R.W. III - The Dark Design

  The men removed all cloths except for those around the waist. Jill kept on a green-and-white-striped kilt and a thin, nearly transparent cloth around her breasts. They had looked like desert Arabs; now they were Polynesians.

  The dwellers of the plains and the bases of the foothills were gathering by the Riverside. A number shucked all their cloths and jumped into the water, whooping at the cold and splashing each other.

  Jill hesitated for a minute. She had sweat all day and all night paddling her canoe. She needed a bath, and sooner or later she'd have to disrobe entirely. She dropped her towels and ran to the bank and dived flatly out. After swimming back; she borrowed a bar of soap from a woman and lathered the upper part of her body. She came out of the water shivering and rubbed herself vigorously.

  The men stared frankly, seeing a very tall woman, slim, long lagged, small breasted, wide hipped, deeply tanned. She had short, straight, russet hair and large russet eyes. Her face, as she well knew, was nothing to write home about. It was passable except for large buck teeth and a nose a little too long and too hawkish. The teeth were an inheritance from her blackfeller grandmother. There was nothing she could do about them. Nor was there anything she wanted to do about them.

  Hardy's gaze was fastened on her pubic hair, which was extraordinarily long, thick, and ginger colored. Well, he'd get over that, and he was as close to it as he was ever going to get.

  Firebrass went around the side of the grailstone and returned with a spear. Just below the steel head, attached to the shaft, was a large vertebral bone from a hornfish. He drove the spear straight into the ground beside her canoe.

  "The bone means it's my spear, the captain's," he said. "I stuck it in the ground by the canoe to tell everybody that it's not to be borrowed without permission. There are a lot of things like that for you to learn. Meanwhile, Schwartz can show you your quarters and then give you a guided tour. Report to me at high noon under that irontree there."

  He indicated a tree about 90 meters to the west. Towering over 300 meters, if had a thick, gnarly grey bark, scores of great branches extending 90 meters outward, huge elephant's-ear leaves with green and red stripes. Its roots surely drove down at least 120 meters, and its unburnable wood was so hard it would resist a steel saw.

  "We call it The Chief. Meet me there."

  The bugles rang out again. The crowds organized themselves into a military formation under the directions of officers. Firebrass pulled himself onto the top of the grailstone. He stood there, watching while the roll call was made. The corporals reported to the sergeants and the sergeants to the lieutenants, and they to the adjutant. Then Hardy to Firebrass. A moment later, the mob was dismissed. However, they did not leave. Firebrass got off the mushroom-shaped stone, and the corporals took his place. These put the grails in the depressions on the surface of the stone.

  Schwartz was beside her. He cleared his throat. "Gulbirra? I'll take care of your grail."

  She took it from the canoe and handed it to him. This was a grey metal cylinder, 45.72 centimeters across, 76.20 centimeters high, weighing empty about 0.55 kilogram. It had a lid which, once shut, could be lifted only by the owner. There was a curved handle on the lid. Tied to it by a bamboo fiber rope was her I.D., a tiny baked-clay dirigible. It bore her initials on both sides.

  Schwartz ordered a man to place her grail on the stone. The man did so quickly, glancing often at the eastern peaks. But he was safe by two minutes. At the end of that time, the sun ballooned over the top. A few seconds later, the mushroom-shape spouted blue flames over 9 meters high. The roar of its discharged electricity mingled with the thunder of every stone on both sides of The River for as far as could be seen. All these years had not inured Jill to the sight or sound. Though expecting it, she jumped a little. The report rolled back from the reflector of the mountains, echoed again, and died out with a mutter.

  Everybody had breakfast.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  They were on a foothill. The tall esparto-like grass had been recently mown to about a centimeter and a half-length. "We have some machines that do that, though much cutting is done with sickles," David Schwartz said. "The grass is made into ropes."

  "We didn't have any machines where I come from," Jill said. "We used flint sickles. But we made rope from it, of course."

  It was shady and cool here. The branches of an iron tree spread out to cover a small village, a scattering of square or round huts of bamboo. Many of them were thatched with the scarlet and green leaves of the iron tree. A rope ladder dangled from the lowest branch of the colossus, 33 meters up. Near it, a hut sat on a platform supported on two branches. There were other rope ladders, other platforms and huts here and there.

