CONRAD'S QUEST FOR RUBBER taocs-7

by Leo Frankowski

  Sir Odon thought awhile and said, "You know, that's almost crazy enough to be the truth! To think that a whole tribe of people are in effect enslaved to a herd of deer! Amazing!"

  "But are the people really the slaves?" Father John said. "It is the deer that are slaughtered and eaten. It is the deer that pull the sleighs. And I'll tell you, I examined some of those sleigh draft animals, and they were castrated males. Do masters permit their slaves to castrate them?"

  "But it is the deer who decide where both the herd and the tribe are going," Sir Odon said.

  Zbigniew said, "Maybe the people don't care where they're going, as long as the deer are there. Perhaps the deer know best where the better grazing is to be found. I mean, who would know better than a deer where the best food for a deer is?"

  "I suppose so," Sir Odon said. "But it is still one of the strangest relationships that I have ever witnessed."

  "I can tell you have never met Komander Sliwa," Lezek said. "He has six wives and everybody in the family is happy. Now, there is a strange relationship!"

  A few days later we found the iron deposit. At first all we saw were several small mines that must have been used sporadically by native blacksmiths. They were little more than holes in the ground, actually, and scattered over several square miles.

  But then, when Father John noticed that the ore from all of the mines was identical, he suggested that the whole area must have a huge seam of iron ore under it. We dug a half-dozen small pits, and found iron in every one of them!

  We spent a further three weeks at the site, digging dozens of holes to define just how big the thing was, and digging a deep hole in the center of it, like a well, to find out how thick the ore seam was. Any way we figured it, there was more iron available than the army could use in three hundred years!

  We surveyed the area, and sketched in some grandiose plans for equipment to mine and clean the ore, and then started to work our way back, making preliminary drawings for a series of canals and locks to get the ore down the river to the Baltic.

  We were all vastly excited about the possibilities ahead of us, because according to the army policy statement concerning explorers, we would all be getting a percentage of the profits of the mine. Not a huge percentage, but as Kiejstut put it, "A small part of infinity is still very large!"

  Our plans called for specially built steamships, designed to hold bulk cargoes of coke or iron ore, to run between the Vistula and the Torne, with steel-making plants at the mouths of both rivers. Coke from Poland would be shipped to the plant on the Torne, and then the ships would be filled with iron ore to be shipped back to Poland. It would be a most efficient operation!

  We then discovered there were four seasons up there in the north. They were June, July, August, and winter.

  By the time we made it back to our base camp, three months had gone by. The short northern summer was over, and the rivers were all frozen over. We suddenly realized that our carefully drawn plans for two gross miles of canals and locks were all a waste of time! If they were built, they would be useless for most of the year.

  So we started all over, and this time we designed a railroad. Fortunately, we could use the same surveys, and do the design work at our base camp, which was wonderful, since we again had some variety in our meals. For the last six weeks, while on the trail, we had been eating nothing but fresh venison, and even that delight became very tiresome after a while.

  Our radio messages concerning our find were well-received on the ship, and as they were getting back to Poland every month, we heard that Lord Conrad was pleased with us. It seems that the seam of magnetite at Three Walls was almost depleted, and another source of high-grade iron ore was urgently needed. We were now certain that our discovery would not be ignored.

  On less important topics, our garden had been surprisingly productive, considering that it had only about five weeks of growing season. When we got back, we found a half acre of plants that had matured, but were mostly frost-killed and rotted. The potatoes, beets, and other root crops could be salvaged, but little else was saved.

  Nonetheless, the long days of sunlight did allow for a decent enough harvest, except for the fact that a farmer would have to do all of his work, from plowing to harvest, in only five weeks, and it didn't seem likely that a man could make a living that way. Maybe gardening would be a hobby for some of the workers at the steel plant we would build here.

  We made a few quick excursions back up the river, to check on a few alternate railroad routes and to bring back more samples of the ore for the metallurgists, but for the most part, the balance of our year on the Torne was spent at our base camp.

  Once, coming back from the ore site, we crossed the tracks of the deer people, but we didn't meet any of them. We found out later, over the radio, that they had been contacted by two of the other explorer lances, southwest of there, toward Sweden. Hopefully, the others would learn more about those strange people than we had.

  Before the Baltic froze over, a few people from the ship dropped by, to pick up our ore samples, along with our maps and drawings, and drop off some fresh fruits and vegetables, but army policy was that an explorer lance should spend at least a year at a site, so we did.

  Once it became really cold, having the cave was a godsend. It was pleasantly warm in there compared to what it was outside.

  A cave stays the same temperature all year around. This temperature is the average of all the outside temperatures in the area over the past several years. At least, that's what our data showed once we'd collected it over a year.

  In fact, recording the temperature, along with the weather and the time the sun rose and set, was about all we did for the last six months in camp. Cooking, eating, and sleeping were the only other things we had to do besides writing up what had happened the summer before.

