Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “But think carefully about whether you want to continue,” he said. “I have sent out messengers to see who my neighbors are, and some of them are quite barbaric. You will not find matters so well arranged as you travel farther up-River. I suggest that you settle down here. We will find women for you, since we enjoy at present a modest surplus in them, and you will be safe.”

  This suggestion, reasonable though it was, did not sit well with me. I hadn’t gone through all the strangeness and dislocation of being reborn in a new world in order to sit down now in a bamboo village and get my rations every day like a good little fellow. I was one of that generation that sailed to the Indies with Francisco Pizarro. Even though I had died once, I wasn’t ready yet to retire.

  Most of the Free Company mercenaries agreed with me, but Rufus and most of the Romans thought better of the idea, and they decided to stay. The rest of us set off again, totaling now about forty men.

  After several more weeks of travel across sparsely populated territory, we came to a large Riverside village of tenth-century Saxon fishermen from the lowlands along the Elbe. There were also some eighth-century Hungarians living among them, and a few nineteenth-century Scots who kept to themselves. These Saxons had never migrated to England as so many of their countrymen had done. Here in Riverworld they had set up their village in a wide bend of the River. They had constructed boats of bamboo and other woods, and made quite a good thing of fishing.

  Their boats were small but handy, and quite seaworthy. Neither the Chinese nor the Romans had taken to the water yet, but we saw the advantages of that mode of travel almost at once. Travel by water seemed safer than any other way, faster, and less tiring.

  We stayed with the Saxons for a while, and it was here that I met Hertha. It happened one evening when a group of us were sitting around a campfire telling stores and singing songs of our homeland. The talk turned to dances, and each man showed the steps of a dance native to his region.

  When my turn came, I danced a jota for them. I had been well versed in dancing as a boy, and if I do say so myself, our native dances of Spain are more beautiful than those of most races. The jota required a partner, however, and so, looking into the faces around the campfire, I chose a pretty flaxen-haired young girl and asked her if she would dance with me.

  Hertha picked up the steps at once, and we performed to considerable applause. Back in Salamanca, in my student days, I had danced once or twice for pay, and had been told I would be able to make a good thing of it if I chose to continue.

  Hertha was grace itself. Her small well-shaped body, revealed and concealed by the clinging towels, moved in and out of the stately figures of the Spanish dance. We won a resounding round of applause, and those around us plied us with food and drink.

  When we talked later, we found we had little in common in the way of a language. But Hertha was already picking up the Norse that was the lingua franca of the River, and soon we were conversing nicely, and finding that we had as much in common as a man and maid can hope to have. We became hutmates that very night, and we are together still.

  Since there were few ways of passing the time, there on that slow bank of the River where food came by itself to our grails and one day was much like the last, Hertha and I practiced other dances. I showed her the steps to the fiery flamenco dances of Andalusia, the Sevillanas and the Seguiryas and others, and she showed a fine poise and grace in the performing of them. With her smooth blond hair tied back beneath a black towel and her back arched imperiously, Hertha could have been a gypsy from Granada or from the Triana in Seville. The only thing missing was the sound of stamping feet, which so characterize the dances of Andalusia. But these depend on well-shod shoes and plank floor, neither of which we had.

  Nevertheless, we persevered. One day I constructed a comb for her in the Spanish fashion, and showed her how to put up her hair in a typical gypsy fashion. A towel had to serve as a mantilla.

  These careless days seemed as though they would continue forever. But then, quite unexpectedly, our Saxon camp was attacked by a strong force of raiders, who came up unseen in the night and attacked just before dawn. They came from the city of Oxenstierna, a large encampment of Northmen that had moved into the vicinity recently. They were mostly Swedes and Danes from the seventh and eighth centuries, former soldiers of the army that ravaged Europe and England for so many centuries before the Norman Conquest. They were turbulent men and strong fighters, much given to strong drink and to the random practice of violence. They burst into the Saxon camp late one night when the sentries were dozing. There was a general battle throughout the camp and up and down the Riverbank. When it was over, most of our Saxon friends had been killed, and Hertha and I were hauled in front of their king, Eric Longhand, to see how he wished to dispose of us.

