The Dark Design (48 page)

The Mongols under Hulagu, Jenghiz Khan’s grandson, stormed into Baghdad, slaughtering and plundering. Within forty days, hundreds of thousands of its citizens were slain. Nur was one of them. He was sitting in his little room playing on the flute when a squat, slant-eyed, blood-drenched soldier burst in. Nur continued his song until the Mongol brought his sword down upon his neck.

“The Mongols devastated the Mideast,” Frigate had said. “Never in history has such desolation been wrought in such a short time. Before the Mongols left, they murdered half the population, and they had destroyed everything from canals to buildings. In my time, six hundred years later, the Mideast still had not recovered.”

“They were indeed the Scourge of Allah,” Nur had said. “Yet there were good men and women among them.”

Now, sitting by the little man, watching the dark-skinned betelnut chewers on shore, Frigate was thinking about chance. What destiny had crossed the paths of a man born in midwestern America in 1918 and of one born in Moslem Spain in 1164? Was destiny anything but chance? Probably. But the odds against this happening on Earth were infinity to one. Then the Riverworld had changed the odds, and here they were.

It was that evening, after his conversation with Nur, that all sat in the captain’s cabin. The ship was anchored near the shore, and fish-oil lamps lit their poker game. After Tom Rider had cleaned up the final big pot—cigarettes were the stakes—they had a bull session. Nur told them two tales of the Mullah Nasruddin. Nasruddin (Eagle-of-the-Faith) was a figure of Moslem folk tales, a mad dervish, a simpleton whose adventures were really lessons in wisdom.

Nur sipped on his scotch whiskey—he never drank more than two ounces a day—and said, “Captain, you’ve told the tale about Pat and Mike, the priest, rabbi, and minister. It’s a funny story, but it does tell a person something about patterns of thinking. Pat and Mike are figures of Western folklore. Let me tell you about one from the East.

“One day a man came by the house of the Mullah Nasruddin and observed him walking around it, throwing bread crumbs on the ground.

“‘Why in the world are you doing that, Mullah?’ the man said.

“‘I’m keeping the tigers away.’

“‘But,’ the man said, ‘there are no tigers around here.’

“‘Exactly. It works, doesn’t it?’”

They laughed, and then Frigate said, “Nur, how old is that story?”

“It was at least two thousand years old when I was born. It originated among the Sufis as a teaching tale. Why?”

“Because,” Frigate said, “I heard the same story, in a different form, in the 1950s or thereabouts. There was this Englishman, and he was kneeling in the street, chalking a line on the curb. A friend, coming along, said, ‘Why are you doing that?’

“‘To keep the lions away.’

“‘But there are no lions in England.’

“‘See?’”

“By God, I heard the same story when I was a kid in Frisco,” Farrington bellowed. “Only it was an Irishman then.”

“Many of the instructive Nasruddin stories have become mere jokes,” Nur said. “The populace tells them for fun, but they were originally meant to be taken seriously. Here’s another.

“Nasruddin crossed the border from Persia to India on his donkey many times. Each time, the donkey carried large bundles of straw on his back. But when Nasruddin returned, the donkey carried nothing. Each time, the customs guard searched Nasruddin, but he could not find any contraband.

“The guard would always ask Nasruddin what he was carrying. The Mullah would always reply, ‘I am smuggling,’ and he would smile.

“After many years, Nasruddin retired to Egypt. The customs man went to him and said, ‘Very well, Nasruddin. Tell me, now it’s safe for you. What were you smuggling?’

“‘Donkeys.’”

They laughed again, and Frigate said, “I heard the same story in Arizona. Only this time the smuggler was Pancho, and he was crossing the border from Mexico to the United States.”

“I suppose every story is an old one,” Tom Rider drawled. “Probably started with the cave man.”

“Perhaps,” Nur said. “But it is a tradition that these stories were originated by the Sufis long before Mohammed was born. They are designed to teach people how to change their patterns of thinking, though they are amusing in themselves. Of course, they are used in the simplest, the first, stage of teaching by the masters.

“However, since then these tales have spread throughout East and West. I was amused to find some of them, in altered form, told in Ireland in Gaelic. By word of mouth, over thousands of leagues and two millennia of time, Nasruddin had passed from Persia to Hibernia.”

“If the Sufis originated them before Mohammed,” Frigate said, “then the Sufis must have been Zoroastrians in the beginning.”

“Sufism is not a monopoly of Islamism,” Nur said. “It was highly developed by the Moslems, but anyone who believes in God can be a Sufi candidate. However, the Sufis modify their methods of teaching to conform to the local cultures. What will work for Persian Moslems in Khorasan won’t necessarily work for black Moslems in the Sudan. And the difference in effective methods would be even greater for Parisian Christians. The place and the time determine the teaching.”

Later, Nur and Frigate stretched their legs on land, walking around a huge bonfire through a crowd of chattering Dravidians. Frigate said, “How can you adapt your medieval Iberian-Moorish methods to teaching in this world? The people are so mixed, from everywhere and every time. There are no monolithic cultures. Besides, those that do exist are always changing.”

“I am working on that,” Nur said.

“Then, one of the reasons you won’t take me as a disciple is that you are not ready as a teacher?”

“You can console yourself with that,” Nur said, and he laughed. “But, yes, that is one reason. You see, the teacher must always be teaching himself.”

The gray clouds moved through the boat, filling every room.

