Riverworld03- The Dark Design (1977) Page 8

  "Not that I chose that name because I identify with, or sympathize with, blackfellow culture," the Miz said. "I am one-quarter abo, but so what? It was a male chauvinist culture through and through, women were mere objects, subject to slavery, they did all the hard work and they were often beaten by their fathers and husbands. A lot of Caucasian males have sentimentalized about the destruction of abo society, but I personally thought it was a good thing. Of course, I deplore the suffering that went along with its disintegration."

  "Deploration, unlike defloration, is usually managed without pain," Mr. Bligh said.

  "Virginity! That's another male myth, invented solely to aggrandize the male ego and enforce his opinions about his property rights," Miz Gulbirra said bitterly. "Fortunately, that attitude changed considerably during my lifetime. But there are still plenty of pigs around, fossil boars, I called them, who . . ."

  "That's all very interesting," the dauntless dared to interrupt. "But you can reserve your opinions for the Letters to the Editor page. Mr. Bagg will print anything you say, no matter how scurrilous. Our readers just now would like to know what your professional plans are. Just how do you see yourself as contributing to Project Airship, as it's officially called? Just where do you think you'll fit into the hierarchy?"

  By now, the heavy acrid fumes of marijuana overrode all others. A wild, fierce light glittered in her drug-expanded pupils. Your correspondent felt it necessary to expand his rapidly shrinking dauntless state with another pull on the divine bottle.

  "By all logic and by right of superior knowledge, experience, and capability,'' she said slowly but loudly, "I should be in charge of the project. And I should be captain of the airship! I've checked out everybody's qualifications, and there's no doubt at all that I am by far the best qualified.

  "So why am I not put in charge of the construction? Why am I not even considered as a candidate for the captaincy? Why?"

  "Don't tell me," your intrepid answered. Possibly he was overly emboldened by the liquid lava coursing through his veins and dulling his otherwise fine sensibilities. "Don't tell me. Let me hazard a guess. Could it be, I'm just groping for an explanation, mind you, could it be that you are relegated to an inferior position because you are only a woman?"

  The subject stared at your correspondent, took another puff, drew it deep into her lungs, causing a slight lifting of slight breasts, and finally, face bluish with lack of oxygen, discharged the tag-ends of fumes through her nostrils. Your intrepid was reminded of pictures of dragons he had seen during his Terrestrial existence. He, however, thought of the better part of valor and did not remark upon the similarity.

  "You've got it," she said. "Maybe you're not so dense after all."

  Then, gripping the edge of the table as if she'd squeeze the wood, she sat up straight. "But just what do you mean by only a woman?"

  "Oh, that's only my verbalization of your thoughts," the intrepid said hastily. "I was being ironic. Or whatever . . ."

  "If I were a man," she said, "which, thank God I am not, I'd have been made at least first mate on the spot. And you wouldn't be sitting there sneering at me."

  "Oh, you're mistaken about that," our dauntless said. "I am not sneering at you. However, there is a point that you may have overlooked. It wouldn't make any difference what your sex is; you could have the biggest balls for 40,000 kilometers around, and you still wouldn't be put in charge.

  "Long before the Riverboat was built – the second one, I mean, not the one King John stole – it was agreed that Firebrass would be in charge of the airship project. It's even in the Parolando constitution, which you must know, since he himself recited it chapter and verse to you. You were aware of that and by taking the oath you accepted that. So, tell me, why all the bitching?"

  "You don't understand after all, do you, you clown?" she said. "The point is that that rule, that arrogantly imperious law, should never have been made."

  Your correspondent swallowed some more of the stuff that encourages – and stupefies – and said, "The point is that it was made. And if a man came along twice as qualified as you, he'd still have to accept the fact that he could never be higher than second. He could be Captain Firebrass' chief construction assistant and first mate on the ship. But that's all."

  "There isn't any such creature as twice as qualified as me," she said, "unless an officer from the Graf Zeppelin should show up. Listen, I'm getting tired of this."

