Riverworld03- The Dark Design (1977) Read online

  He was close, breathing the whiskey fumes up into her face. He was a head shorter than she, his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and deep chest making a curious contrast with long, skinny legs. His large eyes were brown, the balls bloodshot. His head was large, his forehead bulged, his bronze hair was so curly that it was almost kinky, his skin was bronze-red. He was supposed to be a mulatto, but the Caucasian and Onondaga Indian genes seemed to be dominant. He could pass for a Provencal or Catalonian. Or just about anything South European.

  He looked her up and down. Was his bold stare supposed to challenge her to knock him down as she had Cyrano?

  Jill said, "What are you thinking of? My qualifications for airship officer? Or what kind of body is under these baggy towels?"

  Firebrass burst out laughing. When he had recovered, he said, "Both."

  Schwartz looked embarrassed. He was short and slight, blue eyed and brown haired. Jill glared at him, and he turned away. Ezekiel Hardy was, like Cyrano, almost as tall as she. He was narrow faced, high cheekboned, black haired. He stared at her with hard pale-blue eyes.

  "I'll repeat this because it needs to be stressed," she said. "I'm as good as any man and ready to prove it. And I'm a godsend. I have an engineering degree and I can design an airship from A to Z. I have 8342 hours flight-time in four different types of blimp. I can handle any post, including captain."

  "What proof do we have?" Hardy said. "You could be lying."

  "Where are your papers?" Jill said. "And even if you were skipper of a whaling ship, so what? What qualification is that for a dirigible man?"

  "Now, now," Firebrass said. "Don't let us get our bowels in an uproar. I believe you, Gulbirra. I don't think you're one of the many phonies I've had to put up with.

  "But let's get one thing straight. You are a hell of a lot more qualified than I am – as of this moment, anyway – to command the ship. But nevertheless, I am the captain, the boss, the head cheese! I'm running this whole show from start to finish. On the ground and up there. I didn't give up being chief engineer on Clemens' boat so I could take a minor position in this project.

  "It's Captain Firebrass, and don't ever forget that. If that's okay, signed and sealed in blood, then I'll be jumping with joy to welcome you aboard. You might even be first mate – no sexual implications involved – though I can't promise that. The roster is a long way from being filled."

  He paused, cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes.

  "First thing off. You have to swear by your personal honor – and by God, if you believe in one – that you'll obey the laws of Parolando. No ifs, ands, or buts."

  Gulbirra hesitated. She licked her lips, feeling their dryness. She desired – no, lusted for – the airship. She could visualize it even now. It hovered over them, casting a shadow over her and Firebrass, shining silvery where the imaginary sun struck it.

  "I'm not going to sacrifice any of my principles!" she said. She spoke so loudly that she startled the men. "Are men and women equal here? Is there any discrimination in sex, race, nationality, and so forth? Especially in sex?"

  "No," Firebrass said. "Theoretically and legally, that is. Actually, that is, personally, there is, of course. And there is, as there has always been everywhere and everytime, discrimination based on competency. We have high standards here. If you're one of those who think that a person should be given a job just because he – or she – belongs to a group that has been discriminated against, forget it. Or move your ass on out of here."

  She was silent for a moment. The men looked at her, obviously aware of the struggle inside her.

  Firebrass grinned again. "You're not the only one in agony," he said. "I want you in the worst way, just as you want in the worst way, that is, the best way, to be one of the crew. But I've got my principles, just as you have yours."

  He jerked a thumb at Schwartz and Hardy. "Look at them. Both nineteenth-century. One's an Austrian; one, a New Englander. But they've not only accepted me as the captain, they're good friends. Maybe they still believe, way deep down, that I'm an uppity nigger, but they'd take a poke at anyone who called me that. Right, men?"

  They nodded.

  "Thirty-one years on The Riverworld changes a person. If he's capable of being changed. So, what do you say? Want to hear the constitution of Parolando?"

  "Of course. I wouldn't make a decision until I knew what I was getting into."

  "It was formulated by the great Sam Clemens, who left on his boat, the Mark Twain, almost a year ago."

