Philip Jose Farmer (5 page)

This had not only panicked the Eridaneans. The Capelleans were equally affected. The Earthmen must not discover that there existed, and had existed for two hundred years, two groups of nonterrestrial origin among them. The Earthlings would become hysterical; a relentless hunt by all the governments of the globe would be conducted. This, in the opinion of Stuart, 
and doubtless of the Capellean chief, could have only one end. The extermination of all Eridaneans and Capelleans. Even if a few escaped, they would have to lie low for a long long time, and the recruiting of new members by adoption or education of their own children would be very dangerous.

Stuart, while playing solitaire with Fogg as a kibitzer for a few minutes, had told Fogg this some time ago. He had also predicted that if the two parties had to be quiescent for a long time, the concept of Eridanean and Capellean would just die out. This was especially probable if all those who were non-human were caught and killed. Their human foster-children could not be depended upon to keep alive the idea of the Race and of the ultimate peril.

There were times when Fogg thought that this might be a good idea.

Then he had to upbraid himself. After all, he and the other humans of the Race were doing all this for the good of the peoples of Earth. Though he would be regarded as a traitor by human beings, if they found out about him, he was actually their guardian angel.

Meanwhile, the rajah of Bundelcund threatened the existence of both Eridanean and Capellean. Once he got hold of another distorter, he would start the first phase of his plan to sweep the British out of India. That completed, he would assume the maharajah-ship of all India. After that, who knew?

Fogg was well aware that his intended route around the world would bring him close to the borders of Bundelcund. Was he supposed to attempt to get the rajah’s distorter?

Stuart sent no message about this.

That meant that he had no orders about that particular affair. And if an opportunity arose to get the distorter, he was free to seize it or ignore it. Perhaps Stuart was sending another agent to try for the distorter while the rajah was being distracted by the threat of Fogg. But why would he send Passepartout with Fogg? The Frenchman had the only distorter the Eridaneans possessed. Why put him near the rajah so the rajah could trap him and get his hands on what he needed most?

Of course, Passepartout’s device was the one thing which would draw the rajah away from the fortress-palace of the city of Bundelcund. Though he might come out with an army of thuggees, undoubtedly would be accompanied by an army, he would not be in the rear. He would want to make sure that no one else got a chance to get his hands on the distorter. His general, Kanker, knew about the distorters, though apparently he had not been told anything about their origins. Even so, this breach of security had enraged both Capellean and Eridanean. No one, unless he were of the Blood, should have even the slightest hint of the truth. And if Kanker should get greedy and should come into possession of distorters, there was no telling what terrible things would happen.

The rajah was a very wily person, however, and he would make certain precautions to ensure that Kanker would not realize his ambitions, if he should happen to have any.

But accidents happened, and though the rajah might live to be a thousand years old, he was as subject as anyone to a bullet or to disease.

 5 

It was quite true, as Verne says, that Passepartout yearned for repose. He had been almost everywhere and done almost everything. Part of this was due to his nature; he was not named Passepartout just because he carried a distorter. Mostly, though, he had gone here and there, performed this and that, at the orders of Stuart. Now, called from his beloved France, he had come to England and taken up a new trade. Ten English houses had seen him as their valet in five years. Verne says he would not take root in any of them. He always found his masters too impulsive and footloose. His latest, young Lord Longferry, M.P., had discharged him because he had commented on his lordship’s drunkenness. That was true. But Passepartout had deliberately insulted Longferry so that he would be dismissed. His investigations of the young nobleman had turned up nothing suspicious. He seemed to be as innocent of Capelleanism as the previous nine. Passepartout wondered why any of them had been put on Stuart’s list, but he did not question Stuart. And 
when he was commanded to go to Fogg at once and offer his services, he did not ask why.

Not until he had been given a password by Forster at the agency did he suspect that this case was different. On the way in the cab, he was told more but not much. He had no idea that Fogg was going to get an assignment at the Reform Club. Forster could not have told him because Forster did not know this.

This sparseness of information indicates the strictness of the Eridanean security. It also tells of the loneliness that affected most Eridaneans. He or she had few contacts or intimacy with his or her fellows unless a marriage could be arranged or the singularities of a mission permitted such. The true Eridaneans could not even get married with the idea of having children, since the last true Eridanean female had died several decades ago. However, Stuart was zealous in trying to fix situations so that human Eridaneans could become married and so have children. Otherwise, the Race would die out, and the Capelleans would be victor by default. That is, they would have if they had not also had the same problem as their enemies.

Passepartout seldom got his orders by word of mouth. Almost always it was by code transmitted via playing cards. He would be seated in a restaurant catering to people of his class, and a man at a table by his would be playing patience. Passepartout would be observing the cards with the greatest of interest, of course. And so the cards would tell him in telegraphic language what he was to do next. And Passepartout would do it.

He had been in a restaurant in Tours when the cards informed him he was to go to London. While eating oysters in a Cheapside inn, the cards, dealt by a red-faced, fat middle-aged 
lady, told him to get hired as valet for a Lord Windermere. This was the first of his investigations, all of which had resulted in nothing Capellean. But Passepartout thought that some of the things he had uncovered could be, probably would be, used by the Eridanean chief to the advantage of the Race.

