by Mike Resnick
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The Chronicles of Lucifer Jones
Volume I: 1922-1926
ADVENTURES
by Mike Resnick
Being a Stirring Chronicle of Intrigue, Romance, Danger, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Thrilling Triumphs over Fierce Beasts and Fiercer Men in the Mysterious and Exotic Dark Continent, as Recounted by the Daring, Resourceful, Handsome, and Modest Christian Gentleman Who Experienced Them
This,
my very favorite book,
is dedicated to
CAROL
my very favorite person
Table of Contents
1. The White Goddess
2. Partners
3. The Vampire
4. Slave Trading
5. The Mummy
6. A Red-Letter Scheme
7. The Mutiny
8. An Affair of the Heart
9. The Lost Race
10. The Lord of the Jungle
11. The Best Little Tabernacle in Nairobi
12. The Elephants’ Graveyard
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The Dutchman, who prefers to think of his slave-trading operation as an International Employment Placement Service.
Erich Von Horst, a con man's con man.
Herbie Miller, ivory poacher and part-time vampire.
Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt, a pair of brothers from Pittsburgh who became gods at the lost kingdom of the Malaloki.
Burley Rourke, a doctor specializing in diseases of the gullible.
Rosepetal Schultz, who differs from most ancient Egyptian queens in that she was born twenty-three years ago in Brooklyn.
The Rodent, undersized killer of either sixteen or thirty-five men, who changed his name from the Weasel for professional reasons.
Mr. Christian, officer aboard the good ship Dying Quail.
Bloomstoke, a tall, bronzed British nobleman who is living with a tribe of apes while hiding from his creditors.
Neeyora, just your typical naked blonde white goddess, who tips the scales at four hundred pounds, give or take an ounce.
Capturing Clyde Calhoun, who brings ’em back alive. Not intact, but alive.
Amen-hetep III, whose mummy carries a half-clad girl through the streets of Cairo before checking in at Shepheard's Hotel.
Major Theodore Dobbins, a man with a taste for rich widows, who is also a speculator in certain perishable commodities imported from far exotic China and points east.
And our narrator, The Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones: his religion is a little something he and the Lord worked out between themselves one afternoon, his tabernacle is the most prosperous brothel in British East Africa, and he has serious disagreements with the authorities of fourteen different African nations over the finer points of the law. On the other hand, he means well.
ADVENTURES
(1922-1926)
Chapter 1
THE WHITE GODDESS
I knew a real live vampire. It was in Africa about seventy years ago, and his name was Herbie Miller. He didn't look much like a vampire, I suppose—walked around in khaki pants that he cut off above the knees, and his hair wasn't slicked down or nothing. I can't say he was real fond of crosses, but daylight didn't bother him none, and he had no problems walking over running water, except that he couldn't swim and narrow bridges scared the hell out of him.
I don't know why he should have been so interested in me, especially considering that I was a man of the cloth back then, but he was. When he wasn't trying to nab me in the neck, which was pretty difficult inasmuch as poor Herbie was barely five feet tall with his boots on, he kept coming up with crazy schemes about how I should go to the local hospital—not Schweitzer's, but one you've probably never heard of—and borrow some blood, for which he promised to pay me in pounds or dollars or rupees or whatever else he'd gotten off one of his more recent meals.
You know, I think about Herbie and some of the others I met, and I'd have to say that even without the animals—and I never did see all that many of them anyway, except for the time I was an ivory poacher—Africa was a pretty interesting place to be back then. I had my flock and my tabernacle, and of course there was Herbie, who came smack-dab between my little business excursions into opium and brothels, and there were Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt, a pair of brothers who became gods, and there was Capturin’ Clyde Calhoun and a batch of others.
Africa was full of colorful folk like that in the old days. They called themselves adventurers and explorers and hunters and missionaries, but what they mostly were were outcasts. They gathered in the civilized cities, most of them: Johannesburg, Nairobi, Mombasa, Pretoria, places like that. Every now and then they'd go out into the bush—only bad pulp writers ever called it the jungle—after everything from ivory to lost gold mines to half-naked white priestesses. A lot of them found ivory, and a few found gold, but the only man I ever knew who went into the bush and found himself a white woman was an Irishman named Burley Rourke.
I met him just a few days after I got off the boat, young and hopeful and sporting my first beard. Due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings during an informal game of chance, I had been invited to inspect the premises of the Johannesburg gaol, which, while tastefully appointed, was nevertheless not the temporary residence I would have picked had the choice been mine.
Rourke was lying on a cot in the adjacent cell. He was a tall, cadaverous man, with bushy black eyebrows and an enormous dimple on his chin. He had the longest, whitest, most delicate fingers I had ever seen on a man, and since even his fingernails were clean, I asked him if he, like myself, was being incarcerated due to a certain flexibility toward the hard and fast rules of the game. He allowed that this was indeed the case, and I asked him if his trade was cards or dice.
