Mr. Malek grew very despondent when he realized this. Then he rallied. “But there’s the diamond!”
“True,” said Tombo. “They do not know anything about the diamond or exactly what a man can do who possesses it. They do not know, probably, that it was the goal of our entire expedition and they certainly would not know what havoc they could effect with it if they wished. But I wish to call one more thing to your attention, Mr. Malek.”
Malek blinked expectantly.
“The man who has the diamond is Tiger,” said Tombo.
Mr. Malek heaved a very dismal sigh, wriggled backwards and gave up. “It’s impossible,” he agreed.
“Not entirely,” said Tombo grimly. “Tiger does not know the power of that diamond. Not even I know all its power or behavior. But I know far more than he. Sooner or later they will sleep.”
“We may not have a sooner or later,” said Malek. “Arif-Emir will find out this vessel is gone, that it was the last one to clear port. He’ll be after us fast enough and winds don’t hold forever.”
“That’s our risk,” said Tombo doggedly. And he fixed his eye on the quartet on the poop while they ate, bathed in the red light of sunset, an effect which Tombo greatly admired.
“What’s the glass?” said Walleye, hanging on to the tiller with one hand and eating bread and cheese with the other.
“Steady, I guess,” said Tiger absently.
“I mean the rock,” said Walleye. “If it’s genuine ice, we could buy us half a kingdom, anyway.”
Muddy McCoy wriggled. He had serpentine movements he had to make before he could talk about anything and he made them now. There was always a sly, conspirator air about him even when he was asking for the bread to be passed. “Let me see, Tiger.”
Tiger carelessly tossed him the diamond and continued to eat. Muddy looked at it critically in what daylight was left and then he reached up and put a sharp edge of it on the binnacle glass and drew down.
“Hey!” said Walleye. “Whatcha wanna do? Ruin things? Look at the scratch. Now I got to dodge it to read the course!”
Muddy chuckled and burbled over the diamond. “It’s real, all right. Feels like five or six hundred carats. If we ever get away without being caught, we can have a good time.”
“Give it back to Tiger!” said Ryan, catching Muddy’s wrist as the little pickpocket tried to put the gem in his pocket.
Muddy chuckled uncertainly. Tiger put it absently in his pocket and went on eating bread and cheese.
“You sure are thoughtful-like,” said Ryan. “What’s the matter?”
Tiger shrugged and then grinned. When he grinned he lit up his surroundings. He yawned and lay back in the coiled sheet and looked up at the first stars. “I was just trying to think of something I felt I could remember, but that’s no matter. You interested in this diamond?” He pulled it out and looked at it. His inspection was casual, then abruptly intense. He looked at it very closely.
It was a limpid stone and its many facets were almost blinding when the light struck fair upon it. But he had seen something else. Down deep in its depths, etched there by some necromancy he could not understand, he saw the three-dimensional Seal of Sulayman. He blinked and looked again and then sat back. Tiger was not unacquainted with the two interlaced triangles which was Sulayman’s ordinary seal and which had itself vast powers. He had seen the original seal knock every bolt and fastening aside which it met. But here, here was a greater mystery.
He sat up, uncoiling himself. There was a small ditty box on the deck. By rights, this seal should knock all the fastenings out of the ditty box.
“By the Seal of Sulayman,” said Tiger experimentally, “I demand that every nail in this box fly out!”
Nothing happened.
Tiger looked at the diamond, shrugged and put it in his pocket again. He sank back into the sheet coil.
“What did you think would happen?” said Muddy, always a little pleased at the failures of other men.
“He’s got a right,” said Ryan.
“I’m just wondering,” said Tiger. “Somebody was awful anxious to get this diamond, namely Ramus. Now that she’s dead—”
“Ramus dead?” gaped Ryan. “Gosh, how’d you find that out?”
“He’s always spoonin’ up the ifrits,” said Muddy.
“If she’s dead,” said Tiger, unperturbed, “that means that there’s a throne vacant.”