  "The Mark Twain? That's pretty egotistical, isn't it?"

  "The name was chosen by popular vote. Sam protested, though not very strongly. Anyway, you interrupted me. There's an unwritten rule that nobody interrupts the captain. So here goes. We, the people of Parolando, do hereby declare . . ."

  There was no hesitation nor, as far as she knew, any mistakes in the long recital. The almost total lack of the written word had forced the literate population to rely on memory. A skill that once had flourished only among preliterates – and actors – was now general property.

  While the words rose to the sky, the sky became brighter. The mists shrank to their knees. The valley floor was still covered with what looked at a distance like snow. The foothills beyond the plains were no longer distorted. The long hill grass, the bushes, the irontrees, oaks, pines, yews, and bamboo no longer looked like a Japanese painting, misty, unreal, and far off. The huge flowers that grew from the thick vines intertwined on the irontree branches were beginning to collect color. When the sun would hit them, they would glow with vivid reds, greens, blues, blacks, whites, yellows, stripes and diamonds of mixed colors.

  The western precipices were blue-black stone on which were enormous splotches of bluish-green lichen. Here and there, narrow cataracts fell dull-silvery down the mountain sides.

  All of this was familiar to Jill Gulbirra. But each morning awoke in her the same sense of awe and wonder. Who had formed this many million kilometers long Rivervalley? And why? And how and why had she, along with an estimated thirty-four to thirty-seven billion people, been resurrected on this planet? Everybody who had ever lived from about 2,000,000 B.C. to 2008 A.D. seemed to have been raised from the dead. The exceptions were children who'd died at or under the age of five and the mentally retarded. And also, possibly, the hopelessly insane, though there was doubt about the definition of hopelessly.

  Who were the people who had done this? Why?

  There were rumors and tales, strange, disturbing, and maddening, of people who had appeared among the lazari. Briefly. Mysteriously. They were named, among other things, the Ethicals.

  "Are you listening?'' Firebrass said. She became aware that they were staring at her. "I can give you back, almost verbatim, what you've said so far," she answered.

  This wasn't true. But she was sensitized – keeping one ear open, as it were, like an antenna receiving on a single frequency – for what she considered important.

  Now the people were coming out of the huts, stretching, coughing, lighting up cigarettes, heading for the bamboo-walled latrines, or walking toward The River, grails in hand. The hardy wore only a towel; most were clad from head to foot. Bedouins of the Rivervalley. Phantoms in a mirage.

  Firebrass said, "Okay. You ready to be sworn in? Or do you have mental reservations?"

  "I never have those," she said. "What about you? In regard to me, I mean?"

  "It wouldn't matter, anyway." He grinned again. "This oath is only a preliminary one. You'll be on probation for three months, then the people vote on you. But I can veto the vote. Then you take the final oath, if you pass. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  She didn't like it, but what could she do? She certainly wasn't going to walk out. Besides, though they didn't know it, they'd be on probation with her.

  The air became warmer. The eastern sky continued to brighten, quenching all but a few giant stars. Bugles blew. The nearest was on top of a six-story bamboo tower, in the middle of the plain, and the bugler was a tall
, skinny black wearing a scarlet towel around his waist.

  "Real brass," Firebrass said. "There are some deposits of copper and zinc a little ways upstream. We could have taken them away from the people who owned it, but we traded instead. Sam wouldn't let us use force unless it was necessary.

  "South of here, where SoulCity used to be, were big deposits of cryolite and bauxite. The Soul Citizens wouldn't keep their side of the bargain – we were trading steel weapons for the ores – so, we went down and took it. In fact," he waved his hand, "Parolando now extends for 64 kilometers on both sides of The River."

  The men removed all cloths except for those around the waist. Jill kept on a green-and-white-striped kilt and a thin, nearly transparent cloth around her breasts. They had looked like desert Arabs; now they were Polynesians.

  The dwellers of the plains and the bases of the foothills were gathering by the Riverside. A number shucked all their cloths and jumped into the water, whooping at the cold and splashing each other.

