She saw me. She was holding a yellow card.
"Oh, Inky!" she said. "The nicest thing has happened. I had to come back to tell you. I am flying down to Marrakech. I also had to get a landing card as a sailor because I don't have any passport."
"Where," I said, "is Marrakech?"
"It's only about 140 miles to the south and in the interior. And they have beautiful scenery and cloth and camels and everything. Real sheiks. I'm going in a special plane and will be back tomorrow morning."
"Hey!" I said. "You can't go travelling in the desert in sandals and shorts! At least pack a grip!"
But she was running down the gangway. She wasn't even carrying a purse! Well, great, I told myself. At least this is one night I'll have some rest instead of exercise.
Then suddenly I looked at the cab. The shadow in it? Yes, it was the black-jowled man from Bermuda! What the Hells was this? How did he get here?
Teenie got in and the black-jowled man closed the door and off the cab sped.
I went over to town and ate something called couscous, which consisted of balls of some cereal. Pretty tasteless, even though it was the national dish. The Turks should have taught these Arabs how to cook.
Madison dragged aboard about ten, all disillusioned. He found me in the salon listening to something besides Neo Punk Rock.
"He's not a real outlaw," said Madison. "He doesn't take from the rich and give to the poor. He takes it from the poor and gives it to himself. He's just a cheap crook, really. And he's got lousy PR. Every time I mentioned his name to anybody, they spat at me. Hussan-Hussan isn't even worth helping. I'm going to bed."
Shortly, I followed his example. I had a beautiful, untroubled night's sleep. I woke up early, feeling fine. To make matters even better, the sports director wouldn't let me run because I'd get too much dust in my lungs.
Teenie didn't get back in the morning. She showed up around 2:00 P.M. A cab drew up and the driver hailed the deck. A couple of sailors went down and started unloading the cab.
There were several baskets. There were many boxes.
A second cab drew up and out stepped Teenie. She had on a red fez with a long tassel. She was wearing a gold-embroidered short jacket over a red silk shirt. She had on scarlet shorts and was wearing scarlet Moroccan leather boots. She had loops and loops of gold chain around her throat.
She leaned into the cab she had just gotten out of and somebody inside handed her a valise.
The black-jowled man!
He glanced upward at the deck of the yacht, saw me and then leaned back. The cab drove away.
Teenie came prancing aboard, counted all the baskets and bales which had now been brought to the deck and then spotted me. She came dancing over, grinning enough to split her face in half.
"Well, how do you like it?" she said to me, turning around.
"Gaudy, to say the least," I said. "Listen, who the Hells is that black-jowled man?"
"Oh, him," she laughed. "He owns all the airlines that fly in and out of Morocco. He saw the yacht come in and he came over to take me down to Marrakech and get me to go down on him again. He really is crazy about it. He likes to watch the mountains down there while somebody does that to him."
"And he bought you all these things?" I said, ignoring the fact that this was the second version of who he was. She could never tell the truth.
"Of course," she said. "All kinds of goodies. You wait. I was thinking of you."
Good as her word, when I retired that evening, she came waltzing in, in a filmy new negligee and with a box. She opened the box and told me to open my mouth, and into it she popped a green cube of candy, soft like jelly. It was very good.
"Nice, eh," she said.
I agreed that it was very good candy.
"Have another one," she said.
I ate a second piece of candy.
She did something very strange. She went back to her room and got a new radio, came back to my bedchamber, put it in the middle of the floor and tuned it in to the local radio station and simply sat there, listening to the singsong, whiny discords that pass for music to Arabs.
"What are you doing?" I said. The music was torturing my ears. She didn't answer. She was just weaving back and forth to the crazy music. I said, "Well, at least give me another piece of candy."
That got her. "For Christ's sake, Inky. You want to kill yourself?" She glanced at her watch. "You've got another five minutes until it hits."
"What hits?" I said, startled.
"Well, why the hell do you think I went to Marrakech? To get hash, that's what. And all for you."
