The Magic Labyrinth (18 page)

“‘Here, John, you worked hard to get my boat and to keep it from all those thieving rascals that tried to take your hard-earned Riverboat away from you. What the hell, John, I loathed, despised, and detested you, but that was a long time ago. I don’t carry a grudge long; I’m a good-hearted sap.’

“The hell I am!” Clemens roared. “I’m going to sink his boat, the boat I once loved so much! I wouldn’t have it now! He’s dishonored it, made it into crap, stunk it up! I’ll sink it, get it out of sight. And one way or another, I’m ridding this world of John Lackland. When I’m done with him, his name’ll be John Lacklife!”

“We were hoping,” Hermann said, “that after all these years, two generations as they used to be counted, that your hatred had cooled, perhaps entirely died. That…”

“Well, sure, it did,” Clemens said with a sarcastic tone. “There were minutes, days, weeks, even months, even a year now and then, that I didn’t think of John. But when I tired of this eternal travel on The River, when I longed to go ashore and stay ashore and get the racket of the paddle wheels out of my ears and the never-ending routine, the three-times-a-day stop to recharge grails and batacitor, the always-going-on arguments to settle and the ever-recurring administrative details to manage and my heart stopping every once in a while when I saw a face that looked like my beloved Livy or Susy or Jean or Clara only to find out that she was none of them…Well, then when I tired and almost gave up, almost said, ‘Here, Cyrano, you take over the captainship. I’m going ashore and get some rest and have a good time, and forget about this monstrous beauty and you take it on up The River and don’t bring it back,’ then I remembered John and what he’d done to me and what I was going to do to him. And then I’d gather my forces together, and I’d cry, ‘Forward, onward, excelsior! Keep going until we’ve caught up with Evil John and sent him to the bottom of The River!’ And that, the thought of my duty and my dearest desire, to make John squeal before I wring his neck, is what’s kept me going for, as you describe it, two generations!”

Hermann could only say, “It grieves me to hear that.”

It was useless to say any more about that subject.

Burton, suffering again from his cursed insomnia, left his cabin quietly. Alice slept undisturbed. He went down the dimly lit corridor, out of the texas, and onto the landing deck of the
Rex.
The fog was building up below the railing of the B deck. The A deck was entirely shrouded. Directly above, the sky blazed brightly, but to the west clouds were swiftly moving toward the boat. On both sides of The Valley the mountains cut off much of the sky. Though the
Rex
was anchored in a small bay two miles up from the strait, The Valley had broadened only a little here. It was a cold place, gloomy, despondency-making. John had had a difficult time keeping up morale here.

Burton yawned, stretched, and thought about lighting up a cigarette or perhaps a cigar. Damn his sleeplessness! In sixty years on this world, he should have learned how to overcome the affliction which had lasted fifty years on Earth. (He’d been nineteen when the terrible affliction had struck him.)

Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he’d tried a score or more. Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more efficacious than any he’d ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For some time, he’d been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.

Nur had said, “You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You could strike at the source.”

“Yaas,” Burton had replied. “If I knew what and where the source was, I could get my hands on it, I’d be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer the world.”

“First, you’d have to conquer yourself,” the Moor had said. “But when you did that, you’d find out that it wasn’t worthwhile ruling the world.”

The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walking in the semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, marching to the middle of the deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other’s, wheeling, then striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.

During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton didn’t hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens’ men, John had set up night sentinels all over the boat.

Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amerind, in his own tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterwards Burton said he’d heard a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed that he’d heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have been about 30,000
B.C.

Burton told the two he’d be going on to check the other guards. He walked down the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.

Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upwards into the fog. Sirens were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat. People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice.

She cried out, “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “except that someone coshed me.”

He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand against the wall.

“Here,” she said, “I’ll help you get to the sick bay.”

“Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king.”

“You’re crazy,” she said. “You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You shouldn’t even be walking. You should be on a stretcher.”

He growled, “Nonsense,” and started to walk. She made him put his arm around her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow. He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They passed people manning the steam machine guns and the rocket tubes.

Alice called out to a man, “What happened?”

“I don’t know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up The River.”

Burton thought that if that was true, he’d been slugged by someone posted to insure that the thieves weren’t surprised.

The “thieves,” he was sure, had been crew members. He didn’t think that anybody could slip aboard unnoticed. The sonars, radar, and infrared detectors were operating at night and had been ever since the raid. Their operators dared not fall asleep. The last one who’d done that, ten years ago, had been thrown off the boat into The River two minutes after being caught.

Arriving at the pilothouse, Burton had to wait a few minutes before the busy king could speak to him. Burton reported what had happened to him. John wasn’t at all sympathetic; he was beside himself with rage, cursing, giving orders, stomping around.

Finally, he said, “Go to sick bay, Gwalchgwynn. If the doctor says you’re unfit for duty, Demugts will take over. There isn’t much the marines can do now, anyway.”

Burton said, “Yes, Sire,” and he went to the C deck hospital.

Dr. Doyle X-rayed his skull, cleansed the wound on his head, bandaged it, and ordered him to lie down for a while.

“There’s neither concussion nor fracture. All you need is some rest.”

Burton did so. Shortly thereafter, Strubewell’s voice came over the loudspeakers. Twelve people were missing, seven men, five women.

