The Dark Design (20 page)

Burton asked the chief why the Shaawanwaaki didn’t attack in the daylight. They could easily overwhelm the Babylonians.

“That is because there is an agreement among the states in this area to protect strangers. So far, it has been honored and with good reason. The other states would be compelled to go to war against the aggressor. However, the Shaawanwaaki were hoping to keep it a secret. If they were to be found out, they would say that the raftspeople had refused to pay compensation for the damage done to us.

“I don’t know. Perhaps the Shaawanwaaki will give up the idea. Still, there are many among them who would like to make a raid just for the sake of excitement.”

Burton never found out what happened to the Babylonians. He decided that they should leave that day. After the canoe was on its way, the grails were pulled up, emptied, and placed in the bottom of the canoe.

After traveling 200 kilometers, Burton found an area suitable for boat construction. It was not determined by the wood available, since all places had plenty of pine, oak, yew, and bamboo. What was now difficult to find was flint and chert for cutting timber. Even in the beginning, these stones were restricted to certain sites, some being rich in them, others comparatively poor, and many lacking them entirely. Wars for flint had been common in the old days.

The minerals were even rarer now. Hard as they were, flint and chert wore out, and new supplies were almost unheard of. As a result, the end of 32
A.R.D.
(After Resurrection Day) was also the near end of large-vessel construction. At least, it was in the countries through which Burton had passed, and he presumed that it was the same everywhere.

The area at which he stopped was one of the very few that still had a plentiful store. The locals, a majority of pre-Columbian Algonquins and a minority of pre-Roman Picts, were well aware of the value of their stones. Their chief, a Menomini named Oskas, haggled fiercely with Burton. Finally, he stated that his rock-bottom price was seven thousand cigarettes of tobacco, five hundred of marijuana, twenty-five hundred cigars, forty packages of pipe tobacco, and eight thousand cupfuls of liquor. He also suggested that he would like to sleep with the blonde, Loghu, every five days or so. Actually, he would prefer that it be every night, but he did not think his three women would like that.

Burton took some time to recover from his shock. He said, “That’s up to her. I don’t think either she or her man would agree to it. Anyway, you’re asking far too much. None of my party would have booze or tobacco for a year.”

Oskas shrugged and said, “Well, if it isn’t worth it to you… ?”

Burton called a conference and told his crew what Oskas demanded. Kazz objected the most.

“Burton-
naq
, I lived all my life on Earth, forty-five summers, without whiskey or nicotine. But here I got hooked and if I go a day without either, I am ready, as you put it, to climb the wall. You know that I tried to quit both at different times, and before a week was gone I was ready to bite my tongue off. I was as mean as a cave bear with a thorn in his paw.”

Besst said, “I haven’t forgotten.”

“If there was no alternative, we’d have to do it,” Burton said. “It’d be cold turkey or no boat. But we do have the extra grails.”

He returned to Oskas and, after they had smoked a pipe, he got down to business.

“The woman with the yellow hair and blue eyes says the only part of her you’ll get is her foot, and you might have a hard time pulling it out of your ass.”

Oskas laughed loudly and slapped his thigh.

When he had dried his tears, he said, “Too bad. I like a woman with spirit, though not with too much.”

“It so happens that some time ago I got hold of a free-grail. Now, I am willing to trade that for a place in which to build our boat and the materials to build it.”

Oskas did not ask him how he got it, though it was evident that he thought Burton had stolen it.

“If that is so,” he said, smiling, “then we have a deal.”

He stood up. “I will see that things are arranged at once. Are you sure that the blonde is not just playing hard to get?”

The chief took the grail to the council’s stronghouse, adding it to the twenty-one free-grails there. These had been collected through the years for the benefit of himself and his subchiefs.

Here, as everywhere, special people made sure that they got special privileges.

It took a year to build another cutter. When it was half-finished, Burton decided not to name it after its predecessors,
Hadji I
and
Hadji II.
Both had come to bad ends, and, though he denied it, he was superstitious. After some talk with his crew, it was agreed that
Snark
was suitable. Alice liked the name because of her association with Lewis Carroll, and she agreed with Frigate that it was most appropriate.

Smiling, she recited part of the Bellman’s speech from
The Hunting of the Snark.

Burton laughed, but he was not sure that Alice was not obliquely insulting his abilities as a captain. Lately, they had not been getting along so well.

“Let’s hope the voyage in the new boat won’t be another agony in eight fits!” Alice cried.

“Well,” Burton said, grinning savagely at her, “this Bellman knows enough not to get the bowsprit mixed up with the rudder sometimes!

“Nor,” he added, “is there a Rule 42 of the boat’s code.
No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm.
”

“Which,” Alice said, her smile gone, “was decreed by the Bellman himself.
And the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.
”

There was a short silence. All felt the tension between the two, and they looked uneasy, dreading another violent explosion of their captain’s temper.

Monat, eager to avoid this, laughed. He said, “I remember that poem. I was especially struck by ‘Fit the Sixth, The Barrister’s Dream.’ Let me see, ah, yes, the pig was on trial for having deserted its sty, and the Snark, dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending it.

