Land of Unreason

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Land of Unreason Page 13

by L. Sprague De Camp


  “Me, I wouldn’t know. I just plow.”

  “Would it make any difference to you if he did?”

  “Prob’ly not.” Barber knew the mussel was not sure whether he was lying or not. “You get rid of one boss, you get another. It’s all part of the system. Skip it, Mac, skip it.” He jerked his thumb toward another mussel, who was dragging his plow. “If anyone takes a poke at us, we know what to do, see? Meanwhilst we don’t shoot our mouths off to every lug that comes along, see?”

  “I might be able to do something for you.”

  “You?” The mussel’s deep-set eyes were scornful.

  “Hah! I know—gimme some literchure, work twelve hours more a day, so Lacomar, the lousy stinker, can live on pie.”

  Barber persisted: “Aren’t you afraid of what’ll happen if the Low One comes?”

  “Not specially.” He lied. Even without the special sense he had acquired in Fairyland Barber could have detected the undercurrent of fear. So did Joe, the mussel, and rushed on into explanation: “The system’s all wrong, see? It’s gotta be put through the wringer before we get a right break and maybe he’s the only guy can do it.”

  “Isn’t it against the Laws of the Pool to talk the way you have about Sir Lacomar and the Low One? What if I told on you? Though of course I won’t if you give me a little information.” Barber rather hated to do it, but he had to find out.

  “So, you’re a snitch, a agent provocateur? My word against yours, funny-face. Gwan, now beat it, before I dust you off, you goon.” The mussel slung his shield over his back and glumly set off, dragging his plow.

  Barber soared up and looked round. There were two or three other mussels in sight, each stonily pulling at a plow, but their expressions promised no less surly reception than that he had received from Joe, and he headed toward the bank.

  Sure enough, there was where it began to slope up, a circular tower of rough stones. On the top of this tower, with his feet hanging down, sat a bulbous, ruddy-faced man. He was nearly bald, with prominent, china-blue eyes and a handlebar mustache.

  Barber swam for the top of the tower and hung suspended. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, froggy,” said the ruddy man.

  “The name’s Barber.”

  “Barber, eh? Relative of the barbels? Good fellas, stout fighters. They bear azure and argent, barry-wavy of six. What’s your arms? Wait, I forget; frogs aren’t armigerous. All poets; no fight in ’em.”

  “Mind if I sit awhile?”

  “Not at all, old chap. Saw one of your musical relatives the other day—what was his name? Hylas. Thought his singing very nice, though I don’t pretend to understand such things. Soldiers don’t get much time.”

  Barber sat down on the parapet. He noted that a pile of plate armor lay behind the big man. “You’re Sir Lacomar, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Right.”

  “Miss Arvicola suggested I look you up.”

  “Oh, you know Cola? Splendid girl.” Sir Lacomar held out a large red hand to be shaken. “Bit wild and free with her tongue. Don’t know that I blame her, though, seeing the devil of a time she’s had with You-Know-Who. Glad I’ve been able to do a favor or two for her.”

  “When was this?”

  “Don’t know the details, and naturally wouldn’t ask unless the lady chose to volunteer. In my position. Should think it would make a good poem for you, though, if you could get her to tell you.”

  The audience was friendly but the matter had better be approached gradually. Barber asked for local news. Sir Lacomar said: “A few things, here and there. The usual. Trout made a raid from one of the tributaries last week. Got poor old Krebitz, but we routed ’em handsomely.”

  “Oh. One of your fellow crawfish?”

  “Naturally. Splendid chap; one of the Astak family, who bear argent a blood-ax gules. Very old line, but he was a younger son and had to difference it. I remember the time Krebitz and Sir Karkata and I drove a whole tribe of bullheads from the Muddy Pool. They were lined up like this, y’see—” he illustrated with a string of pebbles—“when we took ’em in the flank and then, Santiago for the red and white! I say, that was a real fight. I lost an arm.”

  Barber looked at Sir Lacomar’s two muscular arms.