  “What can you do?” Longhand asked.

  “We can join your forces and serve you well,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “We have enough soldiers at present. Nor do we lack for grail slaves.” He turned to his men. “Might as well put these to death.”

  “Wait!” I cried. “Hertha and I have something that might be of use to you.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Time hangs heavy in this world,” I pointed out. “There is sufficient food and drink, but little in the way of entertainment. My wife and I are dancers, skilled in the exciting steps of my native Spain. We will entertain you.”

  Longhand was amused by this suggestion. “Very well,” he said. “Let us see you dance. We will postpone execution for a few minutes until we see how well or poorly you shamble.”

  Hertha and I gave the performance of our lives. I must say, it was very good indeed. What we lacked in finesse we more than made up for in desperate fury. Hertha remembered her steps, and we danced a series of jotas, then several sets of Sevillanas, and then the mysterious Seguiryas, which never fail to move onlookers. At the end, the Vikings applauded, and our lives were spared.

  Once that first evening of bloodshed was over, the Vikings proved to be amiable people. Hertha and I moved freely among them, and life soon returned to an even temper. The days passed, and nothing of any note happened until about two weeks later, when a group of prisoners was brought in from one of the guardposts.

  “We caught them using the grailstones,” the guard said.

  I was present at the interrogation of the prisoners. Hearing them speak Spanish, I was immediately alert. There was one face among them that I recognized. “Gonzalo!” I cried. For it was indeed my old captain, Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of Francisco Pizarro, at one time captain-general of Peru.

  “Hello, Rodrigo,” Gonzalo said to me. He was cool in this, desperate strait, a tall, well-made man, with a big hawk nose and keen dark eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am making my living as well as I can,” I told him. “I am a dancer, Gonzalo, and I suggest that you become one, too. As I remember it, you had a lively turn with jota and the zapateado, and you could perform some of the South American figures as well, though not as well as Francisco.”

  Gonzalo Pizarro immediately asked me if I had seen his brother, for whom he had been searching. He was disappointed when I told him I had not. As for becoming a dancer, at first he scoffed at the idea. For him, one of the original conquistadors, the conqueror of Quito and other famous places, once for a brief time the controller of Peru after the assassination of his brother Francisco, this seemed a step downward. He swore he would prefer to die with his honor intact. But that was mere bluster. When the time came to make a choice, he announced himself to Eric Longhand as a dancer just like the rest of us, only better than most. And on the strength of his boast he was allowed to join Helga and me.

  It was clear that he would need a partner, and he lost no time in finding one. He picked a Russian woman who had been recently accepted into the Viking settlement. Her name was Katrina, and she was part gypsy, a dark-eyed, wild-haired beauty who might have been from Cуrdoba or Jerez de la Frontera as far
as her looks were concerned. She was graceful and light on her feet, and she picked up the steps quickly. She and Gonzalo quarreled with each other from the moment they met, for Gonzalo was randy as a billy goat and had his eye on the slow-moving Scandinavian beauties from the start. But he and Katrina seemed to like each other well enough despite their arguments, or perhaps because of them. Whatever it was, the relationship seemed to suit them both.

  Our dances went better now with two couples, and soon after that we added another when Pedro Almargo joined us. This old comrade of Gonzalo’s had been his archenemy in the stirring days in the Andes, when central South America had been a prize fought over and wrenched back and forth between the various conquistadors. In fact, Gonzalo had had Almargo executed when he captured Quito, a fact for which he apologized now. Almargo said he didn’t hold a grudge over so slight a matter. What was important now was what lay ahead. And he studied hard at the dance with his new partner, a small, vibrant Provenзal woman from Aix.

  More Spaniards from the days of the Conquest found their way to us, for rumor travels faster in Riverworld than a bird can fly. Alberto Tapia came, and the Valdavia brothers of the Chilean conquest, and Sebastian Romero, who soldiered with Balboa. Even gallant Hernando de Soto found his way to us in Oxenstierna. And we were joined by others not of Spain, most notably the Russian woman Bronislava, who brought her brother, whom she claimed was a famous dancer in his own time named Vaslav Nijinsky.

