The Fata Morgana 
Leo A. Frankowski 



This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this 
book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is 
purely coincidental. 

Copyright  1999 by 

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions 
thereof in any form. 
A Baen Book 
Baen Publishing Enterprises 

P.O. Box 1403 
Riverdale, NY 10471 
ISBN: 0-671-57876-6 
Cover art by Gary Ruddell 


First paperback printing, July 2000 

First paperback printing, July 2000 

Distributed by Simon & Schuster 
1230 Avenue of the Americas 
New York, NY 10020 

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH 
Printed in the United States of America 


DEDICATION 

DEDICATION 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

book, and by giving me many valuable suggestions. Special 

thanks go to L. Warren Douglas, Alan G. Greenberg, 

Gilbert Parker, Tom and Jane Devlin, and Mike Hubble, 

who has a habit of quoting my books back at me, chapter 

and verse. 

PUMMEL IN THE TUNNEL 

I first noticed that something was definitely wrong when 
somebody hit me in the back of the head with a club. 

I went flying down on my knees and elbows, slapped the 
ground, yelled, and came up on the bounce, smashing 
someone's testicles in the process. 

A whole platoon of thugs was pouring out of a small doorway 
in the side of the tunnel. I caught a wall with one hand while 
swinging with the other, and then there were other things to do. 
It seemed like I was surrounded by dozens of the bastards! 

In the movies, the hero can take on vast numbers of bad guys 
because the stunt men have the courtesy to come at him one at a 
time. That way, he only has to fight one opponent at a time, ten 
times in a row. If your enemies have any brains and 
coordination at all, they will mob you, all of them at once, and 
then you will go down, no matter how good you are. At best, 
you might take out one or two before you are deleted. 

My opponents seemed to have neither brains nor 
coordination, but they did have enthusiasm, and there were an 
awful lot of them. Also, even waiting in line takes a certain 
amount of coordination, and for these idiots, fighting seemed 
to be a series of random events. Once, apparently by accident, 
four of them came at me at once, and I had to drop and roll. 


Fortunately, they weren't bright enough to know what to do to 
me once I was down. I was up again in a hurry, and dancing 
around. 

Fortunately, they weren't bright enough to know what to do to 
me once I was down. I was up again in a hurry, and dancing 
around. 

I guess I broke a lot of knees that night. 


BAEN BOOKS by LEO A. FRANKOWSKI 

BAEN BOOKS by LEO A. FRANKOWSKI 
k 
The Fata Morgana 



ONE 

ONE 

We were sinking in a Force Ten gale, with gusts of up to 
seventy, but it was debatable whether she would sink to the 
bottom of the East Pacific Basin, or wreck herself on the rocky 
shores of an island that couldn't possibly be where it obviously 
was. 

We had already done everything we could think of, which 
wasn't nearly enough. We had stuffed a mattress into the hole, 
and wedged and blocked it in as best we could with the sea 
water slapping to and fro on the lower deck. Tons of stuff were 
awash down there. Plugging the hole seemed to help only a 
little. The water in the hold wasn't getting any deeper, but it 
wasn't getting noticeably shallower, either. 

The engines had flooded out early on, taking the big pumps 
west with them, and the electric pumps were losing ground as 
the batteries slowly died. Adam was valiantly working the 
manual bailer, but he was only postponing the inevitable. 

The automatic distress beacon was ready to be switched on 
and the life raft was inflated, loaded and in the water. Back in 
the cockpit, all I could do was wait and see if our navigation was 
really five hundred miles off, and I was staring at one of the 
Line Islands, or if the solid looking thing in front of me was 
really a mirage, the Fata Morgana, as Adam had twice called it. 


A sad ending for a pair of good engineers, I suppose, but 
perhaps a better way to go than some of the alternatives. I've 
read that drowning beats the hell out of, say, death by fire, but I 
don't know where the writer got his information. 

A sad ending for a pair of good engineers, I suppose, but 
perhaps a better way to go than some of the alternatives. I've 
read that drowning beats the hell out of, say, death by fire, but I 
don't know where the writer got his information. 

I guess it all really started because of a problem that exists in 
the Special Machinery business. 

Special Machines are designed and built one at a time, in 
accordance with your customer's needs and specifications. If he 
manufactures widgets, you might make him a machine that 
assembles widgets, or maybe paints them, or wraps them in 
plastic film for shipment. 

Each special machine is specially designed, you could even 
say invented, to do only one thing, but to do that one thing 
extremely well. Such a machine can be very productive, but it is 
generally of use to only one company. Thus, our industry is one 
of the last bastions of craftsmanship in this increasingly 
automated, mass production world. 

To be sure, our machines are largely responsible for all that 
bland mass production, since they can turn out identical 
products at a fraction of the cost of any other method known, 
but there is nonetheless a great deal of personal satisfaction in 
designing something, building it, and then watching it work as 
you had planned. It is a rare joy that the operators of our 
machines can never have. When there is an operator, that is, and 


the whole system is not completely automated. 

the whole system is not completely automated. 

I've always liked workshops and factories. Some people-my 
ex-wife, for example-claim that the industrial environment is 
alien, unnatural, and inhuman, but for me it is the most natural 
thing in the world. 

I am a man, and as such I am as much a part of nature as any 
tree or beaver or bee. The machines that I build are as natural as 
any beaver lodge or bee hive. If there is any fundamental 
difference, it is that, being a man, I use the mind nature gave me 
to direct my efforts, rather than depending on my instincts 
alone. Even then, I don't think that I can claim that a beaver 
never thought about her work, or that she never sat back to 
admire a well built dam. 

In Special Machines, our sort of craftsmanship entails a 
whole set of problems of its own, problems that the rest of the 
world rarely perceives. 

You see, in order to get new business for your company, you 
have to have competent people ready to start on your 
customer's job. No purchasing agent in his right mind would 
trust an important order to someone who had nothing but a 
vacant shop. 

And in order to get competent people, you have to have 
interesting work for them to do. Even if you could afford to pay 
them to sit and do nothing while you were waiting for the next 
job to come in, the best workers would all quit within days, 
leaving you with no one but the sort of people who would be 
better off working for the government. When you start paying 
people to not work, you are automatically selecting for 
incompetence. 

It's a shame, but the only sane course of action is when the 
work is gone, you have to lay almost everybody off. It hurts, but 
there's nothing else you can do. 

It then becomes a matter of If we had some eggs, we could 
have some ham and eggs, if we had some ham. I've seen a few 


companies that never were able to get started up again. Oh, in an 
ideal world, there would always be a fresh job to get into 
whenever the last job was winding down, but if I ever began to 
notice that happening to me on a regular basis, I'd start believing 
in Santa Claus, or maybe even God. 

companies that never were able to get started up again. Oh, in an 
ideal world, there would always be a fresh job to get into 
whenever the last job was winding down, but if I ever began to 
notice that happening to me on a regular basis, I'd start believing 
in Santa Claus, or maybe even God. 

Oh, I had plenty of money. The previous three jobs had been 
profitable, the company bank account was flush, and I hadn't 
even been paid yet for the last one. The trouble was, looking for 
work, I'd called on everybody I knew (and many that I didn't) and 
I hadn't been able to find anything, anywhere, that was ready to 
shake loose in less than two months. 

By which time I would have to hire a whole new bunch of 
strangers, assuming that I could find such people. Then I would 
likely end up having to fire half of them for incompetence, after 
gracing each such bumble fingered fool with a month's pay in 
return for his efforts at screwing things up. And then I would 
have to waste yet another month teaching those with some 
small bit of ability the proper way to get things done. That is to 
say, my way. 

All with the net result of an ungodly amount of personal 
aggravation, late deliveries, and cost overruns that, in this 
industry, you generally have to eat on your own. It's not like 
doing cost plus work for the government. Starting with a new 
crew, my next job would run at a loss, not only to my bank 
account, but also to my reputation, which-in the long run-is the 
only really important thing that any company has ever got. Once 
you have the right reputation, you can buy everything else you 
need. 


THREE 

THREE 

Adam Kulczyinski is the biggest man I've ever met, standing 
six foot five, and so wide that, from a distance, he looks squat. 
He's powerful, not like a bodybuilder, but like a big time 
wrestler who's going to seed. He has thick legs, thicker arms, 
and a big, hanging gut. When you add thinning, unruly hair, 
bushy eyebrows, and a huge beak of a nose, you have a 
remarkable looking individual. 

He walked in with a yellow legal pad filled with numbers and 
sketches, sat down in the chair across from me, and put his feet 
up on my desk. His shoes were very expensive Italian jobs, 
since with what I had to pay to keep him, he could afford 
anything he wanted. But the soles were worn through because 
he never got enough time off work to either have them fixed or 
buy a new pair. 

His suit was crumpled, of course, since his suit was always 
crumpled. On business trips, I've seen Adam put on a good suit 
fresh from the cleaners, and watched it crumple as he stood 
there. It was just one of his many magical talents. 

Another of his peculiarities was that he always wore both a 
belt and suspenders. I'd asked him about that, and he'd said, A 
good engineer, he don't take no chances. 


Now, most people would get fired for putting heel marks on 
their boss's desk, but I'll put up with a lot from a man who really 
knows what he's doing. 

Now, most people would get fired for putting heel marks on 
their boss's desk, but I'll put up with a lot from a man who really 
knows what he's doing. 

Adam was one of the few people left in the world who still 
spoke with a Hamtramck (pronounced hamTRAMik) accent. 
Hamtramck is a small city that is completely surrounded by the 
city of Detroit, like a tough little amoeba that a bigger amoeba 
could swallow but couldn't quite digest. Any place else in the 
world, the larger city would simply have absorbed the smaller 
one, but here, for fairly good reasons, the city fathers involved 
were just plain scared to try it. 

You see, early in the century, Hamtramck had been populated 
by Poles who had abandoned Europe in favor of the American 
car factories. For many years, it was actually the largest 
Polish-speaking city on earth. Thus, those who came over on 
the boat never had to learn English at all, and the second 
generation developed something that was almost a creole of 
English and Polish. It involved substituting a T sound for an 
unvoiced TH, and a D for the one that was voiced. The word 
order used was half way between the two parent languages, and 
its other unwritten rules were beyond my understanding. 
Furthermore, while I have never been able to get Adam to admit 
it, I am positive that he has a lot of fun making his statements as 
deliberately ambiguous as possible, and just filled with internal 
contradictions. 

In writing this history, I have found that I am completely 
unable to do justice (or rather to do proper injustice) to his 
strange accent. Nothing that I am capable of putting on paper 
sounds exactly like whatever it is that Adam actually does. I 


regret to say that even when I am quoting him, you must take it 
for granted that what I am actually doing is paraphrasing his 
statements into something closer to a civilized tongue. 

regret to say that even when I am quoting him, you must take it 
for granted that what I am actually doing is paraphrasing his 
statements into something closer to a civilized tongue. 

His constant use of an illiterate creole convinced some 
people that he was a regular sort of guy, and others, who didn't 
know him well, that he was a fool. He liked people thinking 
both of those things. Very few of his associates realized that he 
had graduated summa cum laude from Michigan Tech, an 
engineering school that is second only to Cal Tech and MIT. He 
never mentioned it. In fact, I've heard him denying that he'd even 
graduated from high school. The only reasons I knew about his 
education were because I'd seen his resume when I'd hired him, 
and because I went to the same school that he had. Oh, he'd been 
a senior when I was a freshman, and we'd never actually met 
during that year, but it was not easy to miss a man as big as 
Adam in a crowd. 

