"Well, chipping would work, and it would only take a half hour or so, even if you had to be quiet about it. Or there are the explosive squibs."
"I figured as much."
A squib is sort of a hydraulic cylinder that uses a powder charge to move the piston. They work fine. Once. There's an engineering joke about a new military quality-control specification for squibs. They required one hundred percent testing. That's funny when you say it in Engineerese.
"Yeah, well, if you want to blow the squibs, there's a screwdriver in a clip right near the stem. Next to it, there's a screw that's just barely covered with clear plastic. Clean out the slot in the screw and then twist it ninety degrees clockwise, like you were driving it farther in. Ten seconds later, the guns should pop up nice and easy."
"Okay, I'll do it while everybody else is at lunch. What happens if I turn it the other way?"
"You expected a booby trap, maybe? Nope. Not when I could be the one to get boobied. But the screw will come off and you won't be able to get it back on again."
TWENTY-THREE
Such was the feeling of urgency on all sides that it took Tom Strong, E.E., Warlock of the Western Islands, only half a day to set up a meeting with the archbishop.
The meeting of the two rivals took place on the nearest thing they had to neutral territory that was secure from public notice, the rectory of the Monastery of St. Thomas the Doubter. Although the monks here constituted a religious order, as part of the Regular Clergy, they were completely independent and not subordinate to the archbishop's Secular Clergy. Furthermore, the Order of St. Thomas the Doubter spends most of its efforts on scientific research, much of it in coordination with the wizards.
"Ah, Thomas! It is so delightful to see you again!" the archbishop said, with not a trace of insincerity in his well- trained voice. He sat down at the stone table, opposite the warlock, in the otherwise empty room.
"The feeling is completely mutual, I assure you, Phillias," the warlock said, smiling. "I feel that we need to talk with regard to our recently rescued castaways. They will soon be helping us with the sinking problem, and it would be good if we could coordinate our programs, so as to cause as little confusion as possible among our respective subordinates and the people at large."
"I agree, Thomas, and as much as we both would enjoy an extended chat, I suppose that it's best to get on to the business at hand immediately. The church of course would welcome your help in alerting the people, and more importantly the duke, to the dangers that these outsiders represent."
"Well, your priests have their pulpits, Phillias. When it comes to influencing the masses, you are far stronger than I. As to the duke, well, he seeks the counsel of many, of course, but makes his mind up for himself. And while I don't want to be a spreader of false hope, you know as well as I that our guests have access to the new technology that has recently been developed out there. They seem willing and able to assist us in solving many of our problems, major as well as minor."
"The major problems that I am concerned with are the bringing of the diseases of the outside world to the bodies of the people of our islands, and the bringing of its many unholy ideas to their minds. We do not need the outsiders' help to alleviate these problems. They themselves are the problems."
"That seems unduly harsh, Phillias. They seem to be decent enough sorts. Isn't one of them taking religious instruction from your people already?"
"Well, we could hardly decline such a request. Yet still it remains that the best help they could possibly give us would be for them to cease to exist. Then I could get on with my proper work of saving people's souls."
"We have survived diseases a hundred times before, Phillias, and since our faith is strong, you need not fear that any other belief will supplant it. But you cannot save souls unless the bodies they inhabit are alive! I have told you again and again that the featherrock the island is made out of is slowly getting waterlogged! In the past, we were able to compensate for our loss in buoyancy by enlarging and extending the tunnels we have inside, especially those below the waterline, but it is getting to the point that further digging will begin to destroy the island's structural integrity, weaken it until a major storm could crack us in half."
" `We are in the hands of God, as we always have been and always will be. Have faith, my son, and fear no ocean's storm.' " The archbishop was quoting from a favorite sermon he had written sixty years before.
Changing tactics, the warlock said, "Has it occurred to you that this is the only place on earth where our particular variety of Christianity is practiced, Archbishop? That if the Western Islands are lost, your religion will be lost along with everything else that we have here?"
"You are such an alarmist, Warlock. If the tunneling that your men are doing is weakening the island, then by all means bid them to stop doing it! Surely that's simple enough for even you to understand! The islands have been afloat for a thousand years, and all previous warlocks were competent enough to keep them thus. The end of our world will not happen this afternoon."
"Perhaps not this afternoon, Your Excellency, but it could well happen this decade, or even this year. As to stopping the digging, the waves now lap to within three yards of the main entrances of the island. If sea water ever started to flow in with any large volume, it would flood the lower galleries, and the island would promptly sink. Call me an alarmist if you wish, Your Excellency, but I definitely prefer being a living alarmist to being a dead nitwit!"
"Warlock, you are as single-minded as always. And as close-minded as well!"
"And you are as bone-headed, as self-seeking, and as stupid as you've always been, Archbishop! You'd be a laughable clown, if you didn't have the power to get us all killed!" The warlock was standing, glowering at his adversary.
"All conversation with you is a waste of God's good time," the archbishop pontificated, standing and leaving by the nearest exit.
