The Magic Labyrinth (4 page)

“Then she reported that there was an explosion. That was the last we heard from the
Parseval
.”

The woman said, “We’ve heard rumors that it crashed many thousands of miles upRiver. There was only one survivor.”

“Only one! My God, who was he? Or she?”

“I don’t know his name. But I heard that he was a Frenchman.”

Sam groaned. There was just one Frenchman on the airship. Cyrano de Bergerac, with whom Sam’s wife had fallen in love. Of all the crew, he was the only one whom Sam would not have sorrowed over.

It was late afternoon when Sam saw the strange being who was even more grotesque than Joe Miller. Joe was at least human, but this person had obviously not been born on Earth.

Sam knew at once that the being had to be one of the small group from a planet of Tau Ceti. His informant, the late Baron John de Greystock, had known one of them. According to his story, the Tau Cetans, in the early twenty-first century, had put into orbit a smaller vessel around Earth before descending in the great mothership to the surface. They’d been welcomed, but then one of them, Monat, had said on a TV talk show that the Cetans had the means for extending their lives to centuries. The Earth-people had demanded that this knowledge be given them. When the Cetans had refused, saying that the Terrestrials would abuse the gift of longevity, mobs had lynched most of the Cetans and then stormed the spaceship. Reluctantly, Monat had activated a scanner on the satellite, and this had projected a beam which killed most of the human life on Earth. At least, Monat thought it would do so. He didn’t see the results of his action. He, too, was torn apart by the mob.

He had set the death-beams into operation because he feared that Terrestrials would use the spaceship as a model to build more ships and then would go to his native planet and war against it, perhaps destroy all his people. He didn’t know whether or not they would actually do that, but he couldn’t take the chance.

The Cetan was standing up somewhat precariously in a narrow dugout and waving frantically at the
Not For Hire.
Obviously, he wanted aboard. So did a lot of people, Sam thought, but they don’t get their wish. This, however, was, if not a horse of a different color, a biped neither bird nor man. So Sam told the pilot to make a circle and then come alongside the dugout.

Presently, while the gaping crew lined the exterior passageways, the Cetan climbed a short ladder to the boiler deck. His companion, an ordinary-looking human male, followed him. The dugout drifted away to be grabbed by whoever got to it first.

Escorted by two marines and General Ely S. Parker himself, the two were soon in the control room. Sam, speaking Esperanto, shook their hands, introduced himself and the others, and then they introduced themselves.

“I am Monat Grrautut,” the biped said in a deep rich voice.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Sam said. “The very one!”

Monat smiled, exposing human-looking teeth.

“Ah, then you’ve heard of me.”

“You’re the only Tau Cetan whose name I know,” Sam said. “I’ve been scanning the banks for years for one of you, and I’ve never seen hair nor hide of any. And then to run smackdab into you yourself!”

“I’m not from a planet of Tau Ceti,” Monat said. “That was the story we gave when we came to Earth. Actually, I’m from a planet of the star Arcturus. We misled the Terrestrials just in case they proved to be warlike and then…”

“Good thinking,” Sam said. “Though you were a little tough on Earthpeople, as I understand. However, why did you stick to that story when you were resurrected here—without your permission?”

Monat shrugged.
How humanlike,
Sam thought.

“Habit, I suppose. Also, I wanted to make sure the Terrestrials still didn’t represent a danger to my people.”

“I can’t blame you.”

“When I knew positively that Earthpeople were no danger, I told the true story of my origin.”

“Sure you did,” Sam said and laughed. “Here. Have a cigar, you two.”

Monat was six feet eight inches tall, thin, and pink-skinned. He wore only a kiltcloth, allowing most of his features to show, but concealing the most interesting to some. Greystock had said that the fellow’s penis could pass for human and was circumcised, as were all men’s on this world. His scrotum, however, was a knobby sac which contained a number of small testes.

His face was semihuman. Below a shaved skull and very high forehead were two thick black curly-haired eyebrows that ran down to his very prominent cheekbones and spread out to cover them. The eyes were a dark brown. Most of his nose was more handsome than Sam had seen on many people. But a thin membranous fringe a sixteenth of an inch long hung from the sides of his nostrils. The nose ended in a thick, deeply clefted pad of cartilage. His lips were doglike, thin, leathery, and black. His lobeless ears displayed quite unhuman convolutions.

