Left of Africa

by Hal Clement

  "We heard of the voyage while our former ship was at Sai," he replied with apparent frankness. "We have sailed all over the Great Sea, and thought it was time to see another.

  We therefore left our ship and came here in hope of serving on this fleet. Your tale that it is of merchantmen rather than galleys has disappointed us greatly, but since we are so near we will go on to the sea. Perhaps there is still a chance."

  The Phoenicians seemed to accept this story with no suspicion, and for some time they speculated on the chances which Sargon and Nimshi might have. One made a good suggestion.

  "It is likely," he said, "that Pharoah will have some of his soldiers with the fleet, since it carries his goods. It may be that you could enlist among these, since he frequently has men who are not of Egypt in his armies. This seems strange to me, since a man fights best for his own city, but so it is."

  "I had not thought of that," Nimshi admitted. "Do you know the name of the commander of these soldiers, so that we would know whom to seek?"

  "I don’t even know for certain that there will be soldiers. Whoever they may be, they had not reached the port when we were last there, and may not arrive much before we start. When they do, though, you will have no trouble finding them. Soldiers are hard to miss."

  Sargon looked sharply at the speaker, as though he suspected there might be something concealed in the last remark, but Nimshi hastily interposed another question.

  "You say they may not arrive much before you sail. I take it, then, you are not yet ready?"

  "Not yet." David seemed not to regard their sailing date as any sort of secret. "We will not leave before spring. Some of the ships are not yet built, and none are supplied. You have plenty of time to find a ship if you really want to go."

  Nimshi nodded thoughtfully and thanked the man, and the group walked on in silence for a time. It was hot; Gizona, used to the more comfortable temperatures of the Spanish hills, was suffering as much from that as from the fatigue of the long walk. His decision to do all further travel by ship became firmer and firmer.

  The Phoenicians had paid no attention to him at all. They evidently regarded a slave as beneath notice-unless, of course, he was for sale, the boy reflected. Maybe it was just as well, though; if they ignored him, he could probably eavesdrop that much better. He decided to make it a habit, without being too obvious, to eat and sleep as close to these people as possible. They might or might not know what languages he spoke, but even if they did realize that he understood them it was easy to forget secrecy when the only listener is a small boy. At least, so Gizona assumed.

  However, he gained nothing by the idea. The trouble was not that he couldn’t get close; it was that Sargon and Nimshi could do the same. The Phoenicians seemed perfectly willing to have them join them when the group finally stopped for a meal; there was nothing said at night when the parties reached a roadside camping area and settled down for the night in the same area. There was nothing which Gizona had a chance to overhear which was not just as easily heard by his masters.

  The following day was the same, and the boy finally decided that one of two things must be true. Either the Phoenicians had no suspicions to hide, and were being completely frank and honest, or else they were doing such a good job of concealing their feelings that he would never find anything out from them. The first, he admitted, was sensible enough; the only reason he had for thinking that they might be suspicious was his own bad conscience. He wanted to ask Nimshi how he felt about the matter, but never had a chance to catch him alone. Most of the day had passed before it occured to him that the Phoenicians might have arranged this deliberately; only then did he remember Nimshi’s advice about not getting so concerned in an attack as to forget defense. Maybe these merchants were staying with him and his masters for the same reason he had wanted to stay with them-to find out what they knew, and what they were up to.

  Gizona was a sadly perplexed young man when the Gulf of Suez came into sight. He didn’t know what to think about the Phoenicians, because he didn’t know what they thought of him.

  The sight of the sea distracted him from these thoughts, however. He had seen seaports before, but never quite like this. Tartessos was on a river, with docks for vessels; Carthage had artificial harbors, also with docking space. Here at the head of the Red Sea there was, properly speaking, no city at all. The partly completed ships were up on dry land, held up by timbers while men swarmed about them. Others, already completed, had not been launched; they still lay on the beach, and Gizona wondered whether they were to be loaded there— and if so, how they were to be dragged to the water afterward. He remembered that the Proteus had been floated before being loaded, and the loading had been done from a dock. Perhaps they would build docks here before bringing supplies on board, he decided.

  The settlement was a scattering of rough huts and tents; there were few real buildings. It was not what the boy would have called a city. However, it had all the sorts of people a city usually contained; soldiers, sailors, craftsmen, merchants, wine-sellers, and the wives and children of all of these. Slaves were everywhere, mostly black-skinned men from the far south, but a sprinkling of every race known to the Mediterranean world could be found.

  Nimshi led Sargon and Gizona away from their Phoenician companions as the party entered the settled area. The boy wondered whether he, too, might not have become suspicious of the shipmen, and Nimshi confirmed this idea as soon as they were alone.

  "It’s all very well to have them let us listen to them," he remarked, "but we couldn’t get away for a dozen heartbeats to talk without them around to hear us. We’ll have to find a place to live where we can plan in peace."

