Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage

by R. A. Lafferty

  I noticed that the leg-irons and manacles in which I was clamped were becoming very hot. Very, very hot. I could smell my own flesh burning and I could smell my wife's flesh burning. Her burning flesh has a more savory smell than does mine. She eats more fruit.

  “It is only the torture, dear,” she said in the private language that we have devised for just the two of us. (I didn't know whether either the Facsimile Ship or the Magician-Navigator could crack our not-very-difficult code.) “We must appear to pay no attention to the pain at all,” my wife said. “And perhaps they will give up on it.”

  “No, that's the wrong way,” I moaned. “Let's carry on and scream a lot. If we seem to take no notice, they may turn the torture up, and then still higher up. But if we scream a lot, if we swoon insensate, if we babble into meaningless jabber, they may turn it down a little bit so they can at least question us.” So we screamed a lot, rolled our eyes back into our heads, swooned insensate, and babbled in meaningless jabber.

  “Oh, don't act so childish, you two!” the Magician-Navigator groused disgustedly. “You two are experienced persons of several worlds: you are into the two adventurous trades of spying and marin —  What's the word for following the mariner's trade?”

  “Marinating,” said my wife.

  “Yes, marinating. You two are in the dangerous catch-all businesses, so certainly you have both been put to the torture before. Play fair! Do you always scream so irritatingly and carry on so outlandishly under torture?”

  “Oh, you haven't heard anything yet,” my wife said. “We can turn it up as high as we want to. For instance   —  ” My wife began to scream very loudly and obnoxiously. I myself was shocked by the painful loudness and the bad taste of it.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” the Ship and the Magician-Navigator protested together; and then the Magician continued in exasperation. “You two win that trick, but you will still lose the war. We will turn down the heat till you are merely uncomfortable. Now then, answer some questions. Who and Where is the Real Sindbad?”

  “I am the Real, the Original, the Only, the True Sindbad,” I swore.

  “And he's right here,” my wife added.

  “If you are the True Sindbad, why do you not have the genuine Sea-Weed, that sign of the True Sindbad, growing on you?”

  “Like Samson, a hero here on Gaea in an earlier day, I was shorn of my pride by a woman, or by a mechanism who passed as a woman,” I said. “It was a shameful event in my life, and I'd rather not talk about it.”

  “And yet we will talk about it, False Sindbad,” the Magician-Navigator stated. “Who then is the person that the ship now reads as the True Sindbad? Who is the one who does have the genuine Sea-Weed growing on him?”

  “He is only a simple-minded kid. Don't give him a thought.”

  “But we do give him a thought, especially since he is now coming towards us at an ever swifter speed. How does he have the Sea-Weed that is your signature growing on him?”

  “Oh, it was implanted on him as a sort of  —   as a sort of joke, I think. And his ship is a joke. All of us spies who came to Gaea in respectable ships laughed at his grotesque craft. It is a burlesque of all good ships.”

  “Ship, Facsimile Ship, I believe that this ‘burlesque of all good ships’ is just what we want,” the Magician-Navigator declared. “Could you make yourself into a facsimile of this burlesque ship? If all the spies treat it with derision, then it may be easier to slip it through the bunch of them. We'll do that, after these two spies here have been obliterated. Can you copy it, Ship?”

  “Sure I can. I can facsimile the thing. Just let me get my tentacles on the thing and I'll copy it totally in every detail. Then I'll be a real open-ended device.”

  “Why should you entities of the Dark Principality want space ships?” I asked them. “Morturi te interrogant, ‘we who are about to die’ ask you this, out of curiosity only.”

  “We want space ships for the same reason you spies have come to prevent our having them,” the Magician-Navigator said in his voice that was as transparent and loosely woven as himself. “We want to break the quarantine that has been imposed on Gaea-Earth for these long millennia. And you do not want it broken. We want to export ourselves and our effects to others of the Five Worlds, to others of the Eighteen Worlds, to others of the Billion Worlds. It is intolerable that we should be imprisoned in the center of Gaea-Earth for fifty thousand years, or even that we should be imprisoned on its surface (for a few thousands of us have gotten that far).