“Hey!” said Ryan. “You mean you think maybe this diamond is a talisman, huh? Maybe it’s got power. Hey, Tiger! You’d make a swell emperor. Hey, how about it, you jokers? Wouldn’t he make a swell emperor?”
“He’d get us all in trouble in five minutes,” said Muddy.
“You shut up!” said Ryan. “I say he’d make a swell emperor!”
“He may have been quiet enough the last year or two but he always gets in trouble,” said Muddy. “I say he’d get us all killed!”
“Come on, come on,” said Walleye. “The sun’s down and that’s the end of my trick. Is somebody goin’ to take this wheel or do I just let it go?”
“Your watch, Muddy,” said Tiger.
Muddy growled, wriggled, whined something under his breath and took the wheel.
Tiger shrugged down into the coiled sheet. “Steer small. And call me for breakfast.”
Walleye and Stagger grinned and stretched out on the planks. Muddy’s beady eye roamed between the luffing of the mainsail head against the brilliant stars, the compass and, now and then, over Tiger’s sleeping form. The glitter of greed was strong in his gaze.
It grew darker as the twilight faded out. The wind held. The night slid through. Tombo, when the watches had changed twice, slid aft toward the poop. Walleye was once more at the wheel and his sight, at best, was poor. Tombo slid a cautious hand over Tiger’s form, gently feeling for the diamond. He examined him well and then, baffled, drew away. None had approached Tiger, he knew that, for he had watched the night through. And yet the diamond was not on Tiger’s person, that he knew.
Baffled, Tombo withdrew to the cargo space and covered himself with sacks. He whispered the news to Malek.
“I knew we’d fail,” said Malek.
“You may know that,” said Tombo, “but I don’t. All I know is that the diamond has never before been in human hands. It becomes part of the soul, you know.”
Malek blinked.
“It’s gone now, for Tiger sleeps,” said Tombo. “It will be here when he wakes. We’ll have to plan for that. Go to sleep.”
Chapter Four
A Christening
In Seattle, Washington, Jan Palmer wended his timorous way through traffic, en route to a ship christening. He did not like the idea. He did not like the crowds which would be there. He did not like the directors of Bering Steam with whom he would have to talk. And he did not, in short, like anything faintly approximating a ship christening if it caused him to consort with humanity.
Dimly, as he drove, feelings like false recollections seemed to tell him that his return to utter self-consciousness was a new thing, a thing which would pass as it had before. But he was not sure how it had passed before. He was sure, from the way the people addressed him, that they were quite surprised to discover him shy. He felt that, even recently, he had been very bold. But he had no proof of it. He was, in short, in something of a muddle. And he had no idea of how serious that muddle could become.
With no recollection of his dual nature, with no distinct awareness that he was elsewhere one Tiger, a redoubtable opponent for any man, Jan could only run on the computation now that he was just Jan, a shy if unwillingly powerful shipping magnate, as they say in Time.
The skeletalized world which was Dodd Shipyards, where crane and scaffold and beam presented a disorderly hodgepodge to all who did not understand the intricacies of assembling vessels, at length enfolded him and his roadster and he alighted into the inevitable shipyard mud to the tune of the inevitable riveters and the flash of the burning torches.
His disorganized condi
tion of mind at the thought of meeting people caused him to park on the wrong side of the administration building, whereas a goodly assemblage was especially congregated at the front entrance to meet him.
There was some confusion in the ensuing half-hour wherein Jan joined the crowd to wait for himself to arrive, and waited very patiently until he discovered that it was his arrival which was expected, when patience fled and anxiety came on him in floods. Conversing with so many people was entirely beyond him, he felt, and the realization, suddenly, that he was expected to make a speech at the christening entirely unbolted him.