"Hash?"
"Hashish, idiot. It's condensed marijuana. They make the best hashish in the world in the Moroccan mountains. It packs a hell of a wallop. You go eating any more of that candy and you'll overdose and go into panic. So just be calm, Inky. It takes about an hour to get into a real trip when you eat it, so be patient and listen to this nice music."
"You (bleepch)!" I started to climb out of bed.
The walls suddenly shot fifty feet away from me. The ceiling went through the floor. I was in 1492 discovering Columbus.
I started to giggle.
"Ah, that's better," said Teenie. "Now just watch and I'll show you a waterfall. Look at the muscles of my belly moving. When I showed them this in a nightclub last night in Marrakech, it got them all so hot I had to go down on the whole orchestra."
She was fifty feet away, then two feet away. Her voice was a mile away and then right in my ear.
I was giggling insanely. I could not stop.
"Well, I'm certainly happy you're happy about it," said Teenie. "That was an awful lot of trouble I went to, but it sure looks like it was worth it. In fact, I'm starting to giggle myself and I only had one piece."
For three solid hours I was giggling.
The Arab musicians came out of the radio and did a tap dance.
A camel walked in and said "Hello."
Everything was terribly funny.
Later I was to remember that. Those giggles were a mask for stark tragedy that right that moment stalked. That's what makes the memory so awful. When later I found out what was really happening, I could not possibly imagine how I had ever laughed about it, even under the influence of hashish!
Chapter 7
When I awoke we were at sea. I wondered where we were going.
"I'm glad you decided to lay off pot," the steward said as he shaved me. "It's so much trouble airing out the room."
Little did he know!
When I left the breakfast salon, I walked up to the bridge. Captain Bitts was sitting in a pilot chair, basking in the morning sun, while a watch officer and steersman handled the ship. I walked all along the bridge, looking at all the instruments and gyros. Words like Fathometer and Repeater 1 and such didn't mean very much to me. All the chrome and brass and dials added up to confusion.
Bitts rose as I approached. "Where we going?" I said.
"Don't you know?" he said, somewhat astonished. "You ordered it about 4:00 A.M."
(Bleep) that hashish! "What did I order?"
"Oh," he said, "you're running a check on us. Don't worry, we're going right where you said."
I looked at the low, sandy coast to starboard. It was backed by mountains-the Atlas? But it sure didn't tell me where I was going. It just told me that we were running along a rather strange coast.
"Pretty uninhabited," I said, hoping he would then volunteer information.
"Oh, it will get lively shortly," he said. "Half the shipping lanes of the world converge straight ahead."
I didn't want him to think I didn't know what I was doing. It would undermine his confidence. "So when do we get there?" I asked.
"Oh-eight-hundred hours Thursday," he said.
"Thank you."
"Always glad to help."
Maybe Teenie would know. I went down ladders and aft to the race track. It was not all that big and pretty tightly banked. Teenie was on a racing bicycle, bent low, pe
dalling like mad, ponytail streaming in the wind of her passage. The swoosh, swoosh, swoosh as she went round made me dizzy. Whipping my head made me aware that I had an ache there.
She didn't look like she was stopping. I yelled, "Teenie, where are we going?"
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. "Don't bother me," her voice whipped by. "I'm trying to clock twenty miles."
"Teenie," I called, "where is the ship going?"
Swoosh, swoosh, "Ask Madison. You're disturbing my rhythm."
I left. Madison was up in the squash court. He had a glove and was playing handball against the backboard.
"Madison," I said.
He jumped. It made him hit the ball too hard so that it struck against a ventilator, ricocheted sideways, flew out into the air and then down into the sea.
"Don't do that!" he said. "I thought for a minute you were the Mafia."
"Madison," I said, "there are two places we mustn't go: one of them is the United States and the other one is Turkey."
He was mopping his face with a towel to remove the sweat. "Turkey?" he said. "But this is a Turkish yacht."