Even then, I'd phoned our old school, not so much to verify 
his technical skills, but to see if he'd actually passed an English 
course. He had. Indeed, he'd minored in English Literature, and 
pulled straight A's doing it. 

But whether it was because of or in spite of his various 
peculiarities, when Adam designed a machine, the machine 
performed flawlessly. What's more, it generally worked 
perfectly the first time it was turned on. 

Therefore, if Adam wanted to talk with his feet on my desk, I 
was willing to listen with my feet on the rug. 

I take it that that's not your resume, I said, pointing to his 
pad of yellow notes. 

Nah, I do dose on one of da draftin plotters, on dat nice 
cotton bond what I had you pay for. 


I wondered why you wanted that stuff. 

I wondered why you wanted that stuff. 

Maybe I just didn't want to know. So what's your idea? 

So sales has screwed up again, and we're looking at some 
serious layoffs. 

From Adam, this was a remarkably tactful statement, seeing 
as how I did most of the actual sales work myself. Not out of 
choice, you understand, but because I have yet to find a sales 
engineer who was both good at his job and willing to work for 
somebody else once he'd learned the ropes. You have to be a 
good engineer to be able to talk to other engineers, and once 
you have the sales contacts besides, the temptation to buy your 
own cannon, and run a company the way one ought to be run is 
just too strong. 

I'm very familiar with the process, since that's how I got my 
company started twelve years ago, and that's how I lost my first 
(and last) four sales engineers. And so although I suppose that it 
represents a monumental case of hypocrisy on my part, well, 
let's just say that I'd gotten tired of training my own future 
competitors a long ways back. 

Look, I've gotten solid promises for two big lines in a 
couple of months. Most of the guys and girls have been working 
sixty, seventy hours a week for over a year now. By the time 
they come back from a long, deserved, company-paid vacation, 
there will be plenty of work for them to do, I said. 

Nah, you know better den dat. Dees guys, dey been pulling 
down twice deir regular wages for so long dat dey tink forty 
hours' pay is like bein' on welfare. Dere's udder outfits around 
wit plenty of work dat'ud snap up our best people in a hurry. But 
me, I figure dat if we could give dem sometin fun to do, we 
could keep our best ones, anyway. Say ten from engineering and 
maybe a dozen from da shop. Da other tirty-five, well, dey're 
not so bad, but we could live without 'em, and anyway, dey're the 
ones dat will still be dere without a job when we need 'em back 
again. 

There's money in the bank to pay for it, but what's your 


plan? 

plan? 

Now wait a minute. A hundred footer, new, has to go for 
something like a couple of million bucks, at least, and the hull 
has to be the major expense item of any ship. There has to be a 
catch, somewhere! 

Dere is! Ferrocrete is pretty labor intensive to make, but 
keeping people busy is exactly what you want to do just now. 

Even so, the gap between ten thousand and two million is 
still too fantastic. 

You got to look at da economics of da yacht-makin 
business. Dose tings are built for people who got too much 
money an' don't know what else to do wit it. Did you know dat 
half da production cost of one of dose big babies goes into teak 
wood decking an' cherry cabinet work on da insides? You're 
talkin a coupla hundred bucks a board foot for some of dat 
stuff! Now, you don't own no teak in your office or your car or 
your house, so why should you want any on your boat? 

Okay, so we keep it sensible and Spartan, but you're still a 
long way from saving two million bucks. 

You got to look at deir sales expenses too, boss. All dose 
fancy showrooms. All dose magazines wit all dose slick photos, 
an' all dose good-lookin girls in dose string bikinis, or dose 
better-lookin girls not in dose string bikinis. I've heard dat da 
total weight of all da books an' magazines about yachting 
produced each year outweighs da actual boats produced each 
year by a factor of more den tree to one. 

That's hard to believe. But anyway, say we get our best 
people involved in building this boat. Why, a hundred footer 
will absolutely fill the big assembly bay. If a customer walks in 
and sees it, he'll know that we don't have any serious work under 


way, and he'll drive the price down to the point where we 
couldn't make a profit, knowing how hard up we are. And when 
we do get a real job in, what do we do with the half finished 
boat? Scrap it? 

way, and he'll drive the price down to the point where we 
couldn't make a profit, knowing how hard up we are. And when 
we do get a real job in, what do we do with the half finished 
boat? Scrap it? 

Okay, say we do this thing. Just what am I going to do with a 
yacht once we get it done? I haven't had time to work out with 
my Karate master for months. I haven't had time for a vacation 
in eight years! 

So dat's da udder beauty of my plan, boss. Once we get it 
done, when we hit a slow spot like now, we all go for a boat 
ride! Wit a boat dat big, we got room for all our people an' deir 
wives an' kids an' husbands. Or, if da season's wrong, from what 
I hear, dere's always more work you can do on a boat. Like dey 
say, 'a boat is a hole in da water dat you pours your money into.' 
Or in our case, our man-hours. 

I doubt if they say it quite the way you do, but okay, okay. 
You've sold me to the extent that I'll seriously explore the idea 
with you. 

I figured dat you'd come around. Adam turned to the open 
door past which our accountant-secretary-receptionist sat. 
Hey, Shirley! It's a go! 

Dammit! I didn't say that! 

Yeah, but you will. 

Shirley brought in a roll of drawings, smiled and left. I gritted 
my teeth. Among my best people, I believe in running a loose 
ship, but I also believe in getting a little respect now and then, 
too. 

So this is something you've designed, Adam? 


Nah, da Coast Guard dey wouldn't let me do it. Seems dat 
you got to be a la-ti-da Naval Architect before you can draw a 
rowboat, an' us lowly Professional Engineers just ain't good 
enough. Dis is a standard plan, wit maybe a dozen built like it in 
da last ten years or so. I got maybe forty or fifty little changes I 
want to make in it, but I figure I can sell da brass on 'em okay. 

Nah, da Coast Guard dey wouldn't let me do it. Seems dat 
you got to be a la-ti-da Naval Architect before you can draw a 
rowboat, an' us lowly Professional Engineers just ain't good 
enough. Dis is a standard plan, wit maybe a dozen built like it in 
da last ten years or so. I got maybe forty or fifty little changes I 
want to make in it, but I figure I can sell da brass on 'em okay. 

Big. 

Look, boss, we gotta have room for forty people. If da guys 
an' girls tought dat dey was buildin dis ting just for you, well, 
deir hearts wouldn't be in it and dey'd start tinkin dat gettin back 
into da machinery business somewheres else wasn't such a bad 
idea. Even like it is, dere ain't much spare space. Half da people 
will be sleeping in a bunk room, and da married couples only 
get an enclosed half of a queen- sized bunk bed. You, however, 
get a spacious owner's cabin in da stern. 

It doesn't look very spacious. What's more, it's right above 
the engines. It'll be as noisy as hell in there. 

It won't be dat bad, boss. Lots of soundproofin. Anyway, we 
won't be using da engines except when we're going in or out of 
port, or in an emergency, and you'd want to be on deck dose 
times anyway. 

Grumble. I take it that you plan on getting this big cabin in 
the front of the boat for yourself? 

And give myself a bigger stateroom dan my boss's? Never 
would I be so crass! No, dat's for nobody in particular. It's just 
sort of a social room. I mean, you know, sometimes a guy has 
to spend a little time alone wit his girl, an' I figure dat if we 
don't give 'em someplace to do it, dey'll be sneakin around an' 
messin up da sail locker all da time. 

Oh. Here you had me thinking that you'd finally found the 


right woman to settle down with. I still say you ought to try 
married life. I mean, we all joke about it, and a bachelor like 
you only hears about the down side of marriage, when your 
friends are in the doghouse, but use your couch instead. But I 
can testify that a wife and maybe someday kids are what really 
makes life worth while. 

right woman to settle down with. I still say you ought to try 
married life. I mean, we all joke about it, and a bachelor like 
you only hears about the down side of marriage, when your 
friends are in the doghouse, but use your couch instead. But I 
can testify that a wife and maybe someday kids are what really 
makes life worth while. 

A necessary temporary expedient. Find yourself a good 
woman, Adam. 

Lookit, boss. I got restaurants to do my cookin, customers 
to bitch at me, and a government to take away all my money. 
What da hell do I need wit a wife? 

If you say so, I sighed. Another thing. These are damn big 
sails. Putting them up and taking them down will be a hell of a 
job. 

You're way behind da times, boss. We got hydraulic roller 
reefin' on bote da sails, and hydraulic winches on everyting 
else. Dere's an onboard computer dat can keep her on course no 
matter what, an' a satellite navigation an' guidance system dat 
knows where it is to witin ten meters, anywheres on Eart. Dis 
baby can be sailed by one person alone, an' even den you only 
got to check on tings every so ofen. 

We both know just how unreliable automatic machines can 
be. Murphy's Law rules the universe. 

Right. An' when tings do get screwed up, like you know dey 
will, we'll have plenty of manpower on board to set tings right. 

This boat's going to be fast, huh? 

Fast enough. It won't win no races, but where's da sense in 
buildin a superfast boat? You want to get somewheres in a 
hurry, you book a flight on a jet. Dis boat's for gettin dere wit 
style! 

Uh-huh. You are sure that all our best people will go along 


with this plan? 

with this plan? 

My thought was, What the hell. It will probably keep most 
of my key people happy, and it just might turn out to be fun. 

Okay, let's do it. But if I hear one single joke about boat 
anchors, the whole deal is off. In the Special Machinery 
business, a boat anchor is a machine that never did work 
properly. 

As he got up to leave, I said, Say, have you given any further 
thought to that offer I made you the other day? You know, about 
being a partner here. 

Nope. Don't have to tink about it. Da answer's da same as it 
was last week an' last munt an' last year. I don't want nuttin to do 
wit da headaches o' being a boss. Da way it is now, I do what I 
like to do an' I got nuttin to worry about. An' I still figure dat in 
da long run, I make more money gettin a paycheck den you do 
gettin to keep whatever's left over after da bills is paid. 

Well, perhaps true, but there are some great benefits to 
running your own show. 

Bennies? What do I need wit more bennies? I got a big new 
company car, a company parkin spot wit my name on it, an' a 
company expense account in case I feel like takin a cab to work. 
Shit, now I'm even gonna get a company yacht! 

FOUR 


I got home almost early that night and took my wife, Helen, 
out to dinner. We ate out often, since cooking was one of the 
things she didn't like to do, and she wasn't much good at it when 
she did do it. She made up for it in other ways. Even now, after a 
messy divorce, I still think that she is one of the most beautiful 
women I've ever met. 

I got home almost early that night and took my wife, Helen, 
out to dinner. We ate out often, since cooking was one of the 
things she didn't like to do, and she wasn't much good at it when 
she did do it. She made up for it in other ways. Even now, after a 
messy divorce, I still think that she is one of the most beautiful 
women I've ever met. 

We'd gone to high school together, where she had been a 
rhythmic gymnast, a cheerleader, and the homecoming queen. 
Not that I was the homecoming king, far from it. And my only 
sport was karate, which in my neighborhood was more a matter 
of survival than something you did for fun. Actually, we didn't 
have much to do with each other back then. I just admired from 
afar, knowing that I would never get a chance to get any closer 
to her. I doubt if she noticed me at all. 

I went off to college, graduated, and went to work in the 
machinery business. All told, I've been fairly successful. 

Helen spent a summer in charm school, something she didn't 
need, and then went on to Michigan State University. Washing 
out in her freshman year, she came home and married her 
high-school sweetheart. A big fellow, he had been the 
quarterback of the our high-school football team, and was as 
handsome as she was beautiful. 

