The Dark Design (22 page)

“However, it is not right that you should bother another man’s woman. You would not do it if you were not full of whiskey. So, I say that from now on you must not treat this woman with anything but the respect you demand from other men toward your women.

“Now, as Burton has told you, I was once a great magician. I still have some powers left, and I will not hesitate to use them if you harm Loghu. I would do so reluctantly, since I have great respect for you. But I will if I have to.”

Oskas turned pale beneath the dark skin and the flush of whiskey-heated blood. He said, “Yes, it must be the drink. No one can blame me for what I do when I am drunk.”

No more was said that night, and the next day Oskas claimed to have been so intoxicated he did not remember anything about the party.

For several months, he had been cool though polite to Loghu. Lately, he had resumed making remarks to her, though he had not touched her. This may have been because Loghu had told him, in private so that he would not lose face, that she would slice open his belly if he so much as laid a hand on her. Following which, she would crush his testicles.

She reported that he had only laughed at her. Despite which, he was aware that, given a chance, she could do just what she said. Nevertheless, Oskas had a compulsive passion for her. Now that the time was drawing close for her to leave, he was again after her.

Burton, talking to him now, kept this in mind. It wouldn’t do to have him think that he had little time left to get Loghu into his bed.

“No, we are not leaving. We will follow the plan that I have worked out for you, and I and my people will be among the vanguard when we seize the boat.

“However, as you know, it is essential that we get to the boat when it has stopped to draw lightning from a stone. If it’s moving we have no chance. Now, I have calculated the area where the boat will stop nearest to this place. I can’t pinpoint it. But I can say within four or five grailstones where it will stop in the evening.

“Our boat needs a shakedown cruise. I propose to take it on one tomorrow. I’ll sail down to the place where the real boat will stop, and I’ll look over the situation. We need to know the lay of the land if we are to attack the mighty vessel with any chance of success.

“Would you like to come along?”

Oskas had been looking at him narrow-eyed. Now his face cleared, and he smiled.

“Of course I will go along. I do not blunder blind into a battle.”

That took care of Oskas’ unvoiced suspicion that the
Snark
would not return from the cruise. Even so, he stationed four men in a hut nearby to keep an eye on the boat, though he said nothing of it to Burton. That night, the entire crew sneaked out through the fog to the hills. There they retrieved the free-grails from a hole in the base of the mountain and brought them back to the boat. These were put in a hiding place behind what looked like a solidly secured bulkhead.

The next day, after breakfast, Oskas came aboard with seven of his best warriors. They crowded the vessel, but Burton did not complain. He began passing out lichen-alcohol flavored with ground irontree leaves. His crew had orders to be very abstemious. By midafternoon, the chief and his men were loud-mouthed, laughing drunks. Even their lunch had not been enough to sober them to any extent. Burton kept pressing his guests with drinks. About an hour before they were to stop for dinner, the Indians were staggering around or lying on deck asleep.

It was easy to push the still conscious ones into the water and then throw the unconscious after them. Fortunately, the shock of the water woke up the latter. Otherwise, Burton would have felt compelled to pick them up and take them ashore.

Oskas, treading water, shook his fist at them and raved in Menomini and Esperanto. Laughing, Burton bent his thumb and all except the middle finger and jerked his hand upward. Then he held out his hand with the first and fourth fingers extended, the ancient sign of the “evil eye,” a sign that in modern times had come to mean “bullshit.”

Oskas became even more violent and colorful in his description of the many ways he would get revenge.

Kazz, grinning, threw the chief’s grail to him so accurately that it struck him on the head. The warriors had to dive down after him. When they brought him up, two were forced to support him until he could regain consciousness.

Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe, though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human.

Though the Neanderthal had lost his tribe on Earth, he had regained it in the crew of the
Snark.
This was his family, his tribe.

The
Snark
did not stop where Burton had told Oskas it would wait for the paddle wheeler. It would have been foolish to do so. Oskas could have made his way back quickly to his territory by renting or stealing a boat. He would then return with many warriors before the arrival of the
Rex Grandissimus.

The cutter sailed on past the designated stop and continued down-River for two days. Meanwhile, its crew saw and heard messages sent by Oskas via heliograph, fire and smoke signals, and drum. The chief claimed that Burton’s party had stolen cigarettes and booze from him and then had kidnapped him. Oskas offered a reward to anyone who would seize and hold the “criminals” until he could arrive to take them into custody.

Burton had to act quickly to counteract this, though it was doubtful that any authorities of the small states would arrest the crew of the
Snark.
Oskas was not popular because of the troubles he had given them over the years. However, individuals might organize privateering groups.

Burton went ashore with a box of tobacco and liquor and some oak rings. With these he paid the head of the local branch of the signal company to send out a message for him. This was that Oskas lied, and the truth was that the chief had wanted to take a female crew member by force and so she and her companions had been compelled to flee. Oskas had pursued them but his warcanoe had been sunk when he had tried to board the
Snark.

Burton then added that he knew that the chief and his councillors had a great treasure, a hoard of free-grails numbering at least a hundred.

