The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (5 page)

“No great matter; one of our own ships leaves for your star a few days later . . .”

Chapman hurried nevertheless. Osirians slept on the floor, did not use chairs, and subsisted on the meat of other reptiles which they domesticated. While he’d heard their spaceships made special provisions for human passengers, as those of the Viagens did for e.t.s, he did not care to test their sleeping accommodations and cuisine himself.

###

When he had stowed his copy of the contract between Greenfarb’s and Thafahiya’s syndicate safely in Captain Almeida’s safe, Cato Chapman said: “Well, girls, guess our fortunes are made.” Then he yelped as he saw Bergerat’s name on the passenger list.

“Well,” said Celia, “what did you expect the poor man to do?”

Chapman said: “This may be embarrassing.”

It did not, however, prove so. Bergerat grinned at him and said: “Where can we talk, my old? I have a proposition to make.”

Later he said: “Look, I cannot go back to Tomaselli. He will not only fire me but will try to get me blacklisted in Paris. A very vengeful man, my little Tomaselli.

“Now you and I, we have fought with what you call the bare knuckles—or is it brass knuckles?—and you have won.
Bien.
I congratulate you. But why can I not go back to Hollywood with you? It is the world’s other great style center. Perhaps you could put in a good word for me with your Miss Greenfarb.”

“Hm,” said Chapman. “An idea. Can’t promise anything. Nettie’ll probably think Tomaselli is trying to plant you in her shop as a spy. Are you sure he isn’t?” Chapman looked hard at his friendly enemy.

“No, no! That is easily proved. True, there is another motive in the case.”

“Huh?”

“A sentimental motive. Your Miss Zorn—ahum—ah . . .”

“Oh. Well, I’ll do what I can. By the way, how’d you work that Mickey Finn trick on me? I carefully watched you drink the same stuff.”

“That was simple,” said Bergerat. “I used a barbiturate that is counteracted by caffeine, and I filled myself with coffee before I visited your cabin. But we are all done with these games now, no?”

###

Five months later, subjective time, the shuttle rocket from Pluto landed at Mohave Spaceport. Chapman, with Anya clinging to his arm, walked down the ramp. There would be changes in twenty-two years. Fortunately, because of the great lengthening of the human lifespan in the last century, most of his old acquaintances would still be around. Including Miss Nettie.

He puffed furiously on his pipe, the first smoke he’d been allowed since boarding the
Camões.
Behind him came Bergerat and Celia. As they passed through the inspection rooms and into the waiting room, Chapman stopped short. His pipe bounced from the floor unheeded.

Except for those who had come in on the ship, the people swarming in the waiting room were all quite naked except for sandals. Moreover, their hides were decorated with the fantastically interwoven designs in iridescent colors that the Osirians used for personal adornment.

As the four stood gawking, a man came up. “Cato Chapman?”

“Y-yes. Who are you?”

“Don’t you know me?”

“By all the gods, you’re my cousin Ed Mahoney! This is my wife Anya, and these are Mr. and Mrs. Bergerat. Remember Celia? She always wanted a tall dark type. The captain hitched us on the way back from Osiris.”

Mahoney nodded. “I thought something like that might happen.”

“But—but—where the hell are your clothes? And why is everybody going around looking like the tattooed woman in the circus?”

“Oh, that. That’s the new Osirian style; it came in a couple of years ago. We don’t wear clothes in hot weather anymore.”

“Yuk,” said Chapman. “How come?”

“It seems some smart Osirians who came here on that so-called cultural mission started a syndicate to exploit the Osirian body-paint designs on Earth. That reminds me, you haven’t got a job anymore.”

“What?”

“That’s right. Nettie Greenfarb and all the other summer wear specialty shops went broke. Last I heard of Nettie she had some government job. But maybe you’d like to try the paint business. It’s doing swell, as you can imagine, and maybe I can find openings for you and your friend. Like me to fly you in to L.A.?”

Dumbly, they followed him.

A.D. 2114-2140

Finished

“It won’t work forever,” said Abreu gloomily. “Keep up a technological blockade, and at the same time allow communication between Krishnans and beings from other planets? Bah! Why doesn’t the damned Interplanetary Council ask us something easy, like lighting the Sadabao Sea with a match?”