His only big problems were that he was a thief, an alcoholic, 
and a worthless bum. The marriage broke up, and someone told 
me that for a time, Helen worked in Detroit as a topless dancer. 
I've tried not to find out much about that. 

I met her again just after I'd started up my own company here 
in our home town. I was on a winning streak, and Helen seemed 
to be a part of all the good things that were happening to me. 

Now, I was by then a long way from being a starry-eyed pup 


in high school. Yes, I noticed the small signs of drug addiction, 
just as I guessed that she was early in the second trimester of 
pregnancy. But I also knew that she was the loveliest woman I'd 
ever seen, and that one such as I was lucky to get her any way I 
could. With enough tender, loving care, we could work her 
through her problems. 

in high school. Yes, I noticed the small signs of drug addiction, 
just as I guessed that she was early in the second trimester of 
pregnancy. But I also knew that she was the loveliest woman I'd 
ever seen, and that one such as I was lucky to get her any way I 
could. With enough tender, loving care, we could work her 
through her problems. 

Yes, I was making a lot of money, and yes, she liked having 
lots of money. Well, I liked money, too. Hell, who doesn't? I 
tell you that for a lot of years, being married to Helen was 
good. 

By the time we started working on the boat, our marriage was 
starting to get less good. Quickly. 

Inside of a week, the old warehouse had been leased, our big 
plotter had turned out full-scale drawings of the ribs, and our 
plumbers and electricians were bending three-inch black iron 
pipe into the flowing curves that would form the hull. More 
pipe and re-rod went into framing out the bulkheads, which 
were then wrapped with hundreds of yards of chicken wire and 
plasterer's lath. Then it was all sewn tightly together with steel 
wire to form a dense mat, and by the third week these bulkheads 
were being welded to the massive I beam that formed her keel 
and stem. 

Twenty layers of chicken wire and lath were stretched over 
the ribs and bulkheads, followed by three more layers of re-rod, 
and then even more chicken wire and lath. All this was stitched 
together by pairs of people with pliers, passing steel wire 
through the hull to pull it all together. 

When this dense steel fabric was completed-hull, deck, and 


bulkheads-Adam handed out big rubber mallets to all and 
sundry, and we spent three days 'fairing' the hull, making it as 
smooth and hydrodynamic as chicken wire and lath can get. My 
wife Helen even showed up one day and actually did over an 
hour's worth of manual labor. 

bulkheads-Adam handed out big rubber mallets to all and 
sundry, and we spent three days 'fairing' the hull, making it as 
smooth and hydrodynamic as chicken wire and lath can get. My 
wife Helen even showed up one day and actually did over an 
hour's worth of manual labor. 

She was huge. Even though she was belly up and not yet 
infused with concrete, she was a thing of beauty. 

Directing the work was Adam's job, since I had to spend most 
of my time on the road, trying to find some real work for my 
young company. Still, it made my sales job easier, being able to 
show to potential customers a full crew working back at the 
shop. 

Three times during the construction of the hull, we had VIPs 
over. Shirley would press a button on the underside of her desk 
that connected to an alarm bell in our boat shop, and then flutter 
about with charming, feigned inefficiency, getting the customer 
a coffee that he really didn't want. 

Meanwhile, Adam would be yelling SHOWTIME! and 
hustling our crew back across the alley to our special 
machinery factory. They'd turn on the machines, pick up the 
tools they kept laid out, and look as industrious as hell, while 
the customer was still getting past Shirley's smile. I don't think 
that any of our guests ever caught on to what we were pulling. 
Or if they did, they had class enough to not mention it. 

While we were involved with boat construction, there was an 
ongoing debate as to what we should name her. Dozens of 
names were batted about and discarded. For a while there, it 
looked as though the consensus would settle on calling her The 
Wind-Lass, and the auxiliary boat The Wench, but in the end 
she became The Brick Royal, and the tender was The Concrete 
Canoe. I don't know who thought up the names, but I liked them. 

With the metal frames and mesh reinforcement completed, it 
was time to plaster on the concrete. Adam divided our people 
up into three shifts, since he insisted that the plastering be done 


in one continuous pour. Apparently, wet cement does not 
stick all that well to cured concrete, and he meant our hull to be 
perfect. Adam called it a carbon-alloy reinforced composite 
ceramic monolith, one time when he was really tired. Cement 
mixers and plastering machines that squirted the mixture 
through long hoses were rented, two of each so that in case of a 
breakdown, our work could continue uninterrupted. 

in one continuous pour. Apparently, wet cement does not 
stick all that well to cured concrete, and he meant our hull to be 
perfect. Adam called it a carbon-alloy reinforced composite 
ceramic monolith, one time when he was really tired. Cement 
mixers and plastering machines that squirted the mixture 
through long hoses were rented, two of each so that in case of a 
breakdown, our work could continue uninterrupted. 

Work started at the bow, and in a continuous helical strip a 
few inches wide, the crew forced the cement mixture into the 
matted steel wire, rod and pipe, always careful to leave not the 
tiniest void in the material. Inside and out, with vibrators and 
trowels, every bit of hull, deck and bulkheads was plastered 
such that the new concrete never went against previously laid 
concrete that was more than a half an hour old. 

Following closely behind them was a crew whose task was to 
trowel the wet cement to smooth perfection. At the end of each 
shift, the sections completed were carefully covered with 
plastic sheeting, so that the concrete would cure slowly and not 
dry out. 

We were three days completing the task, and I don't think 
Adam slept once during the whole process. I'm glad that it didn't 
take longer than that because just after we started plastering, we 
got a rush job in from Saginaw Steering Gear. 

Adam flatly refused to start on the new work himself, or to 
let anyone else leave off working on the boat until the task at 
hand was completed. I shouted and ranted and screamed for half 
an hour, but to no avail. Not one of my workers would obey me! 
Adam had the whole damn crew brainwashed! As I was swearing, 
shaking my head, and leaving, one of my Bridgeport operators 
came to me and said that they were sorry, but that the best they 


could do was to punch out and work for free until the hull was 
done. And then they all went and did just that! 

could do was to punch out and work for free until the hull was 
done. And then they all went and did just that! 

Just don't let anybody tell you that being the boss is all roses! 

Business was good for the next year. The hull just sat there, 
but that was okay. The longer concrete has to cure unmolested, 
the better and stronger it gets. 

Then I saw another dry spell coming, and I figured that it was 
time to get working on the boat again. I hadn't been in the 
warehouse since we had wrapped her in plastic, and when I 
checked on her one Sunday around noon I was surprised to see 
that major changes had taken place. 

The Brick Royal was now sitting upright in a huge wooden 
cradle. The rudder, prop shaft, and propeller had been installed. 
Nearby was a huge cast-iron keel, resting upright on its 
horizontal wings. She had been beautifully painted in red and 
blue, and while her design was completely modern, there was a 
lot of antique gold-covered scrollwork at both the bow and the 
stern. It looked like it was heavily embossed in the concrete, 
and must have been painstakingly sculpted in when the hull was 
being poured. 

Adam's head stuck up from inside the boat. I tought I heard 
somebody out here. 

Hi. What are you doing here? It's Sunday morning. Why 
aren't you in church? Another of Adam's strange quirks was 
that he was a staunch Catholic, something I'd given up on when I 
was twelve. 

I went to da early mass. 


It's never wise to discuss religion with anybody who actually 
believes in the stuff. That wasn't what I wanted to bitch about 
anyway. Adam, all this fancy scrollwork pisses me off! It's 
formed right into the hull! That means that while I was paying 
the Kelly Services people to do nothing, and sweating blood for 
fear that the GM rep would find out about it, you and your 
people were out here farting around with nonessentials! I'm 
about ready to kill somebody! 

It's never wise to discuss religion with anybody who actually 
believes in the stuff. That wasn't what I wanted to bitch about 
anyway. Adam, all this fancy scrollwork pisses me off! It's 
formed right into the hull! That means that while I was paying 
the Kelly Services people to do nothing, and sweating blood for 
fear that the GM rep would find out about it, you and your 
people were out here farting around with nonessentials! I'm 
about ready to kill somebody! 

I just grumbled, since I couldn't tell if he was lying or not. 
So how did you get the boat turned over? I asked. 

Easy. You know when we had to hire a crane to get dat big 
Ford Flatrock job on da railroad car? Well, when da crane and 
crew was here, it only took dem a coupla minutes extra to flip 
da boat for us, so dey did it, no charge. 

I'll bet. What about that cast-iron keel? Where did it come 
from? 

Well, da guys at Chevy Grey Iron, dey needed a hardness 
tester, but dey didn't have no budget for it, an we needed an iron 
keel, an we had a little extra time left over on a job, so we bote 
did da obvious ting. 

And the rest of this work? 

Da paint, you mean? Well, you know when we had to buy all 
dat weird paint for dat Brazilian job? Well, I just ordered some 
udder kinds of weird paint at da same time an nobody noticed. 

Dammit, Adam, I meant to pay for the paint in any event, but 
as an employee, you shouldn't pull shit like that! It sets a bad 
example! I mean, if you want some real authority around here, 
you should take me up on that partnership. I went up a long, 
shaky ladder and climbed into the boat. 

Nah. Like I told you before, boss, I like bein a lowly peon. 
No worries, no hassles. 

You'll have lots of worries and hassles once I call the police 
and have you charged with theft. Where did this hydraulic power 


unit and all these valves come from? I mean, those are Vickers 
valves, worth hundreds of bucks each! 

unit and all these valves come from? I mean, those are Vickers 
valves, worth hundreds of bucks each! 

You're putting me in jail if the IRS ever hears about all this. 

And how're dey goin to do dat? Dere's not a ting on paper 
anywhere dat shows you got anyting to do wit dis boat, let alone 
ownin it. 

You've got a point there. But next time, let me know what 
you're doing, okay? 

Boss, you got no sense of adventure. 

You've made some changes that weren't on the plans. What's 
this glass thing on the deck? 

Dat's a solar still. Dey was knocking down some old stores 
downtown, an I picked up da big plate-glass windows almost for 
free. It's only tree inches high and it's strong enough to walk on. 
It don't weigh all dat much and under ideal conditions, it should 
make about tirty gallons of fresh water a day. A nice backup, 
hey? 

I suppose so, as long as we're just distilling water. If I find a 
barrel of corn mash back here, somebody besides me is going 
to jail! What about that thing just forward of the still? 

Dose are solar cells. Just another backup for all da udder 
generators. 


All what generators? 

All what generators? 

What? No windmill? I said facetiously. 

I looked at dat, but a windmill would have to go on top of da 
mast, an a generator up dere puts too much weight right where 
you don't want it. We got backups enough, for power, anyway. 

Weren't the solar cells expensive? 

Nah, dey were free. Dere was dis Air Force satellite dat got 
canceled, an we sort of got da solar panels donated to us. 

We 'sort of got donated' government property? You're sure 
it wasn't stolen? 

Stolen? Boss, you use such naughty words! How about 'was 
put to da highest an da best civilian use'? Anyway, dose guys, 
dey owed me a couple of favors and dis was da payoff. 

I shook my head and went away with visions of prison dancing 
in my head. 

FIVE 

The crew only spent three weeks working on the boat that 
time, but during those weeks I spent very little on materials. 


Adam had been squirreling away all sorts of parts for use on the 

Adam had been squirreling away all sorts of parts for use on the 

A big old marine diesel engine was being completely rebuilt 
in our shop, but that I understood. I'd managed to pick it up 
myself a few months ago, along with the transmission, shaft and 
packing box, all at scrap-metal prices. 

