L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  Vyssu and I exchanged guilty glances, both of us having been caught in precisely the mental act Mav described.

  Several lam-heights from our picnic, Mav’s trine of wa-tun, ordinarily quartered upon his mother’s Upper (Most) Hedgerow estate, were idly clawing up clumps of lichen-sand and depositing them in their mouths, evidently enjoying a picnic of their own. Mav had insisted upon removing the circular tyrelike affairs from their carapaces. “Saddles,” I believe, was the word he employed. In normal use, these prevented the lamviin rider from a potentially injurious proximity to the animals’ strictly herbivorous but nonetheless formidable jaws, and (at least theoretically) gave one a comfortable place to perch. As I was to discover, some hours later, theory and practice suffer no little divergence when it comes to riding watuback; the unconventional postures required by the sport leave every joint in every limb screaming in agony.

  Be that as it may, it was singularly bracing, at the time, to travel along atop the beast instead of behind and it was thought-provoking—I suppose that is the best expression— once the rider’s straps were snugged up, to be able to employ all three sets of hands at once for something besides perambulation. How a mere two-thirds of a brain can direct three eyes and nine arms without braiding them together in a tangle dissoluble only by radical surgery is something that natural philosophy will have to look into someday.

  An equally challenging question, this time for historians, is why no so-called civilized nation has ever thought of riding directly upon watun. Naturally, the practice is now widely known, if not universally exercised, thanks to the many newsscrolls, magazines, and cheap sensational novels about the colonies—we had, in fact, collected a gratifying minimum of fuzzy-pelted stares as we made our way through the northern margin of the city—yet it is peculiar in this age of electricity and steam that we owe a brilliant innovation to the savages of Einnyo.

  Which musings brought me back to the present and to our conversation.

  Mav was cranking up a juicing box, which Vyssu had brought with her. “Perhaps you’d both like to hear how I spent yesterday,” he offered as he paused in his winding to select a slice of pickled taproot. “I began, of course, with Niitood’s flat, which looked quite as though a desert whirlwind had passed through it in the night, smashing everything, including the new camera of which he had only just taken delivery, and scattering photographs, negatives, and foul picture-making fluids from kitchen to hannbox.”

  “Poor Niitood,” Vyssu said. “Where was he at the time this tragedy took place?”

  “Permit me to venture a guess,” said I. “Imbibing at the Hose & Springbow? This clearly demonstrates the sort of misfortune that juicing invariably—”

  “Close, but no inhaling tube," Mav interrupted. “He was at the Globe & Anchor, a little place of the sort you’d expect from its name, down in Brassie. And specifically at my request, he had been interviewing some of his acquaintances among the Navy.”

  You will appreciate (Mav explained) that I was hesitant about confronting Navylamn directly, at least to begin with. The story of my misspent youth still circulates among them now and then, and, although I seem to have my partisans, there are those who look askance upon a very junior officer committing mutiny, even in the noblest of causes. The purpose of Niitood’s mission was to brace certain of those individuals who had attended Srafen’s lecture on the fatal night, a task he undertook with an ardor that is a credit to him—unless Mymy interrupts to explain that all of them were long retired, contemporaries of the Professor, and given to frequenting such places as the Globe & Anchor, where electricity flows quite as readily as it does in Tamet’s place of business.

  Now Niitood’s burglary, or vandalism, or whatever it may have been—and I would be foolish indeed to dismiss the virtual certainty that it was vitally connected with this case in some as yet unexplained manner—disrupted the schedule I’d intended. However, as Vyssu will recall, he and I spent several hours in conversation the next morning. I asked him to determine for me which of the officers I might address with lamly directness, and which it would be necessary to impress with my present authority—in contravention to my youthful indiscretions.

  Thus, after telephoning Mymy, interviewing Niitood to obtain, as it were, my social bearings, and examining his apartments on the way, I hired a cab that took me to the Navy yards. My insignia were sufficient to gain me grudging entrance (after a brief exchange of formalities with the Navy Bucketeers) and a young rating was detached to escort me to the dockside berth of the T.M.S. Dobotpo.

