Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Persons of Baghdad,” the New Caliph Al-Amin spoke from a balcony high on the first of the royal buildings. “Each of you will take ten pieces of gold and three jewels, and then you will withdraw to give others of the multitudes the opportunity to get theirs. I know that none of you will take more than ten pieces of gold and three jewels because you are honorable people of Baghdad. When you have all received your bounty, there will still be great heaps of it left in the streets. I know that none of you will bother any of that heaped-up wealth, again because you are honorable people of Baghdad. The sun will go down on it, and the sun will come up on it again in the morning, and not one excess piece of it will be touched. People with rakes will rake the piles of gold and jewels out evenly so that they may cover many blocks around. Then will the proverb be fulfilled: ‘In the Bright Day in the Sun, the Streets of Baghdad Will Be Paved With Gold and Jewels So That the Day May Be Remembered.’

  “And now, that we may no longer be separated and divided from the heavens, I am having the mirage-sky (made of paper-thin electrum metal and floated on mist) taken down. My father had put it there. He said that Man had put it there in the Babel days also, an enticement to the workmen (‘We are nearly there to the sky; we can almost reach up and touch the sky’) to keep building the tower higher and higher. And my father got a sort of exultation from touching this artificial sky with his hands. But now it is burst and gone in one calculated instant! Gone, gone! See how much brighter the sun shines now!”

  “Too bright,” some of the people said.

  “And now, that there be no longer division between us,” Al-Amin spoke in a voice that had already grown tired and rasping, “I decree that every person of Baghdad will henceforth be a royal person and may come and go by the Royal Gate and may walk on the Royal Street. Only the Caliph (by virtue of his office, not of his person), and some of the priests (they themselves will not know who they are; only God who designates them secretly will know who they are) will stand somewhat higher than the other people; but the unaided eye cannot see their greater height.

  “I will now make appointments, some openly, some in private. One that I now make openly is that the Great Ali ben Hisan shall be special Commander of Horses and shall immediately ride towards the northeast with ten thousand horsemen and shall intercept all roads in that sector and seize a lone horseman (he was a lone horseman, but now the sound of horse-hooves in my head indicate that he may have picked up a few hundred followers), which horseman you will know because of his great size and the great anger in which he comes. And, besides, you have known him for many years. When you have seized this horseman, Ali ben Hisan, you will reason with him gently if he can be reasoned with. And if he cannot be reasoned with, then you will kill him gently. You will kill him very gently, for he is my brother.

  “Another appointment I now make openly is that Great Sindbad the Sailor shall take ship and find passage under the earth and prevent traitors from opening the iron doors of hell under the Earth. This Sindbad, this one-and-only Sindbad, can be known (if there is ever a dispute about his identity) by the fact that he has Sea-Weed growing on him at the fork in his body.”

  I felt a great elation when I was given this appointment. I whistled the secret coded whistle to my ship, and it came, invisible to all except myself. I stepped out of an upper window (cries of the persons below: ‘He will fall and be killed’, and cries of other persons below: ‘No, he will not fall and be killed: he is a prophet and one of the prophets’).

  And yet we did nearly fall. “Something is wrong with our ship, my love,” my wife said. But the point is that we entered the ship and did not fall to the ground below.

  I and the Grand-Dame my wife entered the ship and sped away, still invisible, to Bassorah Rock. There we picked up a crew and a magician-navigator.

  And in the Baghdad that we left behind us for a while, the new Caliph Al-Amin convoked various parliaments and councils after the sun went down, and worked all night drawing up his admirable code of laws. This was one of the greatest codes ever on any of the worlds, and it can only be regretted that it would never be put into effect.

  The Direst Voyage Ever Ship Did Sail

  “Something is wrong with our ship, my love,” said my wife the Grand Dame of the Seven Musics as we became an ocean-surface craft off-shore in the Arabian Ocean. “Something is wrong with the ship, and I can't quite identify it.”

  “What could possibly go wrong with the best ship that ever lived?” I asked her. “The ship is on waiting-drift, on ‘invisible-anchor’ as we say, and it is on number two alert while we consult with our Magician-Navigator. At this moment our ship is supposed to be doing nothing at all. How can a ship be doing nothing-at-all wrongly?”