“Neither,” he said. “I'm a doctor, specializing in diseases of the gullible.”
That's when I knew we were going to hit it off just fine.
“How about yourself?” said Rourke. “You look like some kind of preacher man, all done up in black like you are.”
“Indeed I am, Brother Rourke,” I said with some modesty. “I don't know how a respectable man like me got involved with all them sinful characters in the first place. I suppose I was just following the good Lord's mandate to consider every man my brother. ‘Course, I never have gotten around to viewing all the women exactly as sisters.”
“And what religion do you preach?” asked Rourke.
“One me and the Lord worked out betwixt ourselves one afternoon,” I said.
Actually, the way I see it, my calling was determined the day I was born. We had a little farm outside Moline, Illinois, and once I was alive and secure, my mother sent my father to the county courthouse to register my name, which was to be Lucas Jones or Lucius Jones, I'm still not sure which. But my father was a man who loved his liquor, and by the time he got there he came up with as close an approximation as he was capable at the time.
Which is how I got to be Lucifer Jones.
Anyway, they say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and I guess toting the name Lucifer around made me pa
infully aware of who I was named after. I just naturally kind of gravitated toward the church, especially after I saw the size of our poorbox, and pretty soon me and God formed sort of a two-man company, and I went out and did His business. And a pretty good business it was, until the day a couple of Federal men came around. Up until then I had always thought that paying income taxes was voluntary, like going into the army and such. Well, I'd have stayed and fought them, but the Lord says that vengeance is His, so I took off down the Mississippi one night and hopped the first ship out of New Orleans.
“Well, now,” said Rourke when I'd told him the story, adding only a minimum number of poetic flourishes, “I do believe we're going to be friends, Saint Luke. You don't mind if I call you that, do you?”
“It's got a nice, down-to-earth sound to it, Brother Rourke,” I allowed. “In fact, now that I roll it around on my tongue, I like it more and more. I think, with your kind permission, that I'll be having these godless black heathen build me the Tabernacle of Saint Luke. Once I leave my present vile surroundings, that is.”
“Oh,” said Rourke, furrowing up his forehead and tugging at his mustache. “That's too bad. But, of course, if a man's got the call...”
“It's a kind of weak call at this moment,” I said quickly, wondering what he had in mind. “Nothing that couldn't be fought off for a couple of months if I was to dig in tooth and nail.” I gritted my teeth, prepared to make the effort, and he must of mistook it for a grin, because he grinned right back at me.
He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and unfolded a huge sheet of paper. Then he dusted it off a bit and passed it through the bars to me.
“Ever see one of these?” he asked.
I took a quick look and handed it back.
“If it's a map to King Solomon's mines, I've seen about twenty. If it's to the elephants’ burial ground, they're kind of rare. I don't imagine I've seen much more than half a dozen in the week I've been here.”
He chuckled. “Actually, it's a map to the lost gold mine of the Zulus. Only one I've seen.”
“Must have been lost a good long time,” I opined. “I don't recall ever seeing a Zulu wearing anything but leopard-claw necklaces.”
“Well, what do you think?” asked Rourke.
“About the gold mine?” I asked.
“About the map.”
He was still grinning at me, and all of a sudden a great big Heavenly revelation smote me right between the eyes, and out of courtesy I returned his smile.
“How many do you think we could make?” I asked.
“Well, we'd have to hunt up some real old paper, and figure out what kind of charcoal the natives draw with. Need about three bob for materials, I should think.”
“You supplied the map, Brother Rourke,” I said. “I'll supply the capital. I've got a dozen copies of the Good Book stashed in my hotel room. It shouldn't be too hard to sell them. There's plenty of widows in town who can find solace in the words of Our Lord and His prophets.”
“Fine,” he said. “I figure we ought to be able to make up about fifty.”
“That's a lot of maps,” I said. “We wouldn't want to flood the market.”
He looked shocked. “That would be immoral. I'm surprised that such a thought would even cross your mind, Saint Luke. Personally, just for propriety's sake, I don't think we should sell more than five an hour.”
“At least, not until we get to Pretoria,” I agreed.
We consummated our partnership with a solemn handshake.
* * * *
Burley and I got turned out about a week later, and within another week we had made and sold almost two hundred maps, accumulating a substantial little nest egg along the way.
Of course, the bush was getting a little crowded by then, what with a couple hundred of hopeful investors looking for that lost gold mine, so we swung north to Bechuanaland, where we stopped at an occasional outpost and dispensed maps, medical care, and salvation with equal vigor. I began taking contributions to the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and Rourke made a little extra pin money by curing two settlers who didn't have heart attacks and another who hadn't broken his leg. When he came to a trader who really did have blackwater fever, he decided that it was time for us to get moving again.