Comandante Silva, who had come over from his planet for the conference, looked amused. “We have no trouble on Vishnu, and moreover we run the station without red tape. Your forms, Senhor Cristôvão, are getting notorious—”

Abreu turned pink and began to bounce in his chair. “Easy for you to criticize, Senhor Augusto. You know Bembom’s a little station compared to Novorecife, and that your Vishnuvans are simple-minded children compared to Krishnans.”

“I only said your red tape was getting notorious, which—”

“But I tell you—”

“Which it is—”

“Queira, senhores,”
interrupted Kennedy. As the Comandante of Novorecife was the S.O.P., the others subsided. “Let’s not get personal. We all do the best we can with what we have.”

“Well, it still won’t work,” grumped Abreu. “Someday, they’ll get something big through, and then we’ll learn whether the I.C. is right in fearing that the backward Krishnans might start an interplanetary war once they have their scientific revolution.”

Silva said: “I sympathize with you, at that. The I.C. is just a board, and a board may be defined as a long, narrow, and wooden thing. I’ve been writing them for a Vishnuvan year now to get—”

“Yes?” said Abreu. Gorchakov, the head customs inspector, had come in.

“You’d better be in on this,
chefe”
said Gorchakov. “You know that Earthman we cleared for travel a few ten-nights back—Akelawi? Ahmad Akelawi?”

“The tall Algerian engineer?
Sim.
What about him?”

“He’s trying to take a mummy through customs.”

“Excuse me,
senhores”
said Abreu. “I certainly do want to be in on this.” The head security officer of Novorecife heaved his bulk out of his chair and waddled after Gorchakov.

“What sort of mummy?” he asked.

“Some native king. He claims it’s perfectly legal, and has a bill of sale to show for it.”

Abreu prepared to bristle at the sight of Akelawi. Being short and fat, he suspected all tall men of evil designs, and the Algerian was perhaps the tallest man ever to set foot on this outpost of the Viagens Interplanetarias. Akelawi still wore his Krishnan makeup: antennae, green hair, and artificial points to his ears. He gazed down at Abreu from large dark eyes with an expression of melancholy reserve.

Abreu brusquely asked: “What’s this all about, Senhor Ahmad?”

Akelawi sighed. “First I explain to the customs inspector, then to the head customs inspector, now to you, and I suppose after you to Comandante Kennedy—”

“Never mind that, my good sir. Just answer the question.”

“Very well. As I’ve already said twice, I bought this mummy from Prince Ferrian of Sotaspé. Here’s my bill of sale, with the prince’s own signature.”

“Why did you buy it?”

“To take to Earth as a museum piece. Even with the present freight rates it’ll pay the cost of my trip.”

“Whose mummy is it?” asked Abreu, bending over the object.
“Mãe do Deus,
it’s ugly!”

Akelawi said: “It’s supposed to be the remains of Manzariyé, the first and only king of Sotaspé.”

“How so? Have they a republic, or what?”

“Not exactly. They have a legal fiction whereby King Manzariyé is still the legal ruler, and the reigning prince has only the status of a regent. The reasons are very complicated and legalistic—”

“Never mind them, then. Have you X-rayed it,
amigo?”

“Not yet,” said Gorchakov. “I thought you’d want to be present . . .”

Half an hour later Abreu completed his examination. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t let you take it through,” he told Akelawi. “But tell me: why should Prince Ferrian sell the sacred relic of his ancestor?”

Akelawi shrugged his bony shoulders. “He didn’t say. Perhaps he plans to make himself king in name as well as in fact.”

“I see. What’s that medal you’re wearing?”

“The open glider championship of Mikardand. If you’ll let me start signing that mountain of papers, maybe I’ll be through in time to catch the ship.”

He signed out and departed with his mummy.

###

Three days later, after Akelawi had taken off on the
Lorêto,
a slim burning-eyed young Krishnan stormed into Novorecife. His clothing was that of a rich islander from the Sadabao Sea, and his Brazilo-Portuguese was, if not broken, at least badly bent.

“I am Prince Ferrian of Sotaspé!” he shouted at the amazed Abreu. “What have you filthy animals done with our sublime king?”

“You mean that mummy Akelawi took with him?” asked Abreu.

“To you mummy, perhaps, but to us, sacred symbol of our eternal kingdom! Where is?”

