Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage

by R. A. Lafferty

  “A question from Master Mariner and Master Spy Essindibad Copperbottom, better known as Sindbad the Sailor? ‘Can I make an eclipse?’ I don't know. I suppose I could have one made, if I wished to trouble Almighty God about such a trifle. But then if He granted me such a silly favor as this, He might not be so ready to grant me something I really needed in a future moment of trouble. In any case, it would take a Faith tall enough to reach into the very Heavens, and I'm not sure that mine is tall enough. But I understand that you have already solved that problem through your friendship with an Ifrit-Bird which can make itself as big as it wished: the Roc or Ruoch Bird. It struck me as a rather clever solution that you came up with, and you have never shown many signs of being clever before. Indeed, the word is that you are a fellow with only one oar in the water, and that you used a ghost writer to do your popular ‘voyage-adventures’. The Roc-eclipse would be worth seeing, but I'm afraid we can't see it here this far from the city walls. The angle would be wrong, and even the Roc cannot make itself to be that big. I suggest that you go back inside the city to watch it happen. You will be able to watch it with the high personages of the City and the Caliphate from one of the tallest parts of the walls, that part that is called ‘The Wall of the Gibbets’.”

  And that is what we did. We went back into the city to watch the eclipse. But I was puzzled as to why the Magus Badadilma had spoken of me having a rather clever solution to the eclipse-problem, when I had no solution to it at all. In the city, we ascended to the high place known as the ‘High Place of the Hanging Gibbets’.

  “The Magus seems to give verification to somebody who never really happened,” said the Master Spy named Rex Romae or the King of Rome, he of whom Citizen-Spy Heifritz had said that there was nothing to know. This speech of Rex was just as we had arrived at the High Place of the Hanging Gibbets. “I mean, of course, Harun al-Rashid. He never happened, though I see him standing there. Al-Amin and Mamun the Great were the sons of the Caliph Al-Mahdi. Al-Mahdi had no son named Harun. He did have a son named Al-Hadi. The father appointed Al-Hadi to be Caliph when he (the father Al-Mahdi) wished to abdicate and become a monk. But Al-Hadi died or was murdered within a year. Al-Mahdi then appointed his two younger sons, Al-Amin and Mamun the Great both to be Caliphs, the one in the Western and Southern parts of the Caliphate, the other in the Northern and Eastern parts. Now the two brother-Caliphs are on a collision course. But Harun Al-Rashid is the name of a fictional character, and he never lived at all. The business of him having one son when he was six years old and one when he was seven is fiction and not fact.”

  “Then who is that boyish middle-aged Caliph standing there?” the Master Spy Cato of Camiroi asked the Master Spy Rex Romae.

  “I don't know, Cato. But the Harun standing there is plainly a secondary manifestation. And the primary of him, as I have discovered by very sophisticated deduction, is one of us Master Spies here. But which, which, which one of us?”

  It gave me a funny feeling to hear that one of us spies was secretly Harun Al-Rashid. And I am not sure that I believed it completely.

  Then, as we stood in that high place on the wall, guards came and took hold of seven of us: Alexander of Astrobe, Myself Essindibad, my Wife the Grand-Dame, the Golden Tom-Cat, Ali ben Raad the Son of Thunder, Azraq-Qamar the lady known as Blue Moon, and Cato of Camiroi, a twit but a smart twit. We had seven nooses slipped over our necks by the guards. We would be hanged by our necks until we were dead, unless there was an eclipse. And if there was an eclipse, then some other group of seven would take our places and be hanged instead of us. There were twelve sets of seven persons each waiting to be hanged, so there were enough of them to make it a good show with or without us spies.

  “Seven, or seventy-times-seven, or seven-times-one-hundred-thousand, I'll keep on hanging them till I get my eclipse,” said the new Caliph Al-Amin. “Time is about up for you, Spies; unless you espy an eclipse winging its way towards the sun pretty rapidly. Rope-men, look to your ropes!”

