R.W. III - The Dark Design

  They could see the fog, like a woolly blanket, covering The River and the plains on both banks. It lapped against the tree-covered hills, on the sides of which were a few lights. Beyond the hills of the valley were the mountains, inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees for the first thousand feet or 305 meters or so, then ascending straight up, smooth as a mirror, for 10,000 feet or about 3048 meters.

  During his first years here, Burton had estimated the mountains to be about 20,000 feet or 6096 meters high. He was not the only one to make that error when only the eye was available for calculation. After he had been able to construct rather crude surveying instruments, however, he had determined that the mountain walls were, generally, twice as low as he had thought. Their blue-grey or black rock created an illusion. Perhaps this was because the valley was so narrow, and the walls made the dwellers feel even more pygmyish.

  This was a world of illusions, physical, metaphysical, and psychological. As on Earth, so here.

  Frigate had lit a cigarette. He had quit smoking for a year, but now, as he put it, he had "fallen from grace." He was almost as tall as Burton. His eyes were hazel. His hair was almost as black as his companion's, though it reflected a reddish undercoating in sunlight. His features were irregular: bulging supra-orbital ridges, a straight nose of average size but with large nostrils, full lips, the upper very long, a clefted chin. The latter seemed to recede because of his unusually short jaw.

  On Earth he had been, among many other things, one of that rare but vigorous breed which collected all literature by, about, and relevant to Burton. He had also written a biography of him but had eventually novelized it as A Rough Knight for the Queen.

  On first meeting him, Burton had been puzzled when Frigate had identified himself as a science fiction writer.

  "What in Gehenna is that?"

  "Don't ask me to define science fiction," Frigate had said. "No one was ever able to give it a completely satisfactory definition. However, what it is . . . was . . . was a genre of literature in which most of the stories took place in a fictional future. It was called science fiction because science was supposed to play a large part in it. The development of science in the future, that is. This science wasn't confined to physics and chemistry but also included extrapolations of the sociological and psychological science of the author's time.

  "In fact, any story that took place in the future was science fiction. However, a story written in 1960, for instance, which projected a future of 1984, was still classified as science fiction in 1984.

  "Moreover, a science fiction story could take place in the present or the past. But the assumption was that the story was possible because it was based on the science of the author's time, and he merely extrapolated, more or less rigorously, what a science could develop into.

  "Unfortunately, this definition included stories in which there was no science or else science poorly understood by the author.

  "However (there are a lot of howevers in science fiction), there were many stories about things which could not possibly happen, for which there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. Like time travel, parallel worlds, and faster-than-light drives. Living stars, God visiting the Earth in the flesh, insects tall as buildings, world deluges, enslavement through telepathy, and more in an endless list."

  "How did it come to be named science fiction?"

  "Well, actually, it was around a long time before a man named Hugo Gernsback originated the label. You've read the Jules Verne novels and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, haven't you? Those were considered to be science fiction."

  "It sounds as if it were just fantasy," Burton had said.

  "Yes, but all fiction is fantasy. The difference between mundane fantasy, what we called mainstream literature, and science fiction was that mainstream stories were about things which could have happened. They also always took place in the past or the present.

  "Science fiction stories were about things that could not happen or were highly improbable. Some people wanted to name it speculative literature, but the term never caught on."

  Burton never thoroughly understood what science fiction was, but he did not feel bad about it. Frigate couldn't explain it clearly either, though he could give numerous examples.

  "Actually," Frigate had said, "science fiction was one of those many things that don't exist but nevertheless have a name. Let's talk about something else."

  Burton had refused to drop the subject. "Then you were in a profession which didn't exist?"

  "No, the profession of writing science fiction existed. It was just that science fiction per se was nonexistent. This is beginning to sound like a dialog in Alice in Wonderland."

  "Was the money you made from your writings also nonexistent?"

  "Almost. Well, that's an exaggeration. I didn't starve in a garret, but I also wasn't driving a gold-plated Cadillac."

  "What's a Cadillac?"

  Thinking of that now, Burton found it strange that the woman who slept with him was the Alice who had been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's two masterpieces.

  Suddenly, Frigate said, "What's that?"

  Burton looked eastward toward the strait. Unlike the areas above and below it, the strait had no banks. High hills rose abruptly along its length, hills which were smooth walls. Below the strait something – no, two objects – were moving toward him, seemingly suspended above the fog.