  “Came off near the shoulder,” Lacomar went on, without noticing, “and that’s always a bad business. Had to go into retreat for months while I was growing the new one. Don’t know who’ll take the war-cry and the profit after Krebitz; young Cambarus, most likely. He’s the old man’s sister’s grandson. But an unlicked whelp—an unlicked whelp; never been blooded, and he has no real right to be Warden of the Inner March, because that doesn’t pass in the female line. I suppose Scudo will put in his claim and then You-Know-Who will want to arbitrate.”

  “Are you people going to let him?”

  “Hah! Not without putting up the standard and giving Him the battle of his life. That’s His way of getting a foot in the door. Did it with the trout in the West Reach, you know. Not that anyone minded what happened to the crew of damned pirates. Served ’em right.”

  “Didn’t they fight?”

  “Tried. But they were disorganized, d’you see, and had no proper weapons. Not like us. Besides, the gods took their chief, Christy, just as the attack started. They’re always just.”

  “Perhaps,” said Barber, “they were less interested in Christy’s character than in his edibility.”

  Sir Lacomar’s face froze a trifle. “Now, now, young fella, don’t blaspheme. All very well to talk that way among your fellow poets, and personally, I quite understand you have to be a little loose in your morals, keep up the artist’s life, eh? Sowed a few wild oats myself, once. But it simply won’t do if you want to be taken up by the right people. Sort of thing a mussel would say.”

  “Thanks, I’ll watch it,” said Barber humbly. “They’re not very well brought up, are they?”

  The knight snorted. “Wouldn’t do ’em any good if they were. Education, my boy, is something for which the masses are not fitted. Like trying to make a sword out of a piece of wood; must have a bit of the right stuff first. What they need is a spot of discipline. Now, mind you—” he shook a finger under Barber’s nose—“I’ll grant What’s-His-Name is no gentleman, and He gave little Cola a pretty thin time of it. But you must admit He does know how to make His own people look sharp. He’ll turn them into something yet, mark my word. Wouldn’t do my mussels any harm to have a bit of that treatment, the ungrateful beggars. Risk life and limb for ’em, give ’em sound government and stability, and what d’you get? A deputation to ask for more holidays!” Another snort expressed Sir Lacomar’s supreme contempt for holidays, and he caressed his mustache with energy. “We can’t afford to take holidays. What if the trout came down on a raid the afternoon we chose for a little outing? Would the mussels defend us? Turnabout’s fair play and fair play’s a jewel, I always say.”

  The crawfish-knight was actually puffing in his indignation and Barber judged it prudent to change the subject. “You know,” he said, “I’m on rather a serious mission as it happens. I’m looking for a piece of property that belongs to the Mother of the Gods, and I’ve been led to believe it might be in Whoozis’ possession. Could you suggest how I might go about recovering it?”

  Sir Lacomar frowned. “Don’t know about that, my boy. I hardly think You-Know-Who would violate property rights. Not His style; too big for that sort of thing, if you understand.”

  “All the same I’d like to look into it. Where does Thingumbob keep himself?”

  “Nobody knows but Cola, and she doesn’t tell. You might ask the leeches. They’re subjects of His.”

  “Where do I find them?”

  “Upstream a way, where a tributary comes in from the right bank.”

  “Well, I think I’ll go see. Good-by and thanks.” Barber poised on the edge of the tower to take off.

  “ ’By, old man, and ’ware fish. Oh, by the way, I’d be grateful if you’d look into
His methods a little. Interested in finding out how He achieves such order.”

  As Barber swam upstream, a vague general malaise told him, more through instinct than reason, that he needed another breath of air. He slid easily upward and his eyes broke surface into that dead, black-and-white world which faded into a blur at any distance. Like stepping into a worn, old-fashioned movie. An insect rocketed past, and one eye followed it unbidden, but its appearance did not telegraph “food” to his sphincters as those of the dragonflies had before he plunged into the life of the Pool. Perhaps it was just as well that he had lost the desire for that form of nourishment; an adjustment that had brought his world more into harmony with his own temperament and the inherited human taboos.

