The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  Which got us into a three-hour-long conversation, and this time with me doing all the talking. On parting, we agreed to meet the next morning down at the boat.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I got home to find that everyone else had started supper without me. As I caught up with the rest of them, I filled them in on my remarkable conversation with the warlock.

  "So what they have is a very old, do-it-yourself scientific organization, with a little World War II technology thrown in. There isn't any magic at all," I said.

  "But, you say that you are able to see hundreds of miles in the dark, that you can look down to the bottom of the ocean, and that you can hear people speak when they are on the other side of the world. If that isn't magic, I would very much like you to tell me just what is!" Agnes said.

  "With Americans, I guess that you could say that technology is something that we understand, and magic is something that we don't," I said.

  "Then for me, it's still magic," Agnes said. "I don't understand any of it!"

  "Call it magic, if you want," Adam said. "One word's as good as another, but `magic' has two syllables and `technology' has four."

  "I suppose that the symbols themselves aren't important, but I'd still rather be called an engineer than a magician," I said. "But tell me, Adam, how went your meeting with the archbishop?"

  "It was beautiful," he said, with a calm and glowing smile. "I don't think that I've ever met so holy a man before in my entire life. They're Christians here, but it's a purer sort of Christianity than anything I've ever heard tell of. It's like they are all living by Christ's actual teaching rather than what a bunch of abstracted theologians have done with those few parts of it that they understood. There's . . . Aw, you wouldn't understand it, Treet, but there's sort of a joyful acceptance here of the beauty of God's world, with love being far more important than sin, and heaven being emphasized more than damnation. I don't think that these people even believe in Hell, or if they do, they aren't worried about it. It's like Christ is too nice a guy to do that to somebody."

  "You almost sound as though you're ready to convert," I said. In fact, he sounded more like he had gone through the kind of brainwashing that the Chinese Communists always wanted to be able to do, but never could quite get down pat. But I couldn't tell him that. Trying to argue with a fanatic just hardens his resolve. All I could do was wait and see if he recovered.

  "I might convert. I just might, once I've learned more. Anyway, I will be taking religious instruction from one of their priests, starting the day after tomorrow."

  "I never thought that I'd see you giving up on being a Catholic."

  "Maybe I'm not. Right now, I don't see why I have to stop being one thing in order to start being another. I don't know enough about this whole setup yet, but I intend to find out, and soon."

  If I was still a teenager, I would have gotten into a frothing hot argument with him, but much of wisdom and maturity has to do with being just too tired to bother with the ones that you know you can't win.

  "Okay," I said. "There seems to be some sort of friction between the warlock and the archbishop, but the warlock didn't want to talk about it. Did the archbishop say anything enlightening?"

  "Some. There's a big faction in the church hierarchy that doesn't want to have anything to do with the outside world. They cite the problems that the warlock mentioned, you know, the problem with diseases and the fact that the island is slowly sinking, but those aren't the biggies with them. They're more worried about cultural inundation, only they don't call it that. They say the big problem with outside contact is that it would make the people here materialistic and sinful. That the people would leave the ways of their forefathers and pick up on an evil American lifestyle."

  "You mean that the churchmen are worried about losing some of their influence, not to mention their cushy lifestyle," I said, and then noticed the shocked expressions on the faces of the servants and our ladies.

  "A heathen like you might put it that way," Adam said in English. "I think that they are worried about more spiritual matters."

  "Whatever. So the church as a whole takes no great joy at our arrival here."

  "I didn't say that," Adam said, switching the conversation back to Westronese. "I said that there was a faction that was worried about us. There's another faction that looks forward to going out and converting the godless, so-called Christians in the rest of the world back to what Christ had in mind in the first place."

  I said, "Doesn't sound like there's much we can or should do about it."

  "True. Getting messed up in somebody else's politics is dumb. Our best shot is to try to prove to them that we're really very nice guys."

  "So I trust that you don't object to my giving our SCUBA stuff to the warlock?"

  "Not when they need it as bad as they do. What's more, we got to start thinking about some kind of submarine, to really give the bottom a good scrape, and maybe rig some kind of additional flotation devices down there as well, some kind of big air bags or something."

  "Makes sense. We also ought to think about donating some of our duplicate electronics stuff to them. All they know about the outside world, they're getting from some old AM and shortwave radios, and they can only keep them working about a quarter of the time," I said.

  "I've been thinking about that, too. We don't really need the satellite stuff, or the solar cells, or the genset, for that matter. The televisions can go, as well as the VCR, the tapes, and the CD library. See, eventually, the Western Isles will have to be integrated in with the rest of the world. The archbishop doesn't like the idea, but I don't see how anybody can stop it from happening. And when it does happen, the Westronese had better know a lot more about the outside world than they do now. Some serious preparations are going to have to be made, and all the legal angles figured out. And it wouldn't hurt a bit if the people here all learned to speak English. I mean, it's the closest thing to a world language there is."

  "You're figuring on making a pretty big commitment to these people?" I said.