  "It is rather hot and smoky in here," your correspondent said, wiping the sweat off his brow. "However, I would like to get more of your background, details of your earthly life, you know, human interest stuff. And also the story of what happened to you right after Resurrection Day. And . . ."

  "Are you hoping I'll get turned on by this joint and by your overwhelming male charm and virility?" she said. "Are you getting ready to make a pass at me?"

  "God forbid," I said. "This is a strictly professional visit. Besides . . ."

  "Besides," she said, and she was the one sneering now, "you're scared of me, aren't you? You're all alike. You have to be dominant, the superior. If you meet a woman with more brains, one who is able to handle you in a fight, who is clearly the superior, then the hot air whistles out of you like a pricked balloon. A balloon with a prick."

  "Now, really, Miz Gulbirra," your dauntless said, feeling his face heat up.

  "Bug off, little man," the subject said.

  Your correspondent thought it was wise to obey this imperative. The interview, though not complete from our viewpoint, was terminated.

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  Jill picked up the next evening's Leak from the distribution shack outside the press building. Some people who obviously had already read the news snickered or grinned at her. She opened the paper to the Newcomers page, suspecting what she would find there, angry before reading it.

  The pages rattled in her shaking hands. The interview was bad enough, though she should have known that a late-nineteenth-century man like Bagg would print such rot. What had he been, editor of some crummy yellow rag of some frontier town in the ArizonaTerritory? Yes, that was it. Tombstone. Firebrass had told her something about him.

  What really enraged her was the photograph. She hadn't been aware of it, but someone in the crowd her first morning here had snapped her picture. There she was, caught in a silly-looking, almost obscene, posture. Naked, bending over, her breasts hanging straight down like a cow's udders, the towel in one hand behind her and one before as she sawed it, drying her crotch. She was looking up, her mouth open, and she seemed all nose and buckteeth.

  Surely, the cameraman had taken other shots. But Bagg had chosen this one just to make her a laughingstock.

  She was so furious she almost forgot to pick up her grail. Swinging it from one hand, thinking how she was going to brain Bagg with it, the newspaper clutched in the other – it was also going to be jammed all the way up – she stormed toward the building. But when she got to the door, she stopped.

  "Come on, Jill!" she told herself. "You're reacting just as he hoped you would, just as they all hope you will. Play it cool; don't be a knee-jerk. Sure, it'd make you feel great to slam him around his office a little. But it might ruin everything. You've endured worse, and you've come out on top."

  She walked slowly homeward, the handle of the grail looped over one arm. In the fading light, she read the rest of the paper. She wasn't the only one Bagg had libeled, slandered, and mocked. Firebrass himself, though treated gently in the write-up on her, was severely criticized elsewhere and not only by Bagg. The vox pop page contained a number of signed letters from citizens outraged by Firebrass' policies.

  As she left the plain and started her winding way through the hills, she was softly hailed. Turning, she saw Piscator. He smiled as he walked toward her and said in an Oxford accent, "Good evening, citizen. May I accompany you? We will be happier in each other's company than alone? Or perhaps not?"

  Jill had to smile. He spoke so gravely, almost
in a seventeenth-century style. This impression was strengthened by his hat, a tall cylinder sloping inward to the top and with a wide circular brim. It reminded her of the hats of the New England Pilgrims. It was made of dark-red leather from the scale-less redfish. Several aluminum alloy flies were snagged in its brim. A black cloth was over his shoulders, held together at the throat. A dark-green cloth served as a kilt, and his sandals were of redfish leather.

  Over his shoulder was a bamboo rod. In the other hand was the handle of his grail. A newspaper was clamped by an arm to his body. A wicker basket hung by a strap from the other shoulder.

  He was tall for a Japanese, the top of his head coming to her nose. And his features were attractive, not too Mongolian.

  "I suppose you've read the paper?" she said.

