by Hal Clement
"That’s not quite all!" It was Nimshi who spoke, and the trembling of his voice betrayed that he was in a white fury. "If you’d done as you were ordered, and reported to me all you heard last spring, we’d never have come on this trip at all. You are the one who brought us on a voyage which may use up years and won’t make us a bit richer when it’s over. Slaves who disobey their masters get punished, boy, and slaves whose disobedience and falsehood waste years of their masters’ time sometimes get punished so they never make such mistakes again. Captain David, this boy may have done you a favor, but he’s my slave, and what he’s done for me is no favor. You and I are going out on the beach, Gizona of Tartessos, and when I’m through everyone on this fleet will know what happens to disobedient slaves. Come along!"
Gizona looked in terror at the captain. He had hoped to be able to talk all three of the men into seeing his side of the matter; failing that, he felt that David at least would have sympathized. Now he realized that, whatever the Phoenician may have felt, his sense of property rights might keep him from interfering; after all, Gizona was Nimshi’s slave. Nothing could be read from David’s expression, and the boy rose slowly to his feet and started to turn toward the door, wondering when would be the best time to run— and where to go.
"Just a minute!" Gizona, Nimshi, and David all turned toward Sargon, who had spoken for the first time since entering the hut. "He’s my slave, too, Nimshi. I have something to say about his punishment."
"True. But he’s put you in the same position I’m in. Do you want to walk back to Egypt from here? We'd probably get there just as quickly as we will with these tubs~-they’re going the wrong way anyhow."
"That doesn’t bother me."
"What?"
"You told me a little while ago that I was angry just because I’d found someone besides you who was smarter than I am. Maybe you were right; I don’t claim to be smart. I leave thinking to people who can’t do things. It seems to me, though, that you’re doing just what I was then— You’re getting angry because someone has outsmarted you. Gizona may be our slave, but we never paid for him— we captured him. If someone had done that to you or me, we’d be trying all the time to please ourselves instead of him. I never thought of that before, but when Gizona said what he did a little while ago it seemed to make sense. Maybe we will be years on this trip, but when we do get back from it I want that boy thinking for me; he’s smart enough to get us rich anyway, even if we don’t make the plans ourselves. I don’t want him beaten; and I’m big enough to see that he isn’t!"
Nimshi looked at his friend in surprise; it was the longest speech, except for his tall stories, that the Ninevite had ever made. Gizona’s remark a few minutes before— the "weren’t you doing that to me’ one— had also impressed Nimshi, though the idea of a slave’s having rights of his own was too new for it to stick very firmly in his mind. Now he paused to think of it again. At the crucial moment, David added a thought.
"If you’re jealous at having been tricked, Nimshi, remember that I was, too. The boy has had all three of us doing just what he wanted. If it doesn’t bother me, why should it anger you? If you wish to regard Gizona as a slave, I'll buy him from you right now— but if I do, I say now, before witnesses, that I will set him free the moment he’s mine "’ For several minutes there was silence. Everyone was thinking, though for some the process was harder and slower than for others. Even Gizona, who by rights should have been doing nothing but hoping, had been struck by an idea and was dealing with it in his own way. Nimshi, however, was the first to speak.
"Maybe you’re right, Captain." His words came slowly. "I still don’t like what happened, but I don’t like men who draw swords because they lose a game of checkers, either. Gizona, as far as my share in you is concerned, you are free; whether or not we are friends is up to you. I will say that if you can find a way to get us back to civilization I’ll be willing to forget what’s happened."
"He’s free for me, too." Sargon said simply.
""Then it seems that everything is settled, and everyone satisfied," the captain said. "Now we can— "
"Just a moment, Captain." It was Gizona again, and the others turned to him. "You know, Nimshi was quite right to be angry, and I wasn’t very smart, either."
"You were smart enough to fool him and me," pointed out David. "That’s where you’re wrong, sir. I wasn’t."
CHAPTER 17
"I'm afraid I don’t understand you, boy." The captain leaned back in his chair and, quite plainly prepared himself to hear a long explanation.
"I fooled you all right, but it wasn’t smart. I’ve been thinking it over, sir. The more I think, the more it seems to me that it doesn’t take much brain to lie to anyone who trusts you. Nimshi and Sargon weren’t exactly friends of mine, but they did trust me in that respect— after the first few weeks, anyway. I thought for a while that I’d feel proud at making them do what I wanted, but now it doesn’t seem so wonderful after all."
The captain once again hid a smile behind his beard. As a matter of fact, he was admiring the boy even more for the cleverness shown by this speech, which would undoubtedly calm down any anger the Judean might still be feeling. David was a trader himself, accustomed to lying whenever convenient, and it simply never occurred to him that Gizona might be speaking sincerely. The Phoenician was not used to trusting people anyway.
Nimshi might have been suspicious, too, but the boy’s words formed just the sort of excuse he needed to restore his self-esteem, and he was willing to believe them for that reason if for no other. As the captain had expected, the last of his tension disappeared and he almost smiled.
