Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 13

"Hakim! What can I do with that man?" President Firebra.s.s asked. "He sounds like a complete scoundrel."

Plum's eyes widened. "Yes! Maybe it was Jim after all! I remember telling him: Tyrant, vamp, and fool. Publisher, editor, and writer. Why else send the three of us to be reborn in Riverworld's greatest literary tnecca?"

Maria set down her gla.s.s. "You can do better than Hakim for a publisher."

"I think so too." Plum beamed. "I can make my plots work just fine without any villains at all. Why shouldn't real life be the same?"

'Til drink to that!" Maria, Plum, and President Firebra.s.s raised gla.s.ses in a final toast.

TWO THIEVES.

Harry Turtledove

Alexios Komnenos folded his arms across his chest. "You have heard my demands," he said in Arabic, the only language he had in common with New Constantinople's neighbors just down the River. "Obey them or face the consequences."

"You are an infidel. We shall never yield to you." Idris Alooma was the Sultan of Bornu's representative in the town of New Constantinople. Tall and lean and black, he towered over Alexios. To show his contempt, he spat at the Basileus's feet.

Alexios's soldiers growled and brandished their flint-tipped spears. He held up a hand. "Let the pagan go in peace for now. Soon enough he will wake up naked and bald somewhere along the River far from here." He used the Greek his people spoke among themselves, then translated for Idris Alooma's benefit.

The big black man laughed scornfully. "You may have been plucked from h.e.l.l to live beside us on the River here, Christian dog, but you are the one whom Allah will uproot when our armies meet." He turned on his heel and174.marched back toward the stretch of the riverbank that owed allegiance to Bornu's Sultan, Musa ar-Rahman.

Alexios watched him go, wondering all the while if he should have let his men enjoy their sport. He tossed his head in a Greek no; he'd done the right thing. If Idris Alooma failed to return to Bornu town, Musa would take his revenge by torturing Michael Palaiologos to death and rebirth. Alexios Komnenos had nothing against killing, but killing to no purpose was stupid and wasteful.

He turned to his brother Isaac, who stood as usual at his right hand. The two men were near twins, especially since being restored to life along the River at the same youthful age. Both were a little below average size, but strongly muscled. Both had a narrow, foxy face beneath a broad forehead; both were swarthy and dark, Isaac a little less so than Alexios. But the best way to tell them apart was to note that Isaac's features were a trifle more open and friendly than Alexios's. Alexios had ruled during his remembered life; Isaac merely aided.

"It will be war," Alexios said now.

"So it would seem," Isaac agreed. "It will not be an easy war, either."

"No." Alexios's scowl was black as the beard he could no longer raise. He still sometimes felt like a eunuch without it. "Why were we resurrected alongside these filthy Muslims?" Were he less pious, he would have wondered about G.o.d's mercy. The folk upstream from New Constantinople were peaceful red-skinned pagans who wanted only to be left alone. Given Bornu on his other flank, he'd been happy to oblige them.

Isaac said, "They are infidels, but they are brave. If we meet them head-on, we will lose a great many of our best men, men we cannot afford to be without. That175.means that if anyone along this stretch of the River succeeds in uniting several little realms behind him, we will be vulnerable."

"This I know." Alexios scowled again. He aimed to lead this stretch of the River. Along with a majority of Rhomaioi, he currently ruled a minority of peasants from the Egypt of Ptolemy III. As soon as they'd accepted Christianity, they made subjects as good as his own folk-maybe better, for their loyalties were less conditional. Some of them had spoken Greek even before their resurrection; they all did now.

"The war will not wait much longer," Isaac warned. "If we do not begin it on our terms, Musa ar-Rahman will start it on his, for he loves us no better than we him."

"This I also know." Alexios's nostrils flared as he took a long, deep breath. He let it out in a sigh. He didn't want to say what he had to say next: "We shall begin it, brother of mine. But before we do, I aim to go to Shytown."

Isaac's bushy eyebrows flew toward his hairline. "You would deal with those-those aftermen?" Opisthanthropoi, was a word in no Greek lexicon; the folk of New Constantinople had coined it to describe people on the River who came from a time many centuries later than their own.