  “Wait, wait!” I cried. “I do see a sort of eclipse winging its way towards the sun.” And I did see something. It was still hardly more than a dot in the distant sky, but I recognized the shape and motion of it as that of an old friend. It was the Roc. I knew that it could make itself larger or smaller. I knew that it could swallow an elephant in a single bite. I knew that it had talents for impersonation; but even then I didn't believe that it could impersonate an eclipse. But it had always been a good-luck bird to me. I hoped that it might swoop down and kill a few of the guards and carry a few of us spies to safety.

  But then the Roc set itself directly in the way of the sun and began to grow larger and larger. It became so large that it obscured the late morning sun completely. And darkness covered the whole City of Baghdad, suddenly and entirely.

  “Torches, torches, torches!” came the strong voice of the New Caliph Al-Amin. “Torches, torches, glorious torches for my glorious reign! Now I have my eclipse! Now I am Caliph indeed! The sun and the skies testify to my new and glorious reign. What, what, what is it that I keep hearing in my moment of triumph? Horse hoof-beats, hoof-beats, hoof-beats! Muffle them, please, somebody! They distract me! Yes, yes, beautiful torches, strength tried in fire and blaze! How long will the eclipse last, Sindbad? Oh, what is that fearful and painful beating of horses’ hooves in my head? How long will the eclipse last? It has already paid homage to me. Now I want light!”

  I had a sudden inspiration. My friend, the Roc Bird who had such astonishing powers, was talking in my head. And I knew that he would be able to hear me when I talked to him.

  “Great Caliph, Al-Amin!” I cried. “The eclipse will end whenever you want it to end; for you have become lord of eclipses also. I myself have a Sky-Connection. Tell me when you want the eclipse to end, and I will tell the Sky. And it will end then.”

  “Who is that? You, Sindbad the Sailor? You have a Sky-Connection?” the new Caliph cried out in amazement. “Do you really have such power and connection? I'll make you my Vizar at least. Take the nooses off the necks of all the spies, guards. You really can do it, Sindbad? I can cry out ‘One, Two, Three, Vanish!’, and the eclipse will vanish and the sun will shine again?”

  “Oh absolutely!” I said bravely; and in my mind I spoke to the Roc: “Fail me not now, my friend. You understand the situation. Fail me not now!”

  “I'll not fail you,” the Roc answered in my head. “I'm at ready.”

  “One, Two,” the new Caliph Al-Amin began in his ponderous voice. “Oh, what horrible hoof-beats are pounding in my head! Perhaps they'll cease when the dark ceases. Three! Vanish, Eclipse!”

  The Roc diminished himself instantly, and the sun shone the brightest that I ever saw it. It seemed to explode with light. And hardly anybody noticed the winged dot that came out of the sun three miles away from us and flew towards the south where birds are birds and elephants make a single bite for them.

  Our new Caliph stood and laughed in his noontime glory. He was the most powerful Caliph ever. He had not a trouble in the world, except for those horse-hoofs galloping, galloping in his head.

  But the brother of our new Caliph Al-Amin, the brother named Mamun the Great, was riding, riding, riding towards Baghdad with murder in his heart.

  I Am A Simple Kid

  There are peculiarities to my thirteenth voyage-adventure that I am not able to explain. But it really seems as though the adventure were happening at the same time to somebody else and to me (both the personal and interior part of the adventure as well as the exterior part). It seems that it is happening more intensely to that somebody else (once, things used to happen so intensely to me), with more numerous and more florid details, details which I do not always recognize at all. Somebody else is having my experiences and having them more fully than I am having them. Somebody else is dreaming my dreams, and dreaming them more extensively and more colorfully than I am able to dream them.

  I even have the feeling now and then that a huge hand (probably that
of an Ifrit-Giant) is taking me by the nape of the neck and throwing me out of my own voyage. Well, I am no longer quite at the center and focus of this voyage, that is sure. And my being off the center of it makes the voyage wobble a little bit for me. But does it also wobble for the person who is apparently at the center and focus of the voyage, or does it run straight for him?

