Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 12

"Oh." As he gained fuller consciousness, Plum was seized by terror. "This-you have to get back. This is madness! We'll be killed for it!"

The shadow shook her head. Plum's bed creaked as she sat at his side. "It does not occur to Hakim that resurrectees are random. He suspects purpose. You are either something dangerous or useful. Me? I'm one of the usefuls. If his alchemists can extract the essence of dreamgum and make his people children again, I will help mould them in ways-of freedom? So he says: freedom and goodness. He says he must put on the grand show of Druzeism, but in his heart he is against it.160.

161.Survival! First he must stay alive here, where his position is unique."

Hers was a tidy synopsis of what Plum already had been told, but it touched too lightly on the one fact that put an edge on the knife. "He's a bally impostor. He never wrote their scriptures. He's just muddling along." "You are always putting impostors in your Blandings Castle," the woman answered. "I think he wants this. He wants to be written up in allegory; warmly, a well-intentioned man. Your book will appeal to the new people we make. The orthodox will hate it. You will be a rod for their lightnings. Druze-land will be your prison, but your work will sneak out into the greater world."

"Until, not too guiltily, Hakim has me killed."

The visitor shook her head. "I don't see how he can pull it off. Creating a race of 'summer children' in the midst of this spiritual winter. He'll be killed too. And the new ones. But we'll be resurrected, knowing how to re-create ourselves with concentrated essence of dreamgum. The ratio of summer to winter will edge our way."

Plum made out the features of a comely face-though taxed by care, and less so than it might have been. She bent and kissed him. "You are purest summer-unless you have hidden depths."

Plum stammered. "No, no depth at all. I stay away from depth."

She smiled. "Yes, you are heroically shallow. Can you write your book? The book of the good impostor Hakim?"

Plum lurched clumsily, the better to pat his seductress's ankle. "He sent you. Your feet are dry. There's no way to get here dry-shod. There's a pool in the way. Except Hakim does it all the time. He's got a secret route."

The woman looked side to side. "I've never been on this half before. I wanted to come. It was made possible. I bring out the summer side of Hakim. Besides, I'm safe with you. I told Hakim you are not an ardent man. Anyone educated in an English boy's school and fond of wrestling and boxing-I told him you were a.s.suredly a closet h.o.m.os.e.xual, or maybe a paedophile."

"Oh, I say-!"

She put a finger to his protesting lips. "That will make it easier. I must be your editor, you see."

"Are you-Maria?"

"Maria Montessori. World's foremost expert on the education of children!" She went on in bitter amus.e.m.e.nt. "If you were useless in Riverworld without paper, imagine me with no young minds to guide."

Wodehouse felt the warmth of her body. The hand he'd used to check her feet slid upward to take stock of her dimensions. This bed wasn't very big after all, even with him pressed against the wall in a semi-aroused state of anxiety. "Ahh," he said. "Ann."

She went tilt. For a while there was confusion: knees and elbows being what they were. "Why Lenin?" Plum blurted after a first pa.s.sionate clinch. "Why all this natter about Lenin and Hitler?"

"They stole my ideas about the plasticity of young minds. The New Communist Man. The Hitler youth. Get children early enough, and you make them anything!"

A kiss, and more lecture. "Of course their directions were wrong, but the concept! The tabula rasa! Did communism prove it, or not? If we make adults children again, and convert them into- You invented the words. Summer people. That's what we want."

"And you're sure about Hakim? You trust him?"162.Maria laughed. "I can out-trick him any day. I'm here, aren't I? And he knows it. Let him kill me. I'd pop back with all my knowledge somewhere else, and start my own regime. So I'm not worried. Come now. Let's not talk about this. Goodness, you're a long-distance head-to-toe! And such baby-soft hair!"

Next day Plum zoomed through chapter two, and took a walk. The Iraqi prince stepped into his path. "Ah, the aristocrat's lapdog."

"Sorry?"

"I'm told you write about dukes and earls. The upper crust. Ordinary people not good enough for you."

"My dukes and earls are very ordinary," Wodehouse answered. "Really, I'm one with the ma.s.ses. The ma.s.ses who buy the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, anyhow."