Somehow, despite such minor affairs as Mrs. Chewenson’s getting paint on her gown—it was she who was to break the champagne bottle—the loss of the bottle itself, the points of etiquette which a retired naval commander insisted upon or corrected, and a small boy—one of the Chewenson children—almost falling a hundred feet down into the dock from the dedication platform, the christening proceeded. The ship was Bering Steam’s newest fleet unit, an especially constructed vessel for the northernmost runs for which was needed an icebreaker bow. She was being named after Zachariah P. Palmer, one of Jan’s more respectable ancestors whose shrewd cheating on the China coast in old clipper days had earned him a name as a great man and had laid the foundations of the Palmer fortune. Another small hitch almost occurred when the ribbons of the champagne bottle became tangled up in Mrs. Chewenson’s bracelets, but it was solved when the retired naval commander, with some presence of mind, wrenched it free and sent it after the vessel, already sliding down the ways. The icebreaker bow and the champagne bottle connected with a satisfactory smack and then the ribbon-wound bottle, swinging back on the line which suspended it above the platform, showered everyone with apple cider and carbonation. The Chewenson boy was again saved from falling off the platform into the dock, the Zachariah P. Palmer missed a ferry boat which had uppishly cruised astern of her ways, and the party retired. It was, all in all, a highly satisfactory, extraordinarily average christening. None marked that Mrs. Chewenson had utterly forgotten to say that she christened the ship anything, no slightest originality was to be found in any of the speeches made and the whole thing, in short, was strictly in the tradition.
Everyone went off to make a party of it and Jan found himself, at length, alone on the platform, somewhat stained with apple cider but at least feeling able to breathe. But the whole thing had unnerved him, and his fingers, as he put a cigarette in his mouth, visibly shook. He reached into his trousers pocket for a lighter and for some seconds stood there running his thumb across what he supposed was a lighter wheel but which was, in fact, a diamond of many-score carats. When he discovered that his cigarette wasn’t getting lighted he looked to see why. The flash of the stone nearly blinded him. Even in this murky sunlight it was comparable to the zzzzt of a welding rod.
He hurriedly put the stone back, sure that somebody would think he had stolen it. But the riggers were far away and he was alone on a high platform above the vacant ways. He sneaked another look at the stone. It flashed as bright as before. A thing as close as this to pure light seemed to howl aloud its presence. He stabbed the stone back into his pocket and stood there, looking blankly at the splinters of bottle on the platform. He thought this thing out from several different directions. Each time he arrived at the fact that he could not possibly have come by this stone. But there it lay, cool in his hot, pocketed hand. Then he considered the matter from another angle. The stone was not a diamond but paste. He knelt, took up a piece of champagne bottle, wiped some of the cider from it and then, looking about to see that he did not appear to be observed, ran the edge of the diamond across the glass. The splinter of bottle fell into two halves. Hastily, Jan put the diamond back into his pocket. He felt chilly. Suddenly he realized that the value of the stone must range into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. And anything as valuable as that must have been missed. Further, when one was known to possess such a stone, he was not entirely safe from being blackjacked, knifed, drugged, beaten or just plain murdered. The shot of this realization received instant reaction from Jan.
“Good lord! I wish I was somebody else!”
There was a strange swishing feeling. The world spun giddily. And Jan Palmer, who thought he was high enough off ground when standing on the platform, found himself clinging to a boom tower, his hands engaged in cable splicing.
He ran a piece of cable in his finger, slipped on the tower, sagged against his safety belt and looked down two hundred feet at the pygmies in the yard. The wind of high altitude fanned him. The Zachariah P. Palmer was a toy being towed by a toy tug into a slip. A loneliness came to him. And acrophobia nauseated him.
He ripped his eyes from the earth below. He looked at the ledge on the tower and saw that his hands were big, broad tools built for skilled but hard labor. He glanced at his clothing. The glance also took in some ground and he hastily looked up. But he had observed that he was dressed in leather and olive drab wool, not in a business suit.
Thoroughly dazed now by the realization that he did not look like and was not dressed like Jan Palmer, he again almost let go, the safety strap alone supporting him. Empty air was under his feet, two hundred feet thick.