But the radios, the radar, the satellite dish, the 
forward-looking sonar, the Global Positioning System, and the 
electronic navigating machine stumped me. I was afraid to ask, 
and put it off for a week, but eventually my curiosity got the 
best of me. 

Oh, dat stuff. Well, you see, boss, da guys over at Nautical 
Micrologic needed some material handlin' stuff-just some 
conveyors an tings-and we needed some of deir stuff, so we 
made a deal. No big ting. 

No big thing, is it? Well, where did the materials and labor 
for the conveyors come from? 

It was dat Brazilian job again. I mean, we was way ahead on 
dat one, and it don't look too good to da customer if you make 
too big a profit on dem. Dis way, everybody's happy. 

Everybody but me and the IRS. I walked away, shaking my 
head as usual. 

One thing I did pay for, and plenty, was the carbon fiber and 
epoxy needed for the mast. The cost of these materials was 
about the same as the price of a custom-made aluminum mast, 
but it would weigh almost half a ton less. Weight way up there 
you don't need. Also, the composite mast would be a lot 
stronger. Too strong, as it turned out later. An aluminum mast 
might not have been strong enough to punch a hole in the 


bottom of the boat. 

bottom of the boat. 

The first machine that we did for them remachined used 
water pump housings. They were very pleased with what we 
designed and built, and they paid for it before the due date. Now 
they had another, much larger project for us if we could start 
immediately, and of course, we could. 

The new job was a variable remachining line for engine 
camshafts that would take just about any used camshaft ever 
made and put it back to the original specs. You could throw in 
old parts in any order, and have them come out just like brand 
new, as long as the programmable controller was informed of 
the proper part number. 

When the camshaft machine was about half completed, their 
rep came by and asked us to quote on five more lines, for 
engine blocks, engine heads, crankshafts, brake drums, and 
rotors. We got the crankshaft job within the week. 

Most machinery companies end up spending between two 
weeks and two months debugging a tool before it's fit to be 
seen in public. All of the sins of misinformation, improper 
assumptions, and outright incompetence come out in final 
assembly and debug. 

It's a trial, but it's not like trying to convince a jury you didn't 
break the laws of man. You're on trial with Mother Nature 
herself sitting in judgment on whether you tried to break her 
very strict rules. 

Rudyard Kipling had it down pat. Machines are not built to 
comprehend a lie. They can neither love, nor pity, nor forgive. 
If you make a slip in handling them, you die. 

Or at the very least, you can lose your shirt. It's the expenses 
that you incur during debugging that can make the difference 
between an almost embarrassingly high profit and a dead loss. 


Indeed, my fledgling company had been forced to lose a few 
not-so-small fortunes, until I hired Adam. It was his fantastic 
record of ultrasmooth startups that made him so valuable to me. 
Before long, his startups made him and our company both 
famous throughout the machinery industry. 

Indeed, my fledgling company had been forced to lose a few 
not-so-small fortunes, until I hired Adam. It was his fantastic 
record of ultrasmooth startups that made him so valuable to me. 
Before long, his startups made him and our company both 
famous throughout the machinery industry. 

Super Spooks in the Sky had nothing to do with it. Machines 
designed and built by Adam always worked because he was 
incredibly competent. He was one of those rare individuals who 
was both remarkably creative and absolutely anal when it came 
to checking every single tiny detail. 

As time went on, I got to scheduling less and less time for 
Tender Loving Care, at least on our own shop schedules, but 
being a chicken at heart, I left it at three weeks as far as what I 
told the customer was concerned, just in case. 

There is a ceremony in the special machine business called 
The Buyoff. Representatives from the purchasing company, 
usually one senior plant engineer and a couple of juniors, come 
to the builder's shop. They inspect the machine and the parts it 
makes, they watch it function, and they sometimes run it 
themselves while it produces a certain number of parts within a 
specified period of time. If all is well, they approve the 
machine for shipment and payment. If Mother Nature doesn't 
accept excuses, neither does the purchaser's plant engineer. 

Only this time, the Brazilian company's President, the 
Chairman of the Board and the Chief Engineer showed up, in 
addition to the usual plant engineers. And they came three 
weeks early. When the Brazilians arrived unannounced, and 
asked to see their machine immediately, I was a more than a bit 
flustered. 

Gentlemen! Of course, you may see anything that you wish. 
But surely you realize that you are here three weeks early. 

A very distinguished-looking gentleman, who turned out to be 
their Chairman of the Board, spoke through their interpreter. 


Of course, we realize this, and it is not our intention to make 
you anxious. We are totally confident of your ability to ship us 
an outstanding machine at the proper time. However, we have 
come north from Bela Horizonte a few weeks early to see for 
ourselves the truth about the remarkable stories that circulate 
concerning your Chief Engineer. 

Of course, we realize this, and it is not our intention to make 
you anxious. We are totally confident of your ability to ship us 
an outstanding machine at the proper time. However, we have 
come north from Bela Horizonte a few weeks early to see for 
ourselves the truth about the remarkable stories that circulate 
concerning your Chief Engineer. 

My Chief Engineer? He's extremely competent, sir, or, uh, 
seor, but of course, what a man does on his own time is none 
of my business, you see. 

The reply, after a few layers of translation, and a fair amount 
of extra conversation in Portuguese, came back, I am not sure 
of what you speak, my friend, and perhaps it is best that I do not 
know. What I was discussing was his remarkable ability to 
design a totally new machine, build it, and have it work 
perfectly the very first time it was turned on. You will 
understand that you are not the first tool-building company that 
we have dealt with. Always before, they were months late in 
their deliveries, and never had we purchased a machine that 
worked to absolute perfection until we received your last 
excellent effort on our behalf. Therefore, we have come early 
in order to watch the machine being completed, and to observe 
the startup. 

Vastly relieved, I took the delegation back to the assembly 
bay, where the electricians and painters were putting on the 
finishing touches. 

Ah, it will be completed soon, yes? 

Oh, yes, sir. Perhaps by noon today. We are slightly ahead of 
schedule. 

Then we will watch. 

It wasn't until one-thirty that Adam had finished his own final 
inspection of the line, and would permit electrical power, 
compressed air, and coolants to be turned on. With a bit of a 
flourish, he pressed the start button for the first time, and all of 


the proper indicator lights turned on. 

the proper indicator lights turned on. 

The machine started, handing the part automatically from 
work station to work station. The cam was washed, its oil 
cavities were blown out clean, and every machined surface was 
measured at many different places. The part was magnafluxed, 
and since it was within allowable tolerances, our machine 
decreed it to be salvageable. 

Those bearings and other surfaces that were worn down or 
otherwise undersized were MIG welded back up until they were 
oversized and then ground down precisely to specification. The 
oil cavities were again blown out clean, the camshaft was 
pressure washed again, dried, and then lightly oiled for 
shipment. Finally, it was placed on a storage rack reserved for 
parts of its type. 

And at every step of the line, our machine had worked 
perfectly, the first time that it had ever operated. Adam had 
done it again. The VIPs were all excited, and wads of brightly 
colored Brazilian money changed hands among them. There 
must have been some hefty bets going. 

Then the Brazilians had to play with their new toy themselves, 
like a bunch of teenagers who had just invented sex. 

When they finally ran out of old camshafts to fix, the 
chairman not only handed me a cashier's check for the full 
amount owed on the tool, he also gave me a purchase order for 
all four of the other new lines that I had quoted them. 

I could see now where I was going to get the money to buy 
the sails for The Brick Royal. Dacron was no longer good 
enough, and the Kevlar sails that Adam insisted on were going 
to cost me three times what the hull did. One of those little 
catches that I had known would be there all along. There would 
be enough money left over to take Helen on a cruise, or even 
buy her that new house she'd been hinting about. Not to mention 


retiring for life, if the mood struck me. 

retiring for life, if the mood struck me. 

But still they didn't go home. Adam took them across the 
alleyway and showed them our boat. I cringed, and stayed 
behind. I shortly heard a series of loud BONGs, and knew that 
Adam was showing off his ferrocrete again. He'd hand you a big 
sledge hammer and challenge you to knock a hole in the hull. 
Nobody could do it, and the hull would ring like a cathedral 
bell. Remarkable stuff, ferrocrete. 

The chairman came back in an hour to tell me that the old 
engine I had purchased was entirely too inferior for so noble a 
vessel. He announced that he would be sending us one that was 
only three years old, that had been rebuilt in his own plant and 
which incorporated all of the most modern new developments, 
and complete with transmission, propshaft and propeller. All 
this as a free gift, in thanks for our excellent workmanship. 

Then they all drove over to the Tri-County Airport and 
hopped a jet for Disneyworld. 

SIX 

In six weeks, a beautifully rebuilt, late model diesel engine 
arrived with the freight prepaid. Far more importantly, for the 


first time in the life of my young company, I could see clear 
sailing far into the future. With this much business spaced out 
over two years, I could afford to pick and choose among the 
other work I took on, with no more dangerous underbidding just 
to keep my people busy. Also, I was now flush enough so that I 
didn't have to go begging to the bank for every machine I built. 

first time in the life of my young company, I could see clear 
sailing far into the future. With this much business spaced out 
over two years, I could afford to pick and choose among the 
other work I took on, with no more dangerous underbidding just 
to keep my people busy. Also, I was now flush enough so that I 
didn't have to go begging to the bank for every machine I built. 

Thus, to build a machine, you must not only pay your people's 
salaries and benefits, as well as your overhead, you must also 
lay out a very substantial slug of cash for purchased parts. This 
makes you a slave to the bankers, a bland, polished and 
thoroughly despicable brand of quasihumanity. But now I was 
free, free at last, or so I thought. 

I told Helen that from then on, I would be spending a lot 
more time with her, and asked her to pick out a cruise that we 
could go on together, sort of like a second honeymoon. I was 
sure that our relationship was on the upswing. 

I was then contacted again by the Brazilians, who had yet 
another profitable order for me, and also a desperate request to 
speed up the previously agreed on delivery schedule. They 
offered some nice bonuses for it, but they wanted all of their 
machines delivered by yesterday, if not the day before. 


Well, you try to keep your customers satisfied. We went 
over our schedules, and by building all of the lines in parallel 
rather than sequentially, by not accepting any other new work, 
by temporarily renting more factory space, by hiring a lot more 
new people, by farming out a lot of the parts to my friendly 
competitors, and by floating a bodacious loan with the bank, we 
could get all of their work out in six months. 

Well, you try to keep your customers satisfied. We went 
over our schedules, and by building all of the lines in parallel 
rather than sequentially, by not accepting any other new work, 
by temporarily renting more factory space, by hiring a lot more 
new people, by farming out a lot of the parts to my friendly 
competitors, and by floating a bodacious loan with the bank, we 
could get all of their work out in six months. 

So for six months, it was interesting times, as they say the 
Chinese say, but the work got done. Sometimes I hardly got 
home from one week to the next, and when I did, I found that 
Helen usually didn't want to talk to me. She preferred 
screaming. We got into a fight damn near every time I got 
home, which sure took the incentive out of getting there in the 
first place. 

Building the machines in parallel instead of in series was 
more work than we had thought it would be. Normally, the 
engineers and designers would have designed the first machine, 
and then started in on the second while the controls designers 
and the mechanical checkers were doing their thing on the first. 
By the time the mechanical designers were working on machine 
number six, the controls people would be on number five, the 
machinists would be building the parts on number four, the 
purchasing people would be getting in the purchased parts on 
number three, the assemblers would be putting number two 
together in Assembly Bay A, and the electricians and the pipe 
fitters would be working on machine number one in Assembly 
Bay B. That is to say, a production line, of sorts, would be in 
operation. 