  “We want to tell our side. We want to export our side. All good and no evil makes the universe a dull place. Do you outworlders, coming to Gaea, not taste a tang that you have been missing? It is the interesting taste of evil, the thing that keeps the worlds from going completely blah, the thing that keeps Gaea from being as bland as your own worlds. There are no native space-ships on Gaea-Earth, or we would have long since copied them and been on our explosive way. And we have not till today been able to get hold of a visiting space ship. But now we are latching onto the ships of the spies whom we enticed here.”

  “Magician, I see now that the strange burlesque ship which I am to copy is of Gaea-Earth, but from Gaea-of-the-future,” the Ship said.

  “And thus far we have been able to snatch things from the Gaea-Future most imperfectly.”

  “This time, Magician-Navigator, it will be a more nearly perfect snatch,” the Ship vaunted. “Oh, I can hardly wait to get my tentacles on that Ship of the Open-Ended Analytics. And apparently I won't have long to wait. It comes faster and faster.”

  Sharp pain will sometimes sharpen the senses. My own hearing had been enhanced by the short and very sharp pain of the white-hot shackle torture. I have long suspected that I am part Ifrit. I knew that the Ifrits in their full powers have such acute hearing that they can overhear conversations in the heavens, or in hell.

  Now I realized that I was able to hear a conversation, or a monolog rather, in my own unreconstructed ship. It was Madame Scheherazade talking feverishly to herself in the throes of creative activity. She, I now realized, was the mysterious person who was captaining my old ship, the ship that was now rushing towards us along with the ship of Ali ben Raad (that goofy kid) (John Thunderson) (the False Real Sindbad who had stolen Sea-Weed growing on him). Ah, what a pair they were! Scheherazade (I had become fairly well acquainted with her in the last day) always wrote out loud and thought out loud. And now I was overhearing her out-loud thoughts.

  The Ship In The Bottle

  Yes, these are the flaming and enabling words of Madam Scheherazade:

  If I don't learn more about this creative business every day my name isn't Scheherazade Carrillo y Krynski. I have become a split-schizo and I can no longer tell what is my own invention and what properly belongs to the exocosmos, the world-unmeddled-with-by-me. But one half or the other of my split person can always do anything that needs doing. Ordinarily I could no more drive a space ship than nothing. I failed a plain driver's license examination four times the year I lived in Dover Delaware. But as soon as I got into this space ship of Essindibad Copperbottom I added a couple of refinements to its driving mechanism, and now I can drive it as easily as I drove that Ford Frolic the year that I lived in Edmond Oklahoma.

  And these crewmen that I picked up at Bassorah Rock, they were the rottenest bunch of cut-throats I ever saw anywhere. But then I sprinkled a few adjectives over them and clarified their characters; and now they have become upstanding men and so loyal that they'd follow me to hell.

  “  —   which, by the way, Miss Scheherazade, is exactly where we’re going if we keep the course you’ve laid out,” one of them just said. “It'll be nice for you to know though, that, if the situation calls for it, we can again become the bloodiest bunch of cutthroats in the world, in your service of course. But anyhow we can ride high in the water and skim along on the trip to hell. There isn't any return journey from there that we have to carry provisions for.”

 
; I should know what is going to happen, but I don't. I am not at all sound on the history of Mesopotamia in Ninth Century. I realize that I made a lot of it up, but there must have been an armature of reality for me to hang those globs of fictional clay on. I took ‘Sculpture Techniques from Clay to Marble’ in junior college the year that I lived in Shreveport Louisiana which is why I use comparisons like that.

  My favorite historian (because he is so droll and whimsical) (and because hardly anyone has ever heard of him) was the Roman Rabelais, Atrox Fabulinus. Writing in Rome about the year two-hundred, he carried his History of the World forward to the year one thousand. He had the world end in the year one thousand, and he had convincing explanations why it would do so. And from the year two hundred to about the year six-twenty-two his history was remarkably accurate. Though he died around the year two ten, he named correctly the Emperors and Empresses in both Rome and Constantinople for more than four hundred years after that. And he got the Frankish rulers named and described right up to the year one thousand.