  Jill hesitated for a minute. She had sweat all day and all night paddling her canoe. She needed a bath, and sooner or later she'd have to disrobe entirely. She dropped her towels and ran to the bank and dived flatly out. After swimming back; she borrowed a bar of soap from a woman and lathered the upper part of her body. She came out of the water shivering and rubbed herself vigorously.

  The men stared frankly, seeing a very tall woman, slim, long lagged, small breasted, wide hipped, deeply tanned. She had short, straight, russet hair and large russet eyes. Her face, as she well knew, was nothing to write home about. It was passable except for large buck teeth and a nose a little too long and too hawkish. The teeth were an inheritance from her blackfeller grandmother. There was nothing she could do about them. Nor was there anything she wanted to do about them.

  Hardy's gaze was fastened on her pubic hair, which was extraordinarily long, thick, and ginger colored. Well, he'd get over that, and he was as close to it as he was ever going to get.

  Firebrass went around the side of the grailstone and returned with a spear. Just below the steel head, attached to the shaft, was a large vertebral bone from a hornfish. He drove the spear straight into the ground beside her canoe.

  "The bone means it's my spear, the captain's," he said. "I stuck it in the ground by the canoe to tell everybody that it's not to be borrowed without permission. There are a lot of things like that for you to learn. Meanwhile, Schwartz can show you your quarters and then give you a guided tour. Report to me at high noon under that irontree there."

  He indicated a tree about 90 meters to the west. Towering over 300 meters, if had a thick, gnarly grey bark, scores of great branches extending 90 meters outward, huge elephant's-ear leaves with green and red stripes. Its roots surely drove down at least 120 meters, and its unburnable wood was so hard it would resist a steel saw.

  "We call it The Chief. Meet me there."

  The bugles rang out again. The crowds organized themselves into a military formation under the directions of officers. Firebrass pulled himself onto the top of the grailstone. He stood there, watching while the roll call was made. The corporals reported to the sergeants and the sergeants to the lieutenants, and they to the adjutant. Then Hardy to Firebrass. A moment later, the mob was dismissed. However, they did not leave. Firebrass got off the mushroom-shaped stone, and the corporals took his place. These put the grails in the depressions on the surface of the stone.

  Schwartz was beside her. He cleared his throat. "Gulbirra? I'll take care of your grail."

  She took it from the canoe and handed it to him. This was a grey metal cylinder, 45.72 centimeters across, 76.20 centimeters high, weighing empty about 0.55 kilogram. It had a lid which, once shut, could be lifted only by the owner. There was a curved handle on the lid. Tied to it by a bamboo fiber rope was her I.D., a tiny baked-clay dirigible. It bore her initials on both sides.

  Schwartz ordered a man to place her grail on the stone. The man did so quickly, glancing often at the eastern peaks. But he was safe by two minutes. At the end of that time, the sun ballooned over the top. A few seconds later, the mushroom-shape spouted blue flames over 9 meters high. The roar of its discharged electricity mingled with the thunder of every stone on both sides of The River for as far as could be seen. All these years had not inured Jill to the sight or sound. Though expecting it, she jumped a little. The report rolled back from the reflector of the mountains, echoed again, and died out with a mutter.

  Everybody had breakfast.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  They were on a foothill. The tall esparto-like grass had been recently mown to about a centimeter and a half-length. "We have some machines that do that, though much cutting is done with sickles," David Schwartz said. "The grass is made into ropes."

  "We didn't have any machines where I come from," Jill said. "We used flint sickles. But we made rope from it, of course."

  It was shady and cool here. The branches of an iron tree spread out to cover a small village, a scattering of square or round huts of bamboo. Many of them were thatched with the scarlet and green leaves of the iron tree. A rope ladder dangled from the lowest branch of the colossus, 33 meters up. Near it, a hut sat on a platform supported on two branches. There were other rope ladders, other platforms and huts here and there.

  "Perhaps you will be assigned one of them after your probation," Schwartz said. "Meanwhile, here's your home."

  Jill entered the indicated doorway. At least, she did not have to stoop in this. So many people were short and had therefore built low entrances.