  This Nijinsky was an odd sulky creature who claimed he didn’t dance any longer, but who did offer to choreograph for us, and to provide numbers for the whole company to perform en ensemble. I was suspicious of him at first; he was an odd-looking creature with his long skull and his strange, graceful, effeminate movements. He was very strong but very strange, too, and he shied away from people.

  He was always watching when new people come in to Oxenstierna.

  “Who are you looking for?” I asked him one day.

  “Never mind, it is better not even to say his name.”

  “Come, Vaslav, saying his name won’t hurt.”

  “It will make him appear.”

  “Is he such a devil, then?”

  “The worst that ever was. He captured my soul long ago, and he will be back to get it again.”

  I learned from Bronislava that he was referring to a man named Diaghilev, who had been a ballet impresario back when they were all alive in the closing years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Under the direction of this Diaghilev, Nijinsky had scored his greatest triumphs: The Spectre of the Rose, The Nutcracker, Les Sylphides, and many others. He had been the leading dancer in the company, and the company itself had been world-renowned.

  “So what was wrong with that?” I asked her. “What did Vaslav have to complain of?”

  She shook her head, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “There was something about Sergei Diaghilev, something terrible and abnormal. He drove everyone hard. But that was not it. Ballet dancers are accustomed to working hard. But it was something else. I can only call it something diabolic. He terrified Vaslav, and finally drove him insane.”

  Somehow, even with all the millions, the billions of people being reborn in Riverworld, I knew that Diaghilev would find Nijinsky. And so it did not surprise me when one day a new group of people came to Oxenstierna. They were travelers, traders, and they had come from far away. They carried some trade goods—dried packets of fishskin and other fish products, and they had some boards, too, rough-hewn out of the great ironwood trees. This last had been done at some place down-River where they had made iron tools.

  Along with this troop came a man of medium height, with sad dark eyes and a flat, rumpled face. He was in no way handsome, but there was a commanding air about him. He came up to our tent, where we were having our rehearsal. “You are the dancers?” he asked.

  “That is what we are, senor,” I replied. “And who are you?”

  “I am a man who has a way with dancers,” he replied. Vaslav, who had been in one of the other tents, rehearsing the dancers, now came in, saw the newcomer, and his jaw fell open.

  “Sergei!” he cried. “Is it really you?”

  “None other, my friend,” the newcomer said. “Suppose you tell your friend here who I am.”

  Vaslav turned to me. His dark eyes glowed as he said, “This is Sergei Diaghilev. He is a great impresario, a great producer of dance troupes.”

  “Interesting,” I replied. “I don’t need you, Diaghilev. Our troupe is already organized.”

  “No doubt,” Diaghilev said. “I merely want to watch your performance.”

  Diaghilev attended our evening show, and came to see us after the performance. It had gone well enough. Our audience seats were better than half full, which was doing well for us. I poured Diaghilev a glass of wine. We Latins had traded our spirits for it with the northern men. It seemed to be a French vintage, but I missed our rougher Spanish stuff.

  I was full of suspicion of this Diaghilev. Especially since he was in the same business I had set myself to. I was well aware of my own deficiencies in this line of work. Luck had thrown me into the impresario line, mainly because I had a gift of languages that, though meager, was greater than that of my fellows. I had no high regard for my talents. If this man was indeed world-renowned, as Nijinsky had assured me, he could no doubt do a better job at leading a dance troupe than I could. But I saw no reason to assist him in putting me out of work. I swore to myself that I’d kill him before letting that happen. There was little enough to do in Riverworld except fight or be a slave. A man didn’t give up a good job lightly if he had the luck to find one.

  Diaghilev tried to put me at my ease at once. “You have done a fine job, Senor Isasaga. It is obvious that you are not schooled in the dance. But what of that? You have done as well as a man could. I do suggest, however, that there is an improvement or two that could well be wrought without loss to you or your people, and with considerable gain.”