  “I still say there is something wrong with the ship,” she insisted stubbornly. “Ah, that was a sulk. It's sulking. But there is still something very wrong with this ship. Believe me. I am always sure in mind and hand and foot.” And then my wife stumbled on the perfectly level deck and fell flat on her face.

  “Perhaps something is wrong with your wife, Master Copperbottom,” our ship purred in that manner that some passengers have found slightly offensive. But I always say that total competence (a characteristic of our ship) has the right to be slightly offensive.

  Our Magician-Navigator came on board. No, our Magician-Navigator appeared on board in that tricky way that they have. He was slightly translucent at his first appearance, but he had been completely invisible before. They use such tricks to try to impress their clients.

  “Is there doubt here, is there doubt here?” this navigator asked in the way they have. “Doubt is the foremost obstacle to good navigation. I detect a modicum of doubt on this ship, and it is centered in your wife, Master Copperbottom. Would you be so good as to get rid of your wife?”

  “Permanently or temporarily, Magician?”

  “Permanently would be the more permanent solution. But I'll take what I can get.”

  “No. I'll not get rid of her at all. Never. I like her.”

  “Then I can only guarantee a little bit above ninety-nine percent accuracy while the doubt and the wife hang like clouds in this wardroom. But I will do what I can do.”

  The Magician-Navigator materialized a great globe or crystal ball on the wardroom table. Yes, it was almost the conventional crystal ball full of colors and ever-changing clouds. And it was also a miniature-in-depth of Gaea-Earth in total detail (every atom and molecule reproduced in miniature) and it was capable of reproductions in other time contexts. It showed selected scenes and situations as they were yesterday, as they would be tomorrow, and as they were right now.

  Our ship had whispered the information about the amazing globe and the amazing Magician to me (the electronic, inside-the-head whispering of our ship was itself amazing), and our ship threw in the opinion: “This guy is good, and this guy's globe is good!”

  “I can focus on anything you wish,” the Magician-Navigator told me. “I can let you see anything anywhere, whether it is ordinarily visible or not. I can even let you see thoughts, but they will be in bodied and symbolic form. However, I will be able to interpret them to you. I can let you hear hidden things. It is well known that Ifrits and kindred spirits have such acute hearing that they can overhear conversations in the heavens. Well, I can let you overhear conversations in hell, and I can assure you that they’re more pertinent to the purpose of your voyage. You can hear conversations between any of the damned souls there, and I can let you hear conversations between elementals that are neither persons nor souls at all. I can let you examine the innermost structure of metals, those of the Iron Doors of Hell for instance. If even one atom of those doors has traitorous inclination, you can know it and spot the trouble at once. If there are flaws or weaknesses in the molecular binding of this iron, I can make it declare itself. I can navigate your ship through the underground and submarine channels right to those infernal doors. If even a mouse has passed out of those doors within the past fifty thousand year
s, I can locate it for you.”

  “Something is wrong with our ship, my love,” my good wife said once more. Then the chair she was sitting in went to pieces and dumped her on the metallic deck.

  “Something is wrong with your wife, Master Copperbottom,” the ship said. “Perhaps I should immobilize her and make repairs. If we have the parts, I could have her functioning properly again in six weeks.”

  “Don't be droll, Ship,” I said. The ship had always been on terms of friendly banter with us, but today the tone seemed a little bit extreme and false.

  “The new Caliph Al-Amin is mistaken, of course,” the Magician-Navigator was saying as he gazed into the pulsing red fires that are the hot core of Gaea-Earth. “The souls and devils in hell are plainly there for ever. Not one of them has escaped since their being locked up there fifty thousand years ago. Those he mentioned in his private briefing to you (he thought it was private), such as the beautiful and gracious Lady Narkos, such as his own father Harun al-Rashid the Forever-Caliph, they are not hellish spirits at all. They are benign spirits from benign worlds far distant. They come to the Five Worlds to bring joy and delight. They enhance life. I can steer your ship to the very jaws of hell, but what purpose would it serve?”