  Only in the Near East did he go wrong, for he had never heard of Mohammed or the Moslems. The Emperor of Constantinople continued to rule Syria and Egypt and Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and a slice of Persia too, right up until the year one thousand when the world ended.

  And I’ve the feeling that Atrox Fabulinus was correct, that there really wasn't any Mohammed of the Moslems (the very idea of them violates historical unity), and that the world really did end in the year one thousand. That was the correct version of history.

  It is only in an alternate and not very substantial version of history, the version that I am unfortunate enough to live in, though, that we find the anomaly of the Moslems and the necessity to continue the world beyond its true ending date because of the impossible muddle that things had gotten themselves into. In this alternate version, the world couldn't get neat and decent enough to be ended. There'd have been too much of it left over.

  Unfortunately I was born in the twentieth century of an historical detour, and not in that correct and main version of history which probably had no twentieth century. My only worry (no, no, I have a thousand and one worries), one of my worries is that my alternate universe may taint the real universe. We know that, in the real universe, all the evil and dubious spirits were locked into the iron center of Gaea-Earth: these were the evil and dubious spirits of all the worlds, and they were imprisoned in that inescapable prison. But, in my alternate history of the universe, very many of these dubious spirits have escaped from this lockup, and multitudes of them are escaping at this very instant.

  The folk memory of these dubious spirits is a personal memory of each of the escapees: it is the escaping from a bottle after a confinement of thousands of years, for they are Genii. It is the escaping by making themselves very small, for they are size-changers and shape-changers. But some of them are always working to enlarge the holes so that the bigger and still bigger devils may come out. So far, even in our own version of the universe, it is just our own Gaea-World that is tainted by the escape of these spirits; and these spirits put on a pretty likeable appearance whenever they wish. But they try constantly to reach the other worlds.

  Will it matter if they do reach and corrupt the other worlds? Does anything matter when one is in only an alternate universe? But I suppose that my alternate universe theory is a little bit simplistic.

  Possibly we will not know till noon of the last day which was the real universe and which were the ten, or ten thousand, alternates. No, that is too simplistic also. I may have to scrap a lot of that theory and go back and redo it. But I want to keep the part where there was one version of the cosmos (and I'll call it the Atrox Fabulinus version) in which the world really did end in the year one thousand (and probably all ten thousand worlds ended at the same time) and I want to keep the other part (and it's easier to keep, since I live in it) where the world was in too much confusion even to think about ending in the year one thousand. This puts a premium on confusion.

  But I don't have to make up my mind right now. On the particular little time tour I am on, the world has almost two hundred years to go before it gets to the year one thousand.

  I am analogous to Plutarch, I believe. The great characters that he created in his Lives still live in classic memory. As to those I have created, I believe that they are equally great, in a devious way. And as to their living and surviving in the corporate memory, we will see, we will see.

  Ah, we come to the wind-down now, possibly to a bloody wind-down, of the Thirteenth Voyage of Sindbad. And I still don't have any good idea of how it should end. Brain, brain, why do you fail me now! Other thing, other thing, you whatever-thing within me that I turn to so often when my brain does fail me, it is now time for one of your flashes of brilliance. Oh, absolutely it is! Shine, thing, shine!

  Another thing bothers me: does God need help in running His Universe? No, of course He doesn't need help. If He needed help, He wouldn't be God.

  Why does He solicit help then if He doesn't need it? Quite often I can feel His soliciting help even from His handmaid myself. Well, He solicits this not-quite-essential help because He loves to deal in these paradoxes; and He does it because being God He doesn't have to give any reasons.