"G.o.d and the saints know I have no love for them," Alexios said. Aftermen were generally weak in faith, which made them unreliable, and strong in arcane gadgetry, which made them dangerous. Alexios sighed once more. "But they are on Bornu's other flank. If they work with us, the pagans will fall like ripe wheat at harvest time."

"Let us make sure that we reap the full benefit thereof, though, not the men of Shytown," Isaac warned.176.At last Alexios found something to amuse him. "Brother of mine, I was Basileus of the Romans for thirty-seven years. In all that time, did anyone ever out-trick me?"

Isaac did not answer. Alexios knew he had no answer. He'd stood off rebels from among his own people, Turks and Patzinaks and Normans; he'd even funneled through his Empire the western barbarians who called themselves Crusaders, and taken for the Rhomaioi most of the territory they'd won from the Seljuks in Anatolia. Maybe someone along the endless River was more cunning than he, but he had his doubts.

As if picking that boastful thought from his mind, Isaac said, "Do be cautious nonetheless. Shytown's Basileus is not a fool."

"Another truth. He does not style himself Emperor, though. While he is no Frank, he uses one of their t.i.tles-he calls himself Mayor."

"I wonder why?" Isaac mused.

"Who knows why the aftermen do as they do?" Alexios answered. "Their customs are even stranger than the Franks', and you know what it means for me to say that." No Franks lay anywhere close along the River, for which Alexios thanked G.o.d. Unwashed, ignorant, stinking, brutal savages-who happened to be inhumanly good at slaughtering anyone who got in their way. The Emperor rubbed his naked chin. "Where was I? Oh, yes, the customs of Shytown's aftermen. Do you know they didn't pick their Mayor by his courage or birth or anything sensible? No, they had all the people who wanted the job make speeches, and then chose by a show of hands from men and women both. 'Democracy,' they call it. It's idiocy, if you ask me."

"Demokratia." Isaac spat in the dirt. In the Greek the177.two Komnenoi spoke, the word meant "mob rule." As Alexios said, it seemed a daft way to run a state, but Shytown flourished. Isaac added, "Do you really have to go there yourself?"

"Whom do you propose I send?" Alexios retorted. "The only other two men I might trust for the job are you and Michael Palaiologos. If I pull Michael out of Bornu town, Musa will surely divine what I aim to do. And. you, brother of mine, make a better soldier than an amba.s.sador. Meaning no disrespect, but in a d.i.c.ker the Mayor would eat you up and pick his teeth with your bones."

Since that was true, Isaac could only give his brother a reproachful stare. He said, "How do you even propose to get to Shytown? You let Idris Alooma go, so the Muslim blacks will know trouble lies ahead for them. And Musa ar-Rahman is no fool either. He will be looking for you to try to stab him in the back like that. Were I he, I'd have rafts in the water day and night. Do you want to be fished out and tortured, then given time to heal and tortured again for years on end?"

"Do I want that? Of course not. But I have to get to Shytown, and I don't think I could pa.s.s myself off as a proper subject of Musa's to sneak across his domain." Alexios laughed. So did Isaac, but he sounded more dutiful than amused. Black men of Musa ar-Rahman's tribe made up about two thirds of the people of Bornu. Most of the rest were short, golden-skinned, flat-featured, and narrow-eyed. Alexios's chance of successfully impersonating a member of either group was effectively none.

"All right. It will have to be the River, then, but I don't like it," Isaac said.178.Alexios laughed. "Here you are, Kaisar to my Basileus; if I fail, you become Emperor. And yet you caution me. What kind of brother are you?" He knew the answer to that: a loyal one. A loyal brother, especially among the treacherous Rhomaioi, was more precious than rubies. Alexios knew that, too. He clapped Isaac on the back with real affection. "Besides, I have an idea-"

The storm blew over not long before dawn. The River rode high and choppy in its banks. Debris drifted downstream-tree trunks, bamboo stalks, part of what had been a hut or a raft.