  Sargon agreed with this thought, and a couple of hours of searching followed. They finally came upon something that claimed to be an inn, though it was simply an area of packed dirt with a rough wall of rubble surrounding it. The keeper of the place, after much haggling, agreed to provide them with food and drink and allow them to sleep in a corner of the place for what Nimshi insisted was a ruinous price. The fellow could not be argued into lowering his charges, though, even by the sight of Sargon’s hand fondling his sword hilt.

  "If you don’t want to stay here, you don’t have to," was all he said. "If you sleep outside walls, though, you’ll find your throats cut in the morning. There are more thieves in this place than in Nebuchadrezzar’s army." If he expected that remark to anger either of the soldiers, he was disappointed; Nimshi as a Judean and Sargon as an AsSyrian both hated Nebuchadrezzar and everything to do with him with great bitterness. They finally paid the "innkeeper’s" price, Sargon only remarking in a pointed way how unfortunate it would he if any of the thieves turned out to be inside the rubble walls. "There’ll be throats cut, all right," he agreed.

  With this matter settled, the three held a council of war. It did not last long; Nimshi had done much thinking during their trip, and spent most of the time telling the others what to do.

  "Sargon, you and I will talk to any soldiers we find. Give them wine; make friends with them. It may be expensive, but it may also prove necessary. Gizona, you will learn this city. Know every building in it, every sort of person who lives in them. Find particularly where all the Phoenicians are living. Try to find out which of them are ship-masters, and overhear all you can of what they say. We must learn whether any galleys are going along, how long they expect to be gone, and most particularly what sort of crews they carry. I want to find, if possible, a ship whose crew is largely or entirely made up of men who aren’t Phoenicians. If it’s galley, so much the better; if not, we'll make it do."

  "Why do you want this knowledge?"

  "What is that to you?" Nimshi was still unused to the idea of regarding a slave as a person. Gizona stiffened his courage to its full strength and answered.

  "I can do things better if I know why they’re being done. Didn’t you fight better when you knew who you were fighting, and that it was someone likely to have plenty of loot for you to steal?”
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  "True enough." It was Sargon who answered. "Explain to him, Nimshi. He can’t betray us without betraying himself; he’s helped us too much already."

  "All right." The Judean controlled his irritation with some effort. "It’s simple enough. Phoenicians will be loyal to their own captains, at least over any foreigner. I want to buy a crew— after we get to sea."

  CHAPTER 11

  It was certainly simple enough, given a crew of unprincipled characters like Sargon and Nimshi. Gizona could see that. He would probably have seen it much earlier except for the fact that the whole idea of bribery and mutiny was brand new to him. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked it, now that it had become clear, either.

  His objections did not arise from his conscience. He had a fairly good one, as consciences went twenty-five hundred years ago, but there was another matter which bothered him more than the thought of a group of ruffians throwing their officers overboard and taking ship and cargo where Sargon and Nimshi wanted. This was the question of whether they would continue to obey the orders of that precious pair. If the men would mutiny under Phoenicians, they would mutiny under an AsSyrian, it seemed to the boy; and while he would not be terribly grieved at watching his masters go over the side, there was the more serious chance that Gizona himself might be thrown after them. This, he felt, was worth a great deal of effort to prevent.

  He had learned, however, that there was nothing to be gained by arguing with Nimshi unless Sargon happened to be willing to help, and there was no doubt whose side Sargon would be on this time.

  "All right," he said. "I’ll find out what I can." He made no promise to tell all he learned, but Nimshi seemed not to notice this. "It will take quite a while. How often do you want me to find you and tell what I’ve learned? I suppose you won't be here much of the time during the day if you’re entertaining friends in the drinking shops, so I won’t know where to find you."

  "That’s true enough," nodded Nimshi. "Just be back here to sleep at night. We'll be in before you go out again in the morning."

  "All right. How about food? I'll have to come back here to eat."

  Nimshi shrugged. "Of course. Eat before you leave in the morning-we’ve paid for it. If our host makes any trouble, tell Sargon."

  Gizona had been hoping to get some money from his masters by convincing them that he would have to buy food, but decided not to argue. Nimshi was too likely to decide that the boy had plans of his own. There seemed no more to be said, and it was still fairly early in the day, so he left the innyard and began to wander through the "city."

  Unfinished as the place was, it was big, and there was plenty to see. Gizona spent several hours just wandering through it, painting a complete picture in his mind of every tent and hut, every ship and fragment of ship along the beach, every person he saw. One of Nimshi’s questions was answered at once; there was a partly finished galley among the others, near one end of the line of hulls. The boy walked as close as he dared to examine it, rendered bold by the fact that there were plenty of other children in the area to whom no one was paying any attention.

  The vessel was not too large, as galleys went-about the size of the Proteus. Gizona remembered that the Greek ship had carried about sixty men, and supposed that this one would do about the same. It was a long way from completion, of course, and things might change; but he was pretty sure of the size.

