by Mike Resnick
“I gave it all to charity this afternoon, right before I went to the courthouse,” she said. “The Lord wouldn't have approved of my keeping it.”
“But what am I going to do?” I said.
“Well, I've always wanted to own a tavern and hotel,” said Lieutenant Todd. “I'll be happy to purchase the place from you for, shall we say, fifteen thousand pounds.”
“I paid five times that much for it!” I yelled.
“You weren't headed for the hoosegow when you bought it,” he pointed out. “Think it over, Doctor Jones. Tell you what: I'll sweeten the pot by turning my back for twenty-four hours if you're of a mood to jump bail and leave the country.”
Well, I haggled for half an hour or so, but he had me over a barrel, and finally I sold him the Tabernacle of Saint Luke for fifteen thousand pounds, which left me the shirt on my back (though at the time it was crumpled up on the floor) and my copy of the Good Book and not much else.
“By the way,” said Todd as he took his leave of us, “if any of the girls don't feel like working in a soup kitchen, Mademoiselle Markoff, please tell them for me that my hotel can always use maids and waitresses.”
He gave me a wink and walked on down the stairs.
“I hope you'll forgive me, Lucifer,” said Mademoiselle Markoff when we were alone.
“That'll take a heap of doing,” I said miserably.
“But if you were a less convincing preacher, none of this would have happened. I spent I don't know how many sleepless nights lusting for your body, but now that the Spirit is with me I can see that you're hardly worth all the thought I gave you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I grated.
“No,” she said. “Thank you for showing me the Light and the Way.”
I put on my clothes, tucked my Bible under my arm, and an hour later was marching south out of town, wishing that just this one time I hadn't been the dynamic, forceful interpreter of the Word that I unquestionably am, and making a solemn vow not to preach about anything except the racier psalms when I established my next tabernacle.
Chapter 12
THE ELEPHANTS’ GRAVEYARD
It didn't take me all that long to find another parish.
I spent a couple of weeks getting clear of British East and found myself in Portuguese East Africa, which was just on the verge of changing its name to Mozambique, partially in honor of its capital city and partially because the Portuguese didn't like swamps and deserts and savages and mosquitoes and snakes and tsetse flies any more than most reasonable people and were pretty busy packing up and moving back to Portugal, where the worst thing they had to worry about was a Viking raid, of which there hadn't been none in about nine hundred years, give or take a decade.
Anyway, I had gotten about two-thirds of the way through Portuguese East, and was planning on heading down to South Africa to see if I couldn't borrow a little mission money from Emily Perrison, who was probably Emily Dobbins by now. I made it as far as the Zambezi River, which may not look like the Mississippi or the Amazon on the maps, but was just as hard to cross, especially considering that it had no bridges and about a million crocodiles, all of which had a lean and hungry look.
I was standing on the bank trying to figure out what to do next when a huge canoe loaded with black warriors pulled up just like a taxicab, and one of these painted savages gave me a big grin and gestured for me to climb in and take a ride with them.
“Thank you kindly, brothers,” I said, hopping in and grabbing a seat. “I must say this is downright neighborly of you. I was afraid that I was going to have to start wrestling crocodiles for a living.”
“We were happy to help a man of God,” said the big fellow who had done most of the smiling. “You are a missionary, are you not?”
“Funny you should mention it,” I said. “I happen to be the Reverend Doctor Jones, come to spread the Word of the Lord and otherwise brighten your dull, lackluster lives. What's for lunch?”
“We shall eat when we return to our village,” said the big guy. “And after that, we would be very happy to learn about your god.”
“You sure seem friendly as all get-out,” I said, lighting up a cigar and offering him one, which he took. “Are you guys Zanake or Makonde?”
“Neither,” he said. “We're Mangbetu.”
“Mangbetu?” I said. “I thought you folks lived in the Congo.”
“There was a food shortage, so some of us migrated down here.”
“How'd you learn to speak English so good?”
“We've had some anthropologists come to live with us from time to time,” he said. “They never stay very long, but we've picked up a smattering of French and English from them.”
“I don't mean no insult,” I said, “but you look pretty much like any other godless black heathens to me. Why would they single you out for serious observing and note-taking?”
“Beats me,” he shrugged. “It probably has something to do with our dietary customs.”
“Yeah?” I said. “What do you do that the rest of the tribes around don't do?”
“We eat people.” he said.
“People?” I repeated. “Such as comes equipped with two arms and two legs and like that?”
He nodded.
“What's your philosophical and gustatory feelings about white meat?” I asked kind of nervously.
“You're our guest, Doctor Jones,” he laughed. “Don't look so upset. We only eat our enemies.”
Viewed that way, I could see where it could save a pile of money that would otherwise be spent on grave diggers, and would also lengthen the lives of a few innocent goats and fish, and as long as sauteed missionary wasn't one of their favorites I figured that I was just a guest and didn't want to upset no applecarts, at least not until I knew their bellies were full.