  Standing at such a place along the harbor gives one a certain perspective. Such elderly vessels as the one I was about to board rested fender to fender with their sleek modem steam-propelled daughters. There are those who maintain that, in the days of sail, the sealamn were of a different mettle. I cannot testify to that, but there is romance in the ancient, tall-masted ships, their sails rotating lazily in the breeze like the wings of some colossal bird, awaiting only the hand of an engineer who will engage the gears, permitting the screw to turn the ship out of the gulf of Dybod and into the world of danger and adventure.

  Dobotpo was such a vessel, double-masted (though with her long, narrow sails furled at this moment and her radial spars naked in the sun), a trimaran of an old and distinguished class. Her guns, of course, were capped, and no one save a crew of scrubbers and broomers remained aboard.

  I climbed the gangway and crossed to her high-railed central hull, pausing for a moment between a pair of masts taller even now than the loftiest building in Mathas. The channel was a clear, smooth strip of green where engineering barges had cut a swath and, even considering the vile substance that it was, somehow beautiful and evocative of a thousand exciting far-off places. In the remainder of the harbor and out into the gulf, the ever-present seagrass stood a lam-height above the surface, turning the horizon and all the ocean between it and myself scarlet. This thick growth had once plagued both Navy and commerce, slowing passage and occasionally tangling the most thoughtfully designed propellers. Too, it concealed within its reedy folds the many large and dangerous beasts that the old, less-swift vessels had no means of avoiding.

  Perhaps that, alone, is why I had chosen the Air Navy. Sheer cowardice—or at least the chance of a quick, clean death in the sky.

  Now, of course, our Navy finds the ubiquitous weed a blessing, and in more than one way. Our coal-fired vessels travel far too rapidly to be bothered by mere sea-monsters, and the scythes upon their downswept bows, the drying racks above, assure a goodly supply of fuel should the coal run low. So swift is their passage that freshly cut vegetation is tinder-dry in a matter of hours.

  Since the invention of the air screw, those great caged fans that sit atop the sterns of modem warships and freighters, no one need fear propeller-clogging weeds, yet the profiles of our modem vessels are so low that, providing the fuel is running dry enough to minimize the smoke, a warship may lie in the deep-sea grasses many lam-heights tall, hidden from enemy observation and gunfire until the last strategic moment.

  You know, I saw the T.M.S. Homdou herself steam by while I was there, a mighty battleship larger than North Hedgerow Station, with three magnificent and powerful propellers, one upon the stem of each iron hull, and cannon big as railroad engines? Did I say the sailing ships had romance? None to match the march of progress! But I digress.

  As I say, I made my way to the central hull of the venerable Dobotpo and thence belowdecks to the sickbay, where I understood one Commander Zedmon Dakods Hedgy t dwelt in preference to Bachelor Officer’s Quarters ashore. It was this Hedgyt, according to Niitood, who was particularly responsible for the Navy delegation at Srafen’s lecture, for he was an old, old friend of rhers (in fact, if you will look, the first edition of The Ascent of Lamviin is dedicated to him) from his midshiplam-cauterist days aboard the fabled T.M.S. Dessmontevo.

  Dessmontevo, you’ll recall, was a light cruiser not unlike this Dobotpo ship; today, schoolchildren recognize her name from yet
another volume of Srafen’s writings, for it was aboard her that rhe made those first discoveries that lead to the Theory of Ascension.

  I tried not to let the tubby little Dobotpo distort my judgment, for her sister ship and the Professor were both young together, fast and sleek by standards of the day, and well-capable of winning a world (or at least that part of it not won already) for the Empire.

  Commander Hedgyt I discovered sitting in a sort of cu-bicular office the sickbay operating theater. “Good day, sir, I am Agot Edmoot Mav, of Their Majesties’ Bucke-teers.”

  The fellow gave a little start, and I realized at once I had awakened him from hann—or something like it, for an obviously well-used juicing box lay near one of his elbows.

  “Bucketeers? Oh, yes, about my poor old Srafen, is it? I answered all those questions on the night rhe ... it happened."

  “I realize and appreciate that, sir,” said I, “but I have been placed in charge of bringing Srafen’s murderer to justice, and for that I need more information than was obtained then.”