"Not the same thing," I said. "They want me in Turkey just like they want you in the U.S. Shotguns and things. So where are we going?"
Madison sat down in a deck chair and the deck steward handed him a tall drink of water and threw a bathrobe over his shoulders. "Well," said Madison, "it's like this. He took on the whole country single-handed after the king banished him. And he got so immortal that in his last fight, when he was dead, they tied his body on a horse and the enemy, just seeing it, fled in complete rout."
"Who?" I said.
"You see, I've got to make this trip pay off," said Madison. "I've got to learn all I can about notorious outlaws who became immortal. It might come in handy in PR, you see. And now I've got a chance to view some of this firsthand. Hussan-Hussan was a bust. So I've got to make up for lost time."
"Madison," I said patiently, "where are we going?"
He looked at me in some alarm. "Do you feel all right, Smith? Maybe you should get more exercise."
"Please, Madison. How did we get to going where we are going?"
"Heavens on Earth," said Madison to the sky, "he's suffering memory lapses. Oh, this is bad, Smith. You have to remember what you have written yesterday in order to alter it today. It just proves you'll never make a real pro PR man."
"Madison," I said in a deadly voice.
"Oh, all right, all right. I'll refresh your memory if you can't make it on your own. At 3:00 A.M. Teenie came tearing down to my cabin, scared me half out of my wits: I thought the Mafia had boarded us. But she said you were demanding to know who I wanted to research next and I told her and she went back to tell you, and so here we go."
"Here we go where?" I said.
"Oh, dear, you don't even remember when I've jogged your brain. All right. El Cid. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, eleventh century. The national hero."
"Of what country?" I said.
"Spain," he said.
"Spain is a big country," I said. "WHAT PORT?"
"Oh, you want to know what PORT we're going to. Well, why didn't you say so? Although, for the life of me, I can't see how you forgot ordering it. Teenie was all over the ship at an ungodly hour telling everyone you were absolutely disgusted with Casablanca and wouldn't spend another hour in the place. Frightful row, leaving so quickly. So we're sailing to investigate Charlton Heston- I mean El Cid."
"In ... ?" I said.
"Valencia, Spain," he said, exasperated. "Don't you ever go to the movies? Listen, when all this blows over and we go home, I'm going to introduce you to my analyst. You need help, Smith."
The sports director was there, dragging me away. "You don't look too good," he said. "That's strange, because the steward said you didn't hit the pot last night. You need a few laps."
"That's what I seem to be suffering from," I said. But I jogged anyway. It really bothered me. True, I hadn't liked Casablanca. But, Gods, I had sure better be careful of that hashish!
Had I only looked, I would have seen Fate jogging along beside me, and had I then really inspected the apparition, I would have seen that it had begun to bare its fangs.
PART FIFTY-SEVEN
Chapter 1
We went through the narrow and heavily trafficked Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea. The water got bluer, the sun brighter and the clouds whiter. We turned northeasterly and began to draw a creaming wake along the Costa del Sol of Spain.
Suffering from too much exercise after too much hash and seeking to avoid too much sun, I went below to my salon in the late afternoon.
I got the viewers out of a cabinet and set them up.
Suddenly I realized my time was all askew. It was only late morning in New York.
The Countess Krak was sitting in a chair facing the Whiz Kid double. Thank Gods he didn't know me or of me, for he had on a hypnohelmet. Beyond him, through a window could be seen the yellowish landscape of lower Manhattan so she must be in the Empire State Building.
Numerous texts had been spread out and one was stamped, as I could see in Krak's peripheral vision, Massachusetts Institute of Wrectology.
I was startled. She must be using a hypnohelmet for its designed purpose: speed training.
She clicked it off and lifted the helmet from the head of the double. She snapped her fingers and the young man woke up.
"Now do you think you can pass your final exams?" she said.
"I don't know," he said. "I lost so much time fooling around on that job. I'll have to get real high marks to overcome the lack of classroom work."
"What do you think you'll do when you graduate?" she said.