This was a lie, since Oskas, when drunk, had told Burton that the headmen only had twenty. Burton did not mind stretching the truth. Attention would be diverted from him to the chief. His people would hear this, and they would be raising hell about it. Undoubtedly, they would demand that the proceeds of the free-grails be added to the communal stockpile. Also, Oskas would now have to worry about thieves. Not only would these be of his own people, but many from other states would be planning how they could steal the grails.

Oskas was going to be too busy to worry about revenge.

Burton chuckled as he thought about this.

The
Snark
came to an area where the current of The River slowed down considerably. The boat had encountered many of these, places where a river should no longer be able to flow downward. On Earth this would have meant that The River would have spread out into a lake, deluging the Valley.

However, after passing through the almost dead current, the cutter came to an area where the water picked up speed. Once again, it was running toward the faraway mouth, that legendary great cavern leading to the north polar sea. There were a number of explanations for this phenomenon, none of which had so far been proved valid.

One was that there were enough variations in local gravity to permit the impetus of The River to overcome the lack of downward gradient. Those who favored this theory said that the unknown makers of this world might have installed underground devices which caused a weaker gravity field in appropriate areas.

Others suggested that water was pumped under great pressure from pipes deep beneath The River.

The third school speculated that the ceaseless current-flow was caused by a combination of pressure pumps and “light-gravity” generators.

A fourth maintained that God had decreed that the water go uphill and so there was no use wondering about the phenomenon.

The majority of people never thought about it.

Whatever the cause, The River never stopped rolling along its many-million-meter course.

At the end of the second day, the
Snark
docked in the locality where the great metal boat should stop. The news here was that the
Rex
had stopped traveling for several days. Its crew was taking a short shore leave.

“Excellent!” Burton said. “We can get to it by tomorrow and have a whole day to talk Captain John into enlisting us.”

Though he sounded cheerful, he did not feel so. If his plan did not work, he’d have to take the
Snark
through Oskas’ area in daylight since there was little wind at night. Warned by the signal system that it was coming, the chief would be waiting for it with his full force. Burton felt that he should have turned back upRiver after getting rid of the Indians and sailed far past their land. However, the paddle wheeler might then have passed by the
Snark
, and Burton would have had no chance to talk to its commander.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. He’d enjoy tonight and take care of tomorrow tomorrow. Despite which reassurance, he worried.

The locals here were a majority of sixteenth-century Dutch, a minority of ancient Thracians, and the usual small percentage of people from many places and many times. Burton met a Fleming who had known Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, among other famous persons. He was talking to him when a newcomer joined the crowd sitting around a bonfire. He was a Caucasian of medium stature, thin bodied, black-haired, and blue-eyed. He stood for a minute, looking intently at Frigate. Then he smiled broadly and ran up to him.

He cried out in English, “Pete! For God’s sake, Pete! It’s me, Bill Owain! Pete Frigate, by the Lord! It is you, isn’t it, Pete?”

Frigate looked startled. He said, “Yes? But you, you’re… what did you say your name was?”

“Bill Owain! For Christ’s sake, you haven’t forgotten me, Bill Owain, your old buddy! You look a little different, Pete. For a moment, I wasn’t sure! You don’t quite look like I remember you! Bill Owain! I didn’t recognize you at first, it’s been so long!”

They embraced then and both talked swiftly, laughing now and then. When they let loose of each other, Frigate introduced Owain.

“He’s my old schoolmate. We’ve known each other since fourth grade in grammar school. We went to Peoria Central High together and buddied around for some years afterward. When I finally settled down in Peoria after working around the country, we used to see each other now and then. Not very often, since we had our own lives to live and belonged to different circles.”

“Even so,” Owain said, “I don’t see how you could have failed to recognize me right off. But then I wasn’t quite sure about you either. I remembered you differently. Your nose is a little longer and your eyes are greener and your mouth isn’t quite as broad and your chin seems bigger. And your voice—you remember how everybody kidded you because it was a dead ringer for Gary Cooper’s? It doesn’t sound like it used to, like I thought it did. So much for memory, eh?”

“Yeah, so much for memory. You know, Bill, mine was never very good. Besides, we remember each other as middle-aged and old men, and now we look like we did when we were twenty-five. Also, we’re not wearing the clothes we did then, and it’s a shock, a real shock, to run across somebody I knew then. I was stunned!”

“I was, too! I wasn’t quite sure! Listen, do you know you’re the first person I’ve met that I knew on Earth?”

Frigate said, “You’re the second for me. And that was thirty-two years ago, and the guy I met wasn’t one I cared to associate with!”

That, Burton thought, would be a man called Sharkko. A publisher of hardcover science fiction books in Chicago, he had cheated Frigate in a rather complicated deal. The business had taken several years, at the end of which Frigate’s writing career had been almost wrecked. But one of the first persons Frigate had encountered after being resurrected was Sharkko. Burton had not witnessed the meeting, but Frigate had recounted how he had avenged himself by punching the fellow in the nose.

Burton himself had met only one person he had known on Earth, though his acquaintances had been numerous and worldwide. That was also a meeting he could have passed up. The man had been one of the porters on his expedition to find the source of the Nile. On the way to Lake Tanganyika (Burton and his companion Speke were the first Europeans to see it), the porter had purchased a slave, a girl about thirteen years old. She had become too sick to continue with them, so the porter had cut off her head rather than allow someone else to own her.