John took over then, apparently too enraged to allow his first mate to call out the names of the missing. His voice shaking, he denounced the twelve as “treacherous dogs, mutinous swine, scurvy stinking polecats, cowardly jackals, yellow-bellied hyenas.”

“Quite a menagerie,” Burton said to Alice.

He listened to the roll call. All were suspected agents, all having claimed to have lived past 1983.

John thought they had deserted because they were afraid to fight.

If he weren’t too furious to think straight, John would have remembered that the twelve had shown their courage in many battles.

Burton knew why they had fled. They wanted to get to the tower as quickly as possible, and they didn’t want to be in a fight which they regarded as totally unnecessary. So they had stolen the launch and were now racing upRiver as fast as possible. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that John wouldn’t go after them, that he’d be too concerned with Clemens.

In fact, John had been worried that the
Not For Hire
might come up through the strait while the
Rex
was chasing after the launch. However, the guards on the path above the strait had a transceiver, and they would report instantly if the
Hire
moved toward the channel. Still, if the
Rex
was too far up The River, it couldn’t get back in time to block the
Hire.

Despite this, John was taking his chances. He was not going to allow the deserters to get away with the launch. He needed it for the coming battle. And he wanted desperately to catch and punish the twelve.

In the old days on Earth, he would have tortured them. He probably would like to put them to rack and wheel and fire now, but he knew that his crew, most of them anyway, wouldn’t tolerate such barbarisms. They would permit the twelve to be shot, though they wouldn’t relish the deed, because discipline did have to be maintained. Moreover, stealing the launch had compounded the felony.

Suddenly, Burton groaned. Alice said, “What’s the matter, dear?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a twinge.”

Since there were other nurses around, he couldn’t tell her that it had just occurred to him that Strubewell had stayed aboard. Why? Why hadn’t he gone with the other agents?

And Podebrad! Podebrad, the Czech engineer, the chief suspect. His name wasn’t on the list.

One more question to add to the dozens he would ask an agent someday. Perhaps he should not wait until
someday.
Why not go to John now and tell him the truth? John would have Strubewell and Podebrad into the brig and put them to the question with a speed unhampered by legalities and red tape.

No. It couldn’t be done now. John wouldn’t have the time to do this. He’d have to wait until after the battle. Besides, the two would just commit suicide.

Or would they?

Now that there were no resurrections, would an agent kill himself?

He might, Burton thought. Just because the Valley dwellers weren’t resurrected was no proof that agents weren’t. They could rise again somewhere else, in the vast underground chambers or in the tower.

Burton didn’t believe this. If the agents were resurrected elsewhere, they wouldn’t have hesitated to board the suicide express. They wouldn’t now be traveling via paddle wheeler to get to the tower.

If he and Strubewell and Podebrad survived the battle, he was going to catch them unawares, knock them out before they could transmit the mental code which would release the poison in the little black balls in their forebrains, and then hypnotize them as they came out of unconsciousness.

That was satisfying to visualize. But in the meantime, why had the twelve taken off and the two stayed?

Had Strubewell and Podebrad remained on the boat so they could sabotage it if it looked as if John were going to catch the twelve?

That seemed the only explanation. In which case, Burton must go to John to expose them.

But would John believe him? Wouldn’t he think that the blow on Burton’s head had deranged him?

He might, but he’d have to be convinced when Burton brought in Alice, Kazz, Loghu, Frigate, Nur, Mix, London, and Umslopogaas as witnesses.

By then, however, Strubewell and Podebrad might find out about what was going on and flee. Worse, they might blow up the boat or whatever they were planning on doing.

Burton wiggled his finger at Alice. When she came, he told her softly to take a message to Nur el-Musafir. Nur was to station one or more of their group with Podebrad in the boiler room and Strubewell in the pilothouse. If either did something suspicious, something which could threaten the boat, he was to be clubbed on the head at once. If that wasn’t possible, he was to be shot or stabbed.

Alice’s eyes widened.

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later!” he said fiercely. “Go while there’s still time!”

Nur would figure out what the orders meant. And he’d see that they were somehow carried out. It wasn’t going to be easy to get someone into the boiler room and the pilothouse. At the moment, everybody had his or her station. To leave it for any reason without authorization was a serious crime. Nur would have to think fast and cleverly to send somebody to watch the two.

And then Burton said, “I’ve got it!”

He picked up the sick-bay phone and called the pilothouse. The phone operator there was going to call Strubewell, but Burton insisted that he speak to the king instead. John was very annoyed, but he did as Burton requested and went down to the observation room. There he flicked a switch which made it impossible for their conversation to be listened to on the pilothouse line unless the line had been bugged.

“Sire,” Burton said, “I’ve been thinking. How do we know that the deserters haven’t planted a bomb on the boat? Then, if it looks as if we’re going to catch them, they transmit a coded message to the receiver, and the explosives are set off.”

After a short silence, John said, his voice a trifle high, “Do you think that’s a possibility?”

“If I can think of it, then why shouldn’t the deserters?”

“I’ll start a search at once. If you’re up to it, you join it.”

John hung up. A minute later, Strubewell’s voice bellowed over the loudspeakers. He gave orders that every inch of the vessel was to be examined for bombs. The officers were to organize parties at once. Strubewell laid out who was responsible for which area and told them to get going.

Burton smiled. It hadn’t been necessary to reveal anything to John, and Podebrad and Strubewell would find themselves directing a search for the very bombs they may have hidden.