As it was, everything had to be designed at first and at once, 
at a time when the electricians and Bridgeport operators had 
nothing to do. Despite the different names that various skilled 


workers had, the truth is that specialization is for insects, and 
good people can do anything they put their mind to. Working 
outside his usual trade is good for a worker, it's broadening, and 
a lot of our people volunteered for strange jobs. We had 
electricians designing controls and machinists designing what 
they usually build. In a few months, the engineers would be 
working with milling machines and arc welders. 

workers had, the truth is that specialization is for insects, and 
good people can do anything they put their mind to. Working 
outside his usual trade is good for a worker, it's broadening, and 
a lot of our people volunteered for strange jobs. We had 
electricians designing controls and machinists designing what 
they usually build. In a few months, the engineers would be 
working with milling machines and arc welders. 

On top of it all, we were working in four buildings scattered 
around the city, and an ungodly number of man-hours were 
being wasted just running between them. 

Coordinating all of this was a major headache, and I spent 
long hours at my desk. Somewhere through all of this, late one 
night, I must have confused a process server with one of the 
runners who were circulating between our various shops. As 
best as I was able to figure out much later, I must have just said 
that yes, I was me, and thrown what he handed me into the IN 
basket. 

A few hours later, I was hungry when Helen walked into my 
office, carrying a big bag of McDonald's stuff. It was after nine 
at night, and I hadn't had time for lunch, yet. It was an unusual 
event, since Helen didn't like the factory. She came to my 
office maybe once a year, if that. I was used to it, and it no 
longer bothered me. Since the night before had ended in 
another yelling match, her actions struck me as being a peace 
offering. I took it as such. She was as beautiful as ever, and I 
never could stay mad at her for long. 

She sat on my desk and smiled while I ate a Big Mac and 
admired her. It must have been then that she swiped the divorce 
papers from my IN basket before I even knew that they were 
there. Or that Helen was divorcing me. 


Before I found out what was happening, Adam reported that 
his new Chrysler convertible was gone. It was in my driveway 
last night and it wasn't dere in da morning. 

Before I found out what was happening, Adam reported that 
his new Chrysler convertible was gone. It was in my driveway 
last night and it wasn't dere in da morning. 

In the end we were victorious. The Brazilians happily bought 
off all six lines in one single day, and promised to send me a 
whopping big check shortly. All the machinery was loaded onto 
the same container ship bound for Rio de Janeiro. I thought that 
when all the checks cleared the bank and all the bills were paid, 
I would be a multimillionaire. 

It was time to make up with Helen. I bought some flowers for 
her on the way home, but the clerk at the shop said that my 
check wouldn't clear. She said that the computer said that my 
account was empty. 

I said that there was some mistake somewhere, but I'd worry 
about it later. I paid her with a company credit card and went 
home. 

To find that I didn't have one. 

The furniture was gone, along with everything else that wasn't 
nailed down. Even my dog Boner was missing, along with his 
doghouse and his water dish. A thief couldn't have taken Boner, 
not without leaving somebody's blood around, and who'd want to 
steal an old water dish? 

Having no idea at all what I should do next, I sat down on the 
front steps. After a bit, a process server came up, handed me a 
folder of divorce papers, and went silently on his way. I was so 
shocked that I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything for 
about an hour. 

Eventually, I got up, drove downtown, and checked into a 
hotel. Then I spent most of the night in the hotel bar. I had long 
known that Helen was less than totally pleased with me, but I 
had been sure that she would eventually see that what I was 
doing was a good thing for both of us. I mean, she knew that 


when I wasn't at home, I was working. I wasn't out with another 
woman. 

when I wasn't at home, I was working. I wasn't out with another 
woman. 

Now that she was gone, I didn't know where she was, and I 
could think of no way to contact her. Her mother wouldn't even 
talk to me, and I didn't see anything that I could do about that, 
either. 

Sometimes, booze is the only answer. 

Booze stayed the only answer for about a week and a half, 
until Adam showed up about noon one day and half carried me 
over to his place. After a few days of drying out, he and Shirley 
let me back into my office. 

Things were up and running, in a quiet sort of way. All of the 
temporary people had been let go, along with the rented factory 
space. The permanent crew was working on a traveling hoist or 
crane, the sort that they use to lift big boats out of the water and 
drive them over to their cradles. It was half built in the big 
assembly bay. 

You don't really want to ask, Adam said, and I nodded yes. 
Boss, why don't you go back to your office and administrate 
something. Or better still, go out and find us some more work. 
Me and Shirley'll take care of everything else. 

And they did. Shirley even refurnished my house. It was 
mostly done in K-Mart modern, but at least I had a place to 
sleep. She was looking for a housekeeper for me when the 
other trouble hit. 

I hadn't had any luck with new work, some of my old 
customers being a little miffed at the way I'd been sending No 
Bid notes to them for the last six months in reply to their 
requests for quotes. 

I was getting ready to go to divorce court when a certified 
letter arrived from Brazil. It said that my good friends south of 
the border were declaring bankruptcy. They wouldn't be paying 


me for the machines I'd sent them. 

me for the machines I'd sent them. 

The thing about special machines is that they are special. 
They're built for one specific customer to do one specific job. 
It is most unlikely that anybody else would want a special 
machine secondhand, except at scrap metal prices. Even if I 
could get my machines back, it wouldn't do me any good. I was 
in absolute trouble. 

A Brazilian lawyer wrote that if I appointed him to be my 
attorney, with a suitable retainer fee, he might be able get me 
ten, or even twenty cents back on the dollar. Of course, between 
the bank and my other creditors, I owed about sixty-five cents 
on the dollar for those machines, and my company bank account 
was running on fumes. 

At the divorce court, my lawyer, Alan Greenberg, wanted to 
fight, but I told him to just agree with anything Helen and her 
lawyer wanted. It didn't make any difference. I was wiped out in 
any event. I figured I might as well let Helen feel good for a 
little while, anyhow. And so her lawyer and the limp- wristed 
little judge gave my wife more of my nonexistent money each 
month than I had ever made even in good times, not that she had 
any chance of collecting any of it. They simply had no real 
comprehension as to what the universe was about to dump on all 
of us. 

Finally, Alan insisted on doing something for me, and got the 
judge to agree that if Helen remarried, or cohabited with a 
male, all of my obligations toward her would cease. I didn't 
much care, or see how it would make any difference, but it 
seemed to make my lawyer happy. 

A week after that my creditors pounced on me and I found 
myself sitting in bankruptcy court, with the same damn judge. 
My lawyer said that it was illegal, but the judge didn't agree. I 
also thought that more time would be given me to sort things 
out, but within three weeks, my factory was empty, padlocked 
and sold. So was my house, but the money there went to Helen 
and her lawyer. 


My car was leased, so they had to let me keep that, and I had 
always kept a set of credit cards separate from my wife's, so 
they were paid up, but when I went across the alleyway to look 
at The Brick Royal, she was gone. 

My car was leased, so they had to let me keep that, and I had 
always kept a set of credit cards separate from my wife's, so 
they were paid up, but when I went across the alleyway to look 
at The Brick Royal, she was gone. 

With both of these two foundations brutally ripped away by 
the power of law, government, and a woman that I still couldn't 
help loving, I found that I had nothing left out in the world, and 
nothing left inside of me either. I was a hollow man, empty, and 
without hope. I was devoid of everything, even hate. 

I was back in the bar when Adam found me again. He sat down 
beside me and ordered a beer. You know, boss, it wasn't really 
da Brazilian's fault. At da courthouse, I heard dat dey got 
knocked flat because deir biggest customer went belly-up. 

Just like a line of dominoes, I said. 

An dey are still fallin. It's lookin like Delta Distribution 
might crash and burn because of what we didn't pay them. A 
coupla udders might go, too. 

Shit. They say misery loves company, but I sure never meant 
that to happen. Not that I feel all that charitable after what they 
did to me at the bankruptcy court. I don't know what I'll do now. 
Probably spend a week getting properly drunk, and then go out 
and really tie one on. What about you? You got any plans? 

Me? Why, I'm stickin wit you, boss. So are most o' da udder 
guys an' girls. 

Adam, you are out of your frigging gourd. For one thing, I'm 
not your boss. I'm nobody's boss, because I don't have a 
company anymore. I made my last payroll, but that cleaned me 
out, so show some sense and go find a soft place to land. And 
tell any of the other people you see to do the same thing. 


Nah, don't talk like dat, boss. We still got fait in you. You 
always pulled it all togedder before. Anyway, it's time we all 
took dat boat ride you promised us. 

Nah, don't talk like dat, boss. We still got fait in you. You 
always pulled it all togedder before. Anyway, it's time we all 
took dat boat ride you promised us. 

Boss, dey never took da boat. I took da boat. Well, me an 
some of da guys, an half of da Bay City Police Department. You 
know dat big travelin hoist we was buildin? Well, dat was for da 
guys at da marina. See, dey needed a new boat hoist, and dey 
didn't have one big enough to handle Da Brick Royal anyway. 
We needed some sails, life preservers, safety equipment, some 
kitchen stuff, an, oh, a list about as long as your arm. So, as 
usual, we cut a deal. 

I'd already ordered the sails, though I never had a chance to 
pick them up and pay for them. 

I know. Which was anudder reason why dey was so eager to 
deal. Dose sails was all custom made, an dey woulda been stuck 
wit a very expensive white elephant witout you to take it off 
their hands. 

So you're saying you stole the boat? How, for God's sake? 

We had a brand new traveling hoist, didn't we? An you was 
always good about donating to da Policeman's Benevolent Fund, 
wasn't you? So at two o'clock on a Tuesday morning, we just 
picked da ting up and drove down da streets to da marina, wit a 
nice police escort, even. 

There has to be something illegal about this. The law says 
that a bankrupt's property gets divided up between his 
creditors. 

Nah. Dere is nutin nowheres written down dat says dat you 
own da boat, except for dis, of course. 

He handed me an envelope that contained a bill of sale and 
the registration for The Brick Royal. 

You see, dere was da Coast Guard certification, da 
registration, an all dat stuff, an you was udderwise occupied, so 
I just sort of put it all in my name. But once everyting settles 


down, you file dat registration, an she's yours again. 

down, you file dat registration, an she's yours again. 

Adam, I don't know what to say. 

Den yous don't have to say it. Come on. Drink up. Da guys an 
girls are down at da marina, puttin da finishin' touches on da 
boat. It'ud be nice if you let dem all know dat you was still alive 
an all. 

Adam insisted on stopping at the doctor's office on the way 
to the marina, and I got nine shots in my arms and butt to update 
the medical records on my passport. 

Then he drove me to see Alan G. Greenberg, our lawyer, 
where there were two Power of Attorney forms ready for us to 
sign, one for me and one for Adam. They would let Greenberg 
do whatever he felt was best with any legal problems that might 
come up while we were gone. I signed mostly because it 
seemed to make both of them happy. Personally, I didn't see 
where anything that might happen could possibly affect me 
anymore, except maybe for a bullet in the head, and I'd probably 
welcome that. 

When we got to the marina, the finishing touches being 
handled was the unloading of a semi full of canned and dried 
food. Everything was being sorted out, logged, put into several 
layers of waterproof plastic garbage bags, and then carried into 
the spacious volumes below The Brick Royal's lower deck. 