  "Perhaps you will be assigned one of them after your probation," Schwartz said. "Meanwhile, here's your home."

  Jill entered the indicated doorway. At least, she did not have to stoop in this. So many people were short and had therefore built low entrances.

  She set her grail and bundles down on the floor. Schwartz followed her in. "This belonged to a couple killed by a dragonfish. It came up out of the water as if it had been fired from a cannon. It bit off one end of the fishing craft. Unfortunately, the couple were standing on the end and were swallowed along with the logs.

  "It was also unfortunate that this happened after the resurrections ceased. So, they won't be appearing elsewhere, I suppose. You haven't heard anything about new lazari, have you? Recently?"

  "No, I haven't," she said. "Nothing reliable, anyway."

  "Why do you suppose it stopped? After all these years?"

  "I don't know," she said sharply. Talking about this made her uneasy. Why had the gift of immortality been so suddenly withdrawn?

  "Bloody hell with it," she said loudly. She looked around. The floor was hidden under grass that reached almost to her crotch. The blades rasped against her legs. She would have to cut the grass close to the ground and then bring in earth to cover it. Even then the blades might not die. The roots went so deep and were so interconnected that the grass could flourish without benefit of sunshine. Apparently they could draw their sustenance from the roots of those exposed to light.

  A steel sickle hung from a peg on the wall. Steel was so common here that this tool, priceless elsewhere, had not been stolen.

  She moved around, slowly, so that the sharp edges of the grass would not cut her legs. She found two clay pots – thundermugs – in the tall green. A jar for drinking water was on a bamboo table which had not as yet been overturned by the pressure of the growing grass. A necklace of fish bones hung on another peg. Two bamboo cots and pillows and mattresses, made from magnetically locked cloths stuffed with leaves, were partially hidden by the grass. Near them lay a harp made from turtle-fish shell and fish intestines.

  "Well, it's not much," she said. "But then it never is, is it?" "It's big enough, though," Schwartz said. "Plenty of room for you and your mate – when you find one."

  Jill took the sickle from the peg and swiped at the grass. The blades fell like so many heads. "Hah!"

  Schwartz looked at her as if he wondered if she would go from the grass to him.

  "Why do you assume that I want a lover?" "Why, why, why, everybody, that is, everybody does." "Everybody doesn't," she said. She hung the sickle back onto the peg. "What's next on this Cook's tour?"

  She had expected that, when they were alone in the hut, he would ask her to go to bed with him. So many men did. It was evident now that he would like to ask her, but he didn't have the guts. She felt relief mixed with contempt. Then she told herself that it was a strange feeling, self-contradictory. Why should she look down on him because he behaved as she wanted him to behave?

  Perhaps some disappointment was also present. When a man got too aggressive, despite her warnings, then she chopped his neck with the edge of her hand, squeezed his testicles, kicked him in the stomach while he writhed on the ground. No matter how big and strong a man, he was taken by surprise. They
were all helpless, at least while the agony in the testicles lasted. Afterward . . . well, most of them left her alone. Some had tried to kill her, but she was ready for that. They didn't know how handy she was with a knife – or with any weapon.

  David Schwartz was unaware of how narrowly he had escaped crippling and a permanent dent in his ego.

  "It's quite safe to leave your belongings here. We've never had a case of theft yet."

  "I'll take the grail. I'd feel nervous if I couldn't keep my eye on it."

  He shrugged and took a cigar from the leather bag hanging from his shoulder. One of this morning's offerings from his grail.

  "Not in here," she said quietly. "This is my home, and I don't want it stunk up."

  He looked surprised, but he shrugged again. As soon as they had stepped out, however, he lit it. And he moved from her left side to upwind, puffing vigorously, blowing in her direction.

  Jill repressed the remark she wanted so much to make. It would be indiscreet to offend him too much, to give him a chance to black-mark her. After all, she was on probation; she was a woman; she wouldn't needlessly antagonize a man with such a high position, a good friend of Firebrass'. But she would bend her principles, her neck, only so far.

