A long time ago—what seemed an eternity—I had asked “Who are these people, anyway?” The more I learned in answer to that question, the less I liked it. Worse, they were dragging me into it. Surely, I had killed on Sca, in defense of my life, of my comrades. I had killed before that, in the Final War. Tonight seemed different, somehow. I said nothing about it to the others, who would simply have talked me out of it. I did not want to be talked out of that difference I felt, at least not until I could examine it, determine whether it was real, significant.
For some reason it all seemed to hinge on my relationship (if that was the proper word for one long, continuous battle) with Lucille. Either that, or I had spent too much time among these anarchistic schemers. Sitting in the dimly firelit room with the others all snoring around me, I thought back to a conversation I had had aboard Tom Paine Maru, just the day before we had Broached down to this planet ...
-4-
She said, “You’d better have some more coffee, Whitey dear. Where you’re going tomorrow, they haven’t invented the stuff yet. They never will—it won’t grow down there. They get their caffeine in nearly microscopic quantities from rock lichen. Anyway, you’d better stock up.”
I rolled over onto one elbow, waking up slowly, stupidly, with an odd feeling that this was where I had come in. “Coffee, sure. Thanks. Just—please—do not light a cigarette before I am in full control of my stomach, will you?” I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them wide, squeezed them shut again, then shook my head. As usual, I did not help.
She was, I pointed out to myself, an extremely attractive female, with great cheekbones, a very good nose, wide, full lips, and a cute little chin. She was a honey blond with gold-green eyes. Just now, she laughed prettily, “I don’t smoke, silly. No bad habits at all, except ... ” She laid a hand on the sheet where it covered certain parts of me.
“Except for Kilroys,” I said. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Does it matter, darling? Here’s the coffee, what do you want in it?”
This one called me “dear” and “darling”. I had not seen Lucille—who had had other terms of endearment for me—for several weeks now. Someone had told me she was keeping company with another man, perhaps that tall, tanned individual I had seen her with at the pool that day. Somehow knowing that made me feel sad at the same time that it made me angry.
“Chocolatl,” I told my new companion. “If it is not too much trouble.”
Not that I had much right to feel angry. In the first place, there had been never that kind of understanding between us, no promises, no plans beyond a pleasant evening’s dinner and whatever came naturally afterward.
In the days following our last terrible fight, I had gotten to know Lucille’s sister, Edwina, better, attending some of her classes in praxeology as a part of preparing for Afdiar. What happened then was almost inevitable, a warm but not particularly passionate matter involving a lot of mutual misery. I do not know what was wrong with Edwina’s life, but I had established an important principle: kissing your girlfriend’s sister can be fully as satisfying as kissing your own.
What I could not figure out is why that discovery made me feel so guilty. She was the most open, generous, comforting person I had ever known.
Edwina handed me the brimming cup, then climbed back onto the bed with her own. One thing I liked about her was that she was completely unselfconscious about her body, which was highly decorative, to say the least. She had large, firm breasts, a narrow waist, a flat belly, rather more womanly hips than I had been used to lately. Good legs, as well.
Some things ran in the family, evidently.
She looked at where the sheet covered me. “Your mind is obviously elsewhere, Corporal, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I can be very patient, and I’m not offended. My sweet sister has the same effect on practically everybody. She drove away all of her old friends after her experience with medical stasis. She also left Praxeology forever, to enlist with Security, of all things—although she’s quite good at it, and rising fast.”
“Is that so?” I asked. What that meant was that, despite Lucille’s constant harping on the Vespuccian military, aboard Tom Paine Maru, she was the closest equivalent to me. “I guess I have the bruises to prove it.” I shook my head, sipped at the coffee, tried to shut up, very much aware that I was in one lady’s bed, intimately discussing another. It did not seem to embarrass Edwina—but it certainly did me.
“Look, Whitey, deep down inside, Lucille trusts nobody. She won’t listen to anybody who could help her to be happier. If you want my professional, praxeological opinion, she drove off any of her friends who weren’t capable of exercising the restraint—or the tolerance—demonstrated by Howell and Koko, because she somehow feels she doesn’t deserve to be happy. She reacts with a savage hostility to anybody—including her mother and father and sister—who threatens to love her.”
I turned to look at Edwina. “What about Couper, then? What is he to her?” In some ways that old war horse seemed like everybody’s father.
She smiled, “Her friend, her boss. He keeps a paternal eye on her—but only from a respectful distance. He’s much too smart to get mauled.”
I shook my head ruefully. “I wish I had been, too.”
“So do I, Whitey.” She put a soft hand on my bare shoulder. “So do I.”
Under the sheet things started happening. I was an hour late for class.
the misplaced continent
“In any uncoerced transaction, ’tis impossible t’distinguish between buyer an’ seller, because ‘money’ is a myth. All transactions are barter, no matter what you’re after callin’ the commodities bein’ swapped.”