  "Unhappily, most of it," he said. "But don't be grieved. As Solomon says of scoffers, Proverbs xxiv. 9. They are an abomination to mankind."

  "I prefer humankind," she said.

  He looked puzzled. "But what . . .? Ah, I see, you obviously object to man in mankind. But man means man, woman, and child in this usage."

  "I know it does," she said as if she were repeating this for the thousandth time, which she was. "I know it does. But the use of man conditions the speaker and the hearer to think of man as the human male only. The use of humankind, or personkind, conditions people to think of Homo sapiens as consisting of both sexes.''

  Piscator drew breath in through his teeth. She expected him to say, "Ah, so!" but he did not. Instead, he said, "I have in this basket three of the savory tench, if I may call them that. They are remarkably similar in appearance and taste to Terrestrial fish of that name. They are not quite as delicious as the grayling, if I may call them that, which are caught in the mountain streams. But they are much sport, a cunning and lusty fish."

  She decided that he must have learned his English from The Compleat Angler.

  "Would you care to share some of the fish with me tonight? I'll have them baked piping hot at 16:00 by the water-clock. I will also have a plentiful supply of skull-bloom."

  This was the local name for alcohol made from the lichen scraped off the mountain face. It was watered down, three parts to one, and then blossoms from the irontree vines were dried, crushed, and mixed with alcohol. After the blossoms had given a purplish color and a rose-like fragrance to the liquid, it was ready to be served.

  Jill hesitated for several seconds. She did not mind being alone – most of the time. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she did not get desperate, panicked, if she were thrown on her own resources. But she had been her only company for too long. The voyage up The River had taken four hundred and twenty days, and during most of that time she had been utterly alone by day. At night, she had eaten and talked with strangers. She had passed an estimated 501,020,000 people and had not seen one face she had known on Earth or Riverworld. Not one.

  But then she had seldom gotten close enough to the banks during the day to have recognized facial features. Her socializing at night was limited to a few people. What was mental agony, or would have been if she permitted herself such an emotion, was that she might have passed by some people she had loved on Earth, or, at least, liked. There were some she wanted very much to see again.

  Perhaps the one she most longed to talk to was Marie. What had Marie felt when she learned that her senseless jealousy had been responsible for the death of her lover, Jill Gulbirra? Would she have been grief-stricken, perhaps have taken her own life because of guilt? After all, Marie was suicide-prone. Or, rather, to be exact, prone to taking just enough pills to endanger her but not enough so that she could not get medical assistance in time to save her. Marie had come close to death at least three times that Jill knew about. But not very close.

  No, Marie would have been plunged into gloom and self-reproach for about three days. Then she would have swallowed about twenty Phenobarbitals and called her closest friend, probably another lover Jill thought, her breast hurting – the bitch! – and the lover would have called the hospital, and then there would be the stomach pump and the antidotes and the long, anxious waiting in the lobby and then the attendance by the bed while Marie rambled on half-mindlessly, still fogged by the drug but not so fogged that she would not be deliberately working on her lover's emotions. It would not just be sympathy that she would be evoking. The sadistic little bitch would also make a few wounding remarks to her lover, getting across some criticisms which she would claim later that she did not remember making.

  Then Marie would be taken to her apartment by her lover, and tenderly taken care of for a while, and then . . . Jill could not bear fantasizing that then.

  At these times she had to laugh, though grimly, at herself. It was thirty-one years after she had stormed out of the house and driven off, tires screaming, rubber burning, and raced recklessly through three stoplights and then . . . then the blinding lights and the blaring horn of the huge lorry and the savage wrenching at the wheel to turn the Mercedes-Benz, the frozen sickness inside her, the looming of the juggernaut, and. . . .

  And she had awakened with countless others, naked, her thirty year old body restored to a twenty-five year old state – minus certain blemishes and imperfections – on the banks of the Rivervalley. Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on making a hell of it.

  Thirty-one years ago. Time had not mended all hurts, not, at least, this one. By now she should have gotten over the mingled fury and grief. It should have receded beyond the horizon of things that mattered now. She should have no slightest emotion about Marie now. But she did.

