed like miles. Dimly, out of the corner of his eye, he could see shapes in the clouds, things standing as motionless and quietly as if they were carved from bone. Twice he distinguished a figure; one wore a crown, the other had a horse's head.

  Suddenly, he was confronted by one of the objects. He stopped since it seemed impossible for some reason to go around it. The butterfly hung for a moment above the top of the thing, then settled down upon it. Its green eyes glowed, and its front legs shook the antennae mockingly.

  Moving forward slowly, Rohrig saw that it was Frigate who was blocking his path.

  "Don't you dare touch it!" Rohrig whispered fiercely. "It's mine!"

  Frigate's face was as expressionless as a knight's visor. It always looked deadpan when Rohrig was in one of his many furies and chewing out everybody in sight. That had made Rohrig even more angry, and now it rocketed him to the point of utter madness.

  "Out of the way, Frigate! Step aside or get knocked down!"

  The butterfly, startled by the outburst, flew off into the fog.

  "I can't," Frigate said.

  "Why not?" Rohrig thundered as he hopped up and down in frustration.

  Frigate pointed downward. He was standing on a large red square. Adjoining it were other squares, some red, some black.

  "I got misplaced. I don't know what's going to happen now. It's against the rules to put me on a red square. But then, who cares about rules? Besides the pieces, I mean."

  "Can I help you?" Rohrig said.

  "How could you do that? You can't help yourself."

  Frigate pointed over Rohrig's shoulder.

  "It's going to catch you now. While you've been chasing the butterfly, it's been chasing you."

  Rohrig suddenly felt utterly terrified. There was something after him, something which would do something horrible to him.

  Desperately, he tried to move forward, to go over or around Frigate. But the red square held him as it held Frigate.

  "Trapped!"

  He could still see the butterfly, a dot, a dust mote, gone. Forever.

  The fog had thickened. Frigate was only a blur.

  "I make my own rules!" Rohrig shouted.

  A whisper came from the mists before him. "Quiet! It'll hear you!"

  He awoke briefly. His hutmate stirred.

  "What's wrong, Bob?"

  "I'm drowning in a surf of uncease."

  "What?"

  "Surcease."

  He sank bank into the primal ocean down to where drowned gods leaned in the ooze at crazy angles, staring with fish-cold eyes under barnacled crowns.

  Neither he nor Frigate knew that he could have answered one of the questions in the letter. Rohrig had awakened on Resurrection Day in the far north. His neighbors were prehistoric Scandinavians, Patagonian Indians, Ice Age Mongolians, and late-twentieth-century Siberians. Rohrig was quick at learning new languages and was soon fluent in a dozen, though he never mastered the pronunciation and he murdered the syntax. As he always did, he made himself at home, and he was soon friends with many. For a while, he even set himself up as a sort of shaman. Shamans, however, must take themselves seriously if they would succeed, and Rohrig was only serious about his sculpturing. Also, he began to tire of the cold. He was a sun worshipper; his happiest days had been in Mexico where he was the first mate on a small coastal ship transporting frozen shrimp from Yucatan to Brownsville, Texas. He had been briefly involved in gun-smuggling there but had quit it before spending a few days in a Mexican jail. He had also quit Mexico. The authorities could not prove his guilt, but they suggested that he leave the country.

  He was just about to take a dugout down-River for a warm climate when along came Agatha Croomes. Agatha was a black woman, born 1713, died 1783, a freed slave, a backwoods Baptist preacher, a holy roller, four times married, mother of ten children, and a pipe smoker. She had been resurrected a hundred thousand grailstones away, but here she was. A vision had come to her, a vision in which God told her to come to His dwelling at the North Pole, where He would hand her the keys to kingdom come, to glory and salvation forever, to understanding of time and eternity, space and infinity, creation and destruction, death and life. She would also be the one to cast the devil into the pit, lock him up, and throw the key away.

  Rohrig thought she was crazy, but she intrigued him. Also, he wasn't so sure that the solution to the mystery of this world did not lie at the beginning of The River.

  He knew that no one had ventured into the fog-laden land further north. If he accompanied her party of eleven, he would be among the first to reach the North Pole. If he had anything to do with it, he would be the very first person to get there. When their goal was in sight he was going to sprint ahead and plant on the site of the North Pole a stone statuette of himself, his name incised at the base.

  From then on, anybody who got there would know that he'd been beat out for first place by Robert F. Rohrig. Agatha wouldn't take him, however, unless he believed in the Lord and the Holy Book. He hated to lie, but he told himself that he wasn't really deceiving her. Deep down, he did believe in a god, though he wasn't sure whether its name was Jehovah or Rohrig. As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.