He paused, rolled his eyes, and said, “I have it. That one quatrain which so impressed me.

They all laughed, and Monat said, “Somehow, that verse squeezes out the essence of Terrestrial justice, its letter if not its spirit.”

“I am amazed,” Burton said, “that in your short time on Earth you managed not only to read so much but to remember it so well.”

“
The Hunting of the Snark
was a poem. I believe that you can understand human beings better through poetry and fiction than through so-called fact-literature. That is why I took the trouble to memorize it.

“Anyway, an Earth friend gave it to me. He said that it was one of the greatest works of metaphysics that humanity could boast of. He asked me if Arcturans had anything to equal it.”

Alice said, “Surely he was pulling your leg?”

“I don’t think so.”

Burton shook his head. He had been a voracious reader, and he had an almost photographic memory. But he had been on Earth sixty-nine years, whereas Monat had lived there only from 2002 to 2008
A.D.
Yet, during the years they had voyaged together, Monat had betrayed a knowledge that no human could have accumulated in a century.

The conversation ended since it was time to go back to work on the boat. Burton had not forgotten Alice’s seeming barb, however. He brought it up as they got ready to go to bed.

She looked at him with large, dark eyes, eyes that were already retreating into another world. She almost always withdrew when he attacked, and it was this that heated his anger from red to white-hot.

“No, Dick, I wasn’t insulting you. At least, I wasn’t doing so consciously.”

“But you were doing it unconsciously, is that it? That’s no excuse. You can’t plead that you have no control of that part of you. What your unconscious thinks is just as much
you
as the conscious is. It’s even worse. You can dismiss your conscious thoughts, but what you really believe is what that shadowy thing believes.”

He began pacing back and forth, his face looking like a demon’s in the faint light cast by the small fire on the stone hearth.

“Isabel worshipped me, yet she was not afraid to argue violently with me, to tell me when she thought I was doing something wrong. But you… you harbor resentment until it makes an absolute bitch of you, yet you won’t come out with it. And that makes things even worse.

“There’s nothing evil about a hammer-and-tongs, screaming, throwing argument. It’s like a thunderstorm, frightening when it happens; but it clears the air after it’s over.

“The trouble with you is that you were raised to be a lady. You must never lift your voice in anger, you must always be calm and cool and collected. But that shadowy entity, that hindbrain, that inheritance from your ape ancestors, is tearing at the bars of its cage. And, incidentally, tearing at you. But you, you won’t admit it.”

Alice lost her dreamy look, and she shouted at him.

“You’re a liar! And don’t throw up your wife to me! We agreed never to compare each other’s spouse, but you do it every time you wish to get me angry! It isn’t true that I lack passion. You of all people should know that, and I don’t just mean in bed.

“But I won’t go into a rage over every petty word and incident. When I get mad it’s because the situation demands it. It’s worth getting angry about. You… you’re in a perpetual state of rage.”

“That’s a lie!”

“I don’t lie!”

“Let us get back to the point,” he said. “What is there about my capacity as commander that you don’t like?”

She bit her lip, then said, “It’s not how you run the boat or how you treat your crew. That’s such an obvious matter, and you do fine at it. No, what troubles me is the command, or lack of it, over yourself.”

Burton sat down, saying, “Let’s have it. Just what are you talking about?”

She hitched forward on the chair and leaned over so that her face was close to his.

“For one thing, you can’t stand to stay in one place more than a week. Before three days are up, you get uneasy. By the seventh day you’re like a tiger pacing back and forth in his cage, a lion throwing himself against the bars.”

“Spare me the zoological analogies,” he said. “Besides, you know that I have stayed in one place for as much as a year.”

“Yes, when you were building a boat. When you had a project going, one which would enable you to travel even more swiftly. Even then, you took short trips, leaving the rest of us to work on the boat. You had to go see this and that, investigate rumors, study strange customs, track down a language you didn’t know. Never mind what the excuse was. You had to get away.

“You have a blight of the soul, Dick. That’s the only way I can describe it. You can’t endure to stay long in one place. But it’s not because of the place. Never! It’s you yourself that you can’t tolerate. You must run so you can get away from yourself!”

He stood up and began pacing again.

“You say then that I can’t endure myself! What a pitiable fellow! He doesn’t love himself, which means that no one else can love him!”

“Nonsense!”

“Yes, all you’re saying is pure rot!”

“The rot is in you, not in what I say.”

“If you can’t stand me, why don’t you leave?”

Tears slid down her cheeks, and she said, “I love you, Dick!”

“But not enough to put up with my trifling eccentricities, is that it?”

She threw up her hands. “
Trifling?
”

“I have an itch to travel. So what? Would you taunt me if I had a physical itch, say athlete’s foot?”

She smiled slightly. “No, I’d tell you to get rid of it. But this isn’t just an itch, Dick. It’s a compulsion.”

She got up and lit a cigarette. Waving it under his nose, she said, “Look at this. In my time on Earth I would never have dared smoke, wouldn’t even have considered it. A lady did not do such things. Especially a lady whose husband was of the landed gentry, whose father was a bishop of the Anglican church. Nor did she ever drink strong liquor to excess or curse. And she would never have considered bathing nude in public!