  The rest of the hulls along the beach were the tubby merchantmen that Phoenicia had been using for so long. The boy had seen the same things, manned usually by Carthaginians, in Tartessos, and didn’t need to examine them so closely. He realized he didn’t know all about them-an artist can usually tell when there are blank spaces on his picture-but decided he could fill the blanks better at sea. The thing to do now was find Phoenicians and listen to them.

  This was not very hard; the beach practically swarmed with them. A few were silently watching progress on one or another of the shipbuilding tasks, but most were talking in groups of varying size. Doing his best to imitate the small boys who were wandering around the beach hunting for shells and similar objects, Gizona worked his way toward the largest of these, where a tall man seemed to be giving lengthy instructions to the others. No one paid any attention to him, and he spent the next quarter hour listening closely.

  He learned about what an eavesdropper at a Christmas party would be likely to learn about next summer’s camping plans. The Phoenicians simply weren’t talking about the trip, which was not to start for so many months. They were talking about the weather, the food, Egyptian and Babylonian politics, and prices. Only occasionally was a remark dropped that seemed to have the slightest bearing on the journey to be taken in the spring. After a while Gizona gave up and went on to the next group, with no better luck.

  He spent the rest of the day at this useless task, and returned to the inn at sunset to make his report. The other two were not there; apparently they had started at once on their own program. He didn’t quite dare ask the unsocial-looking innkeeper for food, so he curled up in the corner the fellow had assigned them and went to sleep.

  Sargon and Nimshi did not return for several hours. When they did, the Judean immediately shook Gizona awake to hear what he had to tell.

  He seemed satisfied with the news about the galley, and did not complain too much about the lack of information from eavesdropping. Gizona suspected that his masters had been paying for a good deal of wine without getting much return in knowledge, though neither of them admitted it. The boy did not bring up the subject. He did mention that he had not eaten, and received no sympathy from Nimshi, but Sargon roared out to the innkeeper to earn his money. All three ate, after some argument with their host, late as the hour was.

  The next day was much the same, and the next, and the next. Gizona began to spend more time watching the shipbuilding than he did listening; the work was interesting. Many other children were always scrambling around the beach, and after a while he began to forget his fear of arousing suspicion and imitate them. Boys would climb into, under, and over the partly completed hulls, shimmy up masts, duck through the "eyes" at the bow of a great ship and drop to the sand yards below. The workers seemed to regard the boys as nuisances, which they certainly were, but never did much about the youngsters unless it was necessary to kick them out of the way. There was a good deal of hard language used, but Gizona decided that he could stand that if the others could.

  He came to know many of the boys that he met climbing around the vessels. They asked no embarrassing questions about where he came from. Gradually he began to lose his suspicious attitude, and found himself having a good time as he joined in their games.

  He could run better than any of them and swim as well as most, he found, and the knowledge made him feel better. He had always been a little afraid of other boys, who never seemed to have people chasing them away or otherwise showing dislike for them. The trouble was, of course, that" Gizona had never met the idle gamins of city and beach; in his home village, boys had worked in the fields or woods from the time they were four or five, simply because they had to-food was scarce in the forested headwaters of the Guadalquivir. In Tartessos he had spent most of his daylight hours with his various masters, and had seen little of the doings of the scamps of the city. In Sai, however, he had watched them with surprise; and now he joined them. It was his first experience of fun. It made quite a difference to the lives of Nimshi of Judea and Sargon of Nineveh, though neither of them ever realized it.

  He began to find out something else, after a few days with the boys. They were the ones to listen to, not the serious grown-ups, if he wanted to find things out. The boys knew how big each ship was, how many men she was to carry, who was to be her commander. Anything interesting that happened along the beach was known to the boys in minutes. If a worker fell from a half-done deck and broke a leg, the crowd that gathered was mostly boys; if a new group of soldiers approached from the north, it was the boys who met them and followed them to the area which was to serve
as their barracks. Gizona began to make use of this source of information in his reports to his masters. By the time he had been in the "city" for two months he had what amounted to a very effective spy system, covering the length and breadth of the place.

  One beauty of the system was that the spies did not know what they were doing; Gizona was smart enough not to ask questions. He just started conversation, and listened. He knew everything Nimshi had wanted to know-almost. He knew that there were to be two galleys, not one, with the fleet; he knew how many men each was to carry; he knew the number of merchant ships, and much of their cargo and nearly all their crews. He knew every ship’s captain by sight and by name, and how highly each one ranked among the others.

  But he did not know where the land of treasure lay. All the boys knew it was to the south; some said three weeks journey and some said two years. Some said that it was on the west coast of the Red Sea, some said it was on the east, some said it was not on that sea at all but on a greater one beyond. Some said it was desert, some that it was inhabited by savages, some that it was ruled by a king who had even more powerful armies than those of Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon. Gizona was no longer bothered by the differing tales, but he was quite unable to decide which if any of them was true. They all contained bits of evident truth, and also of evident falsehood.