  He climbed a rope ladder to get a better look. The two objects were not suspended in the air. Their lower parts were just hidden by the mists. The nearest was a wooden structure with what seemed to be a human figure on its top. The second, much farther back, was a large, round, black object.

  He called down. "Pete! I think it's a raft! A very large one! It's moving with the current, and it's headed directly toward us! There's a tower with a pilot on it. He isn't moving, though, just standing there. Surely . . ."

  No, not surely. The man on the tower had not moved. If he were awake, he would have seen that the raft was on a collision course.

  Burton hooked an arm around a rope, cupped his hands, and bellowed warnings. The figure leaning against the guardrail did not move. Burton stopped shouting at him.

  "Wake up everybody!" he thundered at Frigate. "On the double! We must get the boat out of the way!"

  He climbed swiftly down and went over the side onto the dock. Here, where his head was below the surface of the fog, he could see nothing. By running one hand along the hull, however, he could feel his way to the mooring posts. By the time he had untied two lines, he heard the others on the deck above. He shouted that Monat and Kazz should get onto the dock on the other side and untie the lines there.

  In his haste, he rammed into a post and for several seconds hopped around holding his knee. Then he resumed his work.

  Having completed his part of unloosing, he groped back along the hull. Someone had by then let down the gangway. He went up it, his hands sliding along the railing, and came aboard. Now he could see the tops of the women's heads and the American's face.

  Alice said, "What's going on?"

  "Have you gotten the poles out?" he said to Frigate.

  "Yeah."

  He swung up onto the rope ladder again. The two objects were still on a course that must end at the docks. The man on the watch tower had not moved.

  By now there were voices coming from the island. The Ganopo were awake and calling out questions.

  Monat's head and shoulders rose from the greyness. He looked like a monster sliding up out of the fog of a Gothic novel. The skull was similar to that of a human being's, but the fleshy features made him seem only semi-human. Thick black eyebrows curved down alongside the face to knobbed cheekbones and flared out to cover them. Thin membranes that swung with the movement of his head hung from the lower part of his nostrils. At the end of his nose was a deeply cleft boss of cartilage. His lips were like a dog's, thin, black, and leathery. The lobeless ears were convoluted like seashells.

  Kazz bellowed somewhere near M
onat. Burton could not see him since he was the second shortest of the crew, only about 5 feet or 1.5 meters tall. Then he came very close, and Burton could make out the squat figure.

  "Get the poles and push the boat from the docks!'' Burton yelled.

  "Where in hell are they?" Besst called.

  Frigate said, "I pulled them from the rack. They're on the deck below it."

  Burton said, "Follow me," and then he cursed as he stumbled over something and fell flat on his face. He was up again at once, only to bump into somebody. From the bulky shape, he thought it must be Besst.

  After some confusion, the poles were gotten and their wielders were stationed along the sides. At Burton's orders, they thrust the ends against the top of the dock, there being no room between the hull and the side of the dock for the poles to shove against the stone bottom of the underwater shelf. Since they had to fight against the current, which was strongest on the middle of the lake, they could only move the vessel very slowly. Once past the dock, they lowered the ends of the poles into the water and pushed against the rocky bottom. Even so, the poles slipped on the bare, smooth rock.

  Burton ordered that they should let the prow of the boat swing around. This was done, and then the polers on the port side moved to the starboard to help the others keep the vessel from drifting side-wise against the spire. At this point, both the beach and the underwater shelf abruptly ceased. Now they had to hold the poles horizontally and shove against the wall of the spire.

  Burton, hearing an unknown voice, looked back. The dark figure on the tower was moving now and screaming down into the fog. Other voices, fainter than the pilot's, came through the mists.

  The large, round, dark object had become even larger. In the starlight it looked like the head of a giant. He estimated that the distance between the tower and the other object was about 100 meters. That meant that the raft which carried them was huge. He had no idea how wide it was, and he hoped he did not find out until after the boat was on the other side of the island.

  Just before he turned back to his task, he saw another man appear on the tower. He was waving his hands, and his shrill voice dominated the other man's.

  "Here it comes!" Frigate called out.

  Burton didn't blame him for sounding panicked. He was in a frenzy himself. All that weight and momentum, hundreds, perhaps thousands of logs, were moving toward the Hadji II.

  "Push your guts out!" he yelled. "We'll be crushed if you don't!"