  Like Harun al-Rashid (may his tribe decrease) God often goes masked and disguised among his people and plays amusing tricks and jokes on them. There is a bas-relief of the ‘Masked Christ’ on the South Side (outside) of St. Anselm's Church in Cincinnati; but I'm the only one who understands it and who knows who it is. The year I lived in Cincinnati I went to see that old man who had carved the figure that I have named the ‘Masked Christ’ and he said he didn't know who it was, that he had simply been impelled to carve it. The name he cut on it was ‘Il Mascherato’ or ‘The Masked One’. It was the winos around there (under the bas-relief there is a niche with a bench where they sit sometimes) who first told me that it was really the ‘Masked Christ’.

  I wonder if I could have French Lilacs in a vase on the wardroom table here. Oh yes, thanks, somebody. That was quick. No sooner fictionalized than done. But, um, um, are they really what I wanted? French Lilacs are always prettier in memory than in fact.

  Oh, let's change them to Jasmines. That's it. They are a good flower for the night time. Their fragrance is better than their color, but nobody can have everything. I believe I'll change them again though. I'll shoot for the rarest of all blooms this time, Black Roses. Oh, I love them. Thanks! Black Roses shall be the symbol of this black battle that we enter almost immediately.

  And now I wonder whether I couldn't do something about this subterranean exterior world, this stygian underworld through which we’re sailing. It has light sufficient, considering that it is near midnight. But, like the first three days in the beginning, it is light without a localized source. Let us just have a small sun or moon in the low rock sky that covers us. Oh, oh, yes, that is well done, in an evil sort of way. It's an ashen, garish moon, eerie beyond compare. It's what we call a ‘Ghul Moon’ around here when it shines on the lonesome desert.

  Other Thing, Other Thing in my head that takes over when my brain abdicates responsibility, take over now, Other Thing. The little moon is a moon to cut throats by, it is a moon to board ships by, it is a moon to walk planks by. It is a moon to be ambushed by flashing knives by. Oh, how are our sails so full of wind on this windless subterranean stream of an ocean? How do we scoot along with so great a speed. Other Thing, Other Thing, we are really operating now! This ship has a crack astern and it will break open if rammed there. And the ship that is a copy of this ship will also have a crack astern, and it will break open when rammed on that copied ship, and it will be rammed there. Both this ship and its copy have hard noses, but this ship shall ram first. And then there will be the joy of slippery blood on slippery decks. A little bit of ‘Slippery Blood Music’ for the background, please, just to set the mood. Oh, that's perfect!

  Oh, those damned dragons! They’re in the whole channel, in
the whole cavern! The presumptuous oafs! They always want to get in the act. More tedious than dragons! Oh, but I have an idea now! What I need is twelve fair-size bottles and one big bottle, bottles of jazzy blue or green tint, and with popper-proof corks. With those, we can win this battle.

  And a little slippery blood smell now, whatever subservient powers they are who supply props to me. No, of course it isn't the same smell as all blood. Slippery blood has its own piquant smell. If I were an Ifrit-sort-of-Ghost assigned to smell effects, I'd know the difference.

  What, Blue Moon, are you talking to me with your new projecting voice box? Sure I'm going to hit her. I'll damned well hit her amidships and a little bit aft, and she'll crack open like a ripe melon. You and Kid Thunderson want first hit, do you? Let's see you beat me to it then, kids!

  Say, Blue Moon, tell Thunderson to wind you up very tight right now. We can't have you getting run down on us in the middle of the fray. And, Blue Moon, you don't have twelve fair-size bottles and one big bottle, do you? Of jazzy blue or green glass (no other will do). And with popper-proof corks. Well, do you? Look and see. It's important.

  Oh, you already know exactly what's on the ship, do you? You do have twelve fair-sized bottles with popper proof corks, but no big bottle? Well, that helps a lot. Set the twelve out in the open uncorked. I wonder whether Essindibad Copperbottom has such a big bottle with such a cork on the false ship he's on? Likely not. And I don't know how to contact him. I can hear him if he says something, but how can he hear me to know that I need a big bottle? Oh, I'll think of something.