The Dark Design

by Philip José Farmer

  “However, since then these tales have spread throughout East and West. I was amused to find some of them, in altered form, told in Ireland in Gaelic. By word of mouth, over thousands of leagues and two millennia of time, Nasruddin had passed from Persia to Hibernia.”

  “If the Sufis originated them before Mohammed,” Frigate said, “then the Sufis must have been Zoroastrians in the beginning.”

  “Sufism is not a monopoly of Islamism,” Nur said. “It was highly developed by the Moslems, but anyone who believes in God can be a Sufi candidate. However, the Sufis modify their methods of teaching to conform to the local cultures. What will work for Persian Moslems in Khorasan won’t necessarily work for black Moslems in the Sudan. And the difference in effective methods would be even greater for Parisian Christians. The place and the time determine the teaching.”

  Later, Nur and Frigate stretched their legs on land, walking around a huge bonfire through a crowd of chattering Dravidians. Frigate said, “How can you adapt your medieval Iberian-Moorish methods to teaching in this world? The people are so mixed, from everywhere and every time. There are no monolithic cultures. Besides, those that do exist are always changing.”

  “I am working on that,” Nur said.

  “Then, one of the reasons you won’t take me as a disciple is that you are not ready as a teacher?”

  “You can console yourself with that,” Nur said, and he laughed. “But, yes, that is one reason. You see, the teacher must always be teaching himself.”

  The gray clouds moved through the boat, filling every room.

  Sam Clemens said, “Oh, no, not again!” though he did not know why he said that. The fog not only pressed against the bulkheads and seeped into everything that could absorb moisture, it rolled down his throat and enveloped his heart. The water soaked it, and drops fell off of it, dripping onto his belly, gurgling down inside his groin, running over, spilling down into his legs, waterlogging his feet.

  He was sodden with a nameless fear which he had experienced before.

  He was alone in the pilothouse. Alone in the boat. He stood by the control panel, looking out of the window. Fog shoved against it. He could see no more than an arm’s length through the plastic. Yet, somehow, he knew that the banks of The River were empty of life. There was no one out there. And here he was in this gigantic vessel, the only one aboard. It didn’t even need him, since the controls were set for automatic navigation.

  Alone and lonely as he was, he at least could not be stopped from reaching the headwaters of The River. There was no one left in the world to oppose him.

  He turned and began pacing back and forth from bulkhead to bulkhead of the pilothouse. How long was this journey going to take? When would the fog lift and the sun shine brightly and the mountains surrounding the polar sea be revealed? And when would he hear another human voice, see another face?

  “Now!” someone bellowed.

  Sam jumped straight up as if springs had been unsnapped beneath his feet. His heart opened and closed as swiftly as the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. It pumped out water and fear, forming a puddle around his feet. Somehow, without being aware of it, he had spun around and was facing the owner of the voice. It was a shadowy figure in the clouds swirling in the pilothouse. It moved toward him, stopped, and reached out a vague arm. A pseudopod flicked a switch on the panel.

  Sam tried to cry out, “No! No!” The words ran into each other in his throat and shattered as if they were made of thin glass.

  Though it was too dim to see which control the figure had touched, he knew that the boat was now set on a course which would send it full speed into the left bank.

  Finally, the words came… screeching.

  “You can’t do that!”

  Silently, the shadowy mass advanced. Now he could see that it was a man. It was the same height as he, but its shoulders were much broader. And on one shoulder was a long wooden shaft. At its end was a truncated triangle of steel.

  “Erik Bloodaxe!” he cried.

  Now began the terrible chase. He fled through the boat, through every room of the three-tiered pilothouse, across the flight deck, down the ladder into the hangar deck and through every one of its rooms, down a ladder and through every room of the hurricane deck, down a ladder and through every room of the main deck, down a ladder and into the vast boiler deck.