  For a while I'd had intimations of who this intruder (who made me feel like an intruder in my own adventure) might be; and yet I couldn't quite believe it of him. Well, he is so boyish and simple-minded, and that is the difficulty. But it was not until the Master Spy (all of us smiled when he was called that or called himself that, for a Master Spy he was not), the Master Spy Ali ben Raad the Son of Thunder gave me a great roll of parchment to keep for him (“  —   in case I am lost, or in case I am pulled back to my own time, I want something of myself and my works to remain in this ‘now’. But do not read it, Sindbad. I beg you not to read it. It is too simple-minded entirely. And it would be too awkward for you, of all people, to read it”)   —   oh my gosh, he was the intruder in my adventure! It wasn't until then that I realized that it had to be the unwhiskered, simple-minded, boyish-awkward, apparently self-named Son of Thunder who had pushed me out of the center of own adventure.

  How shall I explain the foolishness of this screed that he gave me to keep for him? How many sheep skins were ruined to give the material for it? Of course I read it. When a pathological, logorrheic idiot is on the loose, his sickness must be examined by an expert such as myself. And I would be no true spy if I did not read what somebody begged me not to read. But how shall I explain the simple-mindedness, the goofiness, the outrageousness, the otherworldliness, the impossibility, the success of this thrown-together pot-full of wild ideas? For it was successful. He was here, and vividly.

  I cannot explain it. So I will incorporate it with my own account and let it speak with its own green-wood and multi-jointed tongue. This is it, just as he left it with me. Read it yourself:

  I am a simple kid. My name is John Scarlatti Thunderson and I live on the North Side of Chicago on Blackwater Street. My Italian grandmother says that I am lazy. My German grandmother says, “Send him up to the farm in Wisconsin. There must be something he can do there. There sure isn't anything he can do here in Chicago.” My Irish grandmother says, “Let him alone. He is a good boy. This is the price we all pay for him having all those smart older brothers and sisters. I was afraid the bucket would run empty. Those older ones took more than their share of the brains and didn't leave many for John when he came along. But he's only dumb in comparison. In a dumb family he wouldn't seem especially dumb.”

  The reason I have three grandmothers is that one of my grandfathers led a double life.

  “One thing about John,” said my chemistry teacher in high school, “he makes things happen. I bet he could mix the two most inert substances in the laboratory and they'd blow up the place. Nothing would happen if anybody else mixed them, but if John mixed them they'd blow up the place.”

  That set me to thinking. I went to the lab that night. I had a key. I was monitor or clean-up boy that week so I had the key. I mixed the two most inert substances they had in that chemistry laboratory. Sure enough, I blew up the place.

  But I was good at art, especially fantasy art. I won first place for fantasy art the last year I was in high school at St. Peters.

  “It's foolish, it's simple-minded, it's goofy, it's screamy-colored, it's wretchedly drawn, it's impossible,” the judges decided unanimously, “but it's the only picture submitted in the Fantasy Art Contest that has any fantasy elements in it at all. We’ve got to give the first place to John. All the other submissions are disqualified because of not having any fantasy elements in them.”

  “Maybe we could give it last place, since it's the only one left,” a judge with minority proclivities suggested. They finally compromised by giving me the special First-And-Last-Place Award (they called it the Alpha and Omega Trophy). But I always shortened it to call it the First Place Award.

  But one of the judges wasn't satisfied to leave bad enough alone.

  “I have seen that picture before,” he said, “and it bothers me. A picture that bad would never be reprinted anywhere, and yet I have seen it before, and in a book.” It took him a week, but he found it. It was a picture that had been painted by an ape that belonged to a Caliph back in the Arabian Middle Ages. So that made me the kid who plagiarized a picture from an ape and didn't do it as well as the ape did it. I probably did plagiarize it, but I didn't mean to. I was hung up on the Arabian Middle Ages and I put my nose into every book I could find about that period. One thing hadn't bothered me about the picture I had painted. I was in it. But when I looked at the picture the ape had painted centuries ago, I saw that I was in it too, right in the same place. And it was a better picture of me than I had done. The judge who had dug up the old picture began to shake like everything when he saw that I was in the old picture and that it wasn't any mistake about it being me. I'm glad nobody else paid any attention to it. But how had I got back there in the Arabian Middle Ages?