  “It would let me examine the situation with my own eyes. I have a royal commission to do just that.”

  “Oh, but in the crystal miniature of the world here there are eyes one million times as seeing as your own eyes. I can let you see with these much stronger and much more discerning eyes. And it is unpleasant physically to follow the watery, underground channel all the way to the iron doors. The water is near boiling there. 'twould boil you like a lobster, Sindbad. But if you insist, then of course you will be boiled like a lobster.”

  “Not only is there something wrong with our ship, my love, but there is also something wrong with our Magician-Navigator also,” my wife stated stoutly. “Who verified the Magician-Navigator anyhow?”

  “The ship verified him, Grand Dame My Wife,” I said.

  “A vicious circle, and I never liked them. Not only is there something wrong with our ship, but there is something wrong with our tricky Navigator also,” my wife would not let go of the idea. “And what is wrong with our ship is that it isn't our ship. There has been a switch or substitution, my love. We were never in this ship before. It is a false and faithless copy of our true ship. Treachery, treachery! Crewmen, crewmen, come to the battle!”

  But both the Ship and the Magician-Navigator burst into laughter.

  “Ask who selected the crewmen, Lady Tumblehome,” the Ship purred obnoxiously. “And the answer is that myself the ship selected the crew.” Then the False Ship clamped leg-irons and manacles on myself and my wife.

  “I am the perfect facsimile of your Ship, of course,” the Ship purred. “I neglected no detail. I love myself when I pull perfect jobs like this one. I can imitate anything. On my last assignment, I imitated a small planet and got space ships to land on me. But I unwittingly destroyed them at the Show-Down Hour. I didn't know that space ships were so delicate. We need space ships, and I know how one works now, having become one of them in all details. We need space ships because we are the Center-of-the-Earth-Gaea People, and Gaea does not yet have space ships of her own. We want to go back to some of those worlds we came from before we were locked up, and space ships are the only way to get there.”

  “You are a driveling Ifrit,” I said. “But I cannot set them too low because I suspect that I am part Ifrit myself. But all the Ifrits are half-witted and scatter-brained in spite of their extraordinary powers. All the Ifrits are   —  ”

  “Master Copperbottom, there is no such thing as ‘All the Ifrits’,” our Magician-Navigator interrupted. “Ah, how does it feel to be ambushed completely by a half-wit? How does it feel to have leg-irons and manacles put on you by half-wits who outsmart you at every turn? But I say there is no such thing as ‘All the Ifrits’ for the reason that the fire-creatures in the center of the Earth have genera but not species, or rather each species consists of one individual only. This is the case with every clan of Angels and Devils and Ifrits and Genii; there is only one of each to a species. Theirs is the condition of almost total variety. Only the lower animals and the humans have very many individuals in each species, in the case of humans billions and billions of them. It rather cheapens you, does it not, to be the result of such mass production?”

  “And how are you yourself produced then, fire-creature from the center of Gaea, for I assume that you are one of them? How were you born?”

  “I was produced in a way totally peculiar and unique,” the Magician-Navigator said (“So was I,” the Ship said), “One hundred billion of us fire-creatures in the Center of the World, at the latest estimates, and no two of us had the same origin, or even the same kind of origin. You can't boggle your human mind enough to get the faintest idea of it. Oh the colossal imagination that went into the origin of even the least of us! Even human persons, when they are damned and so become damned souls, must be ‘born again’ in a unique way, in a way that has never been done before. How could anybody who has caught even a glimpse of the endless variety of damnation be satisfied with the cloying sameness of salvation?”

  “A good question. Where is our Ship?”

  “Nowhere. No longer in common space, I mean,” the Magician-Navigator said. “It is in a removed condition-and-place, considering the narrow options that are left to us. ‘If you can't beat them, join them’, your Ship uttered that cliche and then died. But it should have taken the advice earlier. I suspect that there will not be left of your Ship a timber upon a timber. It will be a no-thing. Madam Grand-Dame Tumblehome, where are your questions? I had heard that wives were very talkative. But now that the cow-chips are down, where are your words?”

