R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth Read online

  "How many survived?"

  Malory said, "We don't know yet."

  A few minutes later, the first of twenty-two corpses, some very charred, were brought to the bank. One of them was a woman's. Though the search continued through the night and part of the morning these were all that were found. The Frenchman was the single survivor. Though he was weak and still in shock, he insisted on getting up and taking part in the search. When he saw the bodies by a grailstone, he burst into tears and sobbed for a long time. Malory took this as a good indication of the man's health. At least he wasn't in such deep trauma that he was unable to express his grief.

  "Where have the others gone?" the stranger demanded.

  Then his sorrow became rage, and he shook his fist at the skies and howled damnation at someone named Thorn. Later, he asked if anybody had seen or heard another aircraft, a helicopter. Many had.

  "Which way did it go?" he said.

  Some said that the machine making the strange chopping noise had gone down-River. Others said that it had gone up-River. Several days later, the report came that the machine had been seen sinking into The River two hundred miles upstream during a rainstorm. Only one person had witnessed that, and he claimed that a man had swum from the sinking craft. A message via drum was sent to the area asking if any strangers had suddenly appeared. The reply was that none had been located.

  A number of grails were found floating on The River, and these were brought to the survivor. He identified one as his, and he ate a meal from it that afternoon. Several of the grails were "free" containers. That is, they could be opened by anybody, and these were confiscated by the state of New Hope.

  The Frenchman then asked if any gigantic boats propelled by paddlewheels had passed this point. He was told that one had, the Rex Grandissimus, commanded by the infamous King John of England.

  "Good," the man said. He thought for a while, then said, "I could just stay here and wait until the Mark Twain comes by. But I don't think I will. I'm going after Thorn."

  By then, he felt recovered .enough to talk about himself. And how he talked about himself!

  "I am Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac," he said. "I prefer to be called Savinien, but for some reason most people prefer Cyrano. So I allow that small liberty. After all, later ages referred to me as Cyrano, and though it was a mistake, I am so famous that people cannot get used to my preference. They think they know better than I do.

  "No doubt you've heard of me."

  He regarded his hosts as if they should feel honored to have such a great man as their guest.

  "It pains me to admit that I have not," Malory said.

  "What? I was the greatest swordsman of my time, perhaps, no, undoubtedly, of all times. There is no reason for me to be modest. I do not hide my light under a bushel or, in fact, under anything. I was also the author of some remarkable literary works. I wrote books about trips to the sun and to the moon, very pointed and witty satire. My play, The Pedant Out-Witted, was, I understand, used with some modifications by a certain Monsieur Moliere and presented as his own. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Certainly he did use much of the comedy. I also understand that an Englishman named Jonathan Swift used some of my ideas in his Gulliver's Travels. I do not blame them, since I myself was not above using the ideas of others, though I improved upon them."

  "That is all very well, sir," Malory said, forbearing to mention his own works. "But if it does not make you overwrought, you could tell us how you came here in that airship and what caused it to burst into flames."

  De Bergerac was staying with the Malorys until an empty hut could be found or he could be loaned the tools to construct one for himself. At this time, though, he and his hosts and perhaps a hundred more were seated or standing by a big fire outside the hut.

  It was a long tale, more fabulous even than the teller's own fictions or Malory's. Sir Thomas, however, had the feeling that the Frenchman was not telling all that had happened.

  When the narrative was finished, Malory mused aloud, "Then it is true that there is a tower in the center of the north polar sea, the sea from whence flows The River and to which it returns? And it is true that whoever is responsible for this world lives in that tower? I wonder what happened to this Japanese, this Piscator? Did the residents of the tower, who surely must be angels, invite him to stay with them because, in a sense, he'd entered the gates of paradise? Or did they send him elsewhere, to some distant part of The River, perhaps?

  "And this Thorn, what could account for his criminal behavior? Perhaps he was a demon in disguise."

  De Bergerac laughed loudly and scornfully.