Each hand bore three fingers and a long thumb on each, and he had four toes on each foot.

I don’t suppose he’d scare anybody on skid row,
Sam thought.
Or in Congress.

His companion was an American born in 1918, deceased in 2008, when the Cetan or Arcturan beam swept Earth. His name was Peter Jairus Frigate, and he was about six feet tall, of muscular build, had black hair and green eyes and a not ugly face in front, but a rather craggy and short-jawed profile. Like Monat, he had a grail and a bundle of possessions and was armed with a stone knife, an ax, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.

Sam doubted very much that Monat was telling the truth about his place of birth or that Frigate was giving his right name. He doubted the story of anybody who said he’d lived past 1983. However, he wasn’t going to say anything about that until he became well acquainted with these two.

After having a drink served to them, he personally led them to the officers’ quarters near his suite.

“It just so happens that I’m short of three of my complement,” he said. “There’s a cabin available in the boiler deck. It’s not a desirable location, so I’ll roust out two junior officers from this cabin here. You can have theirs, and they can go below.”

The man and the woman who had to surrender their cabin didn’t look happy when they heard Sam’s order, but they got out quickly.

That evening, they ate at the captain’s table on china plates painted by an ancient Chinese artist and drank from cut-lead-glass goblets. The dining utensils were a solid silver alloy.

Sam and the others, including the gigantic Joe Miller, listened intently to the stories of both newcomers about their adventures on the Riverworld. When Sam heard that they’d journeyed for a long while with Richard Francis Burton, the famous nineteenth-century explorer, linguist, translator, and author, he felt a shock run through him. The Ethical had told him that he’d also recruited Burton.

“Got any idea where he is?” he asked calmly.

“No,” Monat said. “We were separated during a battle and could not find him after it though we searched for him.”

Sam urged Joe Miller to tell his story of the Egyptian expedition. Sam was getting impatient with his role of the polite questioner and host. He loved to dominate the conversation, but he wanted to see what effect Miller’s tale had on the two.

When Joe finished, Monat said. “So! Then there
is
a tower in the polar sea!”

“Yeth, goddam it, that’th vhat I thaid,” Joe said.

Sam intended to take at least a week hearing everything relevant they had to say about themselves. Then he would subject them to much more rigorous questioning.

Two days later, when the boat was anchored on the right bank at noon for recharging, the grailstones remained mute and flameless.

“Holy jumping Jesus!” Sam said. “Another meteorite?”

He didn’t think that was the cause for the failure. The Ethical had told him that meteor-deflecting guards had been set up in space, and that the only reason the one had gotten through was because he’d managed to make the guards fail at just the right moment to permit the meteor to pass through them. The guards would still be out there, floating in space, ready to do their job.

But if the failure hadn’t been caused by a meteorite, what had caused it?

Or was it another case of malfunction of the Ethicals’ systems? People were no longer resurrected, which meant that something had gone wrong and unrepaired in the mechanism which converted the heat of the planet’s core into electricity for the stones. Luckily, these were set in a parallel, not a series, arrangement. Otherwise, everybody would starve, not just those on the right bank.

Sam immediately ordered that the boat resume its course upstream. When it was near dusk the boat stopped at the left bank. Not unexpectedly, the locals did not agree to allow the use of a grailstone. There was a hell of a fight, a slaughter which sickened Sam. Frigate was one of those killed by a small rocket launched from the bank.

Then the starving desperates of the right bank invaded the left bank. They came in swarms that would not be stopped until so many had been killed that there was room enough on the stones for the grails of the survivors.

Not until the bodies no longer clogged the surface of The River did Clemens give the order to proceed upstream. A few days after that, he stopped long enough to replace those he’d lost in the bloodiness.

It was Loghu and Alice who got Burton and the others onto King John’s boat.

Their group had traveled upRiver to the area at which the
Rex
had anchored for shore leave and repairs. They found the landing place temporarily overpopulated because of those curious to see the great vessel at close range, some of whom were also ambitious to get signed up as crew members. There were some vacancies aboard which rumor said had resulted when the captain had reprimanded too harshly six people whom he thought negligent in their duties. He didn’t seem in any hurry to replace them.

