The Dark Design

by Philip José Farmer

  Her irritation at the invasion died when she saw Piscator. He was carrying a fishing pole and a wickerwork basket. Silently, he sat down beside her and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. For some time they stared at the surface, rippled by the wind, broken now and then by a leaping fish.

  Finally, he said, “It won’t be long before I must reluctantly say good-bye to my disciples and to my piscatorial pursuits.”

  “Is it worth it to you?”

  “You mean, giving up this pleasant life for an expedition that may end in death? I won’t know until it happens, will I?”

  After another silence, he said, “How have you been? Any more experiences such as that night?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “But you have been carrying a knife in your heart.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, turning her head to look at him. She hoped her puzzlement did not look as faked as it felt to her.

  “I should have said three knives. The captaincy, the Russian, and most of all, yourself.”

  “Yes, I have problems. Don’t we all? Or are you an exception? Are you even human?”

  He smiled and said, “Very much so. More than most, I can say with seeming immodesty. Why is that? Because I have realized my human potentiality almost to its fullest. I can’t expect you to credit that. Nor will you, unless, someday… but that day may never come.

  “However, regarding your question of my humanity. I have sometimes wondered if some people we have met are human. I mean, do they belong to Homo sapiens?

  “Isn’t it possible, even highly probable, that the Whoevers responsible for all this have agents among us? For what purpose, I don’t know. But they could be catalysts to cause some kind of action among us. By action, I do not mean physical action, such as the building of the Riverboats and airships, though that may be part of it. I refer to psychic action. To a, shall we say, channeling of humanity? Toward what? Perhaps toward a goal somewhat similar to that which the Church of the Second Chance postulates. A spiritual goal, of refinement of the human spirit. Or perhaps, to use a Christian-Muslim metaphor, to separate the sheep from the goats.”

  He paused and drew on his cigarette.

  “To continue the religious metaphor, there may be two forces at work here, one for evil, one for good. One is working against the fulfillment of that goal.”

  “What?” she said. Then, “Do you have any evidence for that?”

  “No, only speculation. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that Shaitan, Lucifer if you will, is actually conducting a cold war against Allah, or God, whom we Sufis prefer to name The Real. But I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a parallel to that in some sense… well, it is all speculation. If there are agents, then they look like human beings.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I have probably observed certain things. You have, too, the difference being that you have not put them into a pattern. A rather dark pattern it is. Though it is possible that I am looking at the wrong side of the pattern. If it were turned over, the other side might be blazing with light.”

  “I wish I knew what you were talking about. Would you mind letting me in on this… pattern?”

  He rose and tossed the cigarette stub into the lake. A fish rose, swallowed it, and splashed back.

  “There are all sorts of activity going on beneath that mirror of water,” he said, pointing to the lake. “We can’t see them because water is a different element from the air. The fish know what’s going on down there, but that doesn’t do us much good. All we can do is lower our hooks into the darkness and hope we catch something.

  “I read a story once in which a fish sat down on the bottom of a deep, dark lake and extended his fishing pole into the air over the bank. And he caught men with his bait.”

  “Is that all you’re going to say about that?”

  He nodded, and said, “I presume you are coming to Firebrass’ farewell party tonight.”

  “It’s a command invitation. But I hate going. It’ll be a drunken brawl.”

  “You don’t have to soil yourself by joining the pigs in their swinishness. Be with but not of them. That will enable you to enjoy the thought of how superior you are to them.”

  “You’re an ass,” she said. Then, quickly, “I’m sorry, Piscator. I’m the ass. You read me correctly, of course.”

  “I think that Firebrass is going to announce tonight the ranking of the officers and pilots.”

  She held her breath for a moment. “I think so, too, but I am not looking forward with pleasure to that.”

  “You prize rank too highly. What is worse, you know it but will do nothing about it. In any event, I think you have an excellent chance.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Meanwhile, would you care to go out in the boat with me and participate in the angling?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She rose stiffly and pulled in the line. The bait was gone off the hook.