"The despised ma.s.ses. Hakim despises them. Don't you suppose he's told me? He only does bad things because they demand it. I've heard politicians whimper that sort of thing all my several lives. Have any of them had the courage to expect the best of their subjects? Or do they pander to the worst?"

"Some of each, I suppose," Plum muttered.

"Yes. And you know which kind of man Hakim is, and you write for him anyhow."

Plum coloured. "I write what I write. Anybody who puts meaning into it is an idiot. You'd know if you'd ever read my stuff."

"And you spoke on n.a.z.i radio in World War Two. Unfair of people to put meaning into that, right?"

Plum's blush deepened. "It was a mistake. I was isolated and naive. I didn't want people to worry about me. I didn't know my chipper bleat would give pain to Londoners who'd gotten blitzed."

"Stop pus.h.i.+ng him around," Jim the Apache said from behind.

The princeling sneered. "I hear the voice of Hakim's Indian scout. The one who runs free, and tracks skulkers by their broken twigs. Your Arabic has improved."

"Don't let him bug you," Jim told Plum, ignoring the163.irksome Iraqi.

"Thanks. I'll try not."

"-Because when we have fights here, sometimes the guards execute everybody involved. I've seen it."

Plum made a face, but bad news or no, Jim's helpfulness deserved a reward. "Do you smoke? Would you share a bowl of s.h.a.g with me?"

Jim smiled a.s.sent. Once in his hut and away from princely ears, Plum asked: "Er, about that broken twig business..."

"Maria's visit last night? I know nothing about it. There's a stone that pivots open, but I don't know about that either. Third on the left, this side of the pool."

Plum puffed and pa.s.sed over his pipe. "I owe you. Concerning that woman-well, I've been pondering the archetypes. Tyrant, vamp, and fool. Publisher, editor, and writer. It's no different than in New York or London. The Doubleday gang didn't fling spears so enthusiastically, but you have to make allowances for local customs."

Plum sighed. "Maybe I shouldn't be here. Our Iraqi seems keen to take another "cheap trip." I could speed us both on our way."

Jim smiled, his brown face wreathed in smoke. "Hakim's spearmen have been practising. They've gotten good. If164.it's true about people who get killed the same time, you and him could end up resurrecting side by side."

"I don't want that!" Plum laughed. He took another draw on the pipe, then traded it back. After five minutes of nicotine-tinged meditation, the Apache nodded thanks and left. Plum turned his hand to writing, and began chapter three.

Chapter four took shape. "Snookers" Van Doorp left his bedroom with the dead cat under his smoking jacket and b.u.mped into the housemaid. Just then, a work-gang invaded Plum's hut, dismantled his bed, and began stringing a larger one "because you're so tall."

It was longer, and wider. Maria visited again that night, and left two hours later with chapters one to three. "You'll see," she whispered. "Ironwood is strong. We carve it into type for our printing press. This will look wonderful."

Plum instructed her in the publis.h.i.+ng business. "First you frolic in the margins. Then I rewrite. Then your side sets type and runs off a proof. I look, and fuss, and fix all the mistakes that have crept in. Only after all that do you chug out the copies."

"I was an author in my day," Maria a.s.sured him. "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

She left. Plum heard the familiar sneers of the Iraqi prince just outside the door: "Oh, gua-a-a-ards! Look what we have here-ugh!"

Silence. Plum poked his head out of the hut and saw a body clutching itself in the gra.s.s. He scratched his head. Hadn't Maria Montessori been a pacifist in former times? There she was, twinkling off in utter haste....

"Ugh!" Another figure was doing the damage; a165.second riposte from the bushes and back again. The Iraqi bubbled a bit, and Plum withdrew to let the night shroud its secrets. In Hakim's gardens, this was ever the wisest course.

Plum was troubled to discover that murders no longer impeded his writing. His sleep, yes, but despite insomnia he insinuated Reverend Pancroft into chapter six, no matter that he had to fly the blighter home from France. The Toby Winkleman urchin insulted the cook, who quit the day of the Important Dinner....