Isaac Komnenos chuckled. "If the Muslims were out watching for you last night, brother of mine, some of them will have drowned-so many the fewer to face when the time comes."

"True enough," Alexios answered. "I-" The morning roar of the grailstones interrupted him. Lambent blue fire shot into the air, to three times the height of a man. When it faded, the people of New Constantinople crowded forward to see what their grails contained today. Alexios took his with as much curiosity as anyone else.

He opened the hinged lid, smiled as savoury steam tickled his nose. Black bread, honey, porridge with big bits of tuna and squid, a soft jar of wine, and a packet of the smokesticks his folk mostly traded to those who enjoyed sucking on them. And- "A firestarter!" he said happily. His grail had produced only a handful of them since his resurrection.

"A good omen," Isaac agreed.

"More than that," Alexios said. "A good weapon, too. I'll carry it along with my knife tonight. If a Bornu spots me, I'll burn out his tongue before he can shout the179.warning." That was bravado, and he knew it. Still, the new tool gave him one more string to his bow; without its appearance, he might not have thought to take one.

He spent the rest of the day going over his plans till he was sick of it and Isaac sicker. Most of what they talked about had to do with things that were unlikely to happen. Alexios had seen enough unlikely things in his life back on Earth to be sure some, at least, would come true: generally the ones that hadn't been planned for. He was a man who left as little as possible to chance.

The sun set in splendour over the mountains to the west. As dusk darkened toward true night, Alexios walked down to the River. A crew bossed by his brother waited for him there. When they started to prostrate themselves, he waved to show the gesture was unnecessary. "We have work to do here tonight, my friends."

He stripped off the reddish-purple kilt whose colour was reserved for him alone in New Constantinople (any pieces of that hue that appeared on the grailstone were either saved for his use or traded away outside his little empire). To replace it, he covered himself with several dark-blue lengths of cloth, until only his head, hands, and feet remained bare.

Grunting and cursing, the work crew manhandled a yew into the River. They kept one last gra.s.sfiber line attached to it so it would not drift away downstream. Isaac Komnenos slapped Alexios on the back. "G.o.d go with you and bring you home again safe."

"You just say that because you don't want the work of ruling," Alexios said.

Isaac laughed. "Too right I don't, brother of mine. Do you have your reed?"

"Here." Alexios held up the yard-long piece of plant.180.It wasn't actually a reed, as it would have been back on earth; it was a thin length of bamboo, with all the pith hollowed out. But it would serve.

Alexios slipped into the water. It was cool but not cold. The Basileus took hold of a root that trailed from the yew. At Isaac's shouted direction, one of the men cut the last rope with a sharp piece of flint. The yew began to drift down the River.

The land slid slowly past. Settlements in New Constantinople centred on the grailstones. Once the one from which he'd left dropped away behind him, darkness prevailed for most of the next mile. Alexios glanced over to the far side of the River. Lights there were even fewer; a broad stretch of that bank was inhabited by hunters and gatherers even more primitive than the nomadic Patzinaks. They weren't even fierce enough to make decent allies against Bornu; had they been so, Alexios would have tried to recruit them.

Something nibbled his leg. He jerked and thrashed in the water. A croaker let out the mournful call that gave the fish its name, then splashed away. The things were cowards and scavengers and not worth eating if anything better was available. Alexios was glad to be rid of this one.

It could have been worse. It could have been a dragonfish. Dragonfish did not usually attack boats or people in the River. When they did, the people attacked usually reappeared on a new stretch of River.

Another grailstone, another town of Rhomaioi. This one was called Thessaloniki, after the second city in Alexios's empire. The people had lit a bonfire; Alexios saw men and women dancing around it. Faintly, the music of turtlefish lyres and upraised voices reached his181.ears. He smiled. He would sooner have been dancing around that fire himself than where he was.

In the middle of the next stretch of quiet dark, another croaker swam snuffling up to Alexios, hoping, no doubt, that he was a piece of offal. He hit the fish with his fist. It nipped him on the leg before it fled. He hoped he wasn't bleeding. Blood in the water would draw a dragonfish to him if anything would.