  I expanded my notes to cover my entire life up to then. That is to say, this is when I wrote most of the journal you now hold, although now that I've gotten this far, I think I might continue with it.

  At the Winter Solstice, the opposite of the Midnight Sun happened. One day the sun never does come up. But you cannot celebrate something that doesn't happen, so we didn't.

  We tried trapping fur-bearing animals, using traps we made according to one of the manuals we had with us. Either there weren't any animals to be trapped or we didn't know what we were doing, or both, but the project was not successful.

  We did find a large bear, or rather, he found us. Apparently, the cave had been his winter home, and he vigorously objected to our possession of it. This was only fair, since we objected to his repossession of the premises with even greater vigor. The bear made it all the way through the doorway before dying with over a dozen bullets in him. Bear meat was a refreshing change from venison, and we made his pelt into a rug.

  Kiejstut and I managed to catch Sir Odon with the old outhouse trick, but it just isn't as much fun when the shit is frozen solid.

  Lezek and Kiejstut wrote quite a few songs that winter, and some of them have gotten popular around the Explorer's School. When next you hear "Under the Midnight Sun," or "The Baltic Challenger," or even "Ten Thousand to One, Against Us," also known as "The Mosquito Song," think of them, up there in the cold.

  Mostly, we told a lot of long, tall stories, played a lot of games, and read every army manual we had with us at least twice. We loudly bemoaned the fact that we had neither beer nor fair ladies with us. We sang and played our horns, violins, guitars, drums, and recorders, and with so much time to practice, we became better with them. We lived, but I think that if we had not been such good friends in the first place, we might have killed each other just to have something interesting to do.

  In fact, there was a killing in the lance to the southeast of us. Apparently, the man just went crazy from sitting around with nothing to do. He killed one of his teammates and injured two others before he was shot dead. Madness.

  Sitting unloved and sober in the cold and dark, my lance made a few resol
utions. We swore that on our next mission, we would bring a year's supply of strong drink with us, even if it had to be that powerful white lightning stuff that Lord Conrad liked. Also, our next mission would either have to be someplace where they had women, or we would smuggle in our own. And mainly, wherever it was, it had darned well better be warm!

  WRITTEN JANUARY 12, 1250, CONCERNING JUNE 1249

  Again I find time weighing heavily on me, as I sit alone in my cabin, steaming across the Atlantic Ocean, and far away from my one true love. I might as well bring this journal up to date.

  Finally, the birds of the Arctic began to return, the ice on the Baltic started to break, and the long winter ended. We were told to leave everything behind, except for our journals, our weapons, and our personal equipment. All the rest would be of use to those who would follow us. We asked if that included the chest of money we had brought but hadn't found a use for, and they said yes, leave that, too.

  We sealed up and buried the cave entrance as we had done once before, but only after Sir Odon counted the money twice and made us all sign a paper saying that we had left the money and everything else behind pursuant to orders. I'd never seen him quite so nervous before, but then I'd never seen anyone ordered to abandon a quarter of a million pence before, either.

  Well, a quarter million pence less all of our back pay, up to the first of next month. We didn't want to be penniless on the trip back to the Explorer's School.

  We were personally welcomed on board the Baltic Challenger by Baron Siemomysl and Baron Tados with a party, mostly because we had found the most valuable thing of any of the explorer lances. You see, our superiors would get a cut of the profits on the mine, just as we would.

  We all smiled and shook hands, and they all smiled and shook hands, and everybody said uninteresting things, and nobody said anything original, since everything important had already been said months ago, over the radio. They fed us well, with fantastically delicious fresh egg omelets, crispy salads, and fresh green garden vegetables. And we drank, and drank well.

  It was a wonderful thing that they had beer on the ship, and we had been too long sober. We were all astounded at the amount we could drink, several gallons per man, without even falling over. I think that our bodies were telling us that we needed it.

  At Gdansk we got our new orders. We were to forward our journals and equipment to the Explorer's School. I sent them my journals, but shipped my big war chest home, since in his letters, my brother had asked about all the new weapons and equipment, and I wanted to show him.

  We were further ordered to take three months off, with pay. This gave Fritz, Kiejstut, and Taurus time enough to visit home, something they had not been able to do in many years, since before the Mongol invasion.

  Kiejstut stayed right on the ship, since it would be making one more round to pick up the last of the explorer lances, while putting off over a dozen mercantile support groups at the permanent stations that had been selected, and in doing so would be steaming right past Lithuania.

  When I asked why our lance hadn't been sent to Lithuania, since we already had someone who spoke the language, the barons told me that at the time, they hadn't known exactly where Lithuania was, and anyway, they hadn't thought of it.

  Then they asked me why I hadn't suggested it, and I had to say that I hadn't thought of it, either. When we got Kiejstut into the conversation, he said he had traveled to Poland by land. He had never thought of going home by water until now.

  Fritz considered taking the ship around the Baltic to get to Szczecin, and going home from there, but a study of the new maps convinced him it would be just as fast to go home by way of Okoitz, where he could get a little sexual release first.