Abreu explained.

“You mean,” cried the prince, “that symbol of glory of our ancestors has gone millions miles away? That this thief, may Dupulán rot his intestines, has—”

“Wait a minute, my good sir,” said Abreu. “Are you claiming that Akelawi stole this mummy and didn’t buy it from you as he said?”

“Of course he stole! Think you we are such poor things as sell our very king?”

Abreu told his secretary: “Get the photostat of Akelawi’s bill of sale out of the files. If there’s been a mistake, Dom Ferrian, we’ll set it right . . . Here you are. Isn’t that your signature?”

“Looks like, but I never signed no such paper. He must have got it by trick. When does next spaceship leave for Earth?”

“In nine or ten days. But, my friend, you know there are difficulties to getting permission for Krishnans to travel on Viagens vehicles—”

“As if we were not oldest and proudest line in universe!” said Ferrian hotly. “Let me tell you, Senhor, someday will be end to this discrimination—”

“Now, now, it’s not a matter of thinking ourselves superior to the Krishnans. It’s a question of your cultural fitness to absorb scientific knowledge. When you’ve adopted modern ideas on government and legal codes—”

Ferrian told Abreu, in guttural Gozashtandou, what to do with his legal codes.

Abreu, keeping a tight grip on his none-too-amiable temper, replied: “Why not let us handle it? The Viagens’ security organization can send a dispatch to Earth by the next ship. As soon as the message is received, the great Earthly police forces will go into action and have your king back here in no time.”

“What is no time?”

“Oh—Krishnan time, about twenty-five years. It takes that long for the message to reach Earth and the king to return.”

“No! Can’t wait. Must go myself. You think I let my poor ancestor be jerked all over universe without escort, lonesome, unprotected? You Terrans don’t know nothing about respect due divine rulers.”

“Very well. File your application in due form.”

Thus it happened that the next spaceship for the planets of Sol’s system bore Ferrian bad-Arjanaq, Prince Regent of Sotaspé. Since the space traveler was, on one hand, a person of importance, while on the other he was still a native of a backward planet whose warlike people were not allowed access to technical information, Abreu sent his assistant security officer, the small and modest Herculeu Castanhoso, along as guardian.

When Abreu saw them off, they were arguing hotly about the Fitzgerald effect. Ferrian refused to believe that if it took a hundred and sixty-some days, subjective time, to get to Earth, something like three thousand days, objective time, would have meanwhile elapsed on Krishna.

“We have fairy-tale,” he said scornfully, “about the miner Ghalaju who go to Fairyland and spend three days, and when he come back all his friends have grown old. But you don’t expect me, adult and educated man, to take that sort of thing serious!”

###

Years passed.

There was a scandal about the introduction of the custom of kissing into Krishna. In the resulting shakeup, Abreu was transferred to Ganesha, though it hadn’t been his fault at all. Then a similar shakeup, when the tobacco habit spread to Krishna in the administration of his successor, brought him back again, thanks to Earthly geriatrics not visibly older.

Then one day the fast new
Maranhão
settled down on the Novoreceife landing area, and down the ramp trudged Castanhoso and Prince Ferrian.

“Well!” said Abreu, shaking hands vigorously. “I thought you two should be showing up soon. Did you get your mummy?”

“Yes,” said Ferrian, in much-improved Portuguese. “It was a most interesting journey, even though this watch-eshun of yours kept me confined like an aqebat in a cage. He’d let me read nothing, even, save a moldy old law book he picked up somewhere.”

“Those were his orders,” said Abreu. “When Krishna achieves the interplanetary standards of law, ethics, and government, then maybe we’ll let you have access—”

Ferrian made an impatient motion. “Save your lectures, my friend. Right now I’m more interested in arranging transportation to Majbur for myself and my king. While the trip didn’t seem so long to me, the wait will have been interminable for my poor wives. I must see them again.”

Abreu, a henpecked man, envied the prince his ability to manage not merely one wife but a whole platoon of them. However, like a wise bureaucrat, he kept his reflections to himself. When Ferrian was out of earshot he asked Castanhoso:

“How did you make out, Herculeu?”

“Not badly. He obeyed orders all right; the only trouble is he’s too intelligent.”

“How so?”

