Mer-Cycle
Page 30
This is the man you want. Address him forthrightly. Show no doubt, Don-kes-tle. Take the initiative.
“I hailed you and you fired harpoons at me!” Don retorted angrily. “What kind of trigger-happy idiots are you? Now listen to me: I have a vital mission. I must get to Florida immediately. You can help me.”
The officer looked as if he wanted to freak out, but could not afford to do so in front of the men. “Identify yourself!” he snapped.
“I’m Don Kestle, archaeologist. I—”
“Prove it.”
He is recovering the initiative. Do not let him!
Don realized that he could hardly expect to be taken on faith. Any papers he had might be forged, and they couldn’t be handled by the officer anyway. But he had a bright idea.
He dived into his pack and pulled out his notepad and pen. “Photograph this and fax it to the American Archaeological Association,” he said, quickly printing out the equivalent of a sentence in Minoan Linear A. It incorporated some of the new signs whose meaning he had had to glean from the context. “Tell them to contact Dr. Evans Green immediately. He’s the leading contemporary Minoan scholar. This is a matter of life and death.”
The officer looked as if he would have preferred to throw Don in the brig. But he elected to play it cool. “Camera,” he snapped.
Got him.
By the time they had the camera set up, Don had written enough of a message in Linear A to make any competent Minoan scholar’s jaw drop. If such a scholar was reached in time. If he believed. It was a gamble, but the best he could think of at the moment.
They photographed the pages of the notepad. Then they waited while the picture was sent to Naval headquarters, and that office attempted to contact the archaeological association. If this failed, Don knew that he would have no chance to intercept Pacifa; he had lost too much time, and still couldn’t move well with his injured ankle. The fate of the world really did lie in the balance.
But the officer was concerned with something more immediate. “What is your connection to the Chinese submarine?”
Trouble! Should he tell, or refuse? The one could result in torpedoes in the mer-colony; the other torpedoing his mission.
Demur. He can not make you say what you do not wish.
“I am not free to say.”
The officer frowned. But since it was evident that Don could depart the same way he had come—through the hull—he did not push the matter.
Suddenly the word came back: “Can you contact Gaspar Brown?” the officer asked, after reading the message.
Who was a government agent! “Yes!” They had checked far enough to verify that they had a man on the job.
Don turned on the radio; there would be power enough for a few sentences. “Melanie, I’m in the sub. Is Gaspar there?”
“Here,” Gaspar’s voice came back immediately.
“Talk to the man here.” Then Don lifted his bicycle and spun the wheel by hand, so as to keep the radio going.
Gaspar’s identification was evidently good, because soon the officer turned his attention back to Don. “We will take you back to your base near Jamaica.”
“But I have to go to Florida!” Don protested.
“No. That has been taken care of.”
Then Don realized that he had missed the obvious. The moment Gaspar had gotten in touch, Pacifa’s message had become inoperative. Whatever Gaspar had decided, the government was acting on.
You have won the day, Don-kes-tle.
But Don wasn’t clear what Gaspar had decided. The dialogue had not gone that far.
They let Don tie onto the sub with his remaining balloon. It was a precarious perch, but it held, and in due course he was back with Gaspar, Eleph, and Melanie.
“Oh, Don!” Melanie cried, hugging him. “You got through!”
Your concubine is lovely.
“Yes, in a way. But what did Gaspar—?”
“Eleph kept talking to him, and now he’s satisfied that this needs a formal investigation. We will all have to testify, but I think they are going to take Eleph seriously.”
“So his mission to save Earth is a success,” Don said, starting to be relieved.
“It probably is. And the mer-colony is safe. We’re going to need that adaptation technique to get our own people to Jupiter. We’ll be cooperating with China.”
“I’m glad.”
“In fact, it looks as if we’ve done about as much as we can, here,” she continued. “After we testify, we’ll be free to go.”
“To go?”
“On our honeymoon. Where would you most like to visit?”
Remember our agreement, Don-kes-tle. We squeezed hands, and I helped you as I was able.
Don laughed. “To Minoan Crete!”
“That’s what I thought. Eleph says it’s possible, if we join the mission.”
“The mission?”