The ninth person he’d worked for had been General Sir William Clayton of Sallust’s. Passepartout had not ever actually valeted for the old baronet, since Sir William was absent from the manor of Sallust’s House, Oxfordshire. He was away somewhere in southern or south central Africa at this time. Apparently, he was once again looking for the site of the ancient city of Ophir, if Sir William’s wife was telling the truth. She was a good-looking woman of thirty-seven years of age, the eleventh wife of the seventy-three-year-old adventurer. Passepartout’s predecessor had been fired when he was caught drinking brandy from the master’s stock. Lady Martha Clayton had hired the Frenchman to be the baronet’s valet when he got back from the Dark Continent. Meanwhile, he was to be both butler and manager of the household, which included a maid, a cook, a gardener, Lady Martha, an infant, William, by Sir William’s tenth marriage, and an infant, Martha, by the present wife. Passepartout used “the present” because the baronet’s wives did not seem to have much survival value. Except for one who had divorced him, all had died a few years after marrying him. There was no suspicion of foul play in this series of fatalities. The baronet seemed to radiate an aura which attracted beautiful women and then scorched them. Like moths to a light, thought Passepartout.

He did not understand why women kept marrying him, since everybody seemed to know what happened to his wives. 
But then everybody thinks he or she is special; death isn’t going to notice them.

Passepartout was puzzled by his assignment. Sir William’s flamboyant lifestyle did not make him a likely candidate for Capelleanship.

Passepartout did not stay long at Sallust’s House, however. Apparently, the chief was interested mainly in finding out where Sir William was and how long he would be gone. He had left the country secretly and with no word to his intimates of his destination. But his wife knew, and so Passepartout read, very late at night in the study, a letter she had written but not yet posted to a missionary friend in southeast Africa. She confided to her that Sir William was again on the old quest for Solomon’s treasure city. Would her friend report anything she heard about him? Sir William, despite his age, was a remarkably vigorous man, she wrote. (As who should know better than she, who had borne him two children in the past three years, Passepartout thought.) He might be gone a long time. Meantime, their son, Phileas, had died of the colic. But if her friend happened to run into Sir William, she was to say nothing of this. Sir William must not be deterred from his quest.

Passepartout, after five years on the island, was accustomed to the eccentricity of the English. Thus, he was not surprised to find a septuagenarian baronet tramping around in the wilds of Africa after some fabled, doubtless totally nonexistent, city. He was interested when he found out that the dead Phileas was not Sir William’s first child of that name. He eavesdropped on Lady Martha’s conversations with her crony, the widowed Lady Jane Brandon of nearby Brandon Beeches. And he discovered 
that Sir William’s fourth marriage, in 1832, had resulted in two children, a Phileas and a Roxana. His fourth wife, daughter of an old and noble Devonshire family, had remarried after divorcing Sir William. Lady Martha did not know whom the woman had married, since all her information was based on some scattered remarks by Sir William. She did know that Lady Lorina had hated Sir William so much that she had gotten her new husband to adopt her children. Sir William had not objected to this nor to her wish that he never see her or their children again. This was why, Lady Martha told Lady Jane, Sir William’s son by his tenth marriage would inherit the baronetcy. His children by Lady Lorina would inherit nothing. Of course, there had been some legal difficulties, since the title was supposed to go to the eldest surviving son. But that had been taken care of.

Passepartout had thought little of this and some additional information she had let drop. When he had ascertained that Sir William would probably not be back to civilization for a long time, he was removed from the case. After his resignation, he was sent into the service of Lord Longferry, a Member of Parliament and a drunk. (In those days, the two were often synonymous.) Passepartout was startled when he found out that Longferry’s Christian name was Phileas. Could this be a coincidence? Or was it connected, no doubt in a sinister way, with Sir William and his Phileases?

During his short stay with Longferry, Passepartout managed to spend some time in the reading room of the British Museum. It was necessary to get a recommendation for admittance, but Longferry himself had furnished this. He had laughed when his valet asked him for it, as if a member of the lower classes and a 
Frenchman at that, could not possibly be interested in intellectual matters. But he had consented to send down a note to the proper authority. Passepartout had then discovered a very definite connection between the Phileases, though its significance had been beyond him at that time. The grandfather of the present Lord Longferry had been a Phileas, the original, in fact. He had been a very close friend of William Clayton in their youth. Both had gone off to fight with Byron and the Greeks in their battle for independence. Captured by the Turks, young Longferry had died of maltreatment (probably of gang rape by the homosexual Turks, Passepartout thought) and of a fever. William Clayton had grieved for a long time for his dead friend. He had tried to perpetuate the memory of his friend by naming two sons after him. The first had disappeared, as far as the records went. He looked through the newspapers of 1832 through 1836. He found a notice of Sir William’s and Lady Lorina’s divorce (which had required an act of Parliament), but he could find nothing about her remarriage.

A record of it had to exist, of course, and Passepartout intended to track it down. But he was ordered, via a game of cards, to quit his present master. He did this by severely reprimanding the noble for having been carried home intoxicated early one morning. Two days later, the cards, dealt out by a beautiful woman of twenty-five, told him to seek immediate employment with a Mr. Phileas Fogg.