`I'd never heard of you before, Dick,' Frigate said. `But I read the book at once and was fascinated. There was something about you, aside from the obvious derring-do of your life, your swordsmanship, mastery of many languages, disguises as a native doctor, native merchantman, as a pilgrim to Mecca, the first European to get out of the sacred city of Harar alive, discoverer of Lake Tanganyika and near-discoverer of the source of the Nile, co-founder of the Royal Anthropological Society, inventor of the term ESP, translator of the Arabian Nights, student of the sexual practices of the East, and so forth. . .
`Aside from all this, fascinating enough in itself, you had a special affinity for me. I went to the public library – Peoria was a small city but had many books on you and about you, donated by some admirer of yours who'd passed on – and I read these. Then I started to collect first editions by you and about you. I became a fiction writer eventually, but I planned to write a huge definitive biography of you, travel everywhere you had been, take photographs and notes of these places, found a society to collect funds for the preservation of your tomb. . .'
This was the first time Frigate had mentioned his tomb. Burton, startled, said, `Where?' Then, `Oh, of course! Mortlake! I'd forgotten! Was the tomb really in the form of an Arab tent, as Isabel and I had planned?'
`Sure. But the cemetery was swallowed up in a slum, the tomb was defaced by vandals, there were weeds up to your focus and talk of moving the bodies to a more remote section of England, though by then it was hard to find a really remote section.'
`And did you found your society and preserve my tomb?' Burton said.
He had gotten used to the idea by then of having been dead, but to talk with someone who had seen his tomb made his skin chill for a moment.
Frigate took a deep breath. Apologetically, he said, `No. By the time I was in a position to do that, I would have felt guilty spending time and money on the dead. The world was in too much of a mess. The living needed all the attention they could get. Pollution, poverty, oppression, and so forth. These were the important things.'
`And that giant definitive biography?'
Again, Frigate spoke apologetically. `When I first read about you, I thought I was the only one deeply interested in you or even aware of you. But there was an upsurge of interest in you in the '60's. Quite a few books were written about you and even one about your wife.'
'Isabel? Someone wrote a book about her? Why?'
Frigate had grinned. `She was a pretty interesting woman. Very aggravating, I'll admit, pitifully superstitious and schizophrenic and self-fooling. Very few would ever forgive her for burning your manuscripts and your journals. . .'
`What?' Burton had roared. `Burn . . .?'
Frigate nodded and said, `What your doctor, Grenfell Baker, described as "the ruthless holocaust that followed his lamented death." She burned your translation of The Perfumed Garden, claiming you would not have wanted to publish it unless you needed the money for it, and you didn't need it, of course, because you were now dead.' Burton was speechless for one of the few times in his life.
Frigate looked out of the corner of his eyes at Burton, and grinned. He seemed to be enjoying Burton's distress.
`Burning The Perfumed Garden wasn't so bad, though bad enough. But to burn both sets of your journals, the private ones in which, supposedly, you let loose all your deepest thoughts and most bunting hates, and even the public ones, the diary of daily events, well, I never forgave her! Neither did a lot of people. That was a great loss; only one of your notebooks, a small one, escaped, and that was burned during the bombing of London in World War II' He paused and said, `Is it true that you converted to the Catholic Church on your deathbed, as your wife claimed?'
'I may have,' Burton said. 'Isabel had been after me for years to convert, though she never dared urge me directly. When I was so sick there, at the last, I may have told her I would do so in order to make her happy. She was so grief-stricken, so distressed, so afraid my soul would burn in Hell.'
`Then you did love her?' Frigate had said.
`I would have done the same for a dog,' Burton replied.
`For somebody who can be so upsettingly frank and direct you can be very ambiguous at times.' This conversation had taken place about two months after First Day, A.R. 1. The result had been something like that which Doctor Johnson would have felt on encountering another Boswell.