  Before the expedition reached the end of the grailstones, five had turned back. When they got to the enormous cave out of which The River fell, four decided that they would starve to death if they kept on going. Rohrig went on with Agatha Cr
oomes and Winglat, a member of an Amerind tribe that had crossed from Siberia to Alaska sometime in the Old Stone Age. Rohrig would have liked to turn back, but he wasn't going to admit that a crazy black woman and a paleolithic savage had more courage than he.

  Besides, Agatha's preachings had almost convinced him that she had had a true vision. Maybe Almighty God and sweet Jesus were waiting for him. It wouldn't do to hold up the schedule.

  After they had crawled along the ledge in the cave and Winglat had slipped and fallen into The River, Rohrig told himself that he was as crazy as Agatha. But he went on.

  When they came to the place where the ledge sloped downward into the fog, the fog that covered a sea the sounds of which faintly reached them, they were very weak from hunger. There was no turning back now. If they did not find food within the day, they would die. Agatha, however, said that all they could eat was close at hand. She knew it was so because she had had a vision while they slept on the ledge within the cave. She had seen a place where meat and vegetables were in abundance.

  Rohrig watched her crawl away from him. After a while, he followed. But he left his grail behind because he was too weak to drag it. If he survived, he could always come back for it. The statuette was in the grail, and for a few seconds he considered removing it and taking it with him. To hell with it, he thought, and he went down the path.

  He never made it. Weakness overcame him; his legs and arms just would not obey his will.

  Thirst killed him before starvation did its job. It was ironic that The River had rushed by him, and he could not drink because he had no rope with which to lower his grail and collect the precious fluid.

  A sea was booming against the rocks at the base of the cliffs, and he could not descend to it.

  "Coleridge would appreciate this," he thought. "I wish I did."

  He muttered, "Now I'll never get the answers to my questions. Maybe it's just as well. I probably wouldn't have liked them anyway."

  Now Rohrig was sleeping uneasily in a hut by The River in the equatorial zone. And Frigate, standing watch on the deck of a cutter, was chuckling. He was recalling Rohrig's ordeal while defending his thesis.

  Perhaps it was telepathy that evoked the incident in their minds at the same time. It's preferable to use Occam's razor, that never dull but seldom-used blade. Call it coincidence.

  The croaker placed itself directly in the path of the floating dead fish. The body went into the wide mouth of the amphibian. Frigate's letter and its container, only a centimeter behind the carcass, were also engulfed, and both slid into the gullet and became lodged in the croaker's belly.

  Its stomach could easily handle garbage, excrement, and rotting flesh. But the cellulose fibers of the bamboo case were too tough for it to convert into absorbable form. After feeling sharp pain for a long time, the croaker died trying to pass the container.

  The letter often kills the spirit. Sometimes, the envelope does it.

  Chapter 42

  * * *

  Almost everybody was cheering. People were crowding around Jill and hugging and kissing her, and for once she did not mind. Most of the display of affection was due to booziness, she knew, but she still felt a warm glow within herself. If they had not been pleased, their very drunkenness could have resulted in open hostility. Perhaps she was not as disliked as she had thought. Here was David Schwartz, whom she had once overheard calling her "Old Frozen Face,'' patting her on the back and congratulating her.

  Anna Obrenova was standing by Barry Thorn, though neither had spoken much to the other all evening. She was smiling as if she were pleased that Jill Gulbirra had been chosen over her. Perhaps she really did not care. Jill preferred to believe that the little blonde was seething with hate, though she could be wrong. Anna might have a rational attitude toward her. After all, she was a Johnny-come-lately, and Jill had devoted thousands of hours to the construction of the ship and the training of the crew.

  Firebrass had shouted for silence. The loud chatter and singing had finally stopped. Then he had said that he was announcing the roster of officers, and he had grinned at her. She had felt sick. His grin was malicious, she was sure of that. He was going to pay her back for all the cutting remarks she had made to him. Justified remarks, because she was not going to allow anyone to run over her just because she was a woman. But he was in a position to get revenge.

  Yet, he had done the right thing, and he seemed to be happy about doing it.

  Jill, smiling, made her way through the crowd, threw her arms around Firebrass and burst into tears. He thrust his tongue deep into her mouth and then patted her fanny. This time, she did not resent unasked-for familiarities. He wasn't taking advantage of her emotions or being condescending. He was, after all, fond of her, and perhaps he was sexually attracted to her. Or perhaps he was just being ornery.