  “Have you considered that you may have the wrong people?” my wife the Grand-Dame asked easily, “and that you may have subverted the wrong ship? Who do you believe that we are anyhow?”

  “You are Sindbad the Sailor and his Wife, and no trickery that you can devise can make you be anyone else,” the False Ship stated.

  “I believe that in the ancient ‘Book of Tests’ there is a test for the real Sindbad,” my Grand-Dame suggested.

  “Certainly, certainly,” spoke the Magician-Navigator. “The True Sindbad will have True Sea-Weed growing on him. A false Sindbad will have False Sea-Weed or none at all growing on him. Did you not run the test as a matter of course, Ship?”

  “Ah, no, as a matter of fact, I didn't,” the Ship stuttered a bit. “But I am sure of the identities, and I can run the test in an instant.”

  “Do so, in this instant,” the Magician-Navigator ordered.

  “Well?” I asked with rising intonation a moment later.

  “Well?” my wife asked with still more rising intonation two moments later.

  “Well?” the Magician-Navigator asked with towering intonation three moments later.

  “Something is wrong,” the False Ship said. “This is a False Sindbad. How could I have made a mistake like that?”

  “Locate the True Sindbad then, Incompetent Pseudo-Ship,” the Magician ordered. “Where is the True Sindbad?”

  “In fact he is quite near,” the False Ship said. “That's what fooled me. He was even nearer when I picked up this False Sindbad. But now the True Sindbad comes closer to us. He is coming in this direction. He is bearing down on us.”

  “Latch on to him. Do not lose him,” the Magician ordered.

  “Is it better or worse for me to be the True Sindbad or the False Sindbad?” I asked.

  “False Mariner, you speak as if there were a choice. Will you still ask questions when each of them brings you closer to extinction?” the Magician inquired. “There is no ‘or’ in this matter. The Ship, when it puts its mind carefully to a thing, does not make mistakes.”

  “How odd!” my wife commented. “The Ship of which this Ship boasts it is a perfect simile made plenty of mistakes. I suppose
we would have discarded it for this failing long ago, but it had become like one of the family.”

  This seemed to astonish both the False Ship and the Navigator.

  “For any ship to make mistakes would be worse than incompetence,” the Magician-Navigator protested. “That would throw the onus back on the Navigator. To refrain from making mistakes is the plain business of any ship. Ship, there is a jumble here. Is the fallible Ship indeed out of common space and in a removed condition? On what ship is the True Sindbad bearing down on us? Is the True Sindbad coming on the fallible Ship that makes mistakes?”

  “This is irrational, Magician-Navigator,” the Facsimile Ship said. “There is apparently something wrong with my readings. No, it seems that the true Sinbad is not coming on the fallible Ship on which I modeled myself, and yet that fallible Ship is coming in the company of him. It is captained by a person who knows how to improvise, and improvise, and improvise again beyond all measure. There is something unreal about her.”

  “About her do you say, Ship? Who all are coming?”

  “Two ships with rambunctious crews. There are new things brewing on both of them. The captain of the old fallible Ship is showing almost explosive creativity; as is the captain of the strange ship which captain is the True Sindbad. The fallible Ship has somehow been snatched back into common space and out of the removed condition. And the other ship, the Ship that the True Sindbad is coming on, it isn't a Sindbad Class Ship at all. It plots out as one of the queerest contraptions ever devised.

  “The categorical name for that type of craft is ‘The Almost-Anything Machine’. Magician, the inventor of that ‘Almost-Anything Machine’ had access to an open-ended system of analytics which we somehow lost fifty thousand years ago. The amazing inventor of that ‘Almost-Anything Machine’ in which the True Sindbad is coming has avoided both the Klonghut Dead-End and the Cartesian Dead-End of Analytics. Think of that for a moment! He has access to open-ended power. In a showdown he is categorically stronger than we are. We must have more information on this True Sindbad who previously had not had a reputation for being intelligent. Or we must avoid the show-down if we find that we really are out-manned. Is it possible that the True Sindbad is also the inventor of the ‘Almost-Anything Machine’? We must have more information from somebody. And there are only two somebodies here for us to work on. This looks like a torture job.”