Dis one you really don't want to know about, Adam said, so 
I didn't ask. 

I was a little shell-shocked by then, anyway. I went into the 
boat and sat down in the big center cockpit, which was little 
more than an outdoor living room, what they've been calling a 
conversation pit, although you could control the boat manually 
from there. Normally, the boat was controlled from the much 
smaller aft cockpit. 

I looked back at it and was surprised to see that it had an 
automotive style convertible top! And the windshield looked 
suspiciously like it had come from a big, new Chrysler. On 
inspection, so did the padded steering wheel, the leather bucket 


seat and the electric windows. Oh, the single seat was now in 
the center, as was the steering wheel. The dash- board was like 
something out of a Hollywood spaceship, with five display 
screens along the front. On both sides of the driver were banks 
of switches and lights, and in back, once you swiveled the seat 
around, there was a chart table in case you wanted to do things 
the old-fashioned way. Yet it was obvious that most of this had 
to have been ripped out of the company car Adam had reported 
stolen! Damn his ass! 

seat and the electric windows. Oh, the single seat was now in 
the center, as was the steering wheel. The dash- board was like 
something out of a Hollywood spaceship, with five display 
screens along the front. On both sides of the driver were banks 
of switches and lights, and in back, once you swiveled the seat 
around, there was a chart table in case you wanted to do things 
the old-fashioned way. Yet it was obvious that most of this had 
to have been ripped out of the company car Adam had reported 
stolen! Damn his ass! 

I leased it for you, and you reported it stolen! 

Well, how you got it was up to you, none of my business, 
really. And I didn't report it stolen. I just said dat it was in my 
driveway and da next morning it was gone. Nobody ever asked 
me if I was da one who drove it away. 

Adam, you're hopeless. 

Yeah. Don't you feel glad? 

Shit. Are you sure that this top will stay in place during a 
gale? 

Dat top didn't give me no trouble when I drove da car at a 
hundred and fifty. You ever heard of a 
hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour hurricane? 

I don't think that it's quite the same thing. 

Have fait. You'll be glad about da top when we're cruisin 
under a tropical sun. Da air conditionin will be nice, too. 

What tropical sun? We're in Bay City, Michigan! 

Right now, yeah, boss. But once we get our people shook 
down, we're going to take tree years and sail her all da way 
around da world! 

Ridiculous! I can't take off for three years. 

Oh, yeah? Why not? You got sometin else better to do? 

And you know? I really didn't have an answer for that one. 


SEVEN 

SEVEN 

About a half dozen of them, including Adam, had studied 
seamanship very seriously, taking all the courses in it they 
could find, and sailing rented boats whenever they could find 
the time. A group of the girls had really gotten involved with the 
itinerary, and made sure that we could get to the right place at 
the right time to see everything that was worth seeing. 

When everything and everybody was finally aboard, Adam 
came up, gave me a palm-forward British-style salute, and asked 
if I wanted to take her out now. 

Me? I don't know anything about driving a boat! 

Dere's nuttin much to it. Come on. Everybody's waitin. 

I was still in no mood to do anything in public, but sometimes 
you've got to keep the peasants happy. I went up on deck and 
shouted, All right! You all know what to do! 

I gesticulated wildly, with my fist held high, but everybody 
just stood there. It always worked when Errol Flynn yelled 
that, I said to Adam. They climbed up on deck, killed the 
Spaniards, and pulled all the right ropes to make the boat go. 
They even got the words to the song right. 

You don't got no tights on, Adam said. And you don't got 
no mustache, either. Try sometin different. 

Okay. All right, you swabs! Let's shiver the scuppers and 


keelhaul the fo'c's'le, and do all the rest of that nautical stuff 
that gets this boat moving! 

keelhaul the fo'c's'le, and do all the rest of that nautical stuff 
that gets this boat moving! 

Or better still, do what Adam tells you to do, and wake me 
up when we get there. I went below again. 

We spent two months sailing around the Great Lakes, shaking 
down the boat and the crew, seeing the sights. I was in a strange, 
empty mood, and spent a lot of time alone in my cabin. The 
double catastrophe that had befallen me at the very moment of 
triumph still had me hollow, empty and numb. No one asked me 
to stand a watch or help with the boat, and I never volunteered. I 
took to drinking pretty heavily, alone, until Adam came in one 
day, silently picked up my case of scotch and threw it over the 
side, a gift for some future aquatic archaeologist. 

Every now and then, one of the single girls would come in 
and let it be known pretty plainly that if I wanted a little 
company, well, so did she, but Helen had messed me up so bad 
inside that I didn't want to trust another woman, not even for a 
one-night stand. 

Everybody else seemed to be having a marvelous time. We 
had fifty-three people on board. Thirty-one of these were me 
and my former employees. I'd had quite a few husband and wife 
teams working for me. Five were spouses of employees, eleven 
were children, two were boyfriends of two of the girls, and four 
girls had been sort of communally invited aboard by nine of our 
male bachelors. None of my business, so I never said anything. 
That and there were two dogs and a cat. The cat went missing on 
the second night out and I felt a little better. I never could stand 
cats. 

At first, I took my meals in the galley along with everybody 
else. We were so crowded that we were eating in shifts when 
the weather was bad and you couldn't eat on deck. But my 
presence seemed to throw a wet sleeping bag over any group I 
was with, and after a bit I took to eating alone in my room. 


We hit a major storm on Lake Michigan. There was plenty of 
warning, not only from the weather services but also off a fax 
machine that was hooked directly to a satellite. Adam had 
furnished us up proud, communications-wise. Besides the 
satellite hookup and two fax machines, there were six separate 
radios and radio telephones. I mean, we could be in the middle 
of the Atlantic Ocean and place a collect phone call to 
somebody in Fiji, if we didn't care about getting the people 
there up in the middle of the night. 

We hit a major storm on Lake Michigan. There was plenty of 
warning, not only from the weather services but also off a fax 
machine that was hooked directly to a satellite. Adam had 
furnished us up proud, communications-wise. Besides the 
satellite hookup and two fax machines, there were six separate 
radios and radio telephones. I mean, we could be in the middle 
of the Atlantic Ocean and place a collect phone call to 
somebody in Fiji, if we didn't care about getting the people 
there up in the middle of the night. 

We took down the mast and motored through a canal in 
Chicago, which put us on a tributary of the Mississippi River, 
and then spent six weeks playing Tom Sawyer heading south. I 
suppose that there were lots of pretty sights along the way, but 
inside I was still a dead man. 

We lost six more couples, a single parent and all the kids and 
dogs at St. Louis. They had planned it that way all along. 
Summer was over, and the kids had to get back to school. They 
all promised to rejoin the crew next summer once school was 
out, but somehow none of them did. At least now there was 
enough room on board so you could turn around without 
rubbing someone's back. 

Everybody loved New Orleans except me. I saw it as just an 
overrated, overpriced, and overheated place where all you could 
do is sit listening to octogenarians playing music that nobody 
else would want to listen to at all under normal circumstances. 
The swamps just south of that city are nice, though, and Cajuns 
are more fun than people. Eventually, gorged on shrimp, 
crawdads, and hot sauce, we raised the mast and headed into the 


Gulf of Mexico. Yet even these infrequent moments of 
pleasure were just a surface ripple over my inner feelings of 
nothingness. 

Gulf of Mexico. Yet even these infrequent moments of 
pleasure were just a surface ripple over my inner feelings of 
nothingness. 

Sea sickness got to some people, and nine more of our crew 
left the boat at San Juan. We took on four thirty-gallon barrels 
of rum there, since rum sold for less than Coke, and Adam let 
me resume drinking, as long as I did it in public. 

Slowly, I was starting to become a human being once more. 
As the winter passed, I even started noticing girls again. I wasn't 
quite to the point where I wanted to get involved with one, but I 
was noticing. Especially since most of them were in bathing 
suits, and the island fashions that year provided about the same 
coverage as two Band-Aids and a cork. 

I got to noticing Dawn in particular. Now that the kids and 
older folks were gone, she let the exhibitionist side of her 
personality come out. Any time we got out of port, she got out 
of her bikini, which a guy just naturally couldn't help noticing. 
That, and it seemed as if every time I caught sight of her out of 
the corner of my eye, she was looking at me, and grinning. I 
figured her for a tease, albeit a pleasant one. Then one of the 
mechanical designers told me that it wasn't a tease at all. She 
was ready, and what was I doing, ignoring a nice girl like that? 
But Dawn was young enough to be my daughter, if I had one, and 
anyway, I wasn't quite ready for another woman yet. 


Then we hit a hurricane, or vice versa. Normally, a storm isn't 
much of a problem with a good sailboat, as long as you have 
plenty of sea room, and we did. You just take in all the sails, 
hang a bit of sturdy canvas to the backstay, tie off the wheel, 
seal up all the hatches, and try your best to ignore it. The boat 
just automatically puts its nose into the wind and you do five or 
ten knots, backwards. Adam had a surplus parachute rigged to 
one of the anchor lines, as a sea anchor. If we ever got close to 
shore, he could throw it out and stop us dead in the water, but 
we never needed it. We were even going in the direction that we 
wanted. Toward Panama, and the Canal. 

Then we hit a hurricane, or vice versa. Normally, a storm isn't 
much of a problem with a good sailboat, as long as you have 
plenty of sea room, and we did. You just take in all the sails, 
hang a bit of sturdy canvas to the backstay, tie off the wheel, 
seal up all the hatches, and try your best to ignore it. The boat 
just automatically puts its nose into the wind and you do five or 
ten knots, backwards. Adam had a surplus parachute rigged to 
one of the anchor lines, as a sea anchor. If we ever got close to 
shore, he could throw it out and stop us dead in the water, but 
we never needed it. We were even going in the direction that we 
wanted. Toward Panama, and the Canal. 

In fact, Adam bought some decent lumber in the port of 
Coln, and the rest of them were busily converting the 
dormitory into two big staterooms, as we motored our way 
through the Canal. 

I was taking my turn at the wheel, now that we were getting 
shorthanded, and naturally, given the pairing off that was going 
on, Dawn was getting more flirtatious than ever. I got to 
thinking that maybe I should stop being such a grump, and come 
out of my shell a little bit. She was twenty-four and I was 
forty-two, but maybe that wouldn't be an insurmountable 
problem. She was certainly a fine-looking young woman. She 
was down to the buff, lying on the glass top of the solar still 
nine inches in front of my windshield, and pretending not to 
notice me. A pleasant sight, but probably against the law in 


Panama. I mean, she was also ignoring the people on other, 
taller ships, though they weren't doing the same with her. Then I 
got a radio phone call from a passing freighter, thanking me for 
the scenery, but telling me that Panama being a staunchly 
Catholic country, the fines for doing what she was doing were 
huge. 

Panama. I mean, she was also ignoring the people on other, 
taller ships, though they weren't doing the same with her. Then I 
got a radio phone call from a passing freighter, thanking me for 
the scenery, but telling me that Panama being a staunchly 
Catholic country, the fines for doing what she was doing were 
huge. 

She gave me an Aw, shucks! look, stood up, and her head 
exploded. 

We were in Panama for three weeks while the police tried to 
get things sorted out. It seems that Dawn was hit by a .30 
caliber hunting bullet. The bullet was descending at a fifty 
degree angle when it struck her, and from the direction it had to 
have come from, there was no land higher than the boat from 
which it could have been fired. No ship or aircraft had been in 
the right position at the time. The only conclusion that anybody 
could come to was that somewhere off in the jungle, somebody 
had just fired a shot into the air. A weird accident, and a totally 
senseless death. 