  "Hey, Treet. We fell into something really big here, you know? I mean, most people spend most of their lives doing their jobs and trying to be decent and all, but never getting a chance to do anything really significant. Here, we've got a shot at doing something absolutely earthshaking. Something that can really make a difference in the world. I say we go for it! Anyway, you got anything better to do?"

  I thought about it for a while, and you know, I really didn't have anything better to do. I leaned over to his couch so that I could shake his hand. "Adam, you're right! Let's do the job, full bore and balls out!"

  I leaned back, feeling good. I had a job to do, and a company to run again! The old Treet was back!

  The ladies weren't exactly sure of what had just happened, but they picked up on the way Adam and I were happy and confident, so they were happy, too.

  Roxanna and I didn't say much to each other through supper, and later, as we all had a few drinks, we just sort of held hands for a bit. Then, when it was time for bed, we went to her room as though it was the most natural thing in the world, as if we were an old, married couple who had done this a thousand times before. The night was calm, wondrous, and lovely, and when I awoke the next morning, I found that I was thinking of myself as a married man again. For the first time in years, I felt a lovely, warm, confident glow. The dark, empty depression that had plagued me for over a year was totally, absolutely gone and buried.

  "Roxanna, let's get married."

  "My lord. You pick the strangest times to say things!"

  "What? I mean, you don't want to?"

  "I didn't say that. It's just that you must learn to do things properly, and proposing matrimony while lying naked in a lady's bed is not the way it is done!"

  "All right, all right. Forgive my ignorance, but it's all your fault. You are supposed to be my instructor, after all, and if I wasn't told something that I should have known, it's not my doing. In my country, the typical lady wo
uld have at least kissed me for the biggest compliment that a man can give to a woman, even if she was going to turn him down."

  She kissed me, and lingered at it.

  "There. I trust that your customs are now satisfied. Now then, to satisfy mine, you must first approach me when we both are fully dressed, and before witnesses. You must go down on one knee, you must accurately describe both your affections and your financial situation, and you must ask my permission to speak to my father. If I give it, and if you then talk to him, and if he gives you his formal permission, then you may put your proposal to me, but not before. End of lesson."

  "I didn't even know you had a father. You've never mentioned him. Is there anything I should know or do before I look up this man I've never met and ask him for a daughter?"

  "Yes. You should spend a lot more time thinking the whole matter out. Talk it over with your good friend, Adam. I think that he might be wiser than you."

  I should have been smart enough to keep my mouth shut at this point, but I wasn't.

  "You think that Adam is smarter than I am?" I asked. "That his IQ is higher than mine?"

  That put Roxanna off on another one of her long lectures.

  "Again, that's not what I said. From what you've told me, your people seem to measure mental abilities along a single dimension. Here, we use three dimensions, and after testing, we place an individual's mental abilities within a three dimensional solid, rather than along a straight line, as is your people's custom.

  "The horizontal X-axis is graduated to display education, with ignorance at the left and learnedness at the right. Education is what can be taught in school. One's position on that axis indicates how much one has actually learned.

  "The vertical Y-axis is for innate problem solving ability, with stupidity at the bottom and intelligence at the top. This faculty is controlled by one's genetics, although severe environmental factors can sometimes degrade it. It cannot be taught.

  "The Z-axis is used to display the ability to make appropriate actions at the appropriate time, with foolishness at the far side of the cube, and wisdom towards the viewer. The nature of wisdom is much debated among our educators, since it above all else is what we humans strive for in the mundane world.

  "Suffice it to say that each of these three is independent of the others. People exist with every possible combination of these attributes. There are no blank places in the cube. It is quite possible, for example, to be wise while also being stupid and ignorant. The traditional old peasant was often like that. The teachers of higher education are sometimes intelligent and learned while still being foolish."

  "Remarkable," I said.

  The whole situation had gotten about as unromantic as it could get, and I found myself thinking that maybe she was right, maybe I was rushing things. And maybe I was getting myself involved with a rather cold fish. Only there had been nothing frigid about her the night before!

  I think that I must have dozed off for a bit, because when I woke up again, I was alone. When I got to the balcony that we used for breakfast, the maid told me that Adam and his ladies had already eaten. He and his bearers were at the boat, and Maria and Agnes were out looking for an apartment closer to the warehouse than their home was.

  Roxanna didn't show up, and I ate alone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Arriving at the warehouse where our ship was stored, I found Adam directing his workers in further disassembling the ship. They were laboriously chipping out the plastic that had been poured around the ship's batteries, down next to the keel. Adam felt that if we were going to give the warlock the solar cells, we'd better give him most of the batteries as well.

  "What with these casts still on, I can't get in there to see what they're doing. I've told them the difference between what a battery looks like and the stuff we encapsulated them in, but they've never seen a battery before. Maybe you'd better get in there and give it a look."

  "Right," I said. "We don't need battery acid all over the place, or wrecked batteries, either."

  I climbed up into the hull, which was still on its side, and checked out what the men were doing. It was slow going, but they had gotten down to the batteries in two places, and were carefully working around them. I got back out.

  "Looks fine to me. You figure on giving the warlock all of them?"