  The old fellow seemed at first to have some difficulty following me, but as our interview progressed, his senses made their presence steadily more manifest. I realized, when he began to tell me about himself and Srafen, how deeply stricken he was with all that had transpired.

  “I was with rher, you know, aboard the old Dessmontevo—ah, we were wild lammies then, the living terror of TM’s own Navy! Whenever we hit port, be the locals gray or red, or yellow like ourselves, first thing we’d do is find ourselves a willing shemale—professional or enthusiastic amateur—an’ hit th’ sand!” There followed many bawdy, yet somehow innocent and touching, reminiscences of their service together, interspersed with violent adventures and the scientific history with which we are all familiar.

  “Ah, but that educational experience in the Kood Islands never made it into any of old Srafen’s picture books, th’ sanctimonious surry—no, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean it at all, for rhe was never afterward ashamed about those halcyon days, nor ever failed to hash ’em over with me when I was in port.”

  Tasked, “So you saw Srafen now and then?”

  He blinked and rippled affirmation. “Not that I had all that much time once I became a full-pelted ship’s cauterist, mind you. Too many endless voyages, too many bloody wars—and undeclared unpleasantnesses, some of which the citizenry know but little of. Showin’ th’ flag.” He mentioned several recent visits, even a minor operation he’d quietly performed upon the philosopher so as to avoid worrying rher family and friends.

  “And afterward, when I was slowing down, it was Srafen . . . old Srafen . . —he patted the juicing box be

  side him—“Srafen was just getting wound up, in a manner of speaking. World famous rhe is now—and yes, I use the present tense, because rher work has guaranteed rher a sort of immortality. I’m glad of that, although I’ll miss rher sorely.”

  “You were both student ship’s cauterists together, I understand?”

  “Midshiplammies—indeed we were, indeed we were. Comrades in arms—and often in th’ box, as well. And what slim time I’d left to spend aboning upon medicine (for I was just that bit slower than rhe was, you understand, but who in salty dampness wasn’t in those days—or in these?) rhe was out at every stopover, collecting rher goddamp specimens. I myself helped preserve an’ catalog ’em. Great Pah in heaven, if I’d only been able to see what rhe saw, I’d be the famous philosopher now, instead of a tired old carapace-cutter. But I don’t mind, really, not at all. Rhe deserved everything rhe got, and I still have a chance or two in my inventions.”

  “Your inventions?” Everybody fancies himself an inventor these days, but my interest was sincere, for, as I think I said, I do delight in progress.

  “Indeed.” He rose stiffly, shook his limbs out, and walked with steadily decreasing difficulty toward a little storage room between two massive rafters overhead and the after bulkhead of the sickbay. Inside was a veritable jungle of wires and mechanical parts. “This is my Improved Revolving Cannon—not much originality in it, but an idea that I believe is basically sound.”

  And so it proved, for he’d replaced the cranking lever of a common rotary machine gun with a sizable pulley and run a rubber belt from there to a small electric engine. “What rate of fire can you attain?”

  He peered at me, expecting disbelief. “Around six thousand per minute, theoretically. Allowing time to replace magazines—and the occasional sheared firing pin or bollixed casing—perhaps half that.”

  I was indeed impressed, and told him so, adding something of my own adventures regarding such a gun. He told me his Inventors’ Club—which he invited me to join—had given him encouragement.

  “You know the problem, though,” he said, reshrouding the weapon with canvas. He pointed toward the rafters where, to my astonishment, there hung several oil lanterns on gimbals. “The goddamp Navy hasn’t even heard of electricity yet! Why, on one of those new steamers, with a dynamo driven by the engines, we could mount a dozen of these guns for the kind of close protection artillery won’t provide and rifle fire can’t. But here am I, a rattling hulk of a lam, stuck aboard a rattling hulk of a ship. Nor will the Admiralty answer my letters!”

  I commiserated with him, understanding all too well the deliberately backward nature of Imperial institutions, whereupon he revealed to me another of his contrivances. Like the flash gun Niitood had invented, it was based upon a juicing box; only this one was connected, through an incomprehensible apparatus, to a copper coil of some kind and terminated, at the other end, in a railroad telegrapher’s key and the earpiece of a telephone.

