The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  "Polka? Like in the dots?"

  "Right. `Polka dots' means like `lady dots,' and `dancing the Polka' means `dancing the woman,' " Adam said. "You know, maybe the reason why the Blacks don't like the word `Nigger' is because Latin isn't one of their languages. Maybe if we could find out how to say it in Swahili or Ibu or some such, we could find something to call them that they would be willing to use for more than three weeks."

  "I doubt it. I think that they just do it for kicks. Every time the Blacks change their minds about what they want to be called, every liberal wimp in the country gets flustered and feels obligated to line up, kneel, and kiss every Black foot available, reciting the litany of the newly approved word. Some people like having their feet kissed," I said. "And anyway, I've seen a lot of Poles get fighting mad about being called `Polacks.' "

  "Yeah, well, then again, some people just like to fight."

  * * *

  We gave a hefty package to each of the three guards for them to take to their respective boss's boss's boss. Roxanna had included a duplicate inventory list with each package so as to keep the men out of temptation's way. I once read that such inventories were the reason why writing was invented in the first place.

  What with being in mourning for her last husband, and after that being financially challenged (that's Political Correctese for "broke"), it had been a long time since Roxanna had thrown a party. Since this was to be the first time that she and I were to have guests over, Roxanna decided to splurge and do it up brown. A formal dinner on the Western Isles was a lot like those served in ancient Rome, except that the furniture was different. The Romans went in for big, bulky stuff, whereas on the Western Islands, the high strength of materials and the high price of them combined to make for some very spindly looking furniture. It was so skinny, in fact, that it was weeks before I felt comfortable using it. Supporting Adam's huge bulk, it always looked as though the furniture was about to collapse, not that it ever actually felt shaky.

  "I must look like a watermelon propped up on three toothpicks," he said.

  They used very little furniture, and kept their mansions very sparsely furnished. But whether it was out of storage or just rented, Roxanna arranged for enough for everybody. Besides Adam and his ladies, Roxanna's brother and his wife Melinda were there, and Roxanna's sister came in the company of the two men she lived with. I don't know why the idea of two men living with one woman should bother me, but somehow it did. I couldn't think of any reason why it should be any different, morally, than two women living with one man, as with Adam and the Pelitier sisters. So I just tried not to let my irrational feelings show. It's not for me to judge.

  Another quirk of Westronese social customs was that when you invited someone over, you automatically invited their servants as well, so we actually had about thirty people at the party instead of just ourselves and the eight invited. These extra people helped our servants out with all the preparations and serving during the party, and with cleanup afterward. And in a strange way, they also joined the party.

  When we got to the dining room, the servants had a bunch of couches arranged in a circle, and you laid down rather than sitting at a table. Each person had a sort of TV table in front of him, and the maids kept the food coming. There were dozens of beeswax candles burning, evidence of Roxanna's newfound wealth.

  "Silverware" was ordinarily restricted to a clay, bone, or wooden spoon for soup and a sort of fondue spear for anything solid and messy. They used their fingers for everything else. Tonight, though, Roxanna had set out American-style place settings, to honor us, I suppose, though it turned out to be not such a good idea. A fork doesn't work very well when you're lying on your side, because your mouth is now vertical rather than horizontal. And you can't use a knife and fork properly when you need your left hand to prop your head up. By the third course, we all were eating in the traditional Westronese way.

  Since this was the first time we'd had guests over since my arrival on the island, and since Roxanna was wealthy now that I'd paid her, she had arranged for entertainment. She said that the group she'd engaged normally had a three-week waiting list, but there had been a last-minute cancellation that made them available for us with almost no notice at all.

  They had a three-piece woodwind and percussion band, a stand-up comedian and two dancing girls. At first, the music was simple in structure, mostly a sort of plainsong, or a bit like folk music, at least while we were eating. Afterwards, while the tunes stayed simple, some of the rhythms got incredibly complicated.