  Here, aware of the waters pressing against the hull, aware that he was below the surface of The River, he ran through the many rooms, large and small. He passed between the giant electric motors turning the paddle wheels which were driving the vessel toward destruction. Desperately, he tried to get into the large compartment holding the two launches. He would rip the wires out of the motor of one and take the other out into The River and so leave his sinister pursuer behind. But someone had locked the door.

  Now he was crouching in a tiny compartment, trying to slow his rasping breath. Then, the hatch opened. Erik Bloodaxe’s figure loomed in the grayness. It moved slowly toward him, the great axe held in both hands.

  “I told you,” Erik said, and he lifted the axe. Sam was powerless to move, to protest. After all, this was his own fault. He deserved it.

  He awoke moaning. The cabin lights were on, and Gwenafra’s beautiful face and long honey-blond hair were above him.

  “Sam! Wake up! You’ve been having another nightmare!”

  “He almost got me that time,” he mumbled.

  He sat up. Whistles were shrilling on the decks. A minute later, the intercom unit shrilled. The boat would soon be heading for a grailstone and breakfast. Sam liked to sleep late, and he would just as soon have missed breakfast. But as captain it was his duty to rise with the others.

  He got out of bed and shambled into the head. After a shower and tooth-brushing, he came out. Gwenafra was already in her early-morning outfit, looking like an eskimo who had traded her furs for towels. Sam got into a similar suit but left his hood down to put on his captain’s cap. He lit a corona and blew smoke while he paced back and forth.

  Gwenafra said, “Did you have another nightmare about Bloodaxe?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Give me some coffee, will you?”

  Gwenafra dropped a teaspoonful of dark crystals into a gray metal cup. The water boiled as the crystals released both heat and caffeine. He took the cup, saying, “Thanks.”

  She sipped her coffee, then said, “There’s no reason to feel guilty about him.”

  “That’s what I’ve told myself a thousand times,” Sam said. “It’s irrational, but when did knowing that ever make a fellow feel better? It’s the irrational in us that drives us. The Master of Dreams has about as much brains as a hedgehog. But he’s a great artist, witless though he is, like many an artist I’ve known. Perhaps including yours truly.”

  “There isn’t a chance that Bloodaxe will ever find you.”

  “I know that. Try telling the Dream Master that.”

  A light flashed; a whistle blew from a panel on a bulkhead. Sam flicked its switch.

  “Captain? Detweiller here. Arrival time at designated grailstone will be five minutes from now.”

  “Okay, Hank,” Sam said. “I’ll be right out.”

  Followed by Gwenafra, he left the stateroom. They passed down a narrow corridor and went through a hatch into the control room or bridge. This was on the top deck of the pilothouse; the other senior officers were quartered in the cabins on the second and third decks.

  There were three persons in the control room: Detweiller, who had once been a river pilot, then a captain, then owner of an Illinois-Mississippi River steamboat company; the chief executive officer, John Byron, ex-admiral, Royal Navy; the brigadier of the boat’s Marines, Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot, ex-general for Napoleon.

  The latter was a short, slim, merry-looking fellow with dark-brown hair, snub nose, and bright blue eyes. He saluted Clemens and reported in Esperanto.

  “All ready for duty, my captain.”

  Sam said, “Fine, Marc. You
can take your post now.”

  The little Frenchman saluted and left the pilothouse, sliding down the pole behind it to the flight deck. Lights flooded this, showing the Marines in battle array lined up in its middle. The standard bearer held a pole on top of which was the boat’s flag, a light-blue square bearing a scarlet phoenix. Near him were rows of pistoleers, men and women in gray duraluminum coal-scuttle helmets topped by roaches of human hair stiff with grease, plastic cuirasses, knee-length leather boots, their broad belts holding holstered Mark IV revolvers.

  Behind them were the spearmen; behind them, the archers. To one side was a group of bazookateers.

  Off to one side stood a colossus clad in armor, holding an oaken club which Sam could lift with two hands only with difficulty. Officially, Joe Miller was Sam’s bodyguard, but he always accompanied the Marines at these times. His chief function was to awe the locals.

  “But as usual,” Sam often said, “Joe goes too far. He scares the hell out of them just by standing around.”