The last town of Rhomaioi before the frontier with Bornu was Nikaia. More fires blazed at the frontier; a detachment of Rhomaioi kept watch against the infidels. Less than a hundred yards farther on, the black men had their own frontier garrison, of similar size to the one Alexios had posted.

The Bornu capered round their watchfires to the beat of bamboo-stalk drums with redfish leather skins. They brandished flint-tipped spears and shouted threats across the border to the Rhomaioi, most of whom, perhaps fortunately, could not understand them.

Alexios looked ahead. Before long, he spied torches on the River. The Bornu, he had learned since resurrection, came from a desert part of Africa; they did not take naturally to the water. But they were not stupid, either- they knew that if New Constantinople wanted to cut a deal with Shytown, the River was the logical avenue for emissaries.

The Basileus slid all the way under the water. He tried to get as far under the trunk of the yew as he could. Only the tip of his hollowed-out bamboo stuck up above the surface. The other end was in his mouth. He took deep, slow, steady breaths. A military manual from hundreds of years before his own time which he'd once read told how the Sklavenoi used this very trick to avoid detection by182.the Rhomaioi. Now, he thought, a Basileus of the Rhomaioi was turning it against barbarians.

He kept his eyes open, though the night-dark water all around him might as well have been ink. Then, through the crazily s.h.i.+fting mirror of the surface, he saw a flickering torchflame. He knew the black men were peering down into the River. If they saw his pale skin despite the gloomy kilts he'd draped round himself, if by some disaster they recognised his breathing tube for what it was... if either of those things happened, Isaac would become Basileus. Alexios just hoped the Bomu would eventually kill him, instead of torturing him almost to death, letting him heal, and starting over again.

The torchlight receded as the uprooted yew tree drifted on. Alexios sighed relief through hollow bamboo. He stayed submerged for some time, lest the noise of his emerging betray him to his foes.

But before long, he had to put up his head. He needed to watch the land by the River flow past, so he'd know when he'd gone by Bornu and entered the territory of Shytown. He also needed to keep an eye out for more rafts in the River. He would not have contented himself with a single line of pickets had he been Musa ar-Rahman, and he dared not a.s.sume the Sultan was less cautious than he.

Sure enough, he had to go under and breathe through his tube twice more. But the men of Bornu apparently found nothing suspicious about a tree floating downstream after a storm. Though once their torches seemed right overhead, they never probed the water with their spears.

After the third set of rafts, the Muslims had no further River defences. Alexios drifted along past one of their183.settlements after another. He grew bored, and also chilly from having been in the water so long, but willingly endured both for the sake of the reward he might gain from this journey.

Bornu, by the look of things, fortified its border with Shytown more intensively than the one with New Constantinople. A palisade of bamboo and timber ran from the River toward the unclimbable mountains that sealed off the back of each domain.

Not long after he pa.s.sed the palisade, Alexios kicked himself away from the yew and stroked toward the sh.o.r.e. He held on to his bamboo breathing tube: who could say when it might come in handy again?

He splashed up onto the riverbank. Shytown's sentries were alert; he'd hardly come out of the water before someone hailed him: "Who are you and what the devil are you doing here?"

He followed that, though he understood only a little of Shytown's language. The people of the Mayor's domain called it English, but it hardly resembled the English he'd learned from the Angles and Saxons of the Varangian Guard, men who'd abandoned England after William the Norman overthrew their kind. Having dealt with Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund, Alexios did not love Normans, either.

He answered in the aftermen's dialect of English, as best he could: "I am Alexios Komnenos, Basileus of New Konstantinopolis. I will to see your Mayor."

"Say what?" It was a sudden, sharp exclamation, meaningless to Alexios. The sentry came up and looked him over. "G.o.dd.a.m.n! Maybe you are him." He raised his voice: "Hey, Fred, Louie, come here! One of you take my slot, okay? This guy says he's Alexios from184.upstream, and he wants to see Mayor Daley. I'm gonna bring him to Hizzonor."