  I got to studying it and counting on my fingers, and as best I could tell, the lead drummer was beating out a nine count with his left foot and a thirteen count with his right hand. His other extremities were doing even stranger things, with the net result that the music acted in a way analogous to the interference patterns you can get when you're playing with laser beams or moiré patterns on clear plastic films. They sort of automatically built up to a series of internally consistent crescendos. Hard to explain, but really interesting to listen to.

  While the servants were generally ignored at all times when they weren't actually wanted for something, they in turn felt completely at ease at such times to ignore us. They would wander in, sit down on the carpet, and enjoy the show when they didn't have other duties elsewhere. Even the cook and the gardeners came in uninvited and watched what was going on, talking quietly among themselves as if we upperclassmen were pictures on a television.

  I sometimes got the feeling that on the island, there were two separate realities, each populated by a separate group of people, who interacted only at certain prearranged points, and who were invisible to each other at all other times. Sometimes, I think I'll never get used to the Islanders' concept of personal service.

  Most of the comedian's humor was topical, about local celebrities that I'd never heard of, and it went right over my head, but the ladies, our guests, and the servants thought it was a riot.

  And the dancing girls, well, they were an eye- opener. First off, they were both outstanding dancers, they were remarkably attractive, and they were as lithe and energetic as Olympic gymnasts. Secondly, well, what with the almost complete coverage of most of the clothing worn on the island, and all the many and pious references to religion, I had gotten the impression that these were an overly strait-laced sort of people. I was wrong.

  What these fine young dancers eventually built up to was wilder and sexier than anything I'd ever seen in New Orleans, Las Vegas, or even the western suburbs of Detroit! Long before their act was through, they were completely naked, and taking remarkable liberties with our aging male bodies. Oh, I've seen things raunchier before, but only at a stag party and never in front of a mixed audience. Yet Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters seemed to be enjoying the show as much as anyone else!

  Talking with Adam about it later that evening, he said that dance was the "Glorification of Woman," and since our ladies had no doubts about their own femininity, they didn't feel threatened by any one else's. They took our applause as compliments to themselves. If American women took offense to such things, he claimed, it just supported his thesis that they were trying to be both sexes while in fact being neither.

  "And did you notice that neither of the dancing girls had a hair growing anywhere below their necks?" Adam said. "If nobody here ever heard of a razor, they must have some sort of vegetable product that's one hell of a depilatory. You might want to look into it, if you decide to keep your face cleanshaven, since your supply of blades won't last forever."

  For a finale, the comedian set out a number of sharp stakes with wide bottoms, sort of like daggers that stood with the point straight up. When the dancers started to move among them, I got a bad feeling, and signaled it to Adam. Then one of the girls did a back flip and came down between two of the deadly things, missing each by millimeters. I was on my feet, but Adam, casts and all, was quicker.

  "Stop! No more of this! In our country, we do not enjoy watching beautiful women risk t
heir lives. Waste not, want not, after all. So get rid of those knives and do something else."

  Which was the right thing to say, with just the right touch of levity. I only wish that it had been entirely true.

  We had brought a selection of wines, carbonated beers, and various liquors from the ship, including one of the barrels of rum that we had picked up in Puerto Rico. All of these were new to the locals, who had never tasted carbonated beverages, fortified wines, or distilled liquors before. The servants and performers joined in, of course, both because Adam and I, being Americans, are natural born egalitarians, and because our ladies stayed with the local habit of pretending that servants were not there when they weren't needed. Perhaps because of their inexperience with hard liquors, the party got pretty loud and rowdy, but even then the two social classes didn't acknowledge each other's existence. It was as if two parties were taking place in the same space.

  When I went to talk to some of Adam's litter bearers, they did a bit of a double take, as though I had just somehow materialized right in front of them. Then they talked to me formally, as one would to a superior in a work situation, rather than as a fellow party goer.