We humans like to think that we are somehow important in 
the great scheme of things, that in some way, our lives and our 
deaths have meaning. A certain rational part of us tells us that 
this isn't true, that the universe is a vast place, and quite 
indifferent to us, but we don't like to listen to that annoying 
little voice very often. And then something like the way Dawn 
died throws it in our faces. 

I was back in the bottom of my black mental hole again, and 
now each of the other six people was also living in his or her 
own private place of darkness. 

When the police finally gave us permission to leave, 
everyone but Adam and me decided to accompany Dawn's body 
home, and each of them said that they wouldn't be coming back. 
Adam tried hard to persuade them to stay, but Dawn's death just 
took the wind out of the expedition. 

I think that the only reason I stayed on was because I was too 


numb to do anything else, or maybe because, without Helen and 
my factory, Bay City wasn't home any more. 

numb to do anything else, or maybe because, without Helen and 
my factory, Bay City wasn't home any more. 

That's from some sort of a song, isn't it? 

Yah. Some sort. 

Adam, what are we going to do? 

We're going to sail. Come on. 

EIGHT 

We topped off our two thousand-gallon fuel tanks, picked up 
a few bags of fresh food, and left. We didn't need anything else. 
There was enough canned and dried food to last us for three 
years, even if we didn't do any fishing. That didn't count the 
emergency supplies, a ton of dried beans, Bay City being the 
Bean Capitol of the world. The solar still built into the deck 
produced ten gallons of pure water a day, and the osmotic water 
maker could pump out another hundred, at the price of running 
the generator set. We were as free as any human beings 
possibly could be, and yet I was living in my own private hell. 

I had hardly known Dawn, yet somehow her death and the 
manner of it weighed on me more than my divorce and 
bankruptcy had done. It wasn't that I was berating myself with if 
onlys, although it was true that if I'd just let her lie there, and 


not acted like a penny-pinching prude, she would still be alive. 
It was that an uncaring universe had blotted her out with no 
more concern than a truck driver has for a bug hitting the 
windshield. 

not acted like a penny-pinching prude, she would still be alive. 
It was that an uncaring universe had blotted her out with no 
more concern than a truck driver has for a bug hitting the 
windshield. 

The rule on board had always been that at least one person 
had to be awake and in charge at all times. The boat could sail 
itself once it was away from port, but someone was still needed 
to keep an eye on things. There were Coast Guard regulations 
about having somebody there to answer the radio, and assist if 
someone else got into trouble. Then too, neither of us, being 
engineers, fully trusted anything automatic. We flipped a coin, 
and I got the noon-to-midnight shift. It wasn't as though we each 
had to work twelve hours straight, we just had to be awake in 
case anything came up. The schedule had the effect that each of 
us was alone most of the time, and having little to do but look 
out at the sea has a hypnotic effect that sneaks up on you. 

The next stop on the itinerary was the Galapagos Islands. We 
got there, saw a turtle, and bought a basket of fresh fruit. We 
had a drink in the bar of another visiting boat, and left before 
sundown. 

We headed out, sailing west. 

A few weeks later, we hit another storm. The bouncing 
around wasn't as bad as it had been on our previous romps with 
nature. For one thing, we had a few square feet of the jib 
showing, and this put our tail to the wind. We were running with 
it, and in The Brick Royal, it made for a smoother ride. 
Sleeping near the boat's center of gravity helped out a lot, too. 
Adam had rigged up some hammocks that let you stay put while 
the boat rocked around you. They were slung fore and aft, which 
canceled the rolling of the boat, and ropes at the ends of the 
hammock went through pulleys at each bulkhead, near the 
ceiling, and connected together above you. This let the boat 


pitch while you stayed almost stationary. Adam said he was 
going to patent it, next time he got a chance. 

pitch while you stayed almost stationary. Adam said he was 
going to patent it, next time he got a chance. 

The mast was built into the wall separating the two big 
staterooms. The noise was deafening, and I felt another strange 
bump. The emergency lights came on in time for me to see the 
mast pull loose from its socket, and then wrench sideways, 
shattering the new wooden wall into sharp splinters. 

I was tangled up in the hammock, trying to get free when the 
boat suddenly righted itself, which naturally swung me into the 
swordlike remains of the wall. I managed to twist around so that 
I was looking where I'd been, and only a dozen or so sharp 
wooden shards got through the thick canvas and bedding and 
into my back. Painful. 

The carbon-fiber mast, despite the stainless-steel shrouds 
and stays that held it in position, had somehow been pulled 
three feet above the lower deck. It slammed back down like a 
crossbow bolt, going through the deck, through four feet of 
assorted stores, and then right through the ferrocrete bottom of 
the boat. 

A spray of wet lima beans blasted into me as I renewed my 
struggle to get out of the hammock. The boat went over again 
on its side, reacquainting me forcibly with the ceiling. The mast 
then pulled itself out of the hole it had made, and the next time 
the boat righted itself, the mast stayed horizontal. It cracked the 
upper deck, then pulled itself entirely free of the boat, snagging 
in the process the rope that connected the ends of my 
hammock. The hammock was thus pulled straight like the string 
of a discharging crossbow, and I was bounced off the ceiling yet 
a third time, this time catching it on the face and stomach. 

The lights went out, either electrically or because of the way 


I lost consciousness. I awoke to find the cabin half full of water 

I lost consciousness. I awoke to find the cabin half full of water 

You okay? he shouted. 

I respectfully request sick leave, I said. 

Request denied. We got work to do. Can you move at all? 

I guess I have to, don't I. What the hell happened to us? It 
was hard to talk in the wet, noise, and confusion of the dim 
emergency light, the slapping water, and the floating junk. 

We must have hit something. I don't know what. The boat 
broke. I don't know why. Get up. 

Help me up. Maybe we can get a mattress over that hole in 
the bottom. Unless you know of something worse that's 
happened to us. 

Adam said, You're bleeding from twenty places, but that 
shouldn't bother a determined engineer. The spars and rigging 
are dragging beside us, so we're in the trough of the waves. The 
engine won't start, so we can't use the big pumps, and the 
electrical pumps will run down the batteries in a few hours. But 
what the heck. You're the boss, so we'll fix the hole in the 
bottom first. 

He was talking slowly, but moving fast, throwing foodstuffs 
out of the hold to clear the area around the hole. He had 
completely lost his accent, so I knew that he must be in pretty 
bad shape. 

That's Christian of you, I said while making my way to the 
forward cabin where we had stored the bunk beds when the boat 
was converted. 

Hey! Watch it! Coming from an Atheist like you, those are 
swear words, and now would not be a good time to have God 
mad at us. 

With three mattresses, several dismembered bunk beds, 
ropes, bed sheets, and some hose clamps, we managed a lash-up 
that seemed to be holding. No mean feat considering the way 
we were waist deep in saltwater, with a few more feet of plastic 
garbage bags containing who knew what floating on top of it. 
The way everything was sloshing around, and slapping against 


the ceiling, didn't help any, either. 

the ceiling, didn't help any, either. 

You see what you can do about the engine. I'm going to go 
do something about the rigging, he said with a crescent wrench 
in one hand and a fire axe in the other. 

So much for the joys of a unified command. Okay. See you 
later. 

After blundering around a bit in the engine compartment, I 
found the reason the engine hadn't started when Adam first tried 
it. The problem was that I had turned the fuel off at the stopcock 
a few weeks earlier. I hadn't figured that we'd be needing it until 
we got to the islands, and the fumes had been annoying. Now, 
however, the engine couldn't be started because the air intake 
was under water, as was most of the rest of the engine. The 
same was true with the genset, which was farther underwater 
than the big engine. I did manage to engage the manual clutch 
that started the prop-shaft generator turning. It couldn't put out 
enough power by itself to keep the electric pumps going, but it 
would stretch the time before the batteries went dead. 

There was little more that I could accomplish down on the 
lower deck, so I went on deck to see if Adam needed some 
help. The wind topside during that gale was actually refreshing 
after slopping around in the chest-deep mess below. The boat, 
which had been broadside to the waves, was coming around with 
her stern pointed to the wind. Adam was coming back with the 
axe, his wrench having apparently gone adrift. 

Need any help? I shouted. 

Nah. The shrouds parted company right from the beginning, 
and the forestay yielded to a little gentle persuasion, he 
shouted, gesturing to the axe. Everything is now dangling from 
the backstay, and it's acting like a sea anchor. 

So we'll leave it be. There's no hope with the engine, at least 
not until the water level goes down a few feet. 

And it's likely to get worse without the engine pumps. 

Lovely. Adam, maybe my timing's bad, but we might not get 


a chance to talk about it later. Can you tell me what in the hell 
happened? Wasn't this boat supposed to be unsinkable? 

a chance to talk about it later. Can you tell me what in the hell 
happened? Wasn't this boat supposed to be unsinkable? 

The Concrete Canoe, too. 
You still haven't said what happened. I mean, it was your 
watch and all, I said. 

I'm not really sure. The wind was from astern, and we were 
holding our own, when suddenly a freak wind knocked us on our 
side. Then, at just that very instant, the tip of the mast hit 
something, hard. A whale, for all I know, or a submarine. Or 
maybe a submerged rock, or something that was barely 
floating. 

It couldn't have been a rock. We're four hundred miles from 
the nearest land. 

Yeah, that's what I thought. Except that a little while before 
all this happened, I fired up the radar just for something to do, 
and there was this island up ahead, Adam said. 

That's impossible. It must have been some kind of ghost, or 
reflection off the storm. 

Yeah, only it showed up on sonar, too. 

Our navigation can't be that far off. Besides all the different 
electronic stuff all agreeing with each other, you took a noon 
sighting with your sextant yesterday, and it agreed with 
everything else. 

I know. Look, we got other problems just now. You're still 
bleeding, so maybe you ought to do the light work and get the 
lifeboat out. I'm going to go down and work the manual pump. 

The safety equipment was mostly stowed in and around the 
aft cockpit, where there was always supposed to be someone on 
duty, as things had been originally planned, at least. I got out the 
life raft, tied it securely to the boat with the rope provided, and 


popped the carbon dioxide cylinder. She inflated like a champ. 
The raft was covered with an inflatable roof, and had room and 
supplies for twenty. 

popped the carbon dioxide cylinder. She inflated like a champ. 
The raft was covered with an inflatable roof, and had room and 
supplies for twenty. 

There was a combination Global Positioning System and 
satellite transceiver aboard the raft that was supposed to send a 
distress message to whatever ships were in the vicinity. I 
hesitated, and then decided not to turn it on for a while. 

We weren't sunk yet, after all, and I wasn't ready to give up on 

The Brick Royal just yet. 

Rescuers have been known to forcibly rescue people who 
really didn't need it. The feeling seems to be that if they had to 
go through all the bother of being heroic, then you had damn 
well better appreciate it and act humble. I once heard about a 
couple of mountain climbers who ran into a bad snowstorm 
while halfway up a slope. They were experienced men, well 
trained and well equipped. When the weather got impossible, 
they had pitched their tent, gotten into it, and then into their 
sleeping bags. They were quite comfortable, even though their 
tent was soon almost buried in the snow. As far as they were 
concerned, the snow was just more insulation. Their intent was 
to wait out the storm and then to proceed to the top of the 
mountain as they had originally planned. 