Maria Montessori edited with a light hand. On her third visit, she whispered about Sijill magazine, issue one, a Druze tract with news, views, a sermonette about the glories of Hakim-and Wodehouse's serialized book. "We'll send it down-River and up, to the Malagasies, the Rastafarians, the Phrygians, and the Shang. English, Esperanto, and French. Hakim needs food for his hordes. He'll put it to his neighbours-subscribe and pay in rations, or we attack."

"The tyrant publisher!" Plum sighed. "Didn't you write essays for peace? Didn't you sponsor a pacifist conference before World War Two?"

"Yes. And if I can make this work, we'll have peace," Maria Montessori answered.

A few days afterward, a guard delivered another pouch of tobacco and a proof of Plum's soon-to-be published pages. Perhaps because Fatima the copy editor knew little English, she did nothing to "correct" Wodehouse's immortal prose. All the errors had to do with commas, capitals, and italics. Plum fixed them, and swung his attention to chapter eight. Good old "Snookers" hid on the balcony, with no escape but to slide down the water pipe....166.Things went from bad to worse for Snookers, utter humiliation approaching in chapter twelve. New historical consultants popped in and became Wodehouse's neighbors. The Sijill rolled off its wooden press. Hakim's dhows and G.o.downs paddled east and west, hawking a sugarcoated religion the Occult Master claimed not to believe.

Silence. Where were the raves to the editor? The press interviews? The literary luncheons? According to rumour, a hill-size node of metal had been dug up on the far side of the planet. Antipodeans used it to make steams.h.i.+ps and radios. This business of ferrying the magazine beyond Hakim's borders facilitated gossip of all sorts: Druze immigrants confirmed talk about a metal steamer "approaching this way!"

None of this got into issue two. Maria's "inst.i.tute" won six column-inches of glory, laud, and honour, touching only lightly on the facts: extract of dreamgum had made mental children of a few experimental subjects, who gibbered and ran mad in the ideal cla.s.sroom she'd set up.

The good news was that this most potent of drugs had a permanent effect on their "winter" personalities. The bad news? It made them animals. "I have to find then-souls," Maria told Plum on her next nocturnal visit. "I still have hope. Once they regain speech, we may discover what we did wrong. How we traumatised them. They might tell us."

"What does Hakim say?" Plum asked.

Maria sighed. "I have to repair my damage, or-ft could be bad. I've lost influence. He's a politician. This business of summer people and winter people-he adopted the idea as his own for a while, but..."167."He took a flier, eh? And now he means to cut his losses."

She shook her head. "Not quite yet." Her eyes filled with tears. "Wouldn't I deserve it if he did punish me? But the makers of this world provided us with no experimental animals. What else could we do?"

"Shh. I hear voices. People are shouting out mere."

"G.o.d!" Maria felt around the side of the bed for her domes..

"Quick. Get under. I'll go see what's on."

A metal steams.h.i.+p is fast. At an unflagging twenty miles an hour, the Potemkin outpaced anything she had ever encountered. She was almost faster than rumour. No one in Hakim's domain had considered the possibility of such speed until the lights of her portholes gleamed on the River. Summoned from some women's-garden bed, Hakim called out the militia. An armed and vigilant citizenry crowded the sh.o.r.es. The Potemkin slid by, and dwindled, her name blazoned in characters few Druze could read. The valley narrowed to the left, and the mighty monster puffed on to the next regime in sequence.

Clouds bulked up for the predawn rain, and still the buzzing populace didn't go back to bed. In the men's garden, historical consultants and Druze guards chattered in excited clumps. Plum went in and told Maria the bad news. How could she sneak out of here?

For the purpose of these furtive rendezvous, someone had supplied her with the robes of a Druze elder. "Do I look male?" she asked nervously, wrapped to the nines. "I shall walk stiffly to the exit, as if I had a poker up my a.s.s."

Plum winced. As a man she seemed woefully uncon-168.

169.vincing. "Wait a minute. I'll create a diversion." He ran outside. "Jim! Jim! Let's fight."

"What?" Weary of the night's drama, the Apache had returned to his blanketed repose under the tree. He hoisted himself on one elbow.

Plum dropped to his knees and shouldered into him. "You b.l.o.o.d.y redskin. I'll take your scalp!" "Hey!"