  “I think I’ll go home and brood a while.”

  “Don’t lay any eggs,” he said, grinning.

  Jill snorted feebly and walked away. Before she reached her hut, she passed Thorn’s. Loud, angry voices were issuing from it. Thorn’s and Obrenova’s.

  So, the two had finally gotten together. But they did not seem happy about it.

  Jill hesitated a moment, almost overcome with the desire to eavesdrop. Then she plunged on ahead, but she could not help hearing Thorn shout in a language unknown to her. So—it would have done her no good to listen in. But what was that language? It certainly did not sound like Russian to her.

  Obrenova, in a softer voice, but still loud enough for Jill to hear her, said something in the same language. Evidently, it was a request to lower his voice.

  Silence followed. Jill walked away swiftly, hoping they would not look outside and think she had been doing what she had almost done. Now she had something to think about. As far as she knew, Thorn could speak only English, French, German, and Esperanto. Of course, he could have picked up a score of languages during his wanderings along The River. Even the least proficient of linguists could not avoid doing that.

  Still, why would the two talk in anything but their native languages or in Esperanto? Did both know a language which they used while quarreling so that nobody would understand them?

  She would mention this to Piscator. He might have an illuminating viewpoint on the matter.

  As it turned out, however, she had no chance to do so, and by the time the Parseval took off, she had forgotten about the matter.

  Discoveries in Dis

  Jan. 26, 20 A.R.D.

  Peter Jairus Frigate

  Aboard the Razzle Dazzle

  South Temperate Zone

  Riverworld

  Robert F. Rohrig

  DownRiver (hopefully)

  DEAR BOB:

  In thirteen years on this ship I’ve sent out twenty-one of these missives. Letter from a Lazarus. Cable from Charon. Missive from Mictlan. Palaver in Po. Tirades from Tír na nOc. Tunes from Tuonela. Allegories from al-Sirat. Sticklers from the Styx. Issues from Issus. Etc.

  All that sophomoric alliterative jazz.

  Three years ago I dropped into the water my Telegram from Tartarus. I wrote just about everything significant that’d happened to me since you died in St. Louis of too much living. Of course, you won’t get either letter except by the wildest chance.

  Here I am today in the bright afternoon, sitting on the deck of a two-masted schooner, writing with a fishbone pen and carbonblack ink on bamboo paper. When I’m done, I’ll roll the pages up, wrap them in fish membrane, insert them in a bamboo cylinder. I’ll hammer down a disk of bamboo into the open end. I’ll say a prayer to whatever gods there be. And I’ll toss the container over the side. May it reach you via Rivermail.

  The captain, Martin Farrington, the Frisco Kid, is at the tiller right now. His reddish-brown hair shines in the sun and whips with the wind. He looks half-Polynesian, half-Celtic,
but is neither. He’s an American of English and Welsh descent, born in Oakland, California, in 1876. He hasn’t told me that, but I know that because I know who he really is. I’ve seen too many pictures of him not to recognize him. I can’t name him because he has some reason for going under a pseudonym. (Which, by the way, is taken from two of his fictional characters.) Yes, he was a famous writer. Maybe you’ll be able to figure it out, though I doubt it. You once told me that you had read only one of his works, Tales of the Fish Patrol, and you thought it was lousy. I was distressed that you’d refuse to read his major works, many of which were classics.

  He and his first mate, Tom Rider, “Tex,” and an Arab named Nur are the only members of the original crew left. The others dropped out for one reason or another: death, ennui, incompatibility, etc. Tex and the Kid are the only two people I’ve met on The River who could come anywhere near being famous people. I did come close to meeting Georg Simon Ohm (you’ve heard of “ohms”) and James Nasmyth, inventor of the steamhammer. And lo and behold! Rider and Farrington are near the top of the list of the twenty people I’d most like to meet. It’s a peculiar list, but, being human, I’m peculiar.