  "All but two, and we'll need the starter battery for the engine. That's all we really need to run her, and the electronics. Without the solar cells and the genset, we'll have to fire up the engine every other day, but what the heck. I figure that we'll only be shuttling between here and South America, and that's less than a few thousand miles."

  "Makes sense. What about the prop-shaft generator? Won't that help?"

  "I was thinking that by hooking that generator up to some wooden blades that could be made locally, we could rig up a windmill and put it on top of the mountain here. With enough wind, it could probably make more juice than the solar cell array."

  "Why not? We can replace it all in Lima, anyway," I said.

  "Right. Now then, there's one little job that you're going to have to handle alone, since I'm wracked up and I'd rather that nobody else knew about it."

  "What's that?"

  "The arsenal. It's encapsulated just forward of the batteries."

  I stopped and stared at him for a bit. "You never told me we had an arsenal on board. Why do you have it, and why didn't you tell me about it? Just what do you have in there that had to be kept so secret?"

  "It's not all that much, and there's nothing illegal in there, but you got to be careful with guns. On the one hand, if you need them, you really need them, and then they're worth a lot more than gold to you. I mean, what if some drug runners had decided that The Brick Royal was just the thing they needed to make a little midnight run into Miami Beach? On the other hand, more Americans are shot each year by their friends than by their enemies, so until needed, it's better if your friends don't know they're there. Also, some of the girls we started out with would have freaked out at the thought of having guns around. Then there was you. In case you've forgotten, for about a year there you were slopping around in the worst case of depression that I ever saw a man live through and survive. You're better now, so I don't mind telling you about the weapons, but back then you were awfully suicidal. Enough said?"

  "If I'd wanted to kill myself, I could have jumped overboard any night."

  "I know, and if I coulda hid the ocean, I woulda done it. The guns I could just not talk about."

  "All right, and I suppose I owe you my thanks. But for now, just what exactly do you have buried over the keel up by the stem?"

  "Two of everything I thought we might need. There are some Remington autoloading 30-06s with Leopold scopes, for hitting something hard when you don't want to get near it. Some Remington 12-gauge autoloading shotguns, for blowing it away if it's up close. Some Remington Nylon 66 .22 caliber plinking guns, with scopes, for target practice and small game. Some Browning 9mm Hi Power automatic pistols, purely for self-defense. Some Ruger .22 caliber plinking pistols, for just screwing around with, and some Street Sweepers, for when we're not screwing around. All the guns are made out of stainless steel and plastic, so corrosion won't ever be a problem. There's two thousand rounds of each kind of ammo, except for the .22 long rifle. We got twenty thousand rounds of that, plus cleaning equipment, spare clips, belts, holsters, some knives, and other accessories. It's a good little arsenal."

  "Wow. What's a Street Sweeper?"

  "It's a 12-gauge autoloading shotgun with a twenty-five-round drum magazine. It has a collapsible stock and a shoulder sling like what you use with a submachine gun. It has a minimal legal length barrel, and a flashlight that mounts on top where you'd think a scope would go. Where the spot shows is where your shot pattern hits. I thought they would be nice to have if we ever had to stand guard duty."

  "What? No Uzis, assault rifles, or grenade launchers?" I said facetiously.

  "The Uzi is a very overrated weap
on. It's as big as a real gun but it only fires puny pistol ammo. As to assault rifles, I think that the army went over to those .223 caliber M-16s because militarily, you're better off wounding an enemy than killing him. After all, you wound a man and they have to dedicate three medics to haul him away and take care of him. It's that or getting a hell of a morale problem when they start abandoning their own injured. Wounding an enemy takes four of them out of the fight, but if you kill him, he's just one more dead martyr. But I don't ever plan on fighting an army, and if I ever have to shoot somebody, I want him dead! Grenades? They're illegal and way too dangerous. If we had explosives aboard, somebody would likely drop one, and blow a hole in the bottom of the boat and us, too."

  "Thank God for small favors."

  "You shouldn't say things like that unless you mean it. Anyway, we are among a bunch of very peaceable people here, and I think the guns would make a bad impression. I'd hate to have to throw them away, so I figure to just hide them somewhere."

  "Why not just leave them where they are?"

  "Because it's three hundred more pounds that could be cargo, each way, every trip."

  "Whatever you say. I think that it was stupid to have them in the first place. Anybody we'd have to defend ourselves against would know so much more about that kind of fighting than we do, that shooting back at them would just get us killed quicker. I mean, I used to be pretty good at Karate, and I've always had the feeling that you were something of a street fighter when you were a kid. If it came to trouble, we could probably make a good showing for ourselves with our fists and our feet. But with firearms, we'd be flat outclassed."

  "Nah. People who rely on violence are mostly pretty dumb. We could out-shoot them if we had to. But we're not faced with that situation, so I think we'd best hide the arsenal."

  "So how do I get the arsenal out of the boat without taking five hours to chip it out of the plastic? I mean, I know you, so I know you wouldn't put something like guns someplace where we couldn't get at them if they were needed in a hurry."