The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  Roxanna had followed our conversation in English fairly well. She was picking up my language far faster than I had learned Westronese. In a mixture of broken English expanded with Westronese where necessary, she explained her views on the subject, which were that the duke was a fine man, and that by eliminating the trial, and thus not wasting our valuable time, he was doing us a great favor.

  The Pelitier sisters agreed with her completely, saying that we should be thankful to the duke for the courtesies shown us.

  Roxanna was a fine and intelligent person in many ways, and Adam's ladies were stamped from the same cookie cutter, but they all were incredibly naive. They'd never heard of power politics, or of the innate sneakiness of governments in general. The duke might be a fine man personally, but as soon as he acted as a head of state, he naturally became a conniving bastard. It had to be that way, if he was going to continue being the man in charge. Wimps don't last long in this world, unless they are content to live near the bottom of the pecking order.

  "Eliminating the trial does something definite for the local powers-that-be," I said. "Officially, it renders mute the question of just who attacked us, and far more importantly, why they did it. I mean, just what is their bitch against us? Is it open to discussion? Or negotiation? Do we have something that they want? I'm not talking about the individuals involved, since I don't much care who they are. We gave them a licking that they won't forget, and they're not likely to try the same thing again. What I would like to know for sure is just what organization wanted us to be damaged or dead. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's some of the archbishop's boys, but I'd like to really know."

  "There's no possible way that the archbishop could be behind it, Treet. You've never met the man," Adam said. "But, yeah, I would truly like to know who it is that has it in for us. More importantly, are whoever they are still out to get us, and what are they going to try next time? I'm beginning to wish that we hadn't donated my arsenal to the duke for his royal safekeeping. I wish we had those guns still hidden in the bottom of the boat."

  "I'm starting to feel the same way. The problem is that if you're right about the need for protection, we won't get the guns back no matter what we do. And if you're wrong, and we don't need the damned things, we can probably have them returned to us anytime."

  The women were shocked at our words and thoughts, that we could say that someone as noble as the duke would actually try to protect some criminal element within his realm, or that any of the great organizations of their islands could conceivably stoop to violence to attain their ends.

  Adam and I looked at them, looked at each other, and shook our heads. There was nothing that we could say. We'd known all along that we'd come from a totally different world than they did.

  We loved these island women, but we were both beginning to develop a lot more respect for the sort of American woman who can stand up to adversity, and who can think things out for herself!

  * * *

  We tried to find those attackers who had survived the encounter, just to talk to them, but no luck. The medical people said that they never kept such records, and had forgotten who they had worked on.

  When we applied to the keeper of the royal arsenal for the return of our weapons, we were told that citizens were not permitted to have offensive weapons in their possession. When we objected that we weren't citizens, we were told that foreigners weren't allowed them, either.

  The duke and his noble subordinates couldn't quite find the time to see us. The press of important business, we were told.

  There was a local baron who functioned like a neighborhood cop. We went to see him and explained our problem. He said that he was sure that there could be no possible repeat of the fighting incident, since violence was so rare on the islands. In any event, the duke had taken the matter into his own hands, and thus it was no longer the concern of the baron.

  The islands had nothing like a press corps. There were no muckraking reporters who knew how to dig into a story and get the facts out. All they had were some bulletin boards. We put up a series of posters, eventually offering very considerable awards for information, but we got no takers.

  The owner of the men's club acted very glad to see us, and eagerly got every detail of the fight from us, but he steadfastly claimed to have no knowledge of our assailants. The girls there were of no help, either, even when we offered to make anyone who helped us rich.

  Judah ben Salomon was missing. He hadn't been seen since the night of the fight.

  There was no such thing as a lawyer on the Western Islands. When I first learned this fact, months before, I'd claimed that it proved that these people were totally civilized. Now that I wanted to sue somebody, my opinions were a lot different.

  Adam tried to see the archbishop, but was unable to get an appointment.

  I was able to see the warlock, but he maintained that he was as mystified by the situation as we were.

  Even the priest who was still giving Adam lessons in the local religion couldn't or wouldn't answer his questions about who our adversaries were, or why they were out to do us damage. After a while, Adam stopped going to the classes.

  "There is only one way that a blanket of silence this thick can be held down this tight," I told Adam one night. "It has to be all three of the high mucketymucks working together."

  "Yah. I'll be a whole lot happier when we get The Brick Royal in the water."

  "Me, too. I think I'll start lending you a hand, tomorrow morning."

  * * *

  A week later, in the short grey dawn of the tropics, we were all awakened by shouts of "FIRE!"

  I dressed as quickly as possible, but even so, I was the last one out of the house and into the hallway. Buckets in hand, hundreds of people were streaming by, so I followed along with the hurrying crowd. The people here all had various civic duties to perform when an emergency occurred, and helping to fight a fire was one of them. I didn't have a bucket, and I wasn't sure where one was stored, but everyone on the island took their duties very seriously. I dared not appear to be a shirking coward because of going back to the house and searching for a fire bucket.