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “First accompany me to my camp,” Diaghilev said. “I have something I want to show you. Bring all of your people, too. They will be interested.”

  We accompanied Diaghilev down to the River, and then about a mile downstream along its right bank. All of our troop went along. Gonzalo had taken the precaution of arming himself. He carried a copper dagger that he had won at dice from one of the Northmen. A half-dozen of the other Spaniards carried cudgels. Even the women dancers had little flint knives or sharp-edged stones, which they carried in their sashes. Diaghilev must have noticed, but he affected an air of unconcern.

  There were only eight people in Diaghilev’s group, and they appeared to be unarmed. This was a relief for us: this bunch would give us no trouble. And half of them were women, anyhow.

  Diaghilev served us a beer his people had brewed from roots and leaves and wild yeasts. It was not bad. Then he proposed that his people entertain us. And so we lay back on the grass while his people danced. Among them were names whose fame I only learned about later: Alicia Markova, Michel Fokine, and the divine Anna Pavlova.

  None of us had ever seen anything like his performance before. Perhaps the Russians had not the fire of our Spaniards. But that was the only fault you could find, if fault it was. In every other capacity, including that of sheer breathtaking artistry, they surpassed us in every way. Markova floated like a butterfly, and alighted like a piece of down. Pavlova was poetry personified. They were all incredible. We applauded strenuously. Nijinsky watched with tears in his eyes. And at the end, the Russian dancers held out their hands imploringly to our Nijinsky, who had watched all this in a despairing silence. He turned away from them, shaking his head, muttering, “I no longer dance.” But they persevered, and Diaghilev included his pleas, and at length Nijinsky relented and repeated, as I was told later, one of his solos from The Spectre of the Rose.

  At the end we all sat together and drank wine, and Diaghilev said to Nijinsky, “I knew I would
find you, Vaslav. We are together again.”

  “I did the dance for you, Sergei!” Nijinsky cried. “But I will never dance again!”

  “We will see,” said Diaghilev.

  Once this Russian turned up, our situation changed. It was only logical to combine our companies. There was no talk of who was in charge. But without ever exerting himself, Diaghilev bit by bit took over. He did it with a suggestion here, an idea there, and his ideas were first-rate. He was the one who directed the construction of a wooden platform so that our dancers’ heels could be heard stamping out the rhythms. And of course he was also the one who devised shoes so that they could be heard. He had curtains made for greater dramatic effect. He introduced stage lighting and scenery. Nor were his suggestions disconsonant with the spirit of Spanish dance. He was far better at it than I was, foreigner though he was. There was no doubt about it, this man was a conquistador of dance. I struggled with my stubborn soul, and finally decided it was better to be assistant to a genius than mediocre sole impresario of a second-rate dance troupe.

  Most of us got used to it. Not Gonzalo. He hated the idea of Sergei lording it over him. He bristled, resisted, but even he was convinced in the end. Diaghilev’s improvements made the performance so much better.

  Soon, our fame began to spread. People came from far and wide to Oxenstierna to watch our performances. And Sergei Diaghilev began to turn to the production of musical instruments.

  He was aided in this by another newcomer to our ranks, Manuel de Falla, a Spaniard born well after my time, famous in his day, so I was told, as a composer. This de Falla was a dark little fellow, and he had lived many years in Paris and was in some ways quite Frenchified. Even in our rudimentary clothing of towels and leaves, he stood out as something of a dandy. He began by devising simple percussion instruments for us, making them of bamboo and wood. Next he improvised a guitar. The sound box was made of bamboo pieces closely joined with fish glue, and carefully polished and then varnished. He made a keyboard with a fish’s backbone, cut it down to half round, and carefully fitted it with frets of shell. His strings were of fish-gut shaved down to proper diameter. It was difficult getting strings that matched, but de Falla worked with massive patience, and after a while he had constructed the first stringed instrument ever seen in Riverworld. There was no problem tuning it: the man had perfect pitch.