When John came ashore, he was surrounded by twelve marines, who gave him plenty of elbow room. It was no secret, though, that King John had an eye for beautiful women. So Loghu, an exceedingly beautiful ancient Tokharian blonde, walked by him clad only in a short kiltcloth. John stopped his marines and began talking to her. He wasn’t long in inviting her aboard for a tour of his boat. Though he didn’t say so, he intimated that his grand suite might take the longest to inspect and that only he and Loghu should do the inspecting.

Loghu laughed and said that she might come aboard, but her friends would have to come with her. As for the tête-à-tête, she would consider it but would not make up her mind until she had seen everything on the vessel.

King John looked sour, but then he laughed and said that he would show her something that most people didn’t get to see. Loghu was no fool and understood well what he meant. Nevertheless, she knew how desperately necessary it was to get aboard the
Rex.

Thus Alice, Burton, Kazz, and Besst were also invited to the tour.

Burton was fuming since he did not wish to get John’s ear by having Loghu behave like a slut. It was the only way, however. His previous declarations that he would find some way to get onto the boat, no matter what the obstacles, had been so much excess steam, impressive but useless. There was no other course to take that would get him more than a very temporary stay on the
Rex.

Thus, Loghu had taken a very old and still effective method. Without actually saying so, she had suggested that she might be willing to share John’s bed. Burton hadn’t liked it. He felt like a whoremonger, and it also angered him that it was a woman who had done what he couldn’t do. He wasn’t as upset as he would have been on Earth or even here many years ago. This world had given him a good opportunity to see what women could do once the inhibitions and strictures of Terrestrial society had been removed. Moreover, it was he who had written:
Women the world over are what men have made them.
That might have been true in Victorian times, but it no longer applied.

While going back to the boat, Loghu introduced the others. All except Burton were using their native names. He had decided this time not to use his old half-Arab, half-Pathan guise, not to be Mirza Abdullah Bushiri or Abdul Hassan or any of the many similar guises he’d used on Earth and here. This time, for a reason he didn’t explain to his companions, he was posing as Gwalchgwynn, a Dark-Age Welshman who’d lived when the Britons were making their final stand against the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

“It means ‘White Hawk,’ Your Majesty,” he said.

“So?” John said. “You are very dark for a white hawk.”

Kazz, the Neanderthal male, rumbled, “He is a great swordsman and marksman, Your Majesty. He would be a good fighter for you.”

“Perhaps I’ll give him a chance to demonstrate his skill sometime,” John said.

John looked through lowered lids at Kazz. John was five feet four inches in stature, but he looked tall alongside the Neanderthal. Kazz was squat and big-boned, as all early Old Stone Agers were. His breadloaf-shaped head, the low slanting forehead, thick shelving brows, broad flat nose, and very protruding jaws didn’t make him handsome. But he was not subhuman appearing like the Neanderthals in illustrations or the early reconstructions in museums. He was hairy but no more than the most hirsute of Homo sapiens.

His mate, Besst, was several inches shorter than he and just as unprepossessing.

John was interested in the two of them, however. They were small, but their strength was enormous, and both male and female would be good warriors. The low brows did not necessarily front a low intelligence since the gamut of brilliance to stupidity was the same in Neanderthals as in that of modern humanity.

Half of John’s complement was early Paleolithic.

John, nicknamed Lackland because for a long time he’d not been able to possess the states he claimed title to, was the younger brother of King Richard I the Lionhearted, the monarch to whom the legendary Robin Hood remained loyal while John ruled England as regent. He had broad shoulders and an athletic sturdy frame, a heavy jaw, tawny hair, blue eyes, and a terrible temper, though that was nothing unusual for a medieval king. He’d had a very bad reputation during and after his death, though he was no worse than many kings before or since and better than his brother. Contemporary and later chroniclers united to present an unfair portrait of him. He was so loathed that it became a tradition that no one of the British royal family should be named John.

Richard had designated his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, as his heir. John had refused to accept this, and, while fighting Arthur, had captured him and then imprisoned him in the castle of Falaise and later in Rouen. There Richard’s nephew disappeared under circumstances which made most people believe that John had slain him and then thrown the weighted body into the Seine. John had never denied or confirmed the accusations.