"All right, Gizona. Smart or not, I should have known better than to take your reports without some sort of checking. We'll both know better next time."
David cut in at this point, not wanting either Gizona or Sargon to say anything which might spoil the atmosphere of friendship which seemed to have grown up.
"If that’s settled, we’d better face the problem of what use I'll have for the three of you on this expedition. In one way you’re the same sort of danger to me that the other soldiers would have been— you know that we Phoenicians have been trading further down this coast than we have ever told Pharoah, and he might be rather annoyed if he found it out. Looking at it that way, the safest thing for me to do would be leave you here after the harvest. However, I’m sure we can find some way of insuring our safety without being that drastic."
"I couldn’t tell on you, anyway," pointed out Gizona.
"Why not?"
"Because I heard about that before the fleet left, and I'd have to explain why I didn’t tell one of Pharoah’s officers right then.’"
"That’s a thought. We could probably spread the same argument to cover Nimshi and Sargon, too— after all, they were your masters, and it might be hard for them to convince Niku that you hadn’t let them know before sailing time. That makes me feel better; you know if you betray us you'll suffer just the same way we do. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough." Nimshi and Sargon spoke together.
"All right. Now for what use to make of you, so that I won’t fell I’m wasting food. Gizona is no problem, since he can read— "
"What?" The boy’s former masters spoke together.
"Oh, yes, he learned that from some of my men months ago. That’s what gave me a high opinion of his brains, and caused me to have him present when I told you two that story which was supposed to get rid of the galley. I can use him in all sorts of ways— have you done any sailing before, Gizona? Do you know anything of seamanship?"
Gizona explained his few weeks of experience on the Proteus.
"Good. You seem to remember a lot about it, too; I can keep you busy, all right. What we will do with these soldiers, though, baffles me a trifle."
"It would seem to me that you might need soldiers if you’re exploring," pointed out Gizona. "You don’t know what sort of people you might meet, and I never thought of Phoenicians as fighters."
"You never tried to take his property away from one," the captain countered with a grin. "In any case, what use would only two soldiers be? Still, I expect we can use them to row sometimes, and maybe they can learn a little about sailing."
The conference ended on that note, with Gizona’s status completely changed. Before, he had been a slave whose very masters were of minor importance; everyone knew him, but no one noticed him. Now he was regarded as under the protection of David, one of the senior captains of the fleet, and word of his remarkable powers of memory was circulating everywhere-frequently with exaggeration, of course.
Nimshi and Sargon had always had a rather peculiar status; no one had ever been very clear just why they were on David’s ship. The only thing really known even now was the fact that they were connected in some way with the boy. Somewhere, a rumor sprang up to the effect that Gizona was the son of an Egyptian noble who had been sent on the voyage to learn about the sea, and that the soldiers were his bodyguards. This sort of thing sounded likely enough, since Pharoah Niku was known to be trying to improve Egypt’s position as a commercial power. He had even tried to dig a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. This very voyage of exploration, whose real purpose had been revealed by the captains since the soldiers had fled with their galley, was in accord with the same plan.
Captain David made no attempt to stop the spread of the rumor, and by the time the grain was harvested it had become the accepted story among all the Phoenicians except the senior officers. These all knew the true story, but had decided that the notion of Gizona’s nobility would enhance their own prestige—and incidentally, ease any fears which might arise in the minds of some of their own sailors. After all, a noble would hardly send his own son on a voyage expected to be very dangerous.
Gizona’s knowledge of the Egyptian language was better than that of any of the sailors, so no peculiarities were noticed in that direction. Even the boy’s fantastic memory was fitted into the pattern; to the less well educated people of the Mediterranean world, Egypt was still the home of mystery and magic. The idea of an Egyptian noble’s possessing strange and unusual powers was not in the least remarkable.
With the grain aboard the ships, therefore, it seemed to almost as though a completely new fleet left what later be called Delagoa Bay and headed once more southward along the African coast. For a time harbors were numerous, usually lagoons similar to the one where they had stayed while growing their new supplies. This was just as well, for the weather was not very favorable and they frequently had to wait at one spot for days at a time. This was not as boring as it might have been, however; for, once the fleet had passed the farthest point familiar to the Phoenicians, Gizona had no trouble persuading David to let him and the two soldiers go ashore at such times to examine the country.
The detailed descriptions the boy was able to bring back from these trips impressed the Phoenicians even more than the speed with which he had learned to write, and they gradually came to regard him as a sort of semi-official reporter and recorder of all that was noted on the trip— though none of the captains stopped keeping records in writing, the boy noticed.
The sun continued to behave in the peculiar fashion Gizona had pointed out to Lukos. It was a little farther north at noon with each advance southward the fleet made. Sargon and Nimshi had had the boy explain the matter to them with the same sort of diagram he had used for the Greek, and even Sargon seemed to understand. He was not bothered by it, but occasionally Gizona got the impression that Nimshi was taking the edge-of-the-world idea a little too seriously.