  The first mate’s real surname isn’t Rider. His face isn’t one I’d forget, though the absence of the white ten-gallon hat makes it seem less familiar. He was the great film hero of my childhood, right up there with my book heroes: Tarzan, John Carter of Barsoom, Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy of Oz, and Odysseus. Out of the 260 western movies he made, I saw at least forty. These were second or third runs in the second-class Grand, Princess, Columbia, and Apollo theaters in Peoria. (All vanished long before I was fifty.) His movies gave me some of my most golden hours. I don’t remember the details or the scenes of a single one—they all blur into a sort of glittering montage with Rider as a giant figure in the center.

  When I was about fifty-two years old, I became interested in writing biographies. You know that I had planned for many years to write a massive life of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous or infamous nineteenth-century explorer, author, translator, swordsman, anthropologist, etc.

  But financial exigencies kept me too busy to do much on A Rough Knight for the Queen. Finally, just as I was ready to start full-time on Knight, Byron Farwell came out with an excellent biography of Burton. So I decided to wait a few years, until the market could take another Burton bio. And just as I was about to start again, Fawn Brodie’s life of Burton—probably the best—was published.

  So I put off the project for ten years. Meanwhile, I decided to write a biography of my favorite childhood film hero (though I ranked Douglas Fairbanks, Senior, as my other top favorite).

  I’d read a lot of articles about my hero in movie and western magazines and newspaper clippings. These depicted him as having led a life more adventurous and flamboyant than those of the heroes he played in films.

  But I still did not have the money to quit writing fiction long enough to travel around the country interviewing people who’d known him—even if I could have found them. There were some who could have given me details of his careers as a Texas Ranger, a U.S. Marshal in New Mexico, a deputy sheriff in the Oklahoma Territory, a Rough Rider with Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, a soldier in the Philippine Insurrection and the Boxer Rebellion, a horse breaker for the British and possibly as a mercenary for both sides in the Boer War, as a mercenary for Madero in Mexico, as a Wild West show performer, and as the highest-paid movie actor of his time.

  The articles about him couldn’t be trusted. Even those who claimed to have known him well gave differing accounts of his life. His obituaries were full of contradictions. And I knew that Fox and Universal had put out a lot of publicity stories about him, most of which had to be checked out for exaggeration or downright lies.

  The woman who thought she was his first wife had written a biography of him. You’d never know from it that he had divorced her and married twice thereafter. Or had two daughters by another woman. Or that he had a “drinking problem.” Or an illegitimate son who was a jeweler in London.

  She thought she was his first wife, but, as it turned out, she was his second or third. Nobody’s too sure about that.

  That he was still a flawless hero to her even after all this says much about the man, though. It says even more about her.

  A good friend of mine, Coryell Varoll (you remember him, a circus acrobat, juggler, tightrope walker, gargantuan beer drinker, a Tarzan fan) wrote me about him. In 1964, I think.

  “I remember the first time I met him I thought I was meeting God… over the years, being on the same lot with him many times” (in the circus, he means) “the awe fell apart but he was always liked by most people and always idolized by the kids even after he quit making pix… I know that sober he was a swell guy, drunk he’d fight at the least excuse and do some of the damnedest things (don’t we all?)… I’ve a few dozen stories about him that never made the publications. I’ll tell them the next time we get together.”

  But somehow Cory never did.

  Even his birthdate was in doubt. His studios and his wife claimed he was born in 1880. The monument near Florence, Arizona (where he died doing 80 mph on a dirt road), says 1880. But there was contrary evidence that it was 1870. Whether he was sixty or seventy, though, he looked like a young fifty. He always kept himself in great shape.

  Also, a friend who saw him off on his fatal trip said he was driving a yellow Ford convertible. His wife said it was white. So much for eyewitnesses. The studio publicity departments claimed he was born and raised in Texas. I found out myself that that was a lie. He was born near Mix Run, Pennsylvania, and he left there when he was eighteen to enter the Army.