  “Wireless telegraphy!” he exclaimed, and began to describe to me the operating principles, which I still do not fully understand. I did comprehend that this was his intended means of replacing the semaphore towers still employed by the Navy and of greatly increasing the range of communications in general. Someday he hoped to produce a device to transmit the lamviin voice, and he spoke dreamily of a distant future in which photographs—moving photographs such as they are experimenting with on the Continent—might be conveyed through the air as well.

  Truly, my dears, this is an age of lamn-made miracles, and we are fortunate to be living at such a time when humble reporters, elderly sea doctors and, if modesty permits, even Bucketeers such as myself, may dabble about and possibly improve the conditions under which our fellow lamviin exist.

  Regrettably, as with the rotary electric gun, our Admiralty disdained to show the slightest interest whatever in Hedgyt’s wireless telegraphy, and between contending with such recalcitrance and Srafen’s sudden death, he was himself rapidly losing interest in life.

  I asked the old fellow whether he had ever married, particularly Srafen. In answer, he wound up his unmodified juicing box, for we had since returned to his small office. He offered me a jolt; I thanked him, but deferred first in his favor.

  When he had taken it and once again relaxed, he said, “Rhe wouldn’t have me—rather, rher family wouldn’t, and, radical as rhe may have been in other things, rhe would not disobey in this—I think because a professorship awaited at the end of rher enlistment.” He mused and wound the box again, forgetting that he’d offered me a turn. When the magneto stopped, he said, “Not that I blamed rher much—it’s a hard row for a surrie, and was harder by a damp sight, then. Rhe got what rhe needed,

  and I wished rher well. We were always fast friends after an’ I was glad t’ help when I could.”

  He wound the box again and took a jolt. “Anyway, I had

  my career too, what thersh—there was of it. Goddamp Admiralty, goddamp ol’ worm-eaten sandbucket Dobotpo, an’ pretty soon—watch it, son, it sneaks up on y’—goddamp ol’ me 1” Again he took the current. “Well, here’sh to ya, Srafen, m’lost love. Y’did good, an’ I did ash good ash I could, too. No regretsh, no ... no re . .

  Hedgyt slid sideways off his stool in electrically induced hann. I straightened his limbs as best I cou
ld and left him there with his memories. Before I departed, though, I cranked up his juicing box and had one to the shade of the Professor, too, Pah bless rher. Rhe was a second surfather to me, the parent of my intellect, and it made me fond of Hedgyt that he had loved rher, too.

  Mav assisted Vyssu and me in clearing away the remnants of our meal, and he stirred the sand blanket into the soil, but he was silent and thoughtful. Perhaps it was the setting or the conversation, but I watched Vyssu and found myself admiring little inconsequential things about her— the graceful curve of her wrists as she collected the cactus blossoms she’d set out as a centerpiece, her deep and luminous eyes, the humorous, intelligent set of her fur.

  I recall thinking that, in this modern world, which Mav loved so deeply, perhaps there was less room for class distinctions than in our fathers’ time, and perhaps even our fathers had been wrong. Why, just because my ancestors had conquered her ancestors—

  Then I remembered what Vyssu’s occupation was, and my hearts shied like a startled watu, my mind amazed at how corruptible even a well-born Fodduan can be, distracted by a pretty carapace and glossy pelt.

  Mymysiir Offe Woom, scolded a voice within me—not unlike my mother’s—what could you have been thinking of!

  X: The Field Narrows

  I was surprised to learn that Srafen had kept rher home along the northern margin of South Hedgerow, a neighborhood quite comely and fashionable enough, yet hardly what one would expect, given her comparative wealth and renown. Nonetheless, it was entirely consistent with rher naval background, lying as it did just above the military suburb of Brassie, and with what Mav had told me of rher unpretentious attitude toward life.

  What surprised me even more, I suppose, was that rher husband and wife, both of the scoundrels, could be found there even still. The many scandalous rumors of their separate . . . well . . . adventures, made it seem, at least to me, somehow indecent that they should not by now have made more suitable arrangements. As I was discovering rapidly in this affair, decency is rather more elastic a conception than my parents had brought me up to believe.