  One wouldn't have thought that a fire would be a great danger on the Western Isles, since the houses, hallways, and businesses were all carved out of the living rock, and thus should be fireproof. The furnishings were spare, and normally kept too far apart for a flame to propagate between them. All that I could imagine was that a warehouse somewhere was going up, and, most unfortunately, I turned out to be right.

  In a few minutes, I got to a place where I could smell smoke, and I realized that the all-too-familiar smell was that of burning fuel oil. Suddenly, I knew that The Brick Royal was burning, and all our property, all our plans, and all our hopes were burning with her.

  A bucket brigade was already set up, and sea water was already being energetically thrown on the blaze. The people were remarkably efficient, except that what they were doing was exactly the wrong thing to do with an oil fire!

  Adam was already on the scene, and trying to take over command from the local equivalent of a fire chief. Nobody would listen to him, or to us, when I added my shouts to Adam's. The Westronese volunteers with the buckets were all well trained for the emergency, and they didn't need any damn foreigners trying to interfere with their noble rescue efforts.

  Volunteer rescue people are like that everywhere. They train and train, working long, hard, and thankless hours, all in the hopes of one day being in the position of doing something heroic, something meaningful, something that can justify their otherwise humdrum lives. When that once in a lifetime chance finally comes, they are not about to waste it just because somebody they never met before is shouting at them. They want the shouter to get out of the way so that they can continue being heroic.

  Adam went on trying to explain to them the dangers of throwing water on an oil fire, but I knew that it was hopeless. In calmer times, they would be glad to hear from him about the three classes of fires, and wha
t to do about each of them, but not now.

  I sadly shook my head and walked away. I went to a place where I could see inside the mouth of the warehouse-cave that we had rented months ago.

  Everything was burning. The boat. The electronic equipment. The life raft with all its emergency stuff. The cargo that I had been purchasing. It obviously could be nothing but a total loss. I could see fuel oil spilling in flames out of the ruptured tanks in the hull, running on the floor, and being spread further by the water that the fools were throwing at it.

  I saw the cathode ray tube in the old-style television implode, blowing shattered glass and burning plastic around the huge room, and out on the people who were still throwing in buckets of water. Cans and jars of food were exploding as well, with some pickles quenching a bit of the fire, and the ubiquitous cans of Spam adding their grease to the flames.

  As things got hotter, I saw bits of cement crumble and fall from the glowing steel ribs of our once-magnificent ship. It was gone.

  It was all gone, and there was no hope left for us at all. I sat down on the ground, with my arms on my knees and my head on my arms, and I cried.

  Later that day, as Adam and I were going through the mess, seeing what, if anything, there was that could be salvaged, the warlock came by.

  "I was devastated to hear about all this," he said. "I came as soon as I could. Can you save anything?"

  "Not much," I said. "The gold and silver coins were in fireproof strongboxes, but just about everything else is gone. Great, huh? The only things that couldn't be hurt by the fire were the only things protected from it."

  "The air compressor was out on the shore near the SCUBA equipment and the snorkeling stuff, so it's okay, but there isn't enough diesel fuel left out there to run the compressor for more than a day or two. I'm afraid that we won't be able to stop your island from sinking after all," Adam said.

  "Couldn't we operate the compressor manually?" the warlock asked. "Or better still, we've still got those solar cells of yours, and that windcharger you two set up for us. Perhaps we could run it electrically."

  "Maybe," Adam said. "But we don't have any batteries anymore, and we don't have an electric motor left of any description, let alone one big enough. That diesel engine on the compressor may not look like much, but it puts out five brake horsepower. A fit human being can put out maybe a tenth of a horsepower on a continuous basis. Do you see a way to connect fifty people to the shaft of the compressor? Well, I don't, not with what we have available."

  "What about the windcharger, mate?"

  "That thing might be able to generate one horsepower, if the wind is perfect," I said.

  "But you two are so resourceful, I'm sure that you could come up with something."

  "There's a certain problem of motivation," Adam said. "This fire didn't just happen, you know. The lighting here was electric, and there weren't any open flames. Even if something started leaking by itself, diesel fuel isn't that easy to start on fire. It's fairly safe stuff, and that's the main reason why we powered the boat with a diesel engine, rather than with a smaller and lighter-weight gasoline motor."

  "What Adam's saying is that somebody on this island started the fire, deliberately. I'd be convinced of it even if we hadn't been assaulted a few weeks ago, but now the pattern is all too clear. Somebody here doesn't want us around."

  "Yeah," Adam said. "First they tried to kill us, and now they've burned almost everything we had. Now, I've got a question for you, Mister Warlock. One of your men was supposed to have been on guard here last night. We were paying for three guards to be on duty at all times, following the same pattern that you people set up when we first got here. One from the church, one from the duke, and one from you wizards. Now we can't find any of the guys who were supposed to be here. Somehow, they are all gone, and there weren't any dead bodies in the ashes."

  "Surely, you're not suggesting that I had anything to do with these problems that you've been having!"

  "It was one of your people, Judah ben Salomon, who set us up for the beating we got a few weeks ago," I said. "And nobody seems to have seen anything of him since."