  The performers were an exception to this strange dichotomy, apparently being members of both planes of existence. But then, I suppose that show business people are on a different plane everywhere. Anyway, I was introducing this supple and still-naked young thing to the mysteries of a rum and Coke, with a twist of lemon peel, a local product, when Roxanna came up. In the States, this might have caused an embarrassing moment, but here there was none of that sort of thing. And Roxanna fell in love with Cuba Libres, too.

  Anyway, after months of stress, strain, anxiety, injury, shipwreck, depression and confusion, a good party was definitely in order, and indeed was had by all.

  I woke up on the floor with the morning sun in my eyes, with my head propped up on the small of a sleeping dancer's bare back and Roxanna curled up at my side, her head on my shoulder.

  It's actually not such a bad life after all.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Reverend Cardinal Deacon James of Ys approached the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, D.D., Archbishop of the Western Isles. He knelt, kissed The Ring, and looked up, awaiting instructions.

  "Ah, James. You may stand. I have need of your thoughts. Tell me, what do you think of of the new strangers?"

  "Well, Your Excellency, in the short term, they are a public nuisance. Almost everyone on the islands has been infected by their influenza. Thus far no one has been killed, but I call your attention to the many thousands who died during plagues brought to us by just such outsiders cast up on our shores in the past."

  "Yes, yes, but in the long run?"

  "In the long run, they are far more dangerous. In the past, it was a simple matter to keep rescued outsiders from bringing the entire outside world down upon us. We needed only to keep them away from the boats. If one still escaped despite our precautions, and somehow managed to make it home alive, he would never be believed because any ship sent in search of us would find nothing but open sea. But now, it is my understanding that the new ship contains communication devices far in advance of what the Warlock possesses, devices that could call the outsiders directly to us, no matter where we moved. Droves of outsiders with their diseases, their weapons, and their ungodly ways."

  "Yes, James, and I think that last point is what bothers me the most. They tell me that not one outsider in fifty considers himself to be a Christian, and even among those few, well, have you ever listened on the Warlock's devices to what passes for a sermon out there?"

  "Yes, Your Excellency. I learned the English language just so that I could understand them. For my pains, all I heard was a so-called `preacher' who was screeching about God in the most atrocious manner possible. Yet this person repeatedly claimed to be a Christian! I fear for the souls of our people if such foreign influences were let abroad on our islands."

  "Indeed. And those so-called `spiritual' infamies are but a part of their bad influences. Many of our people have fallen to the sins of drunkenness when overindulging in the beer and wines made on our islands. Now, rumor has it that the two outsiders have brought in no less than eighteen new forms of drink to tempt our people. What other abominations can yet be in store for us?"

  "What, indeed, Your Excellency? In truth, I fear for our little island!"

  "As do I, my son. Come, let us pray . . ."

  * * *

  * * *

  Shortly thereafter, the dancer got up, bid us a polite and somewhat formal good-bye, and left, still completely naked. Roxanna kissed me lightly on the cheek, went to her bedroom, and wasn't seen until evening.

  I started to sober up.

  This condition was soon combined with the grandmother of all hangovers. It was past noon before Adam and I got back to the warehouse where The Brick Royal was stored. The main reason why we went there at all that day was because we hadn't thought to bring the medical kit with us the day before.

  After a long search through our scattered property, I found it at last, and the Alka-Seltzers. Felicia already had two plastic glasses of water ready and, bleary-eyed, Adam and I toasted our survival of the previous night.

  Then I sent the maid home with blue packages for Roxanna, Maria, Agnes, and, almost an afterthought, for Felicia herself, since her eyeballs looked as bad as Adam's. Or my own, I suppose, though the technology hereabouts didn't run to mirrors, and I hadn't been up to shaving that morning.

  "Vitamins!" I said, enunciating carefully. "The only way that I could possibly feel this bad is that I must be suffering from a severe vitamin depletion. They must not put enough vitamins in the food here. You stored lots of vitamins, didn't you?"