“He draws correct inferences from the least things. And he can turn on charm enough to lure a fish out of a pond when he wants to! I finally gave him that lawbook to keep him quiet, thinking that Krishna could use some modem law.”

“You did right. Did you know you’d been promoted?”

“Why—uh—thanks, but isn’t there a mistake? I’ve just
been
promoted—”

“You forget, my boy, that was by subjective time, while for pay and seniority purposes, service is figured by objective time . . .”

Abreu saw to it that the prince and his mummy departed in a twenty-oar barge down the Pichidé River, then returned to his paperwork and put the kinglet out of his mind.

Until he got a letter from Gorbovast, the resident commissioner of King Eqrar of Gozashtand in the free city of Majbur. Gorbovast, in addition to representing King Eqrar, picked up a little change on the side by spying for Abreu. The missive read:

From the writer to the distinguished addressee, greeting:

O worthy one, a matter of interest to you has come to my notice. As you know, the Prince of Sotaspé has resided here for a ten-night or more, having with him the mummy of King Manzariyé. Today there docked here a vessel flying the banner of Sotaspé, carrying the Sotaspeo prime minister, Sir Qarao bad-Avé. ’Tis said a tame bijar flew a message to Sotaspé for this ship to come fetch the prince.

The matter of most interest, however, is the ship
Kerukchi
herself. For the means of propulsion on which she relies, besides sails, are not oars but a mechanical device. To either beam is affixed a great wheel having paddles of wood set about its rim so as to dip into the water as the wheel turns. The wheels are revolved by a machine within the hull, whose details I cannot give you because the Sotaspeva let none aboard their craft. ’Tis said, however, that the machine works by boiling water, and that smoke issues from a tall pipe amidships.

As the
Kerukchi
will probably sail soon, when the machine has been readied for the voyage, you must hasten if you’d view this craft. My respectful regards to you and yours.

Abreu, after reading the letter through again, buzzed furiously for Castanhoso.

“Herculeu!” he shouted. “Make an appointment with the barber for both of us! We’re going out! Green hair and all the rest!”

###

Meanwhile in Majbur, Prince Ferrian was giving his prime minister a proper dressing down.

“You utter, unmitigated idiot!” he cried. “Has Sotaspé no ships of the conventional kind, that you must even bring the
Kerukchi
hither, where rumors of its being will surely reach the Earthmen at Novorecife? Take that, fool!” He slashed at the minister’s head with an aya-whip.

Sir Qarao ducked, prostrated himself, and beat his head on the floor. “Have mercy, Your Sublimity!” he wailed. “You know I could never manage your harem!”

“What about my harem?”

“Why, this ill-starred venture was undertaken upon the insistence of your wife, the Lady Tánzi, who said she sought to do you proper honor by sending the pride of our navy to fetch you!”

“Pride! Honor!
Ghuvoi
such talk! My wife the Lady Tánzi wished to score one over my wife the Lady Kurahi, did she not? Why sought you not the counsel of my wife the Lady Ja’li?”

“I did, but she’s ill, and referred me to your wife the Lady Rovrai, who took the part of the Lady Tánzi . . .”

“I see,” snarled Ferrian. “A proper muddle. Well, at least this error shall not be repeated, for when I return to Sotaspé there shall be a new law in the land. A lawbook I read while among the Earthmen convinced me of its desirability.”

“What’s that?” said Qarao, raising his head from the floor.

“Compulsory monogamy, as among the Gozashtanduma.”

“Oh, but Your Sublimity! What will you do with all your faithful wives?”

“Faithful, ha! I can imagine, after all these years . . . But to answer your question, I’ll divorce all but one and pension them off. If they’d find other husbands, let ’em. They’ll have little trouble, since they’ll have wealth and prestige and we have a surplus of men.”

“Which will you keep, godlike sir?”

“That I hadn’t decided. The Lady Ja’li’s the most sensible, but she’s old; the Lady Dunbeni’s the most beautiful, but she’s cold; while the Lady Tánzi’s the most loving, but lacks the wit the gods gave an unha . . .”

###

Two days later, Abreu and his assistant stood before Gorbovast in Majbur. Gone were the trim Viagens security force uniforms. To all appearances the Earthmen were a pair of raffish-looking Krishnans in divided kilts, stocking caps, and cutlery.