Sam Clemens said, “Oh, no, not again!” though he did not know why he said that. The fog not only pressed against the bulkheads and seeped into everything that could absorb moisture, it rolled down his throat and enveloped his heart. The water soaked it, and drops fell off of it, dripping onto his belly, gurgling down inside his groin, running over, spilling down into his legs, waterlogging his feet.

He was sodden with a nameless fear which he had experienced before.

He was alone in the pilothouse. Alone in the boat. He stood by the control panel, looking out of the window. Fog shoved against it. He could see no more than an arm’s length through the plastic. Yet, somehow, he knew that the banks of The River were empty of life. There was no one out there. And here he was in this gigantic vessel, the only one aboard. It didn’t even need him, since the controls were set for automatic navigation.

Alone and lonely as he was, he at least could not be stopped from reaching the headwaters of The River. There was no one left in the world to oppose him.

He turned and began pacing back and forth from bulkhead to bulkhead of the pilothouse. How long was this journey going to take? When would the fog lift and the sun shine brightly and the mountains surrounding the polar sea be revealed? And when would he hear another human voice, see another face?

“Now!” someone bellowed.

Sam jumped straight up as if springs had been unsnapped beneath his feet. His heart opened and closed as swiftly as the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. It pumped out water and fear, forming a puddle around his feet. Somehow, without being aware of it, he had spun around and was facing the owner of the voice. It was a shadowy figure in the clouds swirling in the pilothouse. It moved toward him, stopped, and reached out a vague arm. A pseudopod flicked a switch on the panel.

Sam tried to cry out, “No! No!” The words ran into each other in his throat and shattered as if they were made of thin glass.

Though it was too dim to see which control the figure had touched, he knew that the boat was now set on a course which would send it full speed into the left bank.

Finally, the words came… screeching.

“You can’t do that!”

Silently, the shadowy mass advanced. Now he could see that it was a man. It was the same height as he, but its shoulders were much broader. And on one shoulder was a long wooden shaft. At its end was a truncated triangle of steel.

“Erik Bloodaxe!” he cried.

Now began the terrible chase. He fled through the boat, through every room of the three-tiered pilothouse, across the flight deck, down the ladder into the hangar deck and through every one of its rooms, down a ladder and through every room of the hurricane deck, down a ladder and through every room of the main deck, down a ladder and into the vast boiler deck.

Here, aware of the waters pressing against the hull, aware that he was below the surface of The River, he ran through the many rooms, large and small. He passed between the giant electric motors turning the paddle wheels which were driving the vessel toward destruction. Desperately, he tried to get into the large compartment holding the two launches. He would rip the wires out of the motor of one and take the other out into The River and so leave his sinister pursuer behind. But someone had locked the door.

Now he was crouching in a tiny compartment, trying to slow his rasping breath. Then, the hatch opened. Erik Bloodaxe’s figure loomed in the grayness. It moved slowly toward him, the great axe held in both hands.

“I told you,” Erik said, and he lifted the axe. Sam was powerless to move, to protest. After all, this was his own fault. He deserved it.

He awoke moaning. The cabin lights were on, and Gwenafra’s beautiful face and long honey-blond hair were above him.

“Sam! Wake up! You’ve been having another nightmare!”

“He almost got me that time,” he mumbled.

He sat up. Whistles were shrilling on the decks. A minute later, the intercom unit shrilled. The boat would soon be heading for a grailstone and breakfast. Sam liked to sleep late, and he would just as soon have missed breakfast. But as captain it was his duty to rise with the others.

He got out of bed and shambled into the head. After a shower and tooth-brushing, he came out. Gwenafra was already in her early-morning outfit, looking like an eskimo who had traded her furs for towels. Sam got into a similar suit but left his hood down to put on his captain’s cap. He lit a corona and blew smoke while he paced back and forth.

Gwenafra said, “Did you have another nightmare about Bloodaxe?”

“Yes,” he said. “Give me some coffee, will you?”

Gwenafra dropped a teaspoonful of dark crystals into a gray metal cup. The water boiled as the crystals released both heat and caffeine. He took the cup, saying, “Thanks.”

She sipped her coffee, then said, “There’s no reason to feel guilty about him.”

“That’s what I’ve told myself a thousand times,” Sam said. “It’s irrational, but when did knowing that ever make a fellow feel better? It’s the irrational in us that drives us. The Master of Dreams has about as much brains as a hedgehog. But he’s a great artist, witless though he is, like many an artist I’ve known. Perhaps including yours truly.”

“There isn’t a chance that Bloodaxe will ever find you.”

“I know that. Try telling the Dream Master that.”

A light flashed; a whistle blew from a panel on a bulkhead. Sam flicked its switch.

“Captain? Detweiller here. Arrival time at designated grailstone will be five minutes from now.”

“Okay, Hank,” Sam said. “I’ll be right out.”

Followed by Gwenafra, he left the stateroom. They passed down a narrow corridor and went through a hatch into the control room or bridge. This was on the top deck of the pilothouse; the other senior officers were quartered in the cabins on the second and third decks.

There were three persons in the control room: Detweiller, who had once been a river pilot, then a captain, then owner of an Illinois-Mississippi River steamboat company; the chief executive officer, John Byron, ex-admiral, Royal Navy; the brigadier of the boat’s Marines, Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot, ex-general for Napoleon.

The latter was a short, slim, merry-looking fellow with dark-brown hair, snub nose, and bright blue eyes. He saluted Clemens and reported in Esperanto.