  When he had stopped, he said, "There are no angels nor demons, my friend. I do not now maintain, as I did on Earth, that there is no God. But to admit to the existence of a Creator does not oblige one to believe in such myths as angels and demons."

  Malory hotly insisted that there were indeed such. This led to an argument in the course of which the Frenchman walked away from his audience. He spent the night, from what Malory heard, in the hut of a woman who thought that if he was such a great swordsman he must also be a great lover. From her accounts, he was, though perhaps too much devoted to that fashion of making love which many thought reached its perfection, or nadir of degeneracy, in France. Malory was disgusted. But later that day de Bergerac appeared to apologize for his ingratitude to the man who'd saved his life.

  "I should not have scoffed at you, my host, my savior. I tender you a thousand apologies, for which I hope to receive one forgiveness."

  "You are forgiven," Malory said, sincerely. "Perhaps, though you forsook our Church on Earth and have blasphemed against God, you would care to attend the mass being said tonight for the souls of your departed comrades?"

  "That is the least I can do," de Bergerac said.

  During the mass, he wept copiously, so much so that .after it Malory took advantage of his high emotions. He asked him if he was ready to return to God.

  "I am not aware that I ever left Him, if He exists," the Frenchman said. "I was weeping with grief for those I loved on the Parseval and for those whom I did not love but respected. I was weeping with rage against Thorn or whatever his real name is. And I was also weeping because men and women are still ignorant and superstitious enough to believe in this flummery."

  "You refer to the mass?",Malory said icily.

  "Yes, forgive me again!'' de Bergerac cried.

  "Not until you truly repent," Malory said, "and if you address your repentance to that God whom you have offended so grievously."

  "Quelle merde!" de Bergerac said. But a moment later he embraced Malory and kissed him on both cheeks. "How I wish that your belief was indeed fact! But if it were, then how could I forgive God!"

  He bade adieu to Malory, saying that he would probably never see him again. Tomorrow morning, he was setting out up-River. Malory suspected that de Bergerac would have to steal a boat to do so, and he was right.

  Malory often thought of the man who'd leaped from the burning dirigible, the man who had actually been to the tower which many spoke about but none had seen except for the Frenchman and his crewmates. Or if the story could be believed, a group of ancient Egyptians and a huge hairy subhuman.

  Less than three years later, the second great paddlewheeled boat came by. This was even more huge than the Rex and it was more luxurious and faster and better armored and weaponed. But it was not called the Mark Twain. Its captain, Samuel Clemens, an American, had renamed it the Not For Hire. Apparently, he'd heard that King John was calling his own boat, the original Not For Hire, the Rex Grandissimus. So Clemens had taken back the name and ceremoniously had it painted on the hull.

  The boat stopped off to recharge its batacitor and to charge its grails. Malory didn't get a chance to talk to the captain, but he did see him and his surprising bodyguard. Joe Miller was indeed an ogre, ten feet high and weighing eight hundred pounds. His body was not as hairy as Malory expected from the tales. He was no more hirsute than many m
en Malory had seen, though the hairs were longer. And he did have a face with massive prognathic jaws and a nose like a gigantic cucumber or a proboscis monkey's. Yet he had the look of intelligence.

  4

  * * *

  On drove the pursuer.

  It was an hour to high noon. In another hour, the fabulous riverboat would be anchored, and a very thick aluminum cable would connect a copper cap placed over a grailstone to the batacitor in the vessel. When the stone delivered its tremendous voltage, the batacitor would be charged again and the grails on another copper plate in the boat would be filled with food, liquor, and other items.

  Its hull was white except over the paddle boxes, or wheel guards, over the four paddlewheels. On these were painted in big black letters: NOT FOR HIRE. Under this in smaller letters: Samuel Clemens, Captain. And under this line, in still smaller letters: Owned and Operated By The Avengers, Inc.

  Above the pilothouse was a jack staff flying a square light-blue flag on which was a scarlet phoenix.