  "And we're not suggesting anything," Adam said. "We're saying that this is one tightly controlled little island, and if anything major is going down out here, it's being done by you or the duke."

  "Or more likely yet, by the archbishop," I added.

  "But can't you understand?" The warlock said, "I'm your friend! I'm on your side. I'm one of the good guys!"

  "Then why aren't you doing something about stopping the bad guys?" I asked.

  I didn't get an answer.

  THIRTY-THREE

  "So, Brother Bartholomew, is all in readiness?" the archbishop said.

  "If you mean, have I done your dirty deed, the answer is yes, Your Excellency."

  "Good, good, my son. Consider that on this occasion, all you have done is to have some of the outsiders' stolen property returned to them. If your soul still troubles you, go to confession when you are done here. Only, please go to the cathedral confessor, rather than the one in your order."

  "So that word of your deeds will not be bandied about the church? And if you must make me kill, why must you make me kill in such a long, drawn out, and painful manner?"

  "Because it will be better if the deed takes place off our island. Bartholomew, you are becoming rude, undisciplined, and impertinent! Any more of that and you will be in line for some serious disciplining, boy! Now, be off with you!"

  * * *

  * * *

  It was grey dawn again, twenty-four hours after the fire that killed The Brick Royal. Our ladies were lined up on the shore of the island, surrounded by their servants and employees, all of them looking tired. Getting ready to go had cost us all a night's sleep. The small sails of The Concrete Canoe were drawing well, and Adam and I were at sea once more.

  We weren't exactly running away between two days, but early dawn was close enough. We were waving good-bye to our women on shore. All three of them had wanted to come with us, but that was plainly impossible. For one thing, there wasn't much room on The Concrete Canoe, and most of what there was was taken up by food, three barrels of water, and the three crates of agricultural oddities that the chief gardener had given us. For another, well, they were all good, warm, and tolerant women. They were intelligent, learned, and competent. They were beautiful, loving, and sexy. But they weren't tough women, and we had one hell of a tough trip ahead of us.

  Because of good luck and absentmindedness, I had never gotten around to having the agricultural crates sent down to our warehouse, and thus they were saved from the disastrous fire. We'd managed to scrounge up a few pounds of Super-Hemp thread, and along with several changes of clothing and the strong nets that our fishermen had used; well, it would have to do. The huge drift net that Adam had ordered months before wouldn't be done for weeks, and had to be left behind. Making a fuss and taking delivery before it was completed might have tipped our hand.

  We were bugging out, and neither of us liked it. It isn't easy to leave a fight unfought, and it isn't easy to leave a woman you love behind, but it had to be done, so we were doing it.

  Whoever the bastards were, they had tried to kill us, but they had failed, and they hadn't stopped us from going ahead with our plans. Then they tried arson, and while that had worked all too well, they still hadn't stopped us, although they sure had slowed us down. We were worried that their next attempt would have something to do with our ladies, a kidnaping attempt or some such, and we couldn't let that happen. Our women were just too fragile, too naive, and too trusting of their world. Being exposed to reality's raw side would be a soul-shattering experience for them.

  We could see no practical way to guard and protect our ladies, not while we were there on the Western Islands, and the targets of some unknown organization's hate. We were vastly outnumbered, and while they knew who and where we were, we knew absolutely nothing about them.

  However, without us, the girls
should be perfectly safe. We ourselves had to be the threat that the bad guys were reacting against. Nobody would have any reason to touch our ladies once we were gone. Still, just to be on the safe side, we had retained the services of the fishermen and of Adam's porters, we had paid them each three years in advance, and we had made them each swear to defend Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters with their lives.

  We'd left all the silver we had with the girls, which was enough to make them independently wealthy for life, even though it really wasn't worth much to the two of us out in the real world. The gold we took back with us, since we'd need it in the weeks to come. Depending on the market, it was worth something like a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars, money that we'd need to prepare the way for our return.

  Because we most definitely intended to return, even if we did have to sail across the Pacific Ocean in a twenty-foot open boat.

  Once, before the fire, we'd owned a complete set of navigational charts, showing every square foot of salt water in the world. What with our electronic gear, we'd never used anything so crude as paper charts, except a few times to show people where we'd been and where we were going. Now that we really needed them, they were gone. Murphy's Law still rules.

  Our electronic navigation gear was gone, along with all of the radios, telephones, and faxes. We had no sonar, no radar, and no satellite weather hookups. Hell, we didn't even have running lights!

  We lacked even a pocket calculator, and the sole bit of electronics available to us was my wristwatch. Adam had lost his in the fire. We had debated fastening my watch to the binnacle, but we finally decided that leaving it on my wrist would keep its temperature more stable, and thus help maintain its accuracy. We did have a compass, mounted on the binnacle, and Adam's antique brass sextant had survived the fire, though its mirrors were a bit scorched. Most importantly, the one man on the island that we were sure that we could trust, the chief gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, had managed to obtain a Westronese ocean navigational chart for us, and he was able to give us a fix on our position. Thus, we knew where we were, and from that, we could figure out how to get to where we wanted to be.