Returning good health seemed to have had an unfortunate effect on Carlos Woodrow Murphy. As we trudged along through the unceasing rain, he took it as an opportunity to deliver a lecture to me on free market economics. Suddenly I could hardly wait until the Lieutenant felt better.
It had begun that morning, as soon as the Confederate spy had discovered that I was a Kilroy. It continued as we took what he insisted on calling a “bus” to the waterfront main street of Hobgidobolis.
“No such thing as money?” I shook my head. I had been filling it with other, less-lofty thoughts. “Try telling them that where we are going!”
No one looked upward at the sky of Afdiar. To do so was to invite having the eyes washed out of their sockets. People kept their eyes on the mud at their feet. This was not a good basis on which to build a civilization.
I was concerned about the mud in my brain. It made me feel sad and guilty to admit it to myself, but there was something missing with Edwina, no bright magic, the way there had been with her sister, as painful as everything else had been about that brief affair. Somehow this relationship seemed even more wrong. Perhaps I was beginning acquire wisdom of a sort. I was determined to be honest with myself, with her, to break things off as soon as I got back to Tom Paine Maru.
Also absolutely never to fall in love again.
The bus “drivers”, each bearing a six foot pole that supported the leather canopy over our heads, looked at Murphy oddly as he lectured on, oblivious to the fact that I was no longer listening. As usual, I was thinking that I must get home. The information I possessed would be needed to combat the Confederacy’s inevitable depredations against my own culture. This, I was certain, was why they would not let us go home.
Rain fell, making noise like a ripping sheet.
Dorrie walked beside me, taking up the thread whenever her husband fell silent, which was not often. Redhawk Gonzales walked behind us, his eyes never resting on any single object much more than a tenth of a second, his right hand never leaving the curved grip of a gigantic muzzle-loading pistol thrust through the wide belt beneath his cloak. Rogers walked with Norris, at the front, conversing with Johd-Beydard Geydes. Between us, other “passengers” got on or off at intersections in the sloping streets, handing the “drivers” a few coins as they did so.
“The
Elephant & Donkey, me bhoy. That’s where we’re headed, today, although I personally prefer the good old Porcupine. Tis nearer home. They’re the principal reason I’m tryin’ t’bring enlightenment t’this heathenish balla mud. A free market’ll increase the hilk production an’ lower prices. Simple as that, or me name ain’t Uberd Ubvriez B’goverd!”
He winked at Geydes.
Hilk was a native high-potency brew that Murphy favored. Dorrie suggested that it was how he had contracted the mold. The waterfront hilk-hole he had mentioned was the reason we were dressed as sailors. It was frequented by seapersons, among them Captain Yewjeed B’garthy, half-pirate, half-merchantman, half-explorer. Murphy insisted that I write it that way, adding that B’Garthy was half-again the man any other native of the planet was. One task was left before we broached up to the Tom Paine Maru. It could not be done by the agent or his praxeologist wife alone. We had come to bring hope to this miserable planet.
Murphy himself needed no disguise, being a familiar figure there. For more than twenty years he had pestered ocean voyagers, exerting microscopic pressure—a tankard of hilk was all it usually required—to get the sailors to tell their sea stories. Always he listened for news about Tissathi, the “Misplaced Continent”. Always he was disappointed.
He would not be disappointed tonight.
“The Elephant & Donkey!” he repeated as we neared the tavern. It looked to me like any other slime-covered pile of stone this planet had to offer. The only difference was the dirty gray waves lapping at its foundation. The agent paid our fare. We ducked from the leaking canopy into the dripping shadows of the tavern’s eaves, then went inside.
The aristocratic Geydes was definitely out of place. Noise of the rain was suddenly replaced by shouting, laughing men, the roar of a dozen fires, the clash of a thousand (or so it sounded) tankards of dark, evil-smelling hilk. In a corner sat a sailor, rags wrapped about his eyes, torturing a musical contraption that was half bellows, half keyboard.
Beneath our feet, the floor consisted of a heavy metal grating. I suppose it saved management the trouble of cleaning up after spilled drinks or customers who had one hilk too many. From the looks of the place, they invested their savings elsewhere. Below, waves rolled from one end of the crowded room to the other. Scattered about, seafaring men gambled, drank, sang along with the blind musician, or paid their disrespects to the wenches bringing drinks. The smells of tar, of hilk, mingled with that of the sea, not as unpleasantly as the words suggest.
Captain B’garthy was unmistakable, a tall, trimly-built individual with close-cropped gray hair, he had the hearty look of a middle-aged athlete. He held court at a big corner table strewn with tankards of hilk, maps, weapons, a scattering of coins. A woman sat on each of his knees, skirts hitched up to show their legs. B’garthy paid his real attention, however, to a miserable little fellow standing opposite the table.