"Oh, I'm sure about that," he said. "Twoey has to have new designs for pig troughs and every night he's pushing me to get through with school so I can begin useful work on his farm. He's also rooting around for ideas on how to raise the standard of living of pigs. I'll be busy all right. I never dreamed there was so much civil engineering connected with pigs. Opened a whole new world for me."
"What are you going to do if the media hits you when you go back to school for your exams?"
"Duck," said the double. "But if Jettero ever needs me for public appearances or anything, all he has to do is say the word. I'm not forgetting how he rescued me from that crazy psychiatrist! One minute there I was about to be turned into a vegetable and the next there I was in a van looking at Jettero. And Jesus, was I ashamed of myself right then for ever daring to think I could pose as him. And I know darned well you didn't tell me to think that when I had the helmet on."
"No, I don't have to do that," said the Countess Krak. "Jettero can stand on his own."
"He certainly can," said the double. "What a guy!"
I suddenly seethed. All that (bleeped) adulation for Heller! Couldn't people see what a sneaky, rotten (bleep) he really was? Him and his Royal officer ways. It made me feel nauseated.
"Well, all right," said the Countess Krak. "I've got to go tell my class of microwave engineers to go to lunch and I suggest you do the same."
"I'm real grateful to you," said the double. "If there's anything I can do for you or Jettero my whole life, you only got to say the word."
I gritted my teeth. The two-way-response radio was lying there. Wasn't there some kind of an order I could give Raht? Something that would make these people suffer for all the horrible things they had done to me?
I couldn't think of anything.
The "dress for dinner" gong went. The steward got me into a white evening jacket and black tie. He was all chattery.
"Clothes in Spain," he said, "are very good and very inexpensive. And while Valencia isn't Madrid, I think we can find some proper yachting togs all the same. So when we get in, what say you and I go ashore in the morning and outfit you more fittingly."
"And I won't have to exercise?" I said.
"I have influence with the sports director," he said.
And so it was that after a rather pr
ofessorial dinner where I got told all about El Cid and a very harrowing night wherein Arabs danced with camels on the head of a pin, I found myself, the following day, walking the busy streets of Valencia, Spain, stopping in at shops and getting rigged out to look more the part of a yacht owner.
I suspected that the steward was probably getting a commission, but shopkeepers were so insistent that I looked magnifico and terrifico and fantastico in this or that and were so impressed that I owned el yate grandisimo newly arrived, I couldn't refuse very much. The cost was not that great and I landed back aboard with a taxicab full of boxes.
I wanted to show Teenie that she wasn't the only one who could run off and come back with clothes, but she and Madison weren't there. They had gone off to a library.
That evening, right after dinner, we were suddenly inundated with a flamenco troupe. The Chief Steward explained to us that while this was not Andalusia in southwest Spain, the flamenco was very good and, indeed, as I sat in the yacht's music salon, the stamping heels, swirling skirts, castanets and guitars soon got me shouting and clapping with them. The girls were black-eyed and pretty and although the men certainly looked like they carried knives, they didn't object when the ship's officers and Madison were forced into the dance. Teenie had a stamping contest with a young Spanish dancer and seemed to win or so they said. I got into it at last.
Later, I was exhausted in my bedchamber but Teenie was all fired up. She kept cavorting around the room. "Oh," she said, "I've got to get me a mantilla and a comb and some castanets and some of those skirts with flounces! When you whirl, you can show everything clean up to your neck!"
"You're an exhibitionist," I said.
"Of course," she said. "And you wait until I eat enough to get some flesh on me. Hey, speaking of eating, how would you like some candy?"
We fought. I lost.
At dawn, no less, the steward woke me up. "You'll be late!" he said, rushing about, laying out new clothes. He shaved me and pushed me into a cold shower and rushed me into my clothes so fast, and I was so groggy, I didn't get a chance to ask him what I was being late for.
Somebody pushed a roll and coffee at me as we got into a car. We sped off.
Mission Earth 07: Voyage of Vengeance Page 17