I found out that the big guy's name was Samjeba, and that he didn't mind my calling him Sam, especially when I explained that the original Samuel was Esther's cousin or manservant or chauffeur or something, and we spent a lot of time exchanging a batch of upside-down handshakes and swapping dirty stories, during which time I learned a whole lot of new Swahili words that just don't tend to crop up in the course of a normal conversation.
We arrived at the Mangbetu village a couple of hours before nightfall. The womenfolk were busy cooking up some mighty tender-looking spareribs, but in the light of our recent conversations I decided to stick to fruits and berries and easily identifiable stuff like that.
When the meal was over I got up and did a little serious preaching from the Song of Solomon, and I got an out-and-out standing ovation with a couple of British “hip hip hoorays” tossed in for good measure when I got up to Solomon 1:5, which goes: “I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” In fact, it took me quite some little time to explain to the more suggestible of the young bucks that Jerusalem wasn't some tribe of white women over in the next county, but was even farther away than Nairobi.
I couldn't get Sam and his people to forsake cannibalism, but I did manage to get them to agree to say grace before each meal, which was a minor triumph of sorts, especially since most of them worshiped a god who had an elephant's tusks, a woman's breasts, a lion's claws, and one hell of a cookbook.
I remained with the Mangbetus for the better part of three months, during which time I lost about twenty pounds due to an enforced diet of vegetarianism, because I never could be sure quite what kind of steaks they were cooking up at any given time. At last I couldn't stand it no more, and asked Sam if he and a couple of his better bow-and-arrow men might accompany me on a little hunting trip for klipspringer or duiker or some other kind of inoffensive and four-legged type of meat.
He agreed, and the four of us set off one sunny morning in search of a little something to fill the needs of the inner man. At least, it started off sunny; but by noontime we ran into some mighty fierce thunderstorms, so we wandered off the trail we had been following and went deeper into the jungle to get a little protection from the rain. S
omehow or other we got lost, old Sam's bushcraft not quite being the equal of his talent in the kitchen, and we stayed lost throughout the rest of the day and all that night. On the morning of the next day we saw a clearing and a valley up ahead, so we headed toward it, and broke out of the forest in about twenty minutes’ time.
There was some kind of smoke or fog rising, like it was some prehistoric place or something, and the first thing I noticed was all the skeletons.
“What does that look like to you, Sam?” I asked, pointing off toward the piles of bones.
“Dead elephants,” he said.
“Lots of ’em,” I agreed, walking down to have a closer look.
Some of them still had their tusks, and those tusks were as big as anything Herbie Miller and I ever tried to bring down back in the Lado Enclave. Others didn't have none, but I wrote it off to their being cows and pups, or whatever it is that lady elephants and their children are called.
“You know what this place is?” I said at last, turning to Sam and his two companions.
“I wish I did,” admitted Sam. “Then I wouldn't feel so lost.”
“This is the lost and fabled Elephants’ Burial Ground, as has been writ up in song and story!” I exclaimed.
“Bad job of burying,” said Sam, indicating all the skeletons that were above the ground.
“No, you got it all wrong,” I said. “This is where the elephants come to die!”
Sam took another look around, and I could tell he was wondering why anyone would bother coming to such an out-of-the-way spot to die, but when I explained that it probably had something to do with their not wanting to be cooked by their enemies it made a lot more sense to him.
“Do you think you could find your way back here if you had to?” I asked.
He explained that we'd simply mark the trees on the way back to the village and we'd have no trouble, which was true, but it turned out that I had asked him the wrong question, a better one being if he knew how to find his way back to the village in the first place, but finally we got there after three or four days of hard searching.
I figured that the very first thing I had to do was stake a claim to the land that held the graveyard, and to this end I had Sam and a couple of the boys accompany me to the city of Beira on the coast, since I was sure I'd never find Sam's village again without help, let alone lead anyone to the graveyard, and while the government knew the village existed Sam kept moving it around due to various disagreements with the local constabularies concerning the finer points of his dietary laws.
Beria wasn't the most modern city on the continent, but it was a seaport, and this brought enough money in so that the government could afford to erect a couple of solid-looking brick and mud buildings from which they ran the affairs of the nation, which meant they made sure that the ships arrived and left pretty much on schedule.
One of the nice things about waterfronts is that they imply the existence of waterfront dives, and one of the nice things about waterfront dives is that if you strike up enough acquaintances and supply enough free drinks you can eventually get a line on who is the man most likely to do you some good. In this case it turned out to be Colonel Philippe Carcosa, who had risen to his imposing high rank by the simple expedient of avoiding any form of combat whatsoever while his countrymen were off dying in foreign wars or personal duels of honor.
Colonel Carcosa, so I was told, was a man who was quick to evaluate all the pros and cons of a business proposal, and who could be counted upon to act with satisfying swiftness when convinced that a handsome return on his investment could be had by so doing.
I made an appointment with the Colonel, and got an audience with him the next morning.
“Good morning,” I said, walking into his luxuriously appointed office in my best Sunday preaching clothes. “I am the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones.”
“Pleased to meet you, Doctor Jones,” he said, rising from his polished mahogany desk and taking my hand. “May I offer you a brandy?”