This had been the second stage of their curious relationship. Frigate became closer but at the same time, more of an annoyance. The American had always been restrained in his comments on Burton's attitudes, undoubtedly because he did not want to anger him. Frigate made a very conscious effort not to anger anybody. But he also made unconscious efforts to antagonize them. His hostilities came out in many subtle, and some not so subtle, actions and words. Burton did not like this. He was direct, not at all afraid of anger. Perhaps, as Frigate pointed out, he was too eager for hostile confrontations.
One evening, as they were sitting around a fire under a grailstone Frigate had spoken about Karachi. This village, which later became the capital of Pakistan, the nation created in 1947, had only 2,000 population in Burton's time. By 1970, its population was approximately 2,000,000. That led to Frigate's asking, rather indirectly, about the report Burton had made to his general, Sir Robert Napier, on houses of male prostitution in Karachi. The report was supposed to be kept in the secret files of the East India Army, but it was found by one of the many enemies of Burton. Though the report was never mentioned publicly, it had been used against him throughout his life. Burton had disguised himself as a native in order to get into the house and make observations that no European would have been allowed to make. He had been proud that he had escaped detection, and he had taken the unsavory job because he was the only one who could do it and because his beloved leader, Napier, had asked him to.
Burton had replied to Frigate's questions somewhat surlily. Alice had angered him earlier that day–she seemed to be able to do so very easily lately – and he was thinking of a way to anger her. Now he seized upon the opportunity given him by Frigate. He launched into an uninhibited account of what went on in the Karachi houses. Ruach finally got up and walked away. Frigate looked as if he were sick, but he stayed. Wilfreda laughed until she rolled on the ground. Kazz and Monat kept stolid expressions. Gwenafra was sleeping on the boat, so Burton did not have to take her into account. Loghu seemed to be fascinated but also slightly-repulsed.
Alice, his main target, turned pale and then, later, red. Finally, she rose and said, `Really, Mr. Burton, I had thought you were low before. But to brag of this . . . this . . . you are utterly contemptible, degenerate, and repulsive. Not that I believe a word of what you've been telling me. I can't believe that anybody would behave as you claim you did and then boast about it. You are living up to your reputation as a man who likes to shock others no matter what damage it does to his own reputation.' She had walked off into the darkness.
Frigate had said, `Sometime, maybe, you will tell me how much of that is true. I used to think as she did. But when I got older, more evidence about you was turned up, and one biographer made a psychoanalysis of you based on your own writing and various documentary sources.'
'And the conclusions?' Burton said mockingly.
`Later, Dick,' Frigate said. `Ruffian Dick,' he added, and he, too, left.
Now, standing at the tiller, watching the sun beat down on the group, listening to the hissing of water cut by the two sharp prows, and the creaking of rigging, he wondered what lay ahead on the other side of the canyon-like channel. Not the end of The River, surely. That would probably go on forever. But the end of the group might be near. They had been cooped up too long together. Too many days had been spent on the narrow deck with too little to do except talk or help sail the ship. They were rubbing each other raw and had been doing it for a long time. Even Wilfreda had been quiet and unresponsive lately. Not that he had been too stimulating. Frankly, he was tired of her. He did not hate her or wish h
er any ill. He was just tired of her, and the fact that he could have her and not have Alice Hargreaves made him even more tired of her.
Lev Ruach was staying away from him or speaking as little as possible, and Lev was arguing even more with Esther about his dietary habits and his daydreaming and why didn't he ever talk to her?
Frigate was mad at him about something. But Frigate would never come out and say anything, the coward, until he was driven into a corner and tormented into a mindless rage. Loghu was angry and scornful of Frigate because he was as sullen with her as with the others. Loghu was also angry with him, Burton, because he had turned her down when they had been alone gathering bamboo in the hills several weeks ago. He had told her no, adding that he had no moral scruples, against making love to her, but that he would not betray Frigate or any other member of the crew. Loghu said that it was not that she did not love Frigate; it was just that she needed a change now and then. Just as Frigate did.