Now, there are a lot of ways for a newly-arrived American and a newly-arrived Irishman to travel through Africa, but foot-slogging ain't one of them. When we weren't pulling scorpions out of our clothes and ticks off our skins, we spent most of our time starving and getting rained on. For what was supposed to be a hot, arid country, I never did see so much rain in all my life. It ruined what was left of the maps, but since we had sold about three hundred by that time, it didn't seem like such a great loss.
Besides, we soon figured out that Zulu gold mines weren't real high on our itinerary, whereas a map to the nearest city would have been a right welcome blessing.
I remember that one night just before our food was due to run out I fell asleep next to an old termite mound. I was still dreaming about an exceptionally nubile daughter of King Solomon, or perhaps it was King David, when Burley kicked me in the ribs. I took the Lord's name in vain a couple of times and tried to go back to sleep, but then he kicked me again.
“Get on your feet, Saint Luke,” he said. “We've got company.”
I jumped up right quick at that, and peered off in the direction he was looking. There were about twenty half-naked black savages off in the distance, all of them carrying spears and shields.
“Do you reckon they're cannibals, Brother Rourke?” I asked, holding up a hand to shade my eyes from the morning sun.
“Too far away,” said Rourke. “I can't see their teeth.”
“What have their teeth got to do with it?”
“I read somewhere that all cannibals file their teeth,” he said.
I remembered some gossip I had heard about old Doc Peterson back in Moline before they locked him away, and I knew he sure didn't file his teeth, so I kind of discounted that theory. But they were getting closer now, and most of them looked pretty full, so I figured that it wasn't worth worrying about for the time being.
“What do you think we ought to do?” asked Rourke. “Heal ’em or convert ’em?”
“They don't look like they need much of either,” I said, as they approached to within a hundred yards. “I don't suppose you know Zulu or Tswana?”
He shook his head. “They don't speak much of either back in Dublin. How about beads? I'm told they go crazy for beads.”
“Sounds reasonable, Brother Rourke,” I said. “I didn't know you had any.”
“Me? Of course not. Don't you have any rosary beads in your pockets?”
“Wrong religion,” I replied.
The savages were about forty yards away now, and muttering amongst themselves. They had slowed down a bit, but were still approaching.
“They look like they mean business,” said Rourke. “Suppose we ought to make a run for it?”
“To where?” I asked. “We don't even know where we are.”
“The way I figure it,” said Rourke, “Cairo's north and the Cape's south. Take your choice.”
But by then they had split up, and a moment later we were surrounded. Pulling the Good Book from my pocket, I cleared my throat, raised my hands above my head, and took a step forward.
"Brethren!" I shouted, and they all jumped back a couple of steps. “In the Book of Herod, Chapter 8, Verse 3, the Lord God said unto Moses: Thou shall not eat thy neighbor!”
The leader of the heathens stopped dead in his tracks and blinked his eyes very rapidly.
“You're getting to them,” said Rourke out of the side of his mouth. “Say something else. Maybe a little hellfire and damnation.”
“And the children of Israel were wicked,” I intoned. “And you know why they were wicked? Because they ate two wayfarers who had mistakenly wandered into their city. For does not Jesus say that to err is human, but to forgive divine? And the children of Israel, who were dressed a
far sight better than you, you Godless savages, were cast out into the desert to wander for forty years! Do you want that to happen to you, you ignorant barbarians?”
“Oh, you got ’em on the run, Saint Luke!” said Rourke. “You really got ’em going!”
Well, they got going, all right, but in the wrong direction, and a few seconds later the leader was standing so close to me that l could just about smell his breath.
“Make him smile,” said Rourke. “I still want to get a look at his teeth.”
The savage responded with an enormous grin. “Like so?” he asked in a deep gravelly voice. Then, frowning, he extended a forefinger and poked me right in the short ribs. “You come!” He jabbed Rourke with the butt of his spear. “You too!”
We acceded to his wishes, not caring to dwell upon the alternatives for any considerable length of time. They didn't treat us unkindly, but then no competent butcher likes to bruise the meat, so I can't say that we were real quick to develop a mutual trust with our black companions. We walked the better part of a day, stopping every now and then for water and privy calls, and when night came we built a big fire and huddled around it, more from cold than from fear of man-eating beasts, of which there weren't none, except maybe for our present company.
Finally the leader walked over to us and sat himself down, cross-legged. He pointed to himself and said, “Kitunga.”
“Rourke,” said Burley, tapping himself on the chest. “And this here's Saint Luke.”
Kitunga solemnly extended his hand, kind of upside down, and shook each of ours.
“Does this mean you're not going to eat us?” asked Rourke.
“Eat you?” said Kitunga, and laughed. “No. No. Not eat.”
“Then what do you want from us?” said Rourke.
"Chumbi-chumbi," said Kitunga.
“Sounds like some kind of ritual,” said Rourke. “What the devil does it mean?”
Kitunga flashed every tooth in his head. “Make babies,” he said. He shook our hands again, spat in the fire, and began walking away.