“Oh, it's a little early in the day for brandy, me being a man of the cloth and all,” I told him. “I think I'll settle for a double Scotch.”
He grinned and had an orderly bring us each a drink.
“What can I do for you, Doctor Jones?” he asked.
“Not a hell of a lot more than I can do for you, Colonel Carcosa,” I said, lighting up a cigar and offering him one, which he took.
“It's not often that I entertain the clergy in my offices,” he said. “Is this in reference to a church or chapel, perhaps?”
“Close,” I said. “The property I have in mind happens to be a cemetery.”
“Catholic or Protestant?” he asked.
“Well, that's kind of difficult to say,” I answered truthfully.
“Where is this cemetery, and what seems to he the problem?” he asked.
“I can't actually tell you where it is, and the problem is that you and me don't own it,” I said. “Yet.”
“And why should you and I ever wish to own a cemetery?” he asked, suddenly alert.
“Because you and me can't see no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't be millionaires,” I told him.
“That is true,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “No matter how earnestly I search my heart, I simply cannot come up with an acceptable reason. Now, my friend, perhaps you might be willing to explain why the possession of this particular cemetery will substantially alter our financial situation.”
“Certainly,” I said, taking another sip of my drink. “Colonel Carcosa, I have discovered the lost burial ground of the elephants!”
“I didn't even know it was missing,” he said.
“This is the place where all the elephants go to die,” I said. “It's just chock full of skeletons, most of them loaded down with ivory, and it just stands to reason that as long as elephants keep feeling the need to die they'll keep going to the burial ground and adding to the treasure that awaits us there.”
Colonel Carcosa signaled for his aide. “No more liquor for Doctor Jones,” he said. “He doesn't seem to be able to handle it.”
“But it's true!” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes!”
“This is the silliest story I have ever heard in a long lifetime of hearing silly stories,” he said. “I'm afraid I must ask you to leave.”
“Wait!” I cried. “If I take you there and let you see it yourself, are we partners?”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“We got to buy that graveyard before anyone else stakes a claim!” I said. “I ain't got no money, but I know where it is; you don't know where it is, but you can put up the money. If I can convince you it really exists, do we have a deal?”
“How far is it from here?” he asked suspiciously.
“About six days’ march,” I said.
He pulled a map out of his desk. “Mark its location,” he said.
“I can't,” I said.
“Then how are we to find this mythical graveyard?” he demanded.
“I got three Mangbetus waiting for me outside of town,” I said. “They were with me when I discovered it. They can show us the way.”
“Mangbetus?” he said, his eyebrows raised.
“Right,” I said. “And a God-fearing race they are, except in matters of diet.”
“You know, I could arrest you for coming to me with a hare-brained scheme like this,” he said.
“True, Brother Carcosa,” I said. “But then I'd just have to go out and find another partner once you set me free, and I truly don't see how that could possibly benefit either of us.”
“All right,” he said. “Come back here tomorrow morning and I will be ready to leave with you. But if this graveyard does not exist, it is going to go very hard with you, Doctor Jones. Very hard indeed.”
“Brother Carcosa,” I said, rising and shaking his hand, “you got yourself a deal.”
I picked him up the next morning, and we were joined by Sam and the boys when we got a c
ouple of miles west of the city limits. I knew he wasn't all that thrilled with the Mangbetu tribe, but I warned him to keep it under his hat, because the very last thing anyone in his right mind would want was to be viewed as an enemy by the Mangbetus, especially if they had a little mustard and onions handy. He took it under advisement, and the following six days were kind of routine.
Colonel Carcosa had a big map folded up in his backpack, and every couple of hours he'd pull it out and make certain notations on it. When we finally got to Sam's village he made us spend an extra day there while he checked out various landmarks to make sure he had the place spotted on the map. Then we spent a couple more days hunting up the graveyard, but we finally found it despite Sam's deficiencies at bushcraft.
“By God, Doctor Jones!” exclaimed Colonel Carcosa. “I must confess that until this minute I really didn't believe you!”
“Then why did you come along?” I asked as we moseyed down into the valley.
“If nothing else, I could always have turned the Mangbetus in for the reward,” he said. Sam kind of tensed at that, and started looking at the Colonel the way a chef looks at a choice piece of tenderloin, but the Colonel simply smiled back and said, “Of course, that won't be necessary now, especially in view of the fact that we're going to need a nonstop stream of highly-paid porters.”
That soothed Sam down a bit, and after a while he looked like he might settle for maybe only cutting off two or three of the Colonel's toes to flavor up a stew or something.
We walked down to the skeletons, and started counting, and came up with seven elephants.
“But that's just what's on the surface,” said the Colonel. “There's no telling how many have sunk under the soft moist ground. Possibly thousands.”
“Not only that,” I pointed out, “but we might not even be safe standing right here. I mean, for all we know there's a couple of dozen elephants making their way here right now just to die on this very spot.”
He thought about that for a moment and then walked a few feet away. I nodded my approval and told him he looked much safer in his new location.