Another blot on his record, though no larger or blacker than that on the records of many monarchs, was the undeniable fact that he had caused to be starved to death the wife and son of an enemy, the Baron de Braose.

There were many more stories, some of which were true, about his evil deeds. But not until many centuries later did objective historians record that he had also done much good for England.

Burton didn’t know much about John’s life on the Riverworld except that he had stolen Samuel Clemens’ boat. He also knew that it would not be discreet to mention this to John.

The monarch himself was their guide. He showed them almost everything from the lowest deck to the top, the boiler, main, hurricane, flight, and texas deck, an extension from the lower story of the two-story pilothouse. While they were in the pilothouse, Alice told the king that she was his descendant through his great-great-grandson, John of Gaunt.

“Indeed,” he said. “Were you then a princess or a queen?”

“Not even of the nobility,” she said. “Though I was of the gentry. My father was a relative of Baron Ravensworth. I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1852, when Victoria, another descendant of yours, was queen.”

The king’s tawny eyebrows rose.

“You are the first descendant of mine I’ve ever met. A very pretty one, too.”

“Thank you, Sire.”

Burton burned even more. Was John contemplating incest, however rarefied the consanguinity might be?

John had apparently been considering taking all of them on as crewmembers, and Alice’s distant kinship decided him. After they had gone to the grand salon for a drink, he told them that they could, if they wished, travel the River with him. He told them in detail, first, what the general duties of the crew were and what the discipline consisted of, and then demanded they swear an oath of fealty to him.

So far, John had not followed up on his intimations that Loghu go to bed with him, but he undoubtedly meant to. Burton asked if he could talk to the others privately for a minute. John graciously gave permission, and they went to a corner to talk.

“I don’t mind,” Loghu said. “I might even like it. I’ve never been mounted by a king. Anyway, I have no man now and I haven’t since that bastard Frigate ran out on us. John isn’t a bad looker at all, even if he is shorter than I am.”

On Earth, Alice would have been horrified. But she’d seen too much and changed too much; most of her Victorian attitudes had long dissipated.

“As long as it’s voluntary,” she said, “then it’s not wrong.”

“I’d do it if it were wrong,” Loghu said. “We have too much at stake for me to be squeamish.”

“I don’t like it,” Burton said. He was relieved but didn’t want to admit it. “But if we miss this boat, we may not get a chance to get on the other. I’d say that boarding the
Mark Twain
would be as difficult as it would be for a politician to get into Heaven.

“However, if he should mistreat you…”

“Oh, I can take care of myself,” Loghu said. “If I can’t throw that runt clear across the cabin, I’ve lost my touch. As a last resort I can crack his nuts.”

Alice hadn’t changed so much that she didn’t blush.

“He might even make you his Number One mistress,” Kazz said. “Haw! That’d make you queen then! Hail, Queen Loghu!”

“I’m more worried about his current mistress than I am about him,” Loghu said. “John wouldn’t stab me in the back, though he might try to take me in the rear, but his woman might put a knife in my spine.”

“I still feel like a pimp,” Burton said.

“Why should you? You don’t own me.”

They returned to John and told him that they wished to take the oath.

John ordered drinks for the occasion. After these, he had his executive officer, a huge late-twentieth-century Yank named Augustus Strubewell, make arrangements for the swearing-in that evening.

Two days later, the
Rex
up-anchored and set out upRiver. Alice was attached as a nurse to the staff of one of the boat’s physicians, a Doctor Doyle. Loghu was to be trained as a pilot, after which she would be officially a pilot second-class, extra. The duties would require only that she substitute if one of the second-class pilots was unavailable. She would have plenty of spare time unless John kept her busy in his suite, which he did for some time to come. The woman she dispossessed seemed to be angry about it, but was only pretending. She’d been getting as tired of John as he of her.

Kazz and Burton were ranked as privates in the marines. Kazz was an axman; Burton, a pistoleer and rapiersman. Besst was put among the women archers.

One of the first things that Burton did was find out who on the boat claimed to have lived past
A.D.
1983. There were four. One was Strubewell. He’d been with John when he hijacked the boat.