“To save other planets. Now that we’re melded. A close-knit group. Pacifa’s part of it. She didn’t like having to blow the whistle on Eleph; she likes him, and she loves exploring. So we know she’ll be with us. We were supposed to convince each other that the threat to our world was real, and go as a unit to convince the authorities. That was Eleph’s notion, and maybe it seems farfetched, but they’re going to try it on other worlds now. Eleph has talked with the proxies on his radio. But Gaspar is shortcutting that, so we won’t need to spend much time here. There are a lot of worlds still in doubt, and more knowledgeable folk are needed to phase into them and convince them of the danger. Gaspar has decided to go, and I want to, if you—”
“Yes!” The thrill of the notion was second only to that of his rapport with Melanie. “But what’s this about—”
“The worlds are separated in time as well as phase, but their cultures are similar. The languages. So there are futuristic ones, and ancient ones, and there is one where the Minoans—where your fabulous underwater city is above water and thriving—it’s a lot like what your tablets described—”
And I am there, my friend. The culture of those who are now saving worlds derives from mine, and from that of Atlantis. From a world where the ships were not lost, and the broader empire was restored, and grew to dominate nature in much the way I see yours has. Those people never forgot to be wary of the Bull! Help me as you are able. I desperately want to return to my concubine.
Don intended to. He hoped he wasn’t merely suffering from a lingering hallucination. But it was too much to assimilate all at once. So he cut it short. He kissed Melanie.
She was ardent. Then she drew back, as if uncertain whether to laugh or snap. “Concubine?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I wrote this novel in 1971 and couldn’t sell it. It was one of eight unsold novels I had at one time, and the only one that I concluded was actually not good enough to sell. One publisher did make an offer on it, but when I commented on the inadequacies of that publisher’s standard contract the offer abruptly turned out to be an error in communication and the novel was returned. This is the way publishers treat writers, and one reason why that publisher does not publish Anthony today, though it would like to; writers, too, remember. Another editor, rejecting this and my collaboration with a Cuban, Dead Morn, inquired snidely of my agent whether I had a hang-up about Cuba. Editors don’t strike me as the most enlightened type. But of course if they had the talent to write salable novels, they’d be doing it instead of editing.
All the other seven Unsolds eventually found publishers. Editors claim that they reject only what is not good enough to publish, but the other seven were taken essentially unchanged. What changed was my reputation, as I became famous for light fantasy. But I didn’t even try to remarket Mer-Cycle, because I wasn’t satisfied with it. It just didn’t seem to come properly alive.
So when I got time in edgewise, I did a full revision of the novel, revamping both the characters and the plot. In the process I added 25,000 words. So though this started as an old novel, it’s a new one now. My age
nt placed it, and here it is for you, twenty years later. I hope you enjoyed it.
I did have some credits to give for help on this novel, in 1971. I am long out of touch with those folk, but their contributions remain real, so I shall credit them here and hope that they happen to see it. One is Phyrne (I love that spelling!) Bacon who is responsible for much of the way Melanie thinks. Another is Harry M. Piper, who has done underwater exploration. He had been written up in a newspaper article, and I got in touch and asked for his advice, and he gave it, making my water scenes more authentic than they would have been. Another is Joanne Burger, who helped with advice on the technical end: density of water at different depths, chemistry, and such.
You may be wondering just what changes I made in the original novel. Well, Melanie was then named Melody, but I had subsequently used that name in Chaining the Lady, so had to modify it. She never appeared physically in the novel; she was a radio contact only. The story developed slowly, then suddenly everything broke loose with so many complications that it was difficult to follow. So this time I added heavy foreshadowing, in the form of Eleph’s reports to his frame supervisor, so that that element did not seem to come from nowhere. And I simplified the ending, trying to give it more clarity and force. Some things I wasn’t sure about, so I let them be, such as the reference to the Yuchi Indians. I was later to do a whole lot more research on American Indians, when writing Tatham Mound, but did not verify any strange origin for this tribe. But who knows? I must have had a reference, when I first wrote this novel. It was as if I were collaborating with a promising writer who couldn’t quite get it all together; I saw what was necessary and did it. It’s the first time I’ve collaborated with myself, and it was about as difficult as collaborating with another writer. Which is to say, not too bad, when I have the last word.
Two later notes: after I completed the revision of the novel, and it was published in hardcover, the geologists changed the location of the Dinosaur Meteor strike. Now it is in a region my characters crossed, the north coast of the Yucatan. Ouch! My folk could have looked at it, had they realized. And those who are looking for a source of all my novels and my quarterly Newsletter can call 1–800-HI PIERS to get on our mailing list.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PIERS ANTHONY is the creator of a number of bestselling series, including ‘The Magic of Xanth’, ‘The Apprentice Adept’, ‘The Bio of a Space Tyrant’, and ‘The Incarnations of Immortality’. He is also the author of the bestselling novelisation of the film ‘Total Recall’. Anthony lives in Florida.
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