The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (4 page)

He whirled at a sound, snapping off his light. Somebody moved and breathed in the corridor outside. Then the door opened and an arm came through the opening to grope about the inside of the bulkhead for the light switch.

Chapman saw enough of a shoulder and part of a head, silhouetted against the lighted corridor, to recognize Jean-Jacques Bergerat. In another second the lights would go on, and the trunks were too closely packed for him to hide among them on such short notice.

With one hand Chapman reached into his blouse pocket and brought out a small fistful of pepper. With the other, having stowed his flashlight, he seized the wrist groping for the switch. He threw the pepper in Bergerat’s face and pulled hard on the wrist, jerking the man forward into the baggage room. Chapman let go his victim and slipped past him out the door, which he closed behind him just as the air was rent by the first of a series of crashing sneezes.

Half an hour later, a fist knocked on Chapman’s door. “Let me in, Cato! A thing of the most strange has ’appened to me!”

Chapman looked around the room and took the water carafe out of its bracket on the wall. In a pinch it would do.

Bergerat, however, seemed entirely friendly, though afflicted with a red face and bloodshot eyes. “My friend! It is something of incredible! I am walking along the corridor when I hear a noise coming from the baggage room. Aha, I say, what is it that is there? Is somebody after my beautiful samples? I push the door.
Achoo!
It opens, though it should at all times be locked except when the steward or one of the officers is there. I reach inside to put on the lights. What happens? I am seized and drawn in, and pepper is thrown in my face. The intruder, he rushes past me and out. Fortunately the door cannot be locked from the inside or I should be there yet.
Achoo!”

“Who was it?” said Chapman.

“I don’t know, so quickly did the
fripon
move. For a moment I suspected even you. But that would be absurd; one agent of a great couturière to play such a trick on another? Then I thought maybe our friend Fiasakhe might have some fanatical idea that the custom of wearing clothes was indecent, and wished to prevent us from introducing it to his planet. But no, I am sure the hand that grasped my arm was that of a man, not an Osirian. Have you any ideas?”

Chapman asked innocently: “Is your model, Mademoiselle Savinkov, trustworthy?”

“That little one? I think that yes. Here, let us repair the ravages of time and misfortune.” Bergerat brought out a silver flask with two small cups screwed over the outlet. “Good cognac.”

Chapman sniffed suspiciously at his thimbleful of brandy and held it in his hand until Bergerat drank his. Then Chapman drank too.

“Let us go over the passenger list,” said Bergerat. “This Madame Barros, now, she is en route to join her husband, so I think she is kosher. Mr. William Chisholm: do you know anything of him?”

“Only what he’s told us. He’s some kind of professor . . .”

Chapman, sitting on the edge of Mpande’s bunk, swayed. Then, before he even realized what was happening, he lost consciousness.

###

Cato Chapman awakened with a headache and a foul taste in his mouth. He moved a little experimentally, groaned, and sat up to hold his head.

“I say, are you all right, old thing?” said Mpande, sticking his head out from the bottom bunk. “I came in some hours ago, and found you stretched out on your bunk with your togs on.”

“Guess I’ll live, thanks,” muttered Chapman. His watch told him it was nearly breakfast time.

He got up and shaved. Then, as soon as Mpande left, Chapman leaped to his trunk. Finding it still locked, he hoped for a moment it had not been tampered with. When he got it open, however, the gorgeous raiment within was a slimy mess. Some of the garments were full of holes; others were partly dissolved into a kind of slush; others were whole but violently discolored.

He pulled himself together and pressed the intercom button in the bulkhead. “Miss Zorn, please . . . Celia, this is Gato. Will you step over to my cabin, quick?”

When she saw the mess she clutched her head and moaned: “Cato! How perfectly ghastly! How did that happen?”

Chapman poked among the ruins and came up with a couple of slivers of thin glass. “See this cut on the outside?” He pointed to a semicircular gash that had been cut or burned in the metal of the trunk, and the resulting flap lifted up and pushed down again.

“It’s Bergerat, of course. I thought that ring of his looked too big to be just an ornament. It’s an energy cutter. He knocked me out with that drink—God knows how—cut the trunk open, and stuck in an acid bomb. They’re cute little things, used in strikes in the cleaning business. There’s a plastic covering about the size of an egg, and inside that a thin glass container with the acid and a sliding weight. You tap them hard on something and the weight breaks the glass and the acid dissolves the plastic.”