  Cardinal Newman recalled that when he was a little boy he had wished that the Arabian Nights were true. When I was a little boy, I thought the Arabian Nights were true, and I think so yet. I’ve recently come onto new evidence in favor of their factuality.

  But I am good at mathematics. The other day, Brother Sebastian said of a special assignment that I had turned in to him: “Do you know what you have just done, John? You have just invented Analytical Geometry. Of course Descartes invented it first, quite a while ago, but he didn't follow out some of the implications the way you do. To tell you the truth, John, I always thought that Descartes made an exciting field dull. That is one thing that can't be said against your special assignment. Yours is absolutely open-ended. With your system you can go anywhere you want to go. You can build almost anything you want to build, and you can make it work. You have escaped from the Descartes dead-end, and now the world is your oyster. Whenever you come to an apparent dead-end, you will know that the dull genius has been there before you, and that he stopped there and went no further. But you can open the door which he believed inexorably closed.”

  “Couldn't the world be my ark instead of my oyster?” I asked him. “Oyster shells don't do a thing for me, but I flip all the way over fresh-water ark shells.”

  “You’re an odd one, John,” Brother Sebastian said. “The fresh-water ark has the nothingest shell there is, small and dirty and malodorous. If somebody wanted to hide a great secret, the best way on this world would be to write it small and put it in an ark shell. Nobody would ever pick one of the filthy things up, unless somebody like you.”

  Let me tell you something about Brother Sebastian. Six years before this, when he was a senior at this same St. Peters High School, he dropped a pass in the end zone in the big game against Cathedral High. There was nobody near him; the pass was an easy floater; and it would have won the game. When asked about it he said “I'd been working on an open-ended mathematical equation, and while the pass was in the air I had an inkling of how to solve that equation. I knew that I could catch the pass if I concentrated on it. I knew that I could catch the solution to the equation if I concentrated on it. But I couldn't catch both of them. One of them had to be dropped and lost forever. So I picked the most important of them. I caught the mathematical solution, and I dropped the football.” So this Brother Sebastian, with his straight way of thinking, was the sort of person to understand me best.

  “But as to your open-ended system of analytical geometry,” he continued now, “it takes all the limits off you. You will go far, and probably you will go soon. I'd like to go with you when you go, but my job and my vocation are here. Yes, John, with your new mathematical foundation, you can make almost anything, and you can make it work.”

  Well, I did build an Almost-Anything, and it did work.

  But, before that, I had picked up a book ‘Colloquial Ar
abian Self Taught’ at a second-hand bookstore on Blackwater Street. I discovered that I already knew colloquial Arabian. It was the secret language that I had been dreaming in for all my life. I asked around some of the other kids. Some of them dreamed in the languages that their parents knew well but they the kids knew only a little bit except in their dreams. But many of the kids didn't have a secret language to dream in at all. They dreamed in English. Oh, how deprived can you get!

  And also, before that, I had been one of the discoverers of the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show. The most unnoticed things on any lake-shore or beach are the fresh-water ark shells. They are so much smaller than the shells of the salt-water or ocean ark! And they are so dingy! What's the odds against someone picking one up and holding it to his ear? Even if he did so, what's the odds against there being an audio going on just at that moment? But I picked one up once on the shore of Lake Michigan and held it to my ear. And I heard two other kids talking.

  “We need a third kid,” one of them was saying, “a kid we can trust. With just two kids listening to this we lack a dimension. We got to get a third kid.”

  They talked a while, and I recognized the voice of one of the kids, though I had heard it only once. It was a kid who lived in the same brownstone-flat building with some cousins of mine in South-Side Chicago eleven miles away from where I live. I thought at the time this was a coincidence; but, later, after I had invented Open-Ended Analytical Geometry, I had understood that ‘coincidence’ is only the name for a very neat mathematical curve. Anyhow, I became the third kid to listen to the Fresh-Water Ark-Shell Show. It was a real spell-binder. It hadn't any video, but all of us were agreed on how everybody in it looked. They weren't people. They were Ifrits, though Ifrits are usually thought of as giants. But they can be any size they want, and these were very small.