  Or would she? She had taken a lot of crap on Earth because she had wanted to be an airship officer. And smiled and gone home and smashed dishes and pottery and written dirty words on the wall. Childish, but satisfactory. And here she was, in a similar situation, undreamed of until several years ago. She couldn't go someplace else, because there wasn't any other place. Here was where the only airship in the world would be built. And that was to be a one-shot, a single-voyage phenomenon.

  Schwartz stopped on top of the hill. He pointed at an avenue formed by ridgepole pines. At its end, halfway down the hill opposite, was a long shed.

  "The latrine for your neighborhood," he said. "You'll dump your night-pots in it first thing every morning. The urine in one hole and the excrement in the one next to it."

  He paused, smiled, and said, "Probationers are usually given the task of removing the stuff every other day. They take it up the mountain to the gunpowder factory. The excrement is fed to the powder worms. The end product of their digestion is potassium nitrate, and . . ."

  "I know, "she said, speaking between clamped teeth. "I'm not a dummy. Anyway, that process is used wherever sulfur is available."

  Schwartz teetered on his heels, happily puffing his cigar, tilted upward. If he had had suspenders, he would have snapped them.

  "Most probationers put in at least a month working in the factory. It's unpleasant, but it's good discipline. It also weeds out those who aren't dedicated."

  "Non carborundum illegitimatus," she said.

  "What?" he said out of the side of his mouth.

  "A Yank saying. Jack-Latin. Translation: Don't let the bastards grind you down. I can take any crap handed me – if it's worth doing it. Then it's my turn."

  "You're a tough one."

  "Too right. You have to be if you survive in a man's world. I thought perhaps things would be different here. They weren't, and aren't, but they will be,"

  "We've all changed,'' he said slowly and somewhat sadly. "Not always for the better. If you'd told me in 1893 that I'd be listening to a woman, an upper-class woman, not a whore or a mill-hand, mind you, spewing filth and subversive . . ."

  "Instead of subservient, you mean," she said harshly.

  "Allow me to finish. Subversive suffragette rot. And if you'd told me that it wouldn't particularly bother me, I'd have said you were a liar. But live and learn. Or, in our case, die and learn."

  He paused and looked at her. The right side of her mouth jerked; her eyes narrowed.

  "I could tell you to stick it,'' she said. "But I must get along with you. I will take only so much, however."

  "You didn't understand all I said," he replied. "I said it doesn't bother me now. And I said, live and learn. I am not the David Schwartz of 1893. I hope you are not the Jill Gulbirra of . . . when did you die?"

  "In 1983."

  They walked down the hill in silence, Jill carrying her grail on the end of her spear, which was on her shoulder. Schwartz stopped once to point out a stream that ran down from the hills. Its source was a cataract in the mountains. They came to a small lake between two hills. A man sat in a rowboat in the middle of the lake, a bamboo fishing pole in his hand, the float drifting toward a bush overhanging the bank. Jill thought he looked Japanese.

  Schwartz said, "Your neighbor. His real name is Ohara, but he prefers to be called Piscator. He's crazy about Izaak Walton, whom he can quote verbatim. He says a man needs only one name in this world, and he's chosen Piscator. Latin for fisher. He's a fish freak, as you can see. Which is why he's in charge of the Parolando Riverdragon fishing. But today's his day off."

  "That's interesting," she said. He was, she believed, leading up to something .unpleasant for her. The slight smile looked sadistic.

  "He'll probably be the first mate of the airship," he said. "He was a Japanese naval officer and during the first part of World War I he was attached to the British Navy as an observer and trainee on dirigibles. Later, he was a trainee-observer on an Italian Navy airship which made bombing raids on Austrian bases. So, you see, he's had enough experience to rank him very high on the list."

  "And he is a man." She smiled, though seething inside. "And though my experience is much much more than his, still, he's a man."

  Schwartz backed away from her. "I'm sure Firebrass will appoint officers according to their merits only."

  She did not reply.