  By then the bowsprit, the large spar projecting forward of the ship, had cleared the spire. About ten more pushes should clear the corner, and the Hadji II would be taken by the current past the spire, away from the danger.

  The yelling from the raft was loud and close. Burton spared a glance at the tower. It was only a little over 400 feet or 122 meters away. Furthermore, the side of the tower had turned a little. He cursed. That meant that the raft had turned, or been turned, off its course to avoid striking the island in its center part. Unfortunately, it was going to the left instead of to the right.

  "Heave!" Burton shouted.

  He wondered where the tower was located. Was it on the very prow of the raft or was it set back? If the latter was the situation, then there would be a large part of the raft forward of the tower. That meant that somewhere under the fog the forward part of the raft was very near the boat.

  In any case, the raft was not going to miss the island. He did not care about that if it did not strike the boat.

  A man on the tower was screaming orders in an unknown language down into the mists.

  The prow of the Hadji II was now past the spire. But here the strong current at the corner had pressed the boat against the rocky wall, and their poles were slipping on the rock, which was smoother than that just passed.

  "Push, you sons of bitches, push!" Burton thundered.

  There was a roar, an abrupt lifting of the deck, a tilting inward toward the rock. Burton was dashed against a bright hardness that made him go soft and black inside. Dimly, he was aware that he had fallen back onto the deck, was lying on his back, was trying to get up in the dark greyness. Screams arose from around him. These and the snapping of smashed timbers and a final explosion, the impact of the forward part of the raft against the rock, were the last things he heard.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  Fog blinded Jill Gulbirra.

  By keeping close to the right bank of The River, she could barely discern the grailstones. They looked ominous, like giant toadstools in a dismal wasteland.

  The next one should be the end of her odyssey. She had been counting them as she passed them, counting all night.

  Now, a phantom in a ghost canoe, she paddled on. The wind was dead, but she revived it a little, or made it a pseudo-wind, by her own motion, driving against the current. The heavy wet air rubbed against her face like ectoplasmic curtains.

  Now she saw a fire by the stone which had to be her destination. It had been a small spark. Now it was bigger, glowing palely, a ghost of a fire. From near it the voices of men. Disembodied voices.

  She herself, she thought, must look like the spirit of a nun. White cloths held together by concealed magnetic tabs swathed her body. One cloth formed a hood so that anyone near enough in the fog would see her face as a darker blank in the dark greyness.

  Her few belongings crouched on the floor of the canoe. In this wet, dim woolliness, they were two small beasts, white and grey. Near her was a tall grey metal cylinder, her "tucker box.'' Beyond it was a bundle, cloths containing various items. A bamboo flute. A ring of oak set with polished jadeite stone, her lover's gift, a lover departed but dead in only one sense – as far as she knew. A bag of dragonfish leather, crammed with artifacts and memories. Tied to the bundle, but invisible in this darkness, was a leather case holding a yew bow and a quiver of arrows.

  Under her seat lay a spear, a bamboo shaft tipped with a hornfish horn. By it lay two heavy oak war-boomerangs and a bag containing two leather slings and forty stones.

  As the fire brightened, the voices became louder. Who were they ? Guards? Drunken revelers? Slavers hoping to catch just such as she? Early worms out to catch a bird?

  She smiled grimly. If they wanted violence, they would get it.

  However, they sounded more like drunks. If what she had been told down-River was true, she was in peaceful territory. Neither Parolando nor its neighboring states practiced grail slavery. She could have sailed the canoe boldly in daylight, according to her information. She would be welcomed and free, free to come or to go. Moreover, it was true that they, Parolandoj, were building a giant airship.

  But distrust was her native element, though she could not be blamed for that. Consider her terrible experiences. So, she would scout around in the dark. It would require more work and inconvenience; it would be inefficient. You had to make your choice between survival and efficiency, though in the long run survival was optimum efficiency, no matter how much time and effort it took.

  Death was no longer a temporary event in the Rivervalley. Resurrection seemed to have stopped, and with its cessation the ancient terror had returned.

  Now the fire was bright enough for her to see the huge toadstool shape. The blaze was just beyond it. Four figure, black outlines, moved by the flames. She could smell the smoke of bamboo and pine, and she thought she whiffed cigars. Why had the disgusting cigars been provided by the Mysterious Donors?

  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 n
othing 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.