  This day started out like every other day. It was destined to be, however, quite different. Sometime during the day, the Minerva would attack the Rex Grandissimus. Sam should have felt jubilant. He wasn’t. He hated the idea of destroying such a beautiful boat, one he had designed and built. Moreover, he’d been deprived of the joy of wreaking a personal revenge on John.

  On the other hand, it was a lot safer this way.

  There was a bonfire on the right side about half a kilometer away. It revealed a mushroom-shaped grailstone and gleamed on white cloths covering bodies. The fog over The River was lower and thinner here than that usually encountered. It would clear away quickly once the sun got over the peaks. The sky was brightening, washing out the flaming giant stars and gas clouds.

  Per usual procedure, the Firedragon III, an armored amphibian launch, preceded the mother boat. When it got to an area where the boat would have to recharge its batacitor, its commander parleyed with the locals for the use of two grailstones. Most areas were pleased to do this, their remuneration being the thrill of observing the mammoth vessel at close range.

  Those locals who objected found their grailstones temporarily confiscated. They could do nothing about it except to protest. The boat had overwhelming firepower, though Clemens was always reluctant to use it. When forced to resort to violence, Clemens refrained from massacre. A few spurts of .80-caliber plastic bullets from the big steam machine guns on the boat and from the armored steam-spurting amphibian tearing around on shore, usually sufficed. It wasn’t even necessary to kill anybody in most cases.

  After all, what did the locals lose if two grailstones were used by somebody else for one time only? Nobody had to miss a meal. There were always enough unused spots on nearby stones to take up the slack. In fact, most of those who surrendered their meal did not even bother to travel to the next stone. They preferred to stay there so they could ooh and ah at the magnificent beauty of the boat.

  The four enormous electrical motors of the boat required tremendous energy. Once a day, a giant metal cap was placed over the grailstone by which the boat was stationed. A launch would carry the boat’s grails to the next stone for filling. A crane extended from another launch would lift the cap and place it over the head of the stone. When the stone discharged, its energy flashed via thick cables into the batacitor. This was a huge metal box which rose from the boiler deck into the main deck. It stored the energy instantly in its function of capacitor. As demanded, it would release the energy in its function of battery.

  Sam Clemens went ashore and talked briefly with the local chief officials, who understood Esperanto. This universal language had degraded here into a form which was difficult but not impossible for Sam to understand. He gravely thanked them for their courtesy, and he returned to the boat on his small private launch. Ten minutes later, Firedragon IV returned with a cargo of full grails.

  Whistles blowing and bells clanging to give the locals a thrill, the boat headed on upRiver. Sam and Gwenafra sat at the head of the great nine-sided table in the dining room in the main deck salon. The chief officers, except those on duty, sat with him. After some orders for the day, Sam retired to the billiards table, where he played against the titanthrop. Joe was not very good with a cue or with cards because of his huge hands. Sam almost always beat him. Then Sam would play against a more skilled person.

  At 07:00, Sam would make an inspection of the boat. He hated to walk, but he insisted on this because he needed the exercise. Also, it helped keep up the appearance of a naval vessel. Without the drills and the inspections, the crew were likely to become sloppy civilians. They would get too off-hand, too familiar with their superiors when on duty.

  “I run a tight boat,” Sam had often boasted. “At least, the crew is tight, though no one has ever been found drunk on duty.”

  The inspection did not take place that morning. Sam was called to the pilothouse because the radio operator had gotten a message from the Minerva. Before Sam could get off the elevator, the radar scope had blipped an object coming over the mountain to portside.

  The blimp came down out of the brightness as if it were a silver egg just laid by the sun. To the startled people on the ground, few of whom had ever seen or even heard of an airship before, it was a frightening monster. No doubt some believed that it was a vessel carrying the mysterious beings who had raised them from the dead. A few may even have hailed it with a mixture of dread and joy, sure that a revelation was at hand.