  He said, "That way I will be less likely to rape and pillage and rape again, all my bloody way across the Holy Roman Empire!"

  The seven of us took a leisurely riverboat trip in pleasant early summer weather up the Vistula, to Sionsk, where Father John left us. He had to report to the Archbishop at Gniezno, before visiting his family at Poznan.

  Lezek's family and Zbigniew's foster family lived on army ranches near Sieciechow, and Fritz, Taurus, and I were persuaded to visit with them for a day or two before continuing on home.

  Sir Odon declined the offer, so we left him aboard to continue his way south. It was his loss, for their families gave us a fine welcome, and we enjoyed our stay there immensely.

  The workers at both of the ranches, one for aurochs and the other for young Big People, were members of the army just as we were. But it seemed to them that we were the ones out doing all the exciting things while they were stuck living humdrum, ordinary lives. It seemed to me that I had just spent the winter in a cave bereft of beer and female company, while they had spent the time pleasantly with their families.

  As Lezek put it, "The grass is always greener over somebody else's septic tank."

  I was particularly taken with Zbigniew's foster sister, Maria. Because of her, I delayed my departure from the ranch for almost a week, and the others stayed around as well. I was about to propose matrimony, until my friends convinced me that I was thinking with my gonads rather than with my head. They said I had been too long without a woman, and that before I did anything irreversible, I should go spend a week or two with the girls from the cloth factory at Okoitz. Then I should come back and talk seriously with Maria's father.

  New Big People were always coming of age, that is, "remembering" everything their mothers had known at the time of their voluntary conception. When this process was completed, the adult Big People, who automatically became members of the army, went out to their assigned military duty stations. It was customary to send them in the company of a little person, preferably one of knight's rank or higher.

  We were asked by the assignment clerk if we would care to help out and deliver some of them to Three Walls, which was near the Warrior's School, our next duty assignment. Taurus said he wished he could oblige them but he wanted to go back to his homeland, in the Ukraine, where he had an uncle and some cousins he had not seen in many years, before returning to the Explorer's School. The clerk said that the trip would cause no difficulty, since we had ten weeks to make the delivery. He said that it was always good for the Big People to see some of the outside world before going to work.

  Essentially, we were each being offered the services of one of Anna's fabulously valuable children for the rest of our vacations, and yes, of course we'd be happy to help them out!

  Starting at dawn the next day, Taurus headed southeast for the Ukraine, while Fritz and I galloped south along the Vistula, stopped for a quick lunch in Sandomierz, and then had supper in Cracow on the same day, before we got to Okoitz before dark! This was less than half the time it would have taken had we gone by riverboat, although they ran around the clock. Neither the Big People nor we humans had ever made that trip by land before, but our mounts knew the way.

  It was the first time I had ever been privileged to ride one of those lovely creatures, and being on Margarete was a joy never to be forgotten. She gave me such a tremendous feeling of speed and power! What's more, she remembered me from when I was a little boy at Okoitz who knew her ancestor Anna! She really did have all of Anna's memories.

  I had never had a horse before, much less one of the Big People. I was unsure of how to take proper care of her, and Fritz was almost as ignorant as I was, since as a farmer his father had kept only oxen. Rather than risk causing the ladies any discomfort, we paid the stable keeper at the inn double the usual rates, and told him they must get the very best of everything. The next morning Margarete said that she was satisfied, so I considered the money well spent.

  Fritz and I spent only a single night carousing in the Pink Dragon Inn at Okoitz, and then he went on his way, to his home near Worms, in the Holy Roman Empire. He was excited at the prospect of going home a true, belted knight, with eight pounds of gold on his uniform, a gold-hilted sword, a modern pistol, and a pouch full of silver at his belt, ridi
ng on one of Anna's famous children!

  "My parents will burst with pride, and my old friends will turn purple with envy!"

  I visited my parents the next morning, and it was the same old story. Everyone was glad to see me again except for my father, who still would not talk to me.

  I went back to my room in the inn. I sat alone and thought about my problem with my father. I thought for a long while. I'd already tried using every intermediary possible. The priest. My mother. My sisters and brother. Even the in-laws. I was just going to have to settle the problem myself, somehow.

  It took me a while to get up my courage, but a few days later I confronted my father. I actually stood in his path and wouldn't let him past without talking to me. I asked him just what he expected of me, and he said nothing. I begged to know just what great crime I had committed, that he should treat me this way for so many years, and he wouldn't talk!

  I had to hold him by both arms to keep him in front of me, but still he would not say a single word to me. Finally, he tried to break away. I spun him around to face me again, and when he still wouldn't say a word, I hit him.

  Just once, but in the mouth and as hard as I could.

  He just stood there, bleeding and looking at me, and still he would not speak to me! Even looking into his eyes, I could not fathom what he was thinking.

  I left Okoitz the next morning with the intention of reporting in early to the Explorer's School. There simply wasn't anything else I wanted to do.

  I never saw Lezek's foster sister again, but sometimes I think that I should have.