  From the stern or verge staff, leaning at a forty-five-degree angle from the stern of the lowest deck, was another flag with a light-blue field and bearing a scarlet phoenix.

  Sam's boat was 550 feet and eight inches long. Its breadth over the paddleboxes, or paddlewheel guards, was 115 feet. Its draft was 18 feet when fully loaded.

  There were five major decks. The lowest, the A or boiler deck, held various storage rooms, the enormous batacitor, which rose from a well into the next deck, the four electrical motors which drove the paddlewheels, and a huge boiler.

  The batacitor was an enormous electrical device fifty feet wide and forty-three feet high. One of Sam's engineers had claimed it was a late twentieth- century invention. But, since the engineer had said he'd lived past 1983, Sam suspected that he was an agent. (He was long dead.)

  The batacitor (from battery-capacitor) could take in the enormous voltage discharged from a grailstone within a second and deliver it all within a second or in a mere trickle, as required. It was the power source for the four massive paddlewheel motors and for the other electrical needs of the boat, including the air-conditioning.

  The electrically heated boiler was sixty feet wide and thirty high and was used to heat water for the showers and to heat the cabins, to make alcohol, to power the steam machine guns and fighter-plane steam catapults, and to provide air for the compressed-air cannon and steam for the boat's whistles and the two smokestacks. The smokestacks were misnamed, since they only vented a steam which was colored to simulate smoke when Sam felt like putting on a show.

  At water level in the rear of the boiler deck was a big door which could be raised to admit or let out the two launches and the torpedo-bomber.

  The deck above, the B or main deck, was set back to provide an exterior passageway, called the promenade deck.

  On the Mississippi riverboats which Sam had piloted when young, the lowest deck had been called the main deck and the one above that the boiler deck. But since the boiler in the Not For Hire had its base in the lowest deck, Sam had renamed that the boiler deck. And he called the one above it the main deck. It had been confusing at first for his pilots, who were accustomed to Terrestrial usage, but they had gotten used to it.

  Sometimes, when the boat was anchored off the bank of a peaceable area, Sam gave the crew shore leave (except for the guards, of course). Then he would conduct a tour for the local high .muckymucks. Dressed in a white fishskin-leather jacket, a long white kiltcloth, and white calf-length boots and wearing a white leather captain's hat, he would take his guests from top to bottom of the boat. Of course, he and some marines kept a sharp eye on them, since the contents of the Not For Hire must have proved very tempting to landlubbing stay- at- homes.

  Puffing on a cigar between his sentences, Sam would explain everything, well, almost everything, to his curious party.

  Having led them through the A or boiler deck, Sam would then take them up the steps to the B or main deck.

  "Navy people would call this series of steps a ladder," he said. "But since most of my crew were landlubbers, and since we do have some real ladders aboard, I decided to call the stairways stairways. After all, you go up them on steps, not rungs. In the same spirit, I dictated, despite the outraged protests of naval veterans, that walls should not be called bulkheads but walls. However, I did allow a distinction between your ordinary door and hatches. Hatches are those thick airtight watertight doors which can be locked with a lever mechanism."

  "And what kind of weapon is that?" a tourist would ask. He'd point at a long tubular duraluminum device looking like a cannon and mounted on a platform. Big plastic tubes ran .into the breech.

  "That's a steam machine gun, .80 caliber. It contains a complicated device which permits a stream of plastic bullets, fed through a pipe from below, to be fired at a rapid rate from the gun. Steam from the boiler provides the propulsive power."

  Once, a person who'd been on the Rex said, "King John's boat has a .75-caliber steam machine gun, several of them."

  "Yes. I designed those myself. But the son of a bitch stole the boat, and when I built this one, I made my guns bigger than his."

  He showed them the rows of windows, "not ports but windows," along the exterior passageway. "Which some of my crew have the unmitigated ignorance or brazen gall to call corridors or even halls. Of course, they do that behind my back."

  He took them into a cabin to impress upon them its commodiousness and luxuriousness.