  Schwartz waved at the man in the boat. He rose from his seat and, smiling, bowed. Then he sat down, but not before giving her a look that seemed to sweep over her like a metaphysical radar beam, locating her place in the world, identifying her psychic construction.

  Imagination, of course. But she thought that Schwartz was right when he said, "An extraordinary man, that Piscator."

  The Japanese's black eyes seemed to burn holes in her back as she walked away.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  Blackness outside; inside, a night writhing with snakes of pale lightning, twisty and fuzzy. Some time later, in a place where there was no time, a bright beam ahead shone as if from the lens of a movie projector. The light was a whisper in the air; in her mind, it was bellowing. The film was being shown on a cathode-ray oscilloscope; it was a series of letters, broken words, signs, and symbols, all part of an undeciphered code. Perhaps: undecipherable.

  Worse, it seemed to run backward, spun back into the reel(ity?). It was a documentary made for television, for the boobish (boobed?) viewer of the boob tube. Yet, backward was an excellent technique. Images flashed to suggest, to reverberate, to echo, to evoke, to flap intimation upon intimation with electronic quickness. Like flipping the pages of an illustrated book from back to beginning. But the text, where was the text? And what was she thinking of when she thought of images? There were no images. No plot. Yes, there was a plot, but it had to be put together from many pieces. Ah, many pieces. She almost had it, but it had slipped away.

  Moaning, she awoke. She opened her eyes and listened to the rain beating upon the thatched roof.

  Now she remembered the first part of the dream. It was a dream of a dream, or what she thought was a dream but was not sure. It was raining, and she had half-awakened or had seemed to do so. The hut was 20,000 kilometers from this one, but it was almost identical, and the world outside the hut, as seen by occasional flashes of lightning, would not have differed much. She had turned, and her hand had not felt the expected flesh.

  She had sat up and looked around. A lightning streak, close enough to make her jump, showed that Jack was not in the hut.

  She had got up and lit a fish-oil lamp. Not only was he not there, his cloths, weapons, and grail were gone.

  She had run out into the stormy night to look for him.

  She never found him. He was gone, and no one
knew where or why.

  The only one who might have been able to tell her had also sneaked out that same night. He, too, had left his hutmate without saying a word about his intentions. It was apparent to Jill that the two had run off together. Yet, as far as she knew, they had been only casual acquaintances.

  Why had Jack left her, so silently and heartlessly?

  What had she done?

  Was it just that Jack had decided that he did not want to put up with a woman who wouldn't play second fiddle in their relationship? Also, the wanderlust had gotten him again? With both motives pushing him, he had just up and went, to use one of his corny Americanisms?

  Whatever was the truth, she was living with no man anymore, ever again. Jack was the best, and the last was the best, as it should be, but he had not been good enough.

  She was on the rebound when she met Fatima, the little sloe-eyed Turk. Fatima, one of the hundreds of concubines of Mohammed IV (ruled Turkey from 1648-1687), had never gone to bed with him. She had, however, not suffered overmuch from lack of sexual satisfaction. There were plenty of fellow prisoners of the Seraglio who preferred their own sex as lovers, either through natural inclinations or conditioning. She became a favorite of Kosem, Mohammed's grandmother, though there was nothing overtly homosexual in their relationship.

  But Turban, Mohammed's mother, sought to get control of the government from Kosem, and eventually Kosem was caught by a party of Turban's assassins and strangled to death with the cords from her own bed curtain. It was Fatima's bad fortune to be attending Kosem when this happened and so she had to share her fate.

  Jill took the sexy little Turk in as hutmate after Fatima had quarreled with her lover, a French ballet danseuse (died 1873). Jill was not in love with her, but she was sexually exciting and, after a while, she became fond of her. Fatima, however, was ignorant and, worse, unteachable. She was selfish and would remain so, was infantile and would remain so. Jill got tired of her after a year. Even so, she was grief-stricken when Fatima was raped and then beaten to death by three drunken Sikeli (born 1000 B.C.?). Her grief was intensified by the knowledge (or belief, since there was no proof) that Fatima was truly dead. Resurrection had apparently stopped. No more would a dead person rise the next day at dawn far, far from the scene of his or her demise.