  How had the Minerva found the Mark Twain so easily? The great boat was towing a large kite-shaped balloon which was above the top of the mountains and which carried a transmitter sending powerful dots and dashes. Hardy, the Minerva’s navigator, knew the boat’s general location from the map of The River on his table. During the years of its voyaging, the Mark Twain had sent out data by radio which had enabled the Parolanders to trace its route. Furthermore, on spotting the boat, the navigator of the Parseval had sent a message which gave the Minerva a rough location.

  Having also been given the location of the Rex, the captain of the Minerva knew that John Lackland’s boat was almost on a straight line with Sam’s due east. The Rex was only 140 kilometers away if a line as straight as a Prussian officer’s back was followed. To follow The River, however, Sam’s boat would have to go perhaps 571,195 kilometers or 355,000 miles before it arrived where the Rex was now.

  Greystock, speaking over the transceiver in the control nacelle, asked permission to pass over the Mark Twain.

  Sam’s voice was flat over the transceiver. “Why?”

  “To salute you,” the Englishman said. “Also, I think that you and your crew might like to get a close look at the vessel that is going to destroy King John. And, to tell the truth, my men and I would like to see your splendid boat at close range.”

  He paused, and then said, “It may be our last chance.”

  It was Sam who paused this time. Then, sounding as if he were choking back tears, he said, “Okay, Greystock. You may pass by us, but not over us. Call me paranoid. But it makes me uneasy to have an airship carrying four big bombs directly over me. What if they were accidentally released?”

  Greystock rolled his eyes in disgust and grinned savagely at the other men in the nacelle.

  “Nothing could possibly go wrong,” he said.

  “Yeah? That’s what the commander of the Maine said just before he went to bed. No, Greystock, you do as I say.”

  Greystock, obviously unhappy, replied that he would obey. “We’ll circle you once and then get to the job.”

  “Good luck on that,” Sam’s voice said. “I know that you fine fellows might not be…”

  He seemed unable to complete his sentence.

  “We know we might not get back,” Greystock said. “But I think we have an excellent chance of taking the Rex by surprise.”

  “I hope so. But remember that the Rex has two airplanes. You’ll have to hit the flight deck first so they can’t get off.”

  “I d
on’t need advice,” Greystock said coldly.

  There was another pause, longer than the others.

  Sam’s voice came over the speaker loudly. “Lothar von Richthofen is coming up to greet you. He wants to fly alongside and give you his personal blessing. That’s the least I can do for him. I’ve had a hell of a time keeping him from convoying you. He’d like to be in on the attack, too.

  “But our planes have a flight ceiling of only 3660 meters. That makes them too susceptible to downdrafts over those mountains. Anyway, they’d have to carry an extra fuel tank to get back.”

  Lothar’s voice cut in. “I told him you could spare enough fuel from your ship, Greystock. We could fly back.”

  “Nothing doing!”

  Greystock looked down through the forward port. The balloon was being reeled in, but it would be twenty minutes before it was landed.

  The giant boat was a beauty, a fourth longer than the Rex and much taller. Jill Gulbirra had claimed that the Parseval was the most beautiful and the grandest artifact on The Riverworld. Earth had never had anything to equal it. But Greystock thought that this vessel, to use Clemens’ phrase, “won the blue ribbon by a mile.”

  As Greystock watched, an airplane rose on an elevator to the landing deck while a crew readied a catapult.

  The stocky man looked with arctic-gray eyes around the control gondola. The pilot, Newton, a World War II aviator, was at his post. Hardy, the navigator, and Samhradh, the Irish first mate, were at the port screen. Six others were aboard, stationed in the three engine gondolas.

  Greystock walked to the weapons cabin, opened it, and took out two of the heavy Mark IV pistols. These were steel four-shooter revolvers using duraluminum cartridges holding .69-caliber plastic bullets. He held one by the grip in his left hand; the other, he reversed. Keeping an eye on the two at the port screen, he walked over to a position behind Newton. He brought the butt end of the gun in his right hand against the top of Newton’s head. The pilot fell off his chair onto the floor.