  Just as I was about to write to the War Department to get a copy of his military record—and find out for myself just what he had done in the Army—a novel by Darryl Ponicsan came out. I was stymied again; again, too late. Though the book was semifictional, its author had done the job of research that I’d been planning to do.

  So—my hero wasn’t the grandson of a Cherokee chief. Nor was he born in El Paso, Texas. And, though he was in the Army, he hadn’t been severely wounded at San Juan Hill nor wounded in the Philippines.

  Actually, he’d enlisted the day after the Spanish-American War started. I’m sure—as was Ponicsan—that he hoped to get into action. There is no doubt that he had great courage and that he desired to be where the bullets were the thickest.

  Instead, he was kept at the fort, then honorably discharged. He thereupon reenlisted. But still, no action. So he deserted in 1902.

  He did not go to South Africa, as the studios claimed. Instead, he married a young schoolteacher and went with her to the Oklahoma Territory. Either her father got the marriage annulled or she just left him and a divorce was never filed. Nobody’s sure.

  While working as a bartender, shortly before he went to work for the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma, he married another woman. This didn’t work out, and he apparently failed to divorce her, too.

  Most of what the studio publicity departments—and Rider himself—claimed was false. These tales were made up to glamorize a man who did not need it. Rider went along with these tales, maybe made up some himself for the studios. After a while he got to believing them himself. I mean, really believing them. I should know. I’ve heard him relate almost all of the prevarications, and it’s evident that by now the fiction is as genuine as the reality to him.

  This blurring of distinction between reality and fantasy in no way interfered with his competency in real life, of course.

  He did, however, reject Fox’s wish to advertise him as the illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill. That might have started inquiries which would have exposed the whole truth.

  And he never says a word about having been a great movie star. He does tell stories about his film experiences, but in these he’s always an extra.

  Why is he using a pseudonym? I don’t know.

  His third wife described him as tall, slender, and dark. I suppose that in the early 1900s he wo
uld have been considered a tall man, though he’s shorter than I am. His slim body does contain steel-wire muscles. Farrington is shorter than he but very muscular. He’s always after Tom to Indian wrestle him, especially when he (Farrington) has been drinking. Tom obliges. They put an elbow on the table, lock raised hands, and then try to force each other’s hand down to the table. It’s a long struggle, but Tom usually wins. Farrington laughs, but I think he’s really chagrined.

  I’ve wrestled with both of them, coming out about fifty percent winner (or loser). I can beat both of them in the dashes and the long jump. But when it comes to boxing or stick fighting, I usually get licked. I don’t have their “killer instinct.” Besides, this macho thing never was important to me. Though that may be because I suppressed it from some unconscious fear of competition.

  It’s important to Farrington. If it is to Tom, he never shows it.

  Anyway, it was a thrill to be with these two. It still is, though familiarity breeds, if not contempt, familiarity.

  Tom Rider has been up and down The River for hundreds of thousands of kilometers and has three times been killed. Once he was resurrected near the mouth of The River. By near I mean he was only about 20,000 kilometers distant. This was the arctic region. The River’s mouth is, like its headwaters, near the North Pole. However, the two seem to be diametrically opposite, the waters issuing from the mountains in one hemisphere and emptying into the mountains in the other hemisphere.

  From what I’ve heard, there’s a sea around the North Pole, and it’s walled by a circular mountain which would make Mount Everest look like a wart. The sea pours out of a hole at the base of the mountains, winds back and forth in one hemisphere, finally curving around the South Pole to the other hemisphere. There it wriggles like a snake up and down from the antarctic to the arctic and back again a thousand or so times, and finally empties into the north polar mountains. (Actually, it’s one mountain—like a volcanic cone.)

  If I drew a sketch of The River, it’d look like the Midgard Serpent of Norse myth, a world-girdling snake with its tail in its mouth.