"Whoop it up. That's good!" Jim tumbled Wodehouse to the right. He stood. Plum stood too, bellowed, and charged again.

Jim kicked. Plum grabbed his foot and danced around. A gaggle of Dnize guards converged on them. "Stop that! What are you doing?"

Plum dropped Jim's pedal appendage and squatted like a frog. "Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote," he roared with a mad glint in his eye, and hopped in frog fas.h.i.+on. "The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote-"

"You want to get killed?" Jim shouted. "Are you crazy?"

By now, Maria had made her exit. Plum rose and dusted himself. "Excuse me. I got excited. I'll be better now."

The guards muttered. "Go back in your hut!" Meekly, Plum accommodated them.

The next day Hakim was too busy to pa.s.s judgement on Plum's madness. A Druze spear-wallah came for the proofs for issue three, collecting them far ahead of the deadline. The next Sijill had to be hurried out, with Hakim's sermonette on the Potemkin's night pa.s.sage and what it meant. The neighbouring kingdoms might get uppity, after all. They'd be less afraid of the Druze, after seeing how their technology was outcla.s.sed. They had to be preached back into a cooperative frame of mind.

Again the hawkers went out in their dhows, and came back with news: The Potemkin had interrupted its long voyage to the end of the river. The Rastafarians were entertaining the s.h.i.+p's sailors along their downstream sh.o.r.es.

The good news was that the magazine was a hot item among both Russians and Jamaicans, so much that the dhows returned laden with food. The slowest breezed into home port just ahead of the lights: Hours before the Potemkin had slipped anchor and reversed course.

From the steams.h.i.+p's bridge, an officer shouted in Esperanto, then English. "Bring us P.O. Wodehouse!" Such was Plum's isolation that his first inkling of this was when the garden guard was redoubled. The place bristled with spearmen.

"I could go to them," Plum announced to the Druze generality, who glinted at him in resentment, ice forming on their upper slopes. "I'd hate for there to be any fighting. Not for my sake. Jim, what's going on?"

Jim hustled to Plum's side, back from some palace excursion. "Hakim's digging in. He's being stubborn."

Clearly the Apache had more to say. "Yes?" Plum prompted him.

"You're a hostage. Hakim'll kill you if they attack. That's what he's told them."

"Cor!"

There was a fuss by the garden entry. "Let me through!" Maria announced in her queenliest tones. "I come from Hakim."

Plum converged on her. "What-?"

"Those Jamaicans!" she spluttered. "They put the170.Russians up to it. You're just a cause celebre. Something to make the war popular. You've got fans in the Russian crew who think you're what this is all about, and so they'll do anything.-1 know the truth, and Hakim does too. This ultimatum is all to humble the Druze, but what can he do? Spears against guns!"

"I'm supposed to feel sorry for the blighter?" Plum asked incredulously. "He's threatened-"

"I know. He's lost his soul to power. Nothing's too low for him anymore. I'm just the same. Nothing's too low for me, either." Maria Montessori undid a knot, and flung off her robes. Naked, she stepped to close the final distance. "Kiss me. We'll die together."

"Of all the bally-!"

It was the last straw for the outraged Druze guards. On the far side of the chiclet stones, a great gun boomed. On this side, arms dragged Plum and Maria to the tree trunk. "Kill the mockers! This is all their doing!"

"We'll try again together!" Maria shouted. "Another funny book!"

The gun boomed again. Masonry walls toppled in on Hakim's throne room. In the Occult Master's garden, spears flew simultaneously.

"-And so, here we are," Plum told President Firebra.s.s of the Republic of Parolando. "I'd never heard about this 'simultaneous resurrection' business before. Have you?"

Firebra.s.s shook his great head.

"Hakim's wishful thinking. But there's always a first time," Plum conceded.

Maria poured herself another cup of wine and curled into her seat by the fireplace. ' "These stores-mysterious strangers. Agents. The G.o.ds behind the curtains, who171.move among us like spies. Parolando is full of rumours."' She looked at Plum. "What do you think about your friend Jim?"

"Jim?"

"Who else could have arranged this unique 'cheap trip' for us? Hakim himself?"