Alice had said that she was about to give up hope of ever seeing anybody she knew again. They must have passed an estimated 44,370,000 people, at least, and not once had she seen anybody she had known on Earth. She had seen some that she had mistaken for old acquaintances. And she admitted that she had only seen a small percentage of the 44,370,000 at close range or even at far range. But that did not matter. She was getting abysmally depressed and weary of sitting on this cramped foredeck all day with her only exercise handling the tiller or the rigging or opening and closing her lips with conversation, most of it inane.
Burton did not want to admit it, but he was afraid that she might leave. She might just get off at the next stop, walk off onto the shore with her grail and few belongings, and say goodbye. See you in a hundred years or so. Perhaps. The chief thing keeping her on the boat so far had been Gwenafra. She was raising the little ancient Briton as a Victorian lady cum post-Resurrection mores child. This was a most curious mixture, but not any more curious than anything else along The River.
Burton himself was weary of the eternal voyaging on the little vessel. He wanted to find some hospitable area and settle down there to rest, then to study, to engage in local activities, to get his land legs back, and allow the drive to get out and away to build up again. But he wanted to do it with Alice as his hut mate.
`The fortune of the man who sits also sits,' he muttered. He would have to take action with Alice; he had been a gentleman long enough. He would woo her; he would take her by storm He had been an aggressive lover when a young man, then he had gotten used to being the loved, not the lover, after he got married. And his old habit patterns, old neural circuits, were still with him. He was an old person in a new body.
The Hadji entered the dark and turbulent channel. The blue-black rock walls rose on both sides and the boat went down a curve and the broad lake behind was lost. Everybody was busy then, jumping to handle the sails as Burton took The Hadji back and forth in the quarter-mile wide stream, and against a current that raised high waves. The boat rose and dipped sharply and heeled far over when they changed course abruptly. It often came within a few feet of the canyon walls, where the waves slapped massively against the rock. But he had been sailing the boat so long that he had become a part of it, and his crew had worked with him so long that they could anticipate his orders, though they never acted ahead of them.
The passage took about thirty minutes. It caused anxiety in some – no doubt of Frigate and Ruach being worried – but it also exhilarated all of them. The boredom and the sullenness were, temporarily, at least, gone.
The Hadji came out into the sunshine of another lake. This was about four miles wide and stretched northward as far as they could see. The mountains abruptly fell away; the plains on both sides resumed the usual mile width.
There were fifty or so craft in view, ranging from pine dugouts to two-masted bamboo boats. Most of them seemed to be engaged in fishing. To the left, a mile away, was the ubiquitous grailstone, and along the shore were dark figures. Behind them, on the plain and hills, were bamboo-huts in the usual style of what Frigate called Neo-Polynesian or, sometimes, Post-Mortem Riparian Architecture.
On the right, about half a mile from the exit of the canyon, was a large log fort. Before it were ten massive log docks with a variety of large and small boats. A few minutes after The Hadji appeared, drums began beating. These could be hollow logs or drums made with tanned fish skin or human skin. There was already a crowd in front of the fort, but a large number swarmed out of it and from a collection of huts behind it. They piled into the boats, and these cast off.
On the left bank, the dark figures were launching dugouts, canoes, and single-malted boats.
It looked as if both shores were sending boats out in a competition to seize The Hadji first. Burton took the boat back and forth as required, cutting in between the other boats several times. The men on the right were closer; they were white and well armed but they made no effort to use their bows. A man standing in the prow of war canoe with thirty paddlers shouted at them, in German, to surrender.
`You will not be harmed!'
`We come in peace!' Frigate bawled at him.
`He knows that!' Burton said. `It's evident that we few aren't going to attack them!' Drums were beating on both sides of The River now. It sounded as if the lakeshores were alive with drums. And the shores were certainly alive with men, all armed. Other boats were being put out to intercept them. Behind them, the boats that had first gone out were pursuing but losing distance.