  Anna, still smiling, held out her hand and said, "My sincerest congratulations, Jill." Jill took the delicate and cool hand, felt an irrational, almost overpowering impulse to yank her arm out of its socket, and said, "Thank you very much, Anna."

  Thorn waved to her and shouted something, congratulations, probably. He did, however, make no effort to come to her.

  A moment later, she stumbled weeping out of the ballroom. Before she had gotten home, she hated herself for having shown how strongly she felt. She had never cried in public, not even at the funerals of her parents.

  The tears dried as she thought of her father and mother. Where were they? What were they doing? It would be nice if she could see them. That was all: nice. She did not want to live in the same area with them. They were not her old mother and father, grey baked, wrinkling, and fat, their main concerns their grandchildren. They would look as young as she, and they would have little in common with her except some shared experiences. They would bore her and vice versa. It would be a strain to pretend that the child-parent relationship had not died.

  Besides, she thought of her mother as a cipher, a passive appendage to her father, who was a violent, loud, domineering man. She did not really like him, though she had grieved somewhat when he had died. But that was because of what might have been, not because of what had been.

  For all she knew, they might be dead again.

  What did it matter now?

  It did not matter. Then why the second flood of tears?

  Chapter 43

  * * *

  "Well, folks, here we are again. this time it's the big one.

  The final take-off. Heigh-ho for the Big Grail, the Misty Tower, the house of the Santa Claus at the North Pole, the Saint Nick who gave us the gifts of resurrection, eternal youth, free food, booze, and tobacco.

  "There must be at least a million people here. The stands are full, the hills are crowded, people are falling out of the trees. The police are having a hell of a time keeping order. It's a beautiful day, isn't it always? The uproar is really something, and I don't think you can hear a word I'm saying even through this PA system. So, folks, up yours!

  "Aha! Some of you heard that. Just kidding, folks, just trying to get your attention. Let me tell you again about the Parseval. I know that you have pamphlets describing this colossal airship, but most of you are illiterates. Not that it's your fault. You speak Esperanto, but you've never had an opportunity to learn to read it. So here goes. Only, wait a moment while I moisten my parched throat with some skull-bloom.

  "Ah! That was smoo-oo-ooth! The only trouble is that I've been quenching my thirst since before dawn, and I'm having trouble seeing straight. I hate to think of tomorrow morning, but what the hell. You have to pay for everything good in this world, not to mention the others.

  "There she is, folks, though it's hardly necessary to point her out to you. The Parseval. Named by Firebrass for the man who first suggested that the airship be built though there was a lot of argument at first about what name'd be painted on her silver sides.

  "Third mate Metzing wanted to name her the Graf Zeppelin III, after the man who was responsible for the first air
ship commercial line and chiefly responsible for the military Zeppelins.

  "First Mate Gulbirra thought that she ought to be called Adam and Eve, after the whole human race, since she represents all of us. She also suggested Queen of the Skies and Titania. A little bit of female chauvinism there. Titania sounds too much like Titanic, anyway, and you know what happened to that ship.

  "No, you don't. I forgot most of you never heard of her.

  "One of the engineers, I forget his name at the moment, he was a crewman on the ill-fated Shenandoah, wanted to name her Silver Cloud. That was the name of the airship in a book called Tom Swift and His Big Dirigible.

  "Another wanted to name her the Henri Giffard after the Frenchman who flew the first self-propelled lighter-than-air craft. Too bad old Henri couldn't be here to see the culmination of the airship, the acme of dirigible art, the last and the best and the greatest of all aerial vessels. Too bad the whole human race can't be here to witness this challenge to the gods, the flying gauntlet flung against the face of the powers on high!

  "Pardon me a moment, folks. Time for another libation to the gods to be poured down this dry throat instead of being wasted by pouring on the ground.

  ''Aaah! Mighty good, folks! Drink up! The liquor's free, compliments of the house, which is the nation of Parolando.

  "So, folks, our esteemed ex-president, Milton Firebrass, ex-American, ex-astronaut, decided to call this colossus the Parseval. Since he's the chief honcho, the big enchilada, the boss, that's what she's titled.

  "So . . . oh, yeah, I started to give you her statistics. Captain Firebrass wanted to build the biggest dirigible ever built, and he did. She's also the biggest that will ever be built, since, there won't be any more. Maybe he should have called her The Loft Is the Best.

  "Anyway, the Parseval is 2680 feet or 820 meters long. Its widest diameter is 1112 feet or 328 meters. Its gas capacity is 120,000,000 cubic feet or 6,360,000 cubic meters.