While they examined the ruined samples he told her of his earlier encounter with Bergerat in the baggage room.

She said: “He knew it was you, and decided to get even.”

“For what? I hadn’t hurt his damned trunk . . .”

“You mean not yet. You did fill his face with pepper, though. Why didn’t you have the sense to leave him be, instead of going in for this perfectly ridiculous amateur burglary?”

“What do you mean, ‘sense’? Damn it, woman, I’m in charge and I won’t be yelled at . . .”

“Who’s yelling at whom?”

“You are!”
he shouted.

“I AM NOT YELLING!”

“YOU ARE TOO!”
Chapman took a firm grip on himself and laughed. “So’m I. Let’s not fight; at least, not each other.”

“But what’ll we do? There’s nothing usable except this one pair of swim trunks, and we can’t give a showing with that.”

“We could give a sensational showing,” he said, “but the Osirians wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“There’s no way of turning back, say by being transferred to another ship, is there?”

“Certainly not. We’ve got enough energy stored in us, just from the speed we’re going, to—to—”

They both held their heads. Ceila Zorn finally said: “I knew nothing would come of letting you and Miss Nettie talk me into this crazy expedition. Even if we live to get back, the old hell-cat will fire us.”

Chapman looked up. “There’s one chance left.” He took out his wallet and stuffed it up his sleeve.

“Cato! Are you planning something reckless?”

“You’ll see. Anyway, what have we got to lose?”

In the saloon, the first shift had just finished breakfast and were making way for the second. Chapman pushed towards Bergerat, said: “All right, you . . .” adding several fruity epithets, and punched Bergerat’s nose.

Instantly, the saloon was filled with yells, silverware, and confusion. Bergerat got back one good right to Chapman’s mouth before they clinched and fell, threshing about in the little space between the two tables.

“Stop this at once!” shouted an authoritative voice in Brazilo-Portuguese, and Chapman felt himself plucked from his antagonist. Captain Almeida was roaring at him: “Are you mad, man? What is the meaning of this outrage?”

“This twerp,” said Chapman, blood trickling down his chin, “dopes me with a knock-out drop, picks my pocket, and puts an acid bomb in my sample trunk to ruin my stock, and you call it an outrage when I poke him one?”

“Liar!” said Bergerat. “I gave him a swallow of cognac and he passed out. Can I help it if he has no head for good liquor? I know nothing about his trunk and I never picked his pocket. Let me at the cheap chiseler . . .”

“Look in his pockets,” said Chapman.

Zuloaga ran his hands over Bergerat’s body and found Chapman’s wallet.

“You see?” said Chapman.

“But—but I have no idea how that got there,” said Bergerat. “He must have planted it while we were fighting . . .”

By now, however, Chapman had obviously captured the sympathy of the officers. “Let me show you my trunk,” he said.

He showed them the remains of the samples, Bergerat denying his guilt all the while. Chapman thought with an inward chuckle that he could never have proved that Bergerat had done the crime he
had
committed if he hadn’t first convinced the authorities that Bergerat had done another one he
hadn’t.

Bergerat said: “I came to see Mr. Chapman because I had just had another encounter with him in the baggage room.” He went on with an account of his peppery experience.

“He’s making that up,” said Chapman. “He has to have something to say, I suppose. Let’s look at that trunk of his; maybe it’s full of stolen goods.”

They went down the hall, where the captain opened the baggage-room door. Chapman had a moment of panic lest somebody think to ask Gustafson what Mr. Chapman had been doing all that time in the machine shop. But nobody did, and Bergerat’s trunk proved undisturbed.

“Open it,” said the captain.

Bergerat complied. Inside was a mass of neatly hung summer wear, mostly female: sunsuits, bathing-suits, tennis clothes, and the like. None of the other passengers claimed any of these items as stolen property.

“You see,” said Chapman. “Nobody’s tried to break into his trunk.”

“I see,” said Captain Almeida. He slammed the trunk closed, spun the knob, and turned on Bergerat. “You,
amigo,
are under arrest for assault, burglary, theft, and any others I think up later. You will remain in Compartment K until we arrive, when formal charges will be preferred. Take him away.”