  She was suddenly aware that the Japanese was looking at her. He evidently expected her to reply to something he had just said. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sometimes, I get lost in the past." "I am sorry, too," he said. "Sometimes . . . if one is using dreamgum as a means to rid oneself of painful or crippling memories or undesirable psychic states, one instead . . . gets lost." "No," she said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. "It's just that I have been alone so long, I have fallen into the habit of reverie. Why, when I was sailing the canoe up The River, I would do so automatically. Sometimes, I would realize that I had put ten kilometers behind me and not even been aware, consciously anyway, of what had happened during that time.

  "But now that I'm here, where I have a job that requires constant mental alertness, you will see that I can be as much on my toes as anyone."

  She added that because she knew that Piscator might report her to Firebrass. Absentmindedness was not to be tolerated in an airship officer.

  "I am sure you will," Piscator said. He paused, smiled, and said, "By the way, do not be worried about competition from me. I am not ambitious. I will be satisfied with whatever rank or position I am given, because I know that that will fit my abilities and experience. Firebrass is fair.

  "I am curious about our goal, the so-called MistyTower or Big Grail or the dozen other titles it bears. In fact, I am eager to journey there, to inquire into what may hold the secret of this world. Eager but not anxious, if you understand what I mean. I readily admit that I do not have your qualifications, and so I anticipate being ranked under you."

  Jill Gulbirra was silent for a moment. This man belonged to a nation which practically enslaved its women. At least, in his own time (1886-1965), it had. It was true that after World War I there had been a certain amount of liberation. He would, theoretically, still have the attitude of the old-fashioned Japanese man toward women. Which was a terrible attitude. On the other hand, The Riverworld did change people. Some people.

  "You really wouldn't mind?" she said. "Not really, deep down!"

  "I seldom lie," he said. "And that only to spare the feelings of someone or to keep from wasting time with fools. I think I know what you are thinking. Would it help you to know that one of my masters in Afghanistan was a woman? I spent ten years as her disciple before she decided that I was not as stupid as when I had come to her and that I could go on
to my next sheik."

  "What were you doing there?"

  "I would be happy to discuss that some other time. As of the moment, let me assure you that I am not prejudiced against women or against non-Japanese. I was, but that foolishness was emptied out of me a long time ago. For instance, at one time, for some years after World War I, I was a Zen monk. First, though, do you know anything about Zen?"

  "There were many books written about it after 1960 or thereabouts," Jill said. "I read a few."

  "Yes. Did you know any more after reading these than you did before?" he said, smiling.

  "A little."

  "You are truthful. As I was saying, I retired from the world after I resigned from the Navy and I resided at a monastery in Ryukyu. The third year, a white man, a Hungarian, came to the monastery as a humble novitiate. When I saw how he was treated, I suddenly acknowledged what I had known unconsciously but had resisted bringing to light. That was that many years in the discipline of Zen had not rid either the disciples or masters, no one in the monastery, except myself, of their racial prejudices. Their national prejudices, I should say, since they showed hostility and even contempt for Chinese and Indo-Chinese, fellow Mongolians.

  "After being honest for the first time with myself, I acknowledged to myself that the practice of Zen had not resulted in anything deeply worthwhile in myself or the others. Of course, you must realize that Zen does not have goals. To have goals is to frustrate the attaining of goals. Is that contradictory? It is.

  "It is also nonsense, as is that business of emptying oneself. Perhaps the state of being empty is not nonsense, but the methods used to achieve it were, as far as I was concerned. And so, one morning, I walked out of the monastery and took ship to China. And I began my long wanderings, called by some inaudible voice toward Central Asia. And from thence . . . well, that is enough for the time being. I can continue this later if you wish.

  "I see that we are getting close to our homes. I bid you adieu then until tonight. I will set out two torches, which you may see from your window, to announce when our little gathering begins."