* * *
* * *
The warlock arrived with his entourage, some two dozen people.
Our workers stopped what they were doing and bowed to him, so I thought it would be a good idea to do the same. Adam did the best he could from his sedan chair.
"Thanks, mates," the warlock said in English. "That sort of thing isn't necessary when we're alone, but it helps keep up appearances when in public. My, this is a fine-looking craft you have here. I understand that you built it yourselves."
"Not exactly, my lord," Adam said. "I directed our workers in the construction of The Brick Royal."
"That's about what I meant," the warlock said, switching back to Westronese for the benefit of his entourage. "I've brought six apprentices with me who are particularly good swimmers. I'd like to have them start cleaning off the coral and waterlogged featherrock as soon as possible, so if you would be so kind as to show us these SCUBA rigs you mentioned, we can get on with it."
"Of course, my lord," I said. "But you must understand that they can be dangerous if they're not used properly. Adam here has taken a formal course in their use. He's taught me how to do it, but I think it would be best if he gave the course to them before work actually starts."
"That would be excellent."
In a few minutes, the tanks, weights, masks, flippers, depth gauges, and other paraphernalia were gathered up and put in front of the sedan chair, and Adam was talking to a rapt audience. After a half an hour or so, the warlock was starting to look a bit bored, so I took him aside to talk with him about the master plan Adam and I had started working on the night before.
"My lord, we've started to develop a plan that would let us help you and your people out of your current difficulties. Talking with you yesterday, you mentioned the problem of the Island's sinking, and the problem of the way your people don't have immune systems ready to fight off modern diseases.
"Well, we're starting work on the first problem this very minute, with the SCUBA rigs. Also, we have aboard a dozen or so snorkle outfits, which are simpler. They consist of nothing but a pa
ir of flippers, a face mask, and a short breathing tube, and they're normally used for fishing and sightseeing near the surface. We've got the compressor and a few hundred feet of hose around, and between them, we think we can cobble up some system that will let another dozen men work under water, but not very deep. Still, any weight removed from the island is to the good, so it won't hurt at all to get to the easiest stuff first. We plan on making a number of trips back to the outside world, and one of the first things we plan to bring back will be a larger compressor, one that could support perhaps a hundred workers, down to about one hundred feet. Some time later, perhaps we can come up with some sort of machine to give the bottom of the island a proper scraping, since our preliminary estimates make it look as though putting in some sort of additional flotation would not be cost effective. Nonetheless, the work we do now will gain us time."
"Excellent. Go on."
"As to the medical problem, well, as I said, neither of us is a doctor. But we can get one. When we get to the mainland, we can find a good immunologist, or whatever what we need is called, and hire him, or her. These islands are such a wonder that I don't think we'll have any problems keeping him once he's here. Also, thinking about it, we don't think that the problem here is either as bad or as unique as you have made it out to be. After all, isolated jungle tribes turn up every now and then in the Amazon or New Guinea, and they don't all die the first time a missionary shows up. To be sure, in the long run, the population of these tribes does go down, but for the most part those natives don't get proper medical attention, and we will see to it that your people do."
"I see. Well, you realize that I don't have the final say about all of this, but so far, I'm impressed. Go on, please," he said.
"Adam and I both feel that the eventual joining of your culture with that of the outside world is inevitable. It's going to happen, whether anybody wants it to happen or not. It would be better if it was put off as long as possible, but at the same time, you'd better start preparing for that eventuality right now. The first step is cultural. We have to teach your people about the outside world. For a start, we've got a VCR and a tape library here. That's sort of like a movie projector and a lot of movies. I'll set it up sometime in the next few days, and show it to you. I think you'll love it, and since our tapes are all in English, it should encourage your people to learn what is becoming the world language. We would like to see you start some formal classroom courses in English as well."
"Yes, I don't see why that can't be done," the warlock said.
"Some legal preparations ought to be made. I don't know what this will entail, exactly, but when the world discovers you, we'd better have all the legal angles covered. I mean, twelve thousand is a very small population for an independent nation in this world. Possibly you might be best off being under the protection of some larger power. A number of small nations are currently doing this, and without exception, they are better off for it. Nauru, for example, is under the protection of Australia. Monaco has an arrangement with France, and San Marino is somehow connected with Italy. I don't know what Liechtenstein and Andorra do, but I can find out. All of these countries have populations of about your size."
"Well, that's something for the duke to decide, of course. In fact, none of this can be done without his permission," he said. "But please continue."