Anya Savinkov protested: “But—but that is wrong—you should at least put them both in the cell. What will become of me? I am desolated—”

Chapman patted her arm. “That’s all right, little one. I’ll take care of you.”

“Huh?” said Celia Zorn. “Watch out for him, Anya, when he starts talking that way . . .”

Chapman laughed at them and went back to his cabin, where he swabbed out the inside of his trunk. At the next sleeping period, he made sure Mpande was engrossed in a game in the saloon, dug his lock pickers out of their hiding place, and entered the baggage-compartment again. Captain Almeida, not knowing the peculiarity of the Kleinwasser lock, had simply given the knob a twirl, so that Bergerat’s trunk was not really locked at all.

Half an hour later, all Miss Greenfarb’s ruined summer wear had been transferred to Bergerat’s trunk, while Monsieur Tomaselli’s assortment of similar garments reposed snugly in Chapman’s trunk in Chapman’s cabin.

Then he relaxed in the saloon by dragging Fiasakhe away from his sentimental novels for a bout of checkers.

###

After the
Camões
had landed and all the passengers had been through passport, health, and customs inspection, Chapman said: “Come along, girls. I think those birds in the waiting room are our Osirian capitalists.”

“What good will it do?” wailed Celia. “We haven’t got any stock and we can’t make any . . .”

“Leave it to me,” said Chapman. “Oh, Fiasakhe!”

“Yess?”

“Will you act as interpreter for me for a few minutes? I don’t know much of your language yet.”

“Klatly.”

They went up to the little herd of dinosaurs and Chapman told Fiasakhe: “Ask them if one of them is Thafahiya the curtain-maker.”

After some hissing in the Sha’akhfi tongue, Fiasakhe reported: “That bik one is he.” He indicated a tall Osirian whose scales were decorated with a peculiarly gorgeous pattern of blue-and-gold paint. “Say he get Miss Greenfarb’s letter. Think it is a fine idea. You sell them the designs, they make the clothes. Naturally their answer will not haff reached Earth for many yearss yet. Will you come with them to their office to arranche the showink?”

“Come, girls,” said Chapman, starting to follow his new associates. Through the glass doors he could see an Osirian automobile—a wheeled platform with handrails but no seats. With those tails a sedan body wouldn’t be practical . . .

“Senhor Chapman!” It was one of the Viagens officials. “Just a minute,
por favor
!”

“What is it?” said Chapman in some annoyance.

“You must sign the complaint against the Senhor Bergerat. Otherwise we cannot try him.”

“Don’t want to press that complaint,” said Chapman, feeling magnanimous. “Four months in Compartment K was enough punishment.”

“But then we must let him go!”

“Okay, let him go.”

###

The assembled Osirians hissed like a leaky boiler as Celia and Anya paraded in front of them in one outfit after another. Chapman, whose command of Sha’akhfi was yet meager, read his patter from a script in phonetic symbols: “. . . here, ladies and gentlemen, is an outfit for window shopping on the boulevard. Notice the flare of the skirt . . .” He knew his accent was terrible, since some Sha’akhfi sounds simply could not be made by human vocal organs and vice versa. Naturally he did not tell them they were looking at the line of Tomaselli of Paris.

The female Osirians, he was gratified to see, were putting pressure on their males to buy them everything in sight. When it was over, the males lined up and signed checks, using their claws as pens, as fast as Chapman could quote them prices. Although these prices were fantastically high they did not, of course, cover the cost of bringing the sample trunk to Osiris, but there was no point either in giving the things away or in blowing a few grand more hauling them back to Earth.

After all the samples had been sold, the female Osirians wanted to buy the girls’ personal clothes—all of them. It took all Chapman’s persuasion to get rid of them.

“Whew!” he said as the last Osirian belle stalked out, a beret perched on her cockscomb and a halter around her breastless torso. “That—uh—that show you, eh, Thafahiya?”

“Magnificent!” said the Osirian. “We shall sign the contract forthwith. What a pity that with our bodily temperature control, we have never felt the need of this charming custom of wearing clothes? Come, I shall give you your contract and your first payment. When may we expect our first portfolio of designs?”

“They—they on way,” said Chapman in his stumbling Sha’akhfi. “Are being sent here by ship, for deposit with Viagens, and released to you if contract has been closed. Let us hurry, for we not want to miss
Camões’
return trip.”