It was Nimshi he heard asking one of the Phoenician officers about the behavior of the stars. Gizona, who had learned from Orestes the constellations visible from the Mediterranean latitude, already knew that some of them could not be seen here. The "center of the wheel," the place in the northern sky around which all the stars seemed to circle, could no longer be found, and all the stars close to it had also disappeared. The Phoenicians had pointed out to Gizona that there was a new center in the south, and he was still trying to account for this. There was no "North Star," or "South Star’ either, in those days, which made the matter hard to point out to people like Sargon.
Nimshi was really bothered by the disappearance of the northern stars, and spent a good deal of his time looking southward as though expecting something dangerous, like the edge of the world Gizona had jokingly mentioned, to show up.
No edge appeared, however, and before very long Gizona was able to point out that the coast was trending more and more to the west, which made the Judean a trifle happier. Several times they rounded capes and found themselves actually heading slightly north of west for a while, but after a few days the southward trend would come back. Each time this happened Nimshi, who had relaxed while they were going north, got a little more worried than he had been before. Even Gizona got worried, not about the edge of the world— he was slowly developing with an idea of his own about that— but about Nimshi. The fellow was smart enough to cause real trouble if he got scared enough of the southward journey, and Gizona didn’t want to find the fleet on fire some fine morning when it was time to push off again.
The boy didn’t know quite what to do about it, and was more relieved than annoyed when bad weather kept them ashore for nearly two weeks at one point. As it turned out, the problem was solved at this point, because for the first time on the voyage they met men who were not of their own party.
In a way, this is almost unbelievable; the eastern coast of Africa is no desert. However, sailing ships were either new to the savages of the shore, or else meant men who would come to steal and capture slaves. At least, that was how Gizona accounted for it later. He was right, as it happened, since the mighty wide-spread black nations that were to cause so much trouble to the Europeans in South Africa over two thousand years later were still scattered tribes warring with each other over grazing rights.
The natives who found the ships were warriors, but perhaps fortunately were in a small party. The fleet was drawn up in a river mouth, and the men as usual sleeping and eating on shore while they waited for a good wind. The black men must have heard them from quite a distance away, but the fellows weren’t cowards; they came down to the river bank to see what was going on. They were good at concealment, for they must have been there for some time before one of the sailors noticed them.
His cry of alarm brought the other Phoenicians to their feet, looking in the direction he was pointing. A tall figure stepped into view from behind a tree, and stood calmly staring back at them. He must have been a hundred pounds heavier than Sargon, and a full head taller. He was armed with a spear and a knife, but seemed in no hurry to use either.
Nimshi and Sargon reached automatically for their bows, but one of the captains ordered them sharply to stop.
"No fighting, fools! That leads to no trading, and for all you know they may outnumber us." The Phoenician threw his own knife on the ground and walked slowly toward the native with his hands out and empty. What followed was a lesson to Gizona as well as his soldier friends. In half an hour the Phoenicians and the blacks had exchanged gifts and were trying to exchange languages. Neither side was really free of suspicion for the other, but there had been no violence and there didn’t seem to be any prospect of it.
The natives formed a band of perhaps forty, all men. They had neither gold nor bronze, but the Phoenicians judged that they were hunters and were trying to get the idea across that it would be nice to trade fresh meat for a metal weapon. No one had much luck until Gizona took a hand.
In two days he was making enough headway with the language to conduct a fair conversation, though his manner of speech made the natives laugh— Bantu grammar is much worse than Egyptian, by any European standards. The idea of trading proved satisfactory, and for the rest of the stay at the river mouth the sailors ate well.
The natives said that their people lived further up the river, but that hunting bands frequently went many days’ journey from home.
They knew much of the country for a remarkable distance, as far as the boy could tell; and it was from these men that he learned that the coast turned definitely northward not too much further on.
Fairly good relations were maintained up to the time the Phoenicians sailed. By that time, some of the hunters had returned to their village to tell of the strange people they had met, and one of them had come back to the coast with a message that their chief wanted very much to see the bearded men, and that a number of them should come to the village at once. This request, which sounded very much like an order, was a trifle disconcerting to the Phoenicians, since the wind had turned favorable and they were about to leave.
Gizona explained as politely as he could— he had now had nearly ten days to polish himself in the language— that it was impossible for them to accept the gracious invitation, but that they or others of their people would come later to visit the chief. This reply seemed to bother the warriors; the idea of someone’s not doing what the chief wanted was new to them. They gathered together and talked in low tones while the crews began to splash out to their ships, which were aground but of course were far too huge to be drawn completely out of the water. The natives watched sullenly as the great hulks were shoved until they floated, and the men began to scramble aboard by the knotted ropes hanging overside; then, as though a signal had been given, they leaped yelling toward the nearest of the ships.