  But it did set him wondering about the dietetic arrangements of the underwater people. He had not felt hungry yet and was not now—what would he do when he was? Before he could achieve any speculation on the question his eye caught the fleering movement of a shadow on the bottom as he propelled himself through the atmosphere—hydrosphere—with easy, powerful strokes, and it occurred to him that his froggishness had made him not too ill-adapted to this new environment. Compare it with the world above, he told himself smugly. Like the daring young man on the flying trapeze, he could sail through the skies above such earthbound agrarians as the mussels. Or even Sir Lacomar, probably. He experienced a surge of pity for that hardy veteran of the limited outlook. Brave Sir Lacomar, I sympathize; but you cannot, like me, ride the airs with Kaja-Cola.

  In fact, he might do worse than stay there beneath the silvery, tight-fitting surface with that tempestuous and lovely—vole. The word brought the meditation to a halt. He was an interloper in this submarine world, more separate from her thought and way of life than Barber of the Embassy had been from Kaja, of Budapest or Soho. It wouldn’t do; it wouldn’t do even if he could abandon his origins to live her life, under the Laws of the Pool. For that matter, he could not abandon those origins. It was an attempt to do that, at Fawcett’s farm that had brought him here, produced the mutation. Correct enough for the Yank, who had another and different destiny to fulfill, as the life of the submarine world was the dish for Cola. He, Barber the Frog, the Barber of Seville, would only risk another, unhappier metamorphosis by the attempts to share their tasks and contentments when he was geared for other, more difficult jobs. No escape except upward, then; no path but the hard and hateful one of a duty he had not sought. For that matter, which he did not even know how to perform. He remembered with dismay a tag from old Nietzsche: “He who cannot find the way to his ideal lives more shamelessly than the man without an ideal.” The most and best he could do was carry on.

  “Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening!” called a voice. Barber looked down to find himself just moving past the entrance of a tributary so hidden in reeds that he might have missed it altogether but for the sound. He banked and planed down beside the curious-looking individual who had called out. Like the mussels, he was innocent of hair. Forehead and chin receded from a sharp-nosed, vacuous face whose mouth was set in a mechanical grin; there was a nice, sun tan brown around the grin, but whenever the individual moved it became evident that his back was green, a sharp dividing line running down arms and ribs.

  A limp boneless hand was thrust into Barber’s. “Welcome to Hirudia!” said the individual, with energy. “Welcome to the land of order and plenty.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  “Can you tell me where I can find the leeches?” Barber said. “Unless you’re one of them.”

  “Of course I’m a leech, and proud of it!” Greenback whistled sharply, and from among the reed columns was joined by three more, bearing to him the same maddening resemblance that Chinese have for each other. All bowed. “Visitors are welcome to Hirudia, sir! We are honored to escort you—an unforgettable experience.”

  The last phrase was a trifle ambiguous, and Barber found the welcome a disturbing parody of that he had received in the Kobold Hills. “Well, I don’t know that I want to go that far,” he said. “Perhaps you could give me the information I want.”

  “Certainly, sir. It would give us the greatest pleasure.”

  “Very well. Can you tell me where the Low One lives?”

  The leeches looked at each other, their expressions changing. They drew off a few steps and put their heads together—whisper, whisper. After a moment or two the first one came back, his face bland. “We’re very sorry, indeed, sir, but we are not allowed to discuss political matters. There are certain regulations, as I’m sure you’ll understand. But if you would care to step into Hirudia, the Boss could inform you. The Boss knows everything.”

  “Who is your Boss?”

  “Why, he’s our father and mother! It was the Boss who rescued us from weakness and disorganization, and coordinated us into our present state of order and progress. He keeps us safe from the depredations of the trout, and protects us from the encirclement of the crawfish. A wonderful person! So modest and intelligent! We’d do anything for the Boss.”

  There was something not altogether reassuring about this avowal, the more so since Barber’s lie-detecting sense gave him no intimation that the leeches were telling anything but the truth. He hoped the Boss was as good-natured as he seemed to be admired. In any case the leeches were undersized, flabby creatures, visibly weaponless. If it came to another Kobold Cavern difficulty, he could handle a dozen of them—and he held here an advantage he had never held there. He could leap up; swim away at a speed he was certain the leeches could not match.