  She set her grail and bundles down on the floor. Schwartz followed her in. "This belonged to a couple killed by a dragonfish. It came up out of the water as if it had been fired from a cannon. It bit off one end of the fishing craft. Unfortunately, the couple were standing on the end and were swallowed along with the logs.

  "It was also unfortunate that this happened after the resurrections ceased. So, they won't be appearing elsewhere, I suppose. You haven't heard anything about new lazari, have you? Recently?"

  "No, I haven't," she said. "Nothing reliable, anyway."

  "Why do you suppose it stopped? After all these years?"

  "I don't know," she said sharply. Talking about this made her uneasy. Why had the gift of immortality been so suddenly withdrawn?

  "Bloody hell with it," she said loudly. She looked around. The floor was hidden under grass that reached almost to her crotch. The blades rasped against her legs. She would have to cut the grass close to the ground and then bring in earth to cover it. Even then the blades might not die. The roots went so deep and were so interconnected that the grass could flourish without benefit of sunshine. Apparently they could draw their sustenance from the roots of those exposed to light.

  A steel sickle hung from a peg on the wall. Steel was so common here that this tool, priceless elsewhere, had not been stolen.

  She moved around, slowly, so that the sharp edges of the grass would not cut her legs. She found two clay pots – thundermugs – in the tall green. A jar for drinking water was on a bamboo table which had not as yet been overturned by the pressure of the growing grass. A necklace of fish bones hung on another peg. Two bamboo cots and pillows and mattresses, made from magnetically locked cloths stuffed with leaves, were partially hidden by the grass. Near them lay a harp made from turtle-fish shell and fish intestines.

  "Well, it's not much," she said. "But then it never is, is it?" "It's big enough, though," Schwartz said. "Plenty of room for you and your mate – when you find one."

  Jill took the sickle from the peg and swiped at the grass. The blades fell like so many heads. "Hah!"

  Schwartz looked at her as if he wondered if she would go from the grass to him.

  "Why do you assume that I want a lover?" "Why, why, why, everybody, that is, everybody does." "Everybody doesn't," she said. She hung the sickle back onto the peg. "What's next on this Cook's tour?"

  She had expected that, when they were alone in t
he hut, he would ask her to go to bed with him. So many men did. It was evident now that he would like to ask her, but he didn't have the guts. She felt relief mixed with contempt. Then she told herself that it was a strange feeling, self-contradictory. Why should she look down on him because he behaved as she wanted him to behave?

  Perhaps some disappointment was also present. When a man got too aggressive, despite her warnings, then she chopped his neck with the edge of her hand, squeezed his testicles, kicked him in the stomach while he writhed on the ground. No matter how big and strong a man, he was taken by surprise. They were all helpless, at least while the agony in the testicles lasted. Afterward . . . well, most of them left her alone. Some had tried to kill her, but she was ready for that. They didn't know how handy she was with a knife – or with any weapon.

  David Schwartz was unaware of how narrowly he had escaped crippling and a permanent dent in his ego.

  "It's quite safe to leave your belongings here. We've never had a case of theft yet."

  "I'll take the grail. I'd feel nervous if I couldn't keep my eye on it."

  He shrugged and took a cigar from the leather bag hanging from his shoulder. One of this morning's offerings from his grail.

  "Not in here," she said quietly. "This is my home, and I don't want it stunk up."

  He looked surprised, but he shrugged again. As soon as they had stepped out, however, he lit it. And he moved from her left side to upwind, puffing vigorously, blowing in her direction.

  Jill repressed the remark she wanted so much to make. It would be indiscreet to offend him too much, to give him a chance to black-mark her. After all, she was on probation; she was a woman; she wouldn't needlessly antagonize a man with such a high position, a good friend of Firebrass'. But she would bend her principles, her neck, only so far.

  Or would she? She had taken a lot of crap on Earth because she had wanted to be an airship officer. And smiled and gone home and smashed dishes and pottery and written dirty words on the wall. Childish, but satisfactory. And here she was, in a similar situation, undreamed of until several years ago. She couldn't go someplace else, because there wasn't any other place. Here was where the only airship in the world would be built. And that was to be a one-shot, a single-voyage phenomenon.