Fred or Louie came up. Whoever he was, he had a torch. "Yeah, that's Alexios, all right-I seen him once. Okay, Pete, you found him; I guess you get to take him. Beats stayin' here, that's for d.a.m.n sure."

Alexios caught only part of that, but he gathered Pete would conduct him to the mayor. He fell into step with the Shytown sentry. All the way to Mayor Daley's residence, Pete bombarded him with questions. Why did he want to see the Mayor? Did it have to do with Bornu? If it didn't, what was it about? From one of his own subjects, Alexios would have found such prodding intolerable. But the folk of Shytown had a reputation for being both free of speech with their betters and insatiably inquisitive. Alexios found it politic to make his English poorer than it really was.

The Mayor dwelled in a fair-sized palace. Alexios thought the profusion of windows on the outside extravagant; houses in New Constantinople kept to the courtyard pattern of the lost imperial city. But enough guards ringed the place that theft was unlikely to be a problem.

Pete spoke to a guard by the door, too fast for Alexios to follow. Then he turned back and said, "Do you mind waiting till sunup? They don't want to wake Hizzonor yet."

Alexios considered, decided to have a tantrum. He cursed in Greek before trying English again at the top of his lungs: "I am the Basileus, G.o.d dump you to h.e.l.l! You keep me to wait like man with fish to sell?" If the Mayor hadn't been awake, he ought to be now, theou thelontos.

After listening to some more ranting, the guard went185.inside. Mayor Daley came out a few minutes later, accompanied by a thin man with red hair who wore a bone cross on a leather thong round his neck. Daley rumbled in his brand of English. The thin man spoke Latin, which Alexios also understood: "I am Father Boyle, Hizzonor's interpreter. He asks why whatever business this is couldn't wait until the morning."

"Because I am as much a ruler as he is, and I am here now," Alexios answered. "Tell him that." Because he is an upstart and I am Basileus of the Rhomaioi-he thought, though he kept that to himself.

Daley spoke again: "All right; let's get on with it."

Alexios waved aside the priest's translation; he'd understood that himself. He studied Hizzonor. Like everyone else along the River, Mayor Richard J. Daley was physically perfect and in the prime of youth. That failed to make him handsome; he looked like a bruiser. But his eyes- Maybe it was a trick of the torchlight, but Alexios didn't think so. Those cold gray eyes held more than a youth's experience. Alexios would have bet Hizzonor had lived a long life and done a lot of underhanded things in it. Isaac claimed his own eyes had that look, so no wonder he recognised it.

Aloud, he said, "We are to fight Bomu soon; we want you to come in on our side. Between us, we can crush the black infidels, take control of their grails, and add to the wealth of both Shytown and New Constantinople. Is that interesting enough to get you out of bed early, Mayor?"

Daley didn't speak Latin; he had to wait for Father Boyle to translate. Even after the priest was done, the Mayor did not change expression. Yes, he's good, Alexios thought with reluctant admiration. Daley answered,186."Maybe. Depends on when you do it and what's in it for us. I don't have men to throw away on the Suicide Express."

Via Suicida made strange Latin, but Alexios understood: Daley didn't want men loyal to him killed and resurrected far, far up or down the River. Alexios didn't want that for his own retainers, either. He said, "That's why I propose alliance. Between us, we trap and outnumber the men of Bornu. Our casualties should be small."

"Yes, that might work," Daley said. "I also wouldn't mind seeing those s.h.i.+ftless blacks next door working for a living instead of sponging off their grails and lying around like they were in welfare heaven. So, yeah, I'm interested. Tell me more."

Even after Hizzonor's priest translated that, Alexios didn't get all of it; "welfare heaven" left him especially puzzled. Mayor Daley also seemed to despise the people of Bornu merely for being black. That confused Alexios. They couldn't help being black. But they had chosen false Islam of their own free will, and would (he continued to believe, despite resurrection along the River) one day suffer the pangs of h.e.l.l for their error.

Reasons, however, didn't matter. He said, "Are we allies, then? Shall we fix the day for setting the fate of the black infidels?" If Hizzonor didn't like the Bornu because of their colour, Alexios would remind him of it.