"Then there is the welfare of your people. Your country is currently doing a number of things that I'm sure that most of you wish it didn't have to do, simply because you have more people than you have land. I'm talking about such draconian measurers as sterilizing people who have been servants for two generations, for example. With trade, we can easily solve these problems. Consider. The current price for grain on the Chicago market runs between three and seven cents a pound, depending on which grain we're talking about. I think that we could sell that high- strength fiber of yours for at least fifty dollars a pound. In terms of vegetable mass, that's a ratio of something like a thousand to one. One pound of fiber for a thousand pounds of grain. You've got the room to house a far larger population than you have, and with trade, you can feed them better than you ever have before. Besides food, there are a thousand other products that you could use. I'll bet that some chemical fertilizers would do wonders for your crop yields. Electric lights would give you three or four more hours a day to enjoy yourselves in, and they are a lot healthier than breathing the fumes of smoky oil lamps, too. Not to mention obvious things like good steel tools, as well as some sort of transportation devices. Heck, a wheelbarrow would triple the productivity of your porters, and some very simple farm machinery could vastly multiply the work your gardeners get done. Do you realize that in the United States, which is the world's largest food exporter, less than three percent of the population works on the land?"
"Interesting, mate, but I'm not sure that we should become just another one of your `modern countries,' " he said.
"Nor should you be. What you have and what you are is unique. I'm not suggesting that you should buy the whole bag of toys. Look over each item one at a time, pick and choose what's best for your people. I'm just saying that there are some options that you and the duke should have, and I'm offering to get them for you."
"I'm delighted to see that the two of you are taking our welfare so much to heart. While I'm sure that you are very generous men, still I expect that you will want more than just a handshake for all of this. What is it you want in return?"
"We want two things. The first is a monopoly on the trade between your islands and the outside world, with this monopoly to last until at least ten years after the Western Isles have been discovered by the outside world. The advantages to you are that we will be doing our darnedest to keep you a secret for as long as possible, and that through us, you will be able to control exactly what comes in and what goes out. The second thing we want is money. We propose that we will bring in anything that you want on an item cost plus transportation cost basis. We will sell any of your products for all that we can get, and keep twenty-five percent of the selling price for ourselves. We suggest that the duke should take fifty percent of that selling price and use the money for improvements on the islands, and that the producer of the product get the remaining twenty-five percent. Thus, if, say, two pounds of fiber were to sell for one hundred dollars, then we would get twenty-five dollars, the duke fifty, and the producer twenty-five. Since the producer could then buy five hundred pounds of grain with his money, he won't be hurt by the transaction."
"And you won't make any profit on what you sell to us?" he asked.
"We would charge you only for our actual costs in purchasing it and getting it here. Our books will be open to you. We will provide you with the manufacturer's catalogs and price lists on any product that you might want to buy, so you'll know that you're not being cheated. Since we will be making our profit only on what we sell, you can be sure that we will try to get the best prices possible for your products, and since we want you to produce as much as possible for us to sell, we will want your people to need money, and thus we will be trying to get them to buy as much as possible from the world outside. It's as fair a deal as we could come up with. Also, Adam and I plan to live here as much as we can, and so much of our profits will be spent right here, with the money going right back into your economy."
"It all sounds reasonable to me, except perhaps for your proposal to put a quarter of the entire nation's production into your own pouch. But those are details to be discussed later. What specifically do you propose for the near future?"
"Well, we must get the boat repaired. That will take a few weeks, but then it would be best if we let the patch cure for at least two months, to harden properly. During that time, there will be plenty of mechanical and electrical things to keep us busy. After that, it will be another week before she is ready for sea. While all that is happening, I think that I should spend much of my time doing an inventory of the local products available here on the Western Isles. We've talked about your amazing high-s
trength fibers, but I'm sure that you have many other things that would be of interest to the outside world."
"Good. That will give me perhaps three months to work on the duke and, more importantly, the archbishop. As to familiarizing you with the state of our technology, I will arrange for you to have a technically competent guide to show you the island, and to take you through our various horticultural and animal husbandry research facilities. Perhaps we can schedule it in a few days. But for now, it looks as though your good ladies have a lunch prepared for us, so I think that we should oblige them."
"Agreed, my lord. One last thing. You might want to mention to your friends that it would be a profitable idea to plant as much of your high-strength hemp as possible. Adam and I will be putting our entire fields in hemp, and buying such food as we need."
TWENTY-FOUR
Indeed, while I had been talking with the warlock, Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters had arrived. They had set up an American-style banquet table, and were loading it with food. The fine ladies here took pride in taking good care of their men.
The table was filled with the usual Western Islands fare, but as a treat for our guests, I broke out some of our supply of foreign "delicacies," such as canned sardines, Hershey bars, and Spam. Again, Spam was a major hit, so I passed out cans of the stuff for people to take home with them. Adam must have gotten that canned pork fat cheap, since we had cases of the greasy stuff. I never could stand it, myself. I found the case of Foster's I'd mentioned to the warlock, and gave him one of the oversized cans.
"It's warm, I'm afraid, but then you Brits like your beer warm, don't you?"
"First off, mate, I'm not a Brit. I'm an Aussie. Second, while there are some British ales that are better served at room temperature, Foster's is a lager, and is best served chilled." Switching back to Westronese, he said, "Page! Run these off to one of the nearest cold shafts, won't you? And the rest of you, take some of these other beers and wines there as well."
The Fata Morgana Page 16