“An’ what have ye t’say fer yerself, young Chrissie Hockins?”
Stooped over, miserable with terror, Hockins twisted his knitted cap in trembling hands. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Cap’n, I swear!”
A great roar went up from B’garthy’s tablemates, a threatening-looking collection of peg-legs, eye-patches, dire hooks in place of hands.
“He didn’t mean nothin’ by it, says he! Hawr! Hawr! Hawr!”
“Now, calm yerselves, bhoys,” replied an unruffled B’garthy, once the raucous piratical laughter had died a bit. “Mehinks we’ll hear him out.”
“Then we’ll keel-haul the little bilge-rat, right, Cap’n? Hawr! Hawr!”
Hockins features did, indeed, remind me of a sneaky little rodent of some kind. He even had a ratty mustache. His pointy nose quivered. He twisted his knit cap again, a tear squeezing out from beneath each eyelid. For the first time, I suddenly noticed a dozen or more obvious—angry—non-sailors gathered behind the Captain in the shadowy corner.
“Awrr, Cap’n,” Hockins pleaded. “These be only landlubbers an’ feather merchants as I was kypin’ from. That don’t hardly count, do it?”
There came no immediate reply. B’garthy’s sudden silence was contagious. Conversation ceased. Even the blind accordion-player stopped. For once there was no braying chorus from the Captain’s table.
Then: “By all the saints, you little barnacle, I orta let these here landsmen hang ye after all! A theft is a theft, Chrissie Hockins, be it from lubbers or yer mates. Fer that matter, ye were stealin’ from yer mates, in a manner of speakin’—now these worthies’ll have yet another reason t’be seein’ all us seafarin’ folk as untrustworthy dogs, an’ every bit of it’ll be yer fault. Now what have ye t’say t’that?”
Amazingly, Hockins stood up straighter, a look of defiance on his weaselly face. “Cap’n, I was not alone, pinchin’ them chickens. ’Twas both of the Edwards twins helped as me out. If I hang, they orta hang, too!”
B’garthy snorted: “Misery loves its company, don’t it?”
There was a general round of “Arrrh!” from his table companions.
“All right, then,” the Captain said. “Here be punishment—an’ the same fer Glarg an’ Graid Edwards, do they confess. Do they not, then these townies can have ’em—draw, quarter, hang, stab, shoot an’ burn ’em. An’ Afdiar hisself have mercy on their non-existent souls!”
The captain took a swig of hilk, clearing his throat judicially: “Ye shall go about the town, Christopher Hockins, in every street an’ alleyway, an’ no umbrelly. There shall ye shout twice in every block ‘I am a liar an’ a thief an’ a betrayer of me friends’, an’ this ye shall do until we raise anchor from this port, pausin’ only fer bread an’ water an’ two hours’ sleep each night. In addition, ye shall pay back the chickens ye stole, an’ at the rate we been takin’ loot, lately, ye’ll be at it ’til ye’ve a long gray beard. I’ll not ask ye what ye say t’that, for ye well know the alternative. Can ye read an’ write?”
“Aye, Cap’n, after a fashion,” Hockins gulped, fear and confusion flitting across his rat face, mixed with the first faint touches of hope.
“Very well: four hours’ sleep shall ye have, an’ a spare hour t’write ‘I shall never initiate force again’ a thousand an’ one times. The chickens’ll come outa ship’s expenses. Dismissed. See to ’im, Sharkey!”
A grim-looking figure rose from the table, possessing as many missing parts as the rest of the Captain’s messmates combined, “Aye, Cap’n darlin’, I’d be most delighted. Come, lad, ye’ve yer work cut out.”
Caught in the middle of thanking B’garthy profusely, Hockins cringed, was taken by the collar by the unshaven officer, then led away.
The music started again. Soon the room was back to its familiar uproar. “Uberd! Uberd B’goverd! An’ if it ain’t Johd-Beydard Geydes hisself, come aslummin’! Sit ye down here, ye old philosophizers! What think ye gentles of the disgustin’ly enlightened sentence I’ve just passed?”
We squeezed through to B’garthy’s table. Murphy shook the gray Captain’s hand. “Ah, ‘twas a fine upstandin’ thing ye did, Yewjeed, a fine upstandin’ thing. Sounds like ye been listenin’ t’somebody we know.”
B’garthy winked at Geydes. “Aye, we’ve both accepted yer damnable Non-Aggression Principle. ’Tis no man’s right to inititiate force against another human bein’ fer any reason. Though it’s cut that deep into me privateerin’ income. But ’tis the one code fittin’ sea-rovers like us. An’ ’twill add to our wealth immeasurably in the long run, I trow.”
“That it will, Yewjeed, virtue bein’ its own punishment, to the contrary nonwithstandin’. An’ I’m here to add a pinch more, if ye be willin’.”
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