"It isn't quite so simple," Mayor Daley said. "The one thing the blacks are good for is keeping you and me from b.u.mping up against each other. When we're neighbours, we're going to have to watch each other all the time. Musa's a nuisance to me now, what with his bucks coming in and stealing a white woman every so often,187.but he's only a nuisance, if you know what I mean. Having you next door might be downright dangerous."

Alexios eyed Hizzonor with surprised respect. If he understood die idea of buffer states, he was indeed no one's fool. After some thought, Alexios said, "Let us agree in advance, then, on which of us will control each grailstone in Bornu. Quarrels settled ahead of time do not turn vexing later."

But Mayor Daley shook his head. "That isn't good enough. I heard you were smart, and I see it's so. So sooner or later, Shytown and New Constantinople will likely fight. We're both going to want to take over as much as we can-we're like that. Am I right or wrong?"

"I think you're right," Alexios admitted. He'd seen the same, but had intended to keep quiet about it. Hizzonor's style was different, almost brutally direct. The Basileus asked, "What do you propose to do about the problem?"

"Here's what," Daley said. "A big war would wreck your country and mine both, and leave whichever of us won in bad shape against anybody strong who might come up or down the River at him. So let's keep it clean: We'll go together against the Bornu, sure. But at the same time, I'll name you Vice Mayor of Shytown and you'll name me-what do you call your number-two guy?"

"Kaisar," Alexios answered.

"Okay. That's what you'll name me, then. You see what I'm driving at?"

"I see," Alexios said slowly. If he took Mayor Daley's terms, whichever of them a.s.sa.s.sinated the other would rule New Constantinople and Shytown both. Life henceforward would be nervous for the two headmen, but their188.retainers would live. Alexios went on, "But, you see, I already have a Kaisar. He-"

"I got a Vice Mayor, too," Daley interrupted. "It's no big deal. This is important. It needs doing, if Shytown and New Constantinople are going to end up next door to each other. Am I right, or not?"

Alexios had been about to say that his Kaisar was his own brother, the only man he'd ever known upon whom he could rely absolutely. The last thing he wanted was to replace Isaac with someone mainly interested in killing him off. But Daley had made it clear that Shytown wouldn't help against Bornu unless he had his way. And if New Constantinople took on Bornu alone, then even if he won he'd be vulnerable to an attack from downstream.

Better the risk to his person than the one to his empire, he decided. "Let it be as you say," he told the Mayor. "Once Bornu is taken, you will name me Vice Mayor and I will appoint you Kaisar." And we shall see what happens after that, too, he added to himself.

Daley stuck out his hand. Alexios took it. The Mayor's clasp was brief, firm, and as mechanical as the gears and levers that raised the imperial throne in Constantinople high in the air to overawe barbarous envoys. Daley, worse luck, did not act like a barbarian-he did not show on his face what he was thinking. Alexios reminded himself that the aftermen had had hundreds of years past his own time in which to learn deceit. He hoped his own lifetime of practising such arts would suffice.

Once the Mayor had what he wanted, he turned businesslike in a hurry. "Let's plan this thing out," he said. "If we're going to do it, we ought to do it right. I think we can, but we need to work things out beforehand...."

The sun came up while Daley and Alexios were still189.plotting. Only the roar from the grailstones made the Basileus notice he no longer needed torches to see. One of Daley's henchmen fetched him breakfast: fried eggs and bacon, toasted bread with fruit jam sweeter than honey, and the hot bitter brew called coffee. He didn't care for that, but drank for politeness' sake. After he finished it, he felt more awake and alert than the long night should have permitted.

Mayor Daley's t.i.tle was anything but martial, but he had a sound grasp of strategy. If everything went as he and Alexios designed (which seldom happened in war), Bornu would be ground between them like grain between upper and lower millstones. And Daley's scheme for returning Alexios to New Constantinople was simplicity itself: "We'll send you as a sailor in one of our boats, and we'll tell the black boys they'll get instant war with us if they try searching anything of ours that floats. Think that'll work?"