  "There are one hundred and twenty-eight cabins, each of which is fitted for two persons. Notice the snap-up bed, made from brass. Eye-ball the porcelain toilets, the shower stall with hot and cold running water, the wash basin with brass plumbing, the mirrors framed in brass, the oak bureaus. They're not very large, but then we don't carry many changes of clothes aboard. Notice also the weapons rack, which may hold pistols, rifles, spears, swords, and bows. The carpeting is made of human hairs. And pop your eyes out at the painting on the wall. It's an original by Motonobu, A.D. 1476 to 1559, the great Japanese painter who founded the style of painting called Kano. In the next cabin are some paintings by Zeuxis of Heraclea. There are ten in there. As a matter of fact it's Zeuxis' own cabin. He, as you may or may not know, was the great fifth-century B.C. painter born in Heraclea, a Greek colony in south Italy. It's said of him that he painted a bunch of grapes so realistically that birds tried to eat it. Zeuxis won't confirm or deny this tale. For myself, I prefer photographs, but I do have some paintings in my suite. One by a Pieter de Hooch, a Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. Near it is one by the Italian, Giovanni Fattori, A.D. 1825 to 1908. Poor fellow. It may be his final work, since he fell overboard during a party and was smashed to shreds by the paddle wheel. Even if he were resurrected, which isn't likely, he won't find pigments enough for a single painting anywhere but on this boat and the Rex"

  Sam took them along the outside or promenade deck to the bow. Here was mounted an 88-millimeter cannon. So far, Sam said, it hadn't been used, and new gunpowder would soon have to be made to refill the charges.

  "But when I catch up with the Rex, I'll blow Rotten John out of the water with this."

  He also pointed out the rocket batteries on the promenade, heat-seeking missiles with a range of a mile and a half and carrying warheads of forty pounds of plastic explosive.

  "If the cannons miss, these'll shred his ass."

  One of the women tourists was well acquainted with Clemens' work and biographies about him. She spoke in a low voice to her companion. "I never realized that Mark Twain was so bloodthirsty."

  "Madame," Sam said, having overheard her, "I am not bloodthirsty! I am the most pacifistic of men! I loathe violence, and the idea of war puts my bowels into an uproar. If you'd read my essays about war and those who love it, you'd know that. But I have been forced into this situation and many like it. To survive, you must lie better than the liars, deceive more than the, deceivers, and kill the killers first! For me, it's sheer necessity, though justifie
d! What would you do if King John had stolen your boat after you'd gone through years of search for iron and other metals to build your dream! And years of fighting others who wanted to take them away from you after you'd found them, and on every side treachery and murder all directed against you! And what would you do if that John killed some of your good friends and your wife and then sped away laughing at you! Would you let him get away with it? I think not, not if you've got an ounce of courage."

  "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," a man said.

  "Yes. Maybe. But if there is a Lord, and He works His vengeance, how's He going to do it without using humans as His hands? Did you ever hear of any wicked person being struck down by lightning, except by accident? Lightning also strikes thousands of innocents every year, you know! No, He has to use human beings as His instruments, and who else is better qualified than me? Or more made by circumstances into His keen and purposefully designed tool?"

  Sam was so upset that he had to send a marine up to the grand salon to get four ounces of bourbon to settle his nerves.

  Before the drink was brought down to Sam, a tourist muttered, "Bullshit!"

  "Throw that man off the boat!" Sam shouted. And it was done.

  "You're a very angry man," the woman who knew his works said.

  "Yes, ma'am, I am. And with good reason. I was angry on Earth, and I'm angry here."

  The marine brought Sam's whiskey. He downed it quickly and then continued the tour with his good humor restored.

  He led the group up the grand staircase to the grand salon. They paused in the entrance, and the tourists oohed and ahed. It was two hundred feet long and fifty wide and the ceiling was twenty feet above the floor. Along the center of the ceiling was a line of five huge cut-glass chandeliers. There were many windows making the huge room well lighted and many wall and ceiling lights and towering ornate brass floor lamps.