  "Megadoses. I bought cases of the stuff when I was thinking that maybe we might actually have to spend a few years wrecked on some desert isle doing in the tons of dried beans I'd just bought. But are you so sure that you're suffering from a deficiency disease? Couldn't it have something to do with those thirty-six rums and Cokes, on top of all that wine and beer and scotch and gin and stuff? I mean, you were drinking and keeping up with four ladies, each one individually."

  "Maybe," I said slowly and quietly, carefully enunciating each word so as not to be accused of inebriation. "But a hangover has definite physiological causes, like dehydration, and salt depletion, because you pissed it all away, and a depletion of the soluble vitamins, like B, C, and the rest, for the same inalienable reason. Had my vitamin and mineral levels been up there where they belong, I wouldn't be feeling nearly this bad."

  I found what I had been scrounging for, and mouthed down some One-A-Days, a couple of B-50s, a gram of number C, and then some vitamin E, because it was there.

  "You want some, Adam?"

  "They couldn't make me feel any worse," he said, chewing up a random handful.

  "We ought to give some Alka-Seltzer to your bearers," I said.

  "What for? I didn't invite them to the party. Did you invite them to the party? So why should we be beholden to a bunch of party crashers?"

  "Don't be that way. They're in pain, and the thing about pain is that it hurts a lot. Anyway, if they all quit you, you'll be stranded here, because I'm not going to carry you anywhere today. Furthermore, they were invited. When I invited you, the invite covered them. Local custom. Roxanna said so. So be nice to the boys."

  "If I gotta."

  He waved them over, handed out some of our dwindling supply of tablets, and told them how to take them.

  "Maybe there is something to these people having some vitamin deficiencies. Let's get the girls on vitamin supplements and ask them in a few weeks if they really feel better."

  I said, "Good idea."

  About then, two gaudily dressed individuals came up to us, bowed, and presented us each with an oversized envelope. Adam had the presence of mind to open his first.

  "Well. It seems that I have been formally invited to lunch tomorrow with `His Excellency, the Most Reverend Ph
illias XIV of Caduz, Archbishop of the Western Isles.' "

  "Wonderful," I said. "Me, too. Only I get to meet the warlock, just after lunch. I wonder what you wear to a formal meeting with a warlock?"

  "I don't think it much matters as long as you bring the proper gifts with you. Some bat wings would be nice, or maybe a roc's egg, and don't forget a negative pound or two of phlogiston."

  "I've already sent him a positive pound of gold, and after that, he's just going to have to suffer or live with it," I said.

  Not much got accomplished that afternoon, and, since it was still a two-hour walk back to his place, I invited Adam back to Roxanna's place again.

  "Yeah, thanks, but you know, we can't keep doing this forever. I mean, if it was just you and me, there wouldn't be any problem, but women got these nesting instincts. Roxanna and my girls act real friendly and all, but if we force them together too much, they'll start infringing on each other's territoriality. I think I got to buy or rent someplace near this warehouse to live in."

  "Seems silly to me. I mean, I got a good fifty thousand square feet at Roxanna's place. Why should we bother with getting more?"

  "I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying we got to do it or we'll eventually have a female explosion on our hands. I don't want to lose mine, and after last night, you don't want to lose yours, either. So be reasonable and do it my way."

  "If you say so. Anyway, we're rich. You can afford it."

  Supper that night was quiet and subdued.

  * * *

  The next morning, Roxanna invited me to the local bathhouse, a weekly bath being the local norm. I'd gotten to looking forward to the sponge baths she'd been giving me, but I was out of quarantine now and I wasn't an invalid any more. Also, I thought that I'd better look my best, if I was to meet a warlock in the afternoon.

  The public baths turned out to be as big an eye- opener as the party had been. There was something almost schizophrenic about the way these people were super strait-laced at some times and totally uninhibited at others.