  A sense of confidence in his own powers enveloped him as he followed the first leech, with the other three behind. The leader chattered continuously over his shoulder. “Hirudia has become a changed place since our Boss arrived. You wouldn’t recognize it. Everything systematic, the work done so easily and efficiently. The rest of the world will someday learn to appreciate us, whom they have neglected. We cannot remain forever hemmed in among the reeds.”

  “Hm,” said Barber. “And what’s your personal part in this, if I may ask?”

  “Me? Oh, I have leisure.”

  “You have leisure?”

  “Certainly. Take the mussels, for instance. They live in one of the old-fashioned, competitive communities, where economic pressure forces everyone to endless and hopeless labor.” He rattled this off like a train of cars going over a switch, then paused and added proudly: “Our Boss assigns certain of us to the duty of having leisure. We take it outside the city, where passersby can see us and know the lies that are told about our beautiful land for what they are. That is social justice.”

  “Do you have leisure twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Of course. There is no time wasted in Hirudia. The competitive communities are monuments to inefficiency and waste.”

  “I should think you’d get bored,” said Barber, holding to the point.

  “Bored? Oh, no! Boredom is a product of the class system and social disintegration. One never gets bored in Hirudia. It would be disloyalty to the achievements of our Boss.”

  The answer was glib as ever and the tone unchanged, but a red light burned within Barber’s mind, signifying “lie.” Not surprising; he had heard of programs of enforced leisure before, only usually they were called something else.

  They wound through alleys of tall reed trunks, like the pillars of Karnak, till they reached a wall which stretched up and sidewise to the limit of vision. The leading leech whistled, upscale and down, and a section of the wall sprang open without visible agency. Behind it was another wall, with a narrow slit through which an eye scrutinized them suspiciously before this wall too, opened, but in a different place. Beyond it the guiding leech whistled again, another tune, before a third wall—and then came another and another and another, alternately guarded by eye and ear, till Barber lost count.

  “For a model community,” he remarked, “you take unusual care in matters of fortification.”

  “We must protect ourselves from the jealousy of our neighbors
. An enlightened and progressive nation is always an island in the midst of a sea of enemies.”

  A last wall opened to reveal an immense plaza where reed trunks grew from the bottom, but in strict geometrical rows with open spaces between. Many more leeches were in sight, all alike as eggs, and all furiously busy. Just to the left of the gate a group of three were building a narrow tower of bricks. One brought the bricks from a pile, a second sat at the top of the tower, hauling them up in a basket, while the third laid the bricks. Barber observed that the tower was not really a tower, but a solid, square monolith without openings or exterior features.

  “What’s that for?” he asked his guide.

  “I don’t know, sir, but it has social importance or it would not have been ordered by our Boss. In enlightened ages all the public works have social importance. Foreigners should not inquire into the actions of the cooperative state without full knowledge of their ultimate social purpose.”

  It was the same rapid flow of sententious vocables as before, like a lesson learned by rote, but the last sentence was subtly tinged with insolence—now they were inside the walls. Barber glanced at him sharply. “The purpose is what I was trying to find out,” he observed. “May I ask the workers?”

  The four leeches drew apart and consulted, whisper, whisper again, and their leader came back. “Unlike the decadent feudalisms, Hirudia has nothing to hide. We shall be glad to have you ask any worker anything.”

  The next time the brick carrier appeared with his hod, Barber inquired: “Beg pardon, but could you tell me what this brick thing is?”

  The leech leaned his hod against the tower and began heaving bricks into the basket at a furious rate, whipping out a word or two at a time between heaves: “Cultural—object, sir—ordered by—the Boss.”

  Barber’s four guides had clustered round to listen with an intentness that was almost painful, their heads stretched forward and cocked to one side. Now they exchanged smiles.

  “But why are you doing the work?” persisted Barber.

 

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