Burton hesitated. Should he bring The Hadji on around and go back through the channel and then return at night? It would be a dangerous maneuver, because the 20,000-foot high walls would block out the light from the blazing stars and gas sheets. They would be almost blind.
And this craft did seem to be faster than anything the enemy had. So far, that is. Far in the distance, tall sails were coming swiftly toward him. Still, they had the wind and current behind them, and if he avoided them, could they outstrip him when they, too, had to tack? All the vessels he had seen so far had been loaded with men, thus slowing them down. Even a boat that had the same potentialities as The Hadji would not keep up with her if she were loaded with warriors.
He decided to keep on running upriver.
Ten minutes later, as he was running close-hauled, another large war canoe cut across his path. This held sixteen paddlers on each side and supported a small deck in the bow and the stern. Two men stood on each deck beside a catapult mounted on a wooden pedestal. The two in the bow placed a round object which sputtered smoke in the pocket of the catapult. One pulled the catch, and the arm of the machine banged against the crossbeam. The canoe shuddered, and there was a slight halt in the deep rhythmic grunting of the paddlers. The smoking object flew in a high arc until it was about twenty feet in front of The Hadji and ten feet above the water. It exploded with a loud noise and much black smoke, quickly cleared away by the breeze.
Some of the women screamed, and a man shouted. He thought, there is sulfur in this area. Otherwise, they would not have been able to make gunpowder. He called to Loghu and Esther Rodriguez to take over at the tiller. Both women were pale, but they seemed calm enough, although neither woman had ever experienced a bomb.
Gwenafra had been put inside the fo'c'sle. Alice had a yew bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows strapped to her back. Her pale skin contrasted shockingly with the red lipstick and the green eyelid-makeup. But she had been through at least ten running battles on the water, and her nerves were as steady as the chalk cliffs of Dover. Moreover, she was the best archer of the lot. Burton was a superb marksman with a firearm but he lacked practice with the bow. Kazz could draw the riverdragon horn bow even deeper than Burton, but his marksmanship was abominable. Frigate claimed it would never be very good; like most preliterates, he lacked a development of the sense of perspective.
The catapult men did not fit another bomb to the machine, Evidently; the bomb had been a warning to stop. Burton intended to stop for nothing. Their pursue
rs could have shot them full of arrows several times. That they had refrained meant that they wanted The Hadji crew alive.
The canoe, water boiling from its prow, paddles flashing in the sun, paddlers grunting in unison, passed closely to the stern of The Hadji. The two men on the foredeck leaped outward, and the canoe rocked. One man splashed into the water, his fingertips striking the edge of the deck. The other landed on his knees on the edge. He gripped a bamboo knife between his teeth; his belt held two sheaths, one with a small stone axe and the other with a hornfish stiletto. For a second, as he tried to grab onto the wet planking and pull himself up, he stared upward into Burton's eyes. His hair was a rich yellow, his eyes were a pale blue, and his face was classically handsome. His intention was probably to wound one or two of the crew and then to dive off, maybe with a woman in his arms. While he kept The Hadji crew busy, his fellows would sail up and engage The Hadji and pour aboard, and that would be that.
He did not have much chance of carrying out his plan, probably knew it, and did not care. Most men still feared death because the fear was in the cells of their bodies, and they reacted instinctively. A few had overcome their fear, and others had never really felt it.
Burton stepped up and banged the man on the side of the head with his axe. The man's mouth opened; the bamboo knife fell out; he collapsed face down on the deck. Burton picked up the knife, untied the man's belt, and shoved him off into the water with his foot. At that, a roar came from the men in the war canoe, which was turning around. Burton saw that the shore was coming up fast, and he gave orders to tack. The vessel swung around, and the boom swung by. Then they were beating across The River, with a dozen boats speeding toward them. Three were four-man dugouts, four were big war canoes, and five were two-masted schooners. The latter held a number of catapults and many men on the decks.
R.W. I - To Your Scattered Bodies Go Page 12