For some time he remained where he was, afraid to stir, but when he found that he did not instantly fall, he discovered courage enough to look below again. And he saw the platform under him, a hundred feet below. Murky Seattle sunlight glinted from the chips of broken bottle. Coils of smoke came off the timbers where the Zachariah P. Palmer had slid down. And on the platform stood a man who, even from this height, was unmistakably Jan Palmer. He wore Jan Palmer’s business suit, his hat and his shoes; he had the build and, as far as one could tell, the height of Jan Palmer. But it was obviously not Jan Palmer, as Jan up the pole hurriedly assured himself, because Jan Palmer was up here dressed in leather and olive drab, belted and kitted like a high rigger; yes, and with the hands and muscles of a high rigger even if he did not have a high rigger’s insolence about altitude.
The man on the platform below, evidently, was not without his own qualms. He looked up the boom tower and frowned. He looked down at the ground and the ways, still undecided. He looked at his hands and felt the texture of the expensive suit and then, rummaging through his pockets, drew out the diamond and stared at it.
Instantly Jan was alert, immediately some of his fright vanished. He had considerable wit and he knew considerable lore. He had studied something of Arabianology; he had some inklings about magic and demonology. And the instant the murky sunlight flashed from that diamond he became entirely certain that it had a vital role in this sudden shift of identity. It was not a difficult line of reasoning, for the diamond, appearing so suddenly in his life, was the only strange factor in the equation. Just what it had to do with this, Jan did not know or stop to compute at this time. Instead he hastily grabbed for his safety belt and—with some amazement as to his strength—swung himself down the spikes toward the ground. Two or three times he almost missed a step but somehow this unusual body of his knew better than to miss and with an automatic gesture he each time saved himself.
In a short space of time he was on the ground. Clanking because of the tools belted around him, he started for the launching platform. A bulk abruptly loomed before him.
“Murphy! What the hell are you doing off the job? Get back up there!”
Jan looked at the foreman. He started to say, “I beg your pardon, sir, but—” and he said, “Dry up, Donovan! You want a spanner around your neck?”
Donovan stepped back and Jan, much amazed at his own tone of voice, hastened on.
The man dressed in Jan’s clothes was coming down the steps as Jan reached the bottom. Jan looked up, the man looked down.
“I’ll trouble you for that piece of ice,” said Jan truculently.
“I beg pardon?” said the man who looked like Jan.
“The rock,” said Jan. He was making an effort to be polite and proper but the wrong words kept
coming out. “The glass, dummy. Fork it over before I beat your skull in!”
The man hastily backed up the steps. He seemed confused. In his turn he was trying to be tough and he was getting, “I beg pardon. Excuse me, I didn’t understand you.”
“You’ll understand, all right,” snarled Jan, swarming up the steps.
The man turned and fled to the top. Jan was one jump behind him. He grabbed the fellow by the collar and shook him so hard he lifted him clean off the boards. Thus dazing his captive, Jan thrust his hand into the fellow’s pocket and grasped the diamond. The second he had it, he shoved the man aside. Jan looked at the stone. He tried to think back. He knew this must have to do with some incantation. He tried to think of incantations.
He peered more closely into the diamond, thinking hard. The fellow grabbed at him and he knocked him back again. Jan cast his wits back across the moments he had last been Jan. What had he said?
The foreman was coming to the bottom of the steps. Jan looked at him down there, thinking the while. The fellow in Jan’s clothes made another attack and Jan grabbed him automatically by the collar and held him up in the air where he struggled and wheezed.
“Hey, drop that!” bawled the foreman. “Hey, Murphy, you ape! That’s Palmer of Bering Steam! Let him go!”
At that instant, gazing abstractedly at the foreman, Jan recalled what he had said. “Good lord,” he whispered, “I wish I was somebody else!”
There was a blur and a swish, a feeling of emptiness and then solidity. And he was at the bottom of the steps looking up at a high rigger shaking a man who looked like Jan Palmer.
It took him a moment to recover himself. Then he understood what had happened. He had said the right words all right. But he had been looking at the wrong man. The foreman had become the high rigger, the high rigger was Jan, and Jan was the foreman! And here he was down at the bottom of the steps, rigged out in a burly body, chewing tobacco and wearing stained suspenders, looking up while, evidently, a high rigger wondered why he was holding the head of Bering Steam by the collar.
Slaves of Sleep & the Masters of Sleep Page 19