Their rescuers, being much less well trained and prepared 
than the supposed 'victims,' and having had three of their 
members injured in the storm, had forced the recipients of their 
unwanted favors to abandon their equipment and to accompany 
them down off the mountain. The net result of this supposedly 
heroic rescue was that everyone concerned, victims and 
rescuers alike, became severely frostbitten. I had heard the 
story directly from one of the two unfortunate mountain 
climbers. A quarter inch of his nose was missing, along with all 
of the toes on his right foot. 

Better to wait until we had abandoned ship ourselves, I 


thought, and were in the lifeboat before we called for help. If 
the Coast Guard arrived before we had abandoned ship, they 
might force us aboard their vessel, and then we'd likely lose 
The Brick Royal. 

thought, and were in the lifeboat before we called for help. If 
the Coast Guard arrived before we had abandoned ship, they 
might force us aboard their vessel, and then we'd likely lose 
The Brick Royal. 

Adam! I shouted over the intercom, You'd better come up 
and look at this. 

His head came up through the hatchway beside me. 

Sweet Jesus! You know, I read about something like that 
once. It was supposed to be an optical illusion. They called it 
the Fata Morgana, after the witch in the King Arthur legends. 
There was a big write-up in Scientific American, about how the 
different layers of calm air made it appear. It made a lot of 
sense at the time. 

There's nothing calm about the air out here. We've got gale 
winds going! This optical illusion is showing up on radar and 
sonar. I turned them on for a little while, and I saw the same 
thing you did earlier. 

Well, given the choice, I think I'd rather be marooned than 
sunk. But I'd rather be sailing than either of the above, so I'm 
going back to the pump. If you feel up to it, you might relieve 
me in a while, Fata Morgana or no Fata Morgana. 

He went below and I went back to checking our emergency 
equipment. After a while, I had done everything I could think of, 
even reading the checklist, and went below to help Adam. Then, 


suddenly, the ladder wasn't where it was supposed to be, and I 
was knocked unconscious again. 

suddenly, the ladder wasn't where it was supposed to be, and I 
was knocked unconscious again. 

On the highest peak of the Western Isles, two figures 
stood watching as the storm winds blew their long capes 
high behind their backs. Aldrich Skybolt, journeyman 
wizard and Master of Radios, pointed due east into the 
wind. 

There! A ship! I told you it was coming! He shouted 
above the wind in a language akin to ancient French. 

Yes, but it's an old one! Look, it has a mast. It's 
broken, but it's still a mast. That thing is a sailing ship. 
I was told that the outsiders stopped using such craft a 
century ago, cried Sister Joan of the Lyonnesse 
Nunnery. 

That's no ancient ship, sister! I have been hearing its 
many radios for hours. It may be powered by the wind, 
but its equipment is brand new. 

Believe what you want. How do you know that this 
ship is the one you heard? They stopped calling half an 
hour ago! 

I tell you, I know! The law says that the Shire Reeve 
must be told immediately, as must the Council of 


Wizards and the Warlock! 

Wizards and the Warlock! 

You're going to play politics when Christian lives are 
in danger? You know that I can't leave my post! Look! 
They're sure to be shipwrecked on our shore, near the 
Point of Avalon! The Shire Reeve there must be told first, 
so he can call out the Sea Farmers and the Fishermen! 
Lives are at stake! 

All lives are in the hands of God, Aldrich, and God 
will decide whether they live or die. And how do you 
know that the people in that ship are Christians? Odds 
are that they are Heathens, or even Atheists! 

I warn you of the law, sister! When there is danger 
from the sea, the Reeve must be told first. If you must 
suck up to your superiors, and try to advance yourself at 
the expense of innocent lives, do so and be damned! But 
you must go to the Reeve first! 

He's on my way, so I'll do it. But the Archbishop will 
hear about this before your Warlock does! 

Then so be it, but get moving, woman! There are 
lives at stake! 

The nun ran down the long path to the shore. When 
she was out of sight, the wizard hurried down to his 
cave, unlocked a chest, picked up crude, handmade 
telephone and said, Warlock? Warlock? Are you there, 
master? A ship, a strange new ship is about to wreck on 
the point of Avalon. This may be the one we have waited 
for all these years! Warlock, are you there? 

* * * 

I awoke, naked and in pain, on a stiff, lumpy bed with scratchy 


sheets. For some reason, this inferior bed had been covered by 
a rich blue velvet bedspread with a wide border that was heavily 
embroidered with threads of at least a dozen colors. It 
portrayed some sort of a medieval scene, a party of noble 
knights and ladies with their dogs and horses on a field of 
flowers. It looked to be done by hand, and if so, must have taken 
thousands of man-hours, or more likely woman-hours, to make. 
For a few moments, my back and neck in pain, I couldn't help 
wishing that they had spent more money on the mattress and 
less on the decoration. 

sheets. For some reason, this inferior bed had been covered by 
a rich blue velvet bedspread with a wide border that was heavily 
embroidered with threads of at least a dozen colors. It 
portrayed some sort of a medieval scene, a party of noble 
knights and ladies with their dogs and horses on a field of 
flowers. It looked to be done by hand, and if so, must have taken 
thousands of man-hours, or more likely woman-hours, to make. 
For a few moments, my back and neck in pain, I couldn't help 
wishing that they had spent more money on the mattress and 
less on the decoration. 

One wall was made up of tall, thick Doric pillars, beyond 
which was a small garden that looked out on the sea, a few 
hundred feet below. There was no glass in the windows thus 
formed, but the weather was fair, and the temperature 
comfortable. The storm was over, the sky was a cloudless blue 
with the beginnings of a sunset, the sun being just a few degrees 
above the horizon. Seagulls were flying above a blue sea 
touched with pink by the occasional breaking wave. 

I rolled and sat up at the edge of the bed, and an incredible 
pain shot through my head. I stayed there a bit, groaning, and 
then let myself slowly back under the covers. It seemed that I 
would live, but I was far from well. My body was a mass of 
bruises, from my lumpy head to my smashed toes. It felt as 
though every tendon, ligament, and muscle I had was pulled. 
Except for my eyeballs, all bodily motion was painful. The good 
news was that as best as I could tell, my bones were reasonably 
sound, I could wiggle my toes, so my spinal cord was all right, 


and the cuts on my back were sewn up and bandaged. 

and the cuts on my back were sewn up and bandaged. 

I called her a nurse since somehow she acted that way, but 
she certainly wasn't dressed like one. She wore a floor-length 
vermilion dress held out by hoops. The bodice was tight and was 
cut about as low as it could go, actually exposing the upper 

parts of her nipples. The entire dress, like my fabulous 
bedspread, had been adorned with several thousand 
woman-hours of embroidery. 
She felt my forehead and then my pulse. 

Where am I? I said. What is this place? 

She answered me in something that was maybe French, or 
even Latin, and I couldn't make out a word of it. 

Is there anyone here who understands English? I said 
slowly, carefully, and a bit too loudly. I had to find out about 
Adam, and The Brick Royal. 

Again, her response meant nothing to me. I used the few 
words I remembered from my high school Latin, but got no 
response. 

All I remembered from my college Russian was how to say 
that I was going to go soon to the library, but I was either not 
understood, or the nurse didn't care about who went to Russian 
libraries. I tried the limited Vietnamese that my parents had 
allowed me to learn, but that too drew a blank. 

Finally, resorting to sign language, I gesticulated that I was 
thirsty and hungry, and at last met with some success. Within 
minutes she was back with a bowl of almost meatless stew in a 
porcelain bowl, a wooden spoon, a clay cup, and a pottery 


pitcher of beer. That is to say, I thought it might be beer, even 
though it was thin, flat, and strangely flavored. It definitely 
contained alcohol, which in my book put this place way ahead 
of the average American hospital. 

pitcher of beer. That is to say, I thought it might be beer, even 
though it was thin, flat, and strangely flavored. It definitely 
contained alcohol, which in my book put this place way ahead 
of the average American hospital. 

On returning, she talked a long while, and although I still 
could not understand a word of what she said, her tone and her 
bearing let me know that somehow I was in good hands, that all 
would be well. Later, she rolled me over and massaged my back, 
carefully avoiding the places where I had been cut. 

The sun was setting. Contented and comfortable, I fell asleep. 
When I awoke, the thin grey light of morning was coming 
through the window wall. It was almost unpleasantly cool. My 
nose was cold, but the rest of me was warm enough under the 
thick covers, some of which must have been added while I was 
asleep. In a short while, the sun came up and shined directly in 
my eyes. I watched it for a long time, and it was definitely 
rising. 

I knew that something was very wrong. 

Last night I had lain in this same bed and watched the sun set 
out of that very same window. Only one wall had windows in it 
and that wall had been to the west! Now, either it was to the east 
or I was going insane! Or was I in a different, identical room, 
the victim of a fabulously expensive practical joke? Or had I 
died and gone to some irrational afterlife? 

An unfair thought. A decent Atheist like me should not have 
to worry about that sort of thing! 

The same lady brought breakfast, although this time she wore 
a pale blue dress, as richly embroidered and expensive looking 
as the last one, and of a similar cut. I guessed that if she had to 
work unnaturally long hours, she was at least well paid for it. 

I slept for a few more hours, and when I awoke, my nurse was 


again sitting beside me. She began teaching me the language, 
starting with the parts of the body. The word for elbow, the 
word for finger. How you said that your finger was touching 
your elbow. 

again sitting beside me. She began teaching me the language, 
starting with the parts of the body. The word for elbow, the 
word for finger. How you said that your finger was touching 
your elbow. 

Her name was Roxanna. We were on the Western Isles, and 
the language was Westronese. She couldn't say exactly where 
the Western Isles were. Indeed, she seemed to think that it was 
a very complicated question to answer. I gave it up until I could 
speak the language better. 

While the medical help was always there when I wanted it, the 
level of medical technology seemed to be as ancient as the 
style of my nurse's dress. Another, older, woman occasionally 
came by. She talked briefly with my nurse, changed my 
bandages, and checked my wounds. I never saw anything like the 
ordinary tools to be expected in a doctor's office. No one 
checked my blood pressure. I never saw a stethoscope. I never 
got a shot or took a pill. Slowly, my body healed. 

My mind was already well. My physical pains were such that I 
was actually a few days noticing it, but somehow the deep, black 
depression that had plagued me for over a year was simply not 
there, gone as if it had never been. I could no longer even 
imagine what it had been like to suffer from it. Perhaps the 
brain cells that had caused it had died in the wreck. If so, they 
would not be missed. 

As I slowly recovered, my nurse got sick. It looked as if she 
had a bad case of the flu, with a running nose and a fever, but 
she doggedly continued to serve me, to the point where I got to 
feeling very guilty about it. I tried to get her to take it easier, 
but my Westronese wasn't up to explaining what I meant, and 
my gestures were not understood. 

My nurse gave me a thorough weekly sponge bath in a strictly 


professional manner, but never a shave. After much difficulty 
with my almost nonexistent Westronese and a lot of 
gesticulation, I found that Roxanna had never even heard of a 
razor. What she thought of my initially clean-shaven face 
remained a mystery for quite a while. As it was, the discomfort 
and itching of growing a full beard was added to my other 
physical problems, or perhaps it distracted from them. 

professional manner, but never a shave. After much difficulty 
with my almost nonexistent Westronese and a lot of 
gesticulation, I found that Roxanna had never even heard of a 
razor. What she thought of my initially clean-shaven face 
remained a mystery for quite a while. As it was, the discomfort 
and itching of growing a full beard was added to my other 
physical problems, or perhaps it distracted from them. 

It was a week before they would let me get up and walk 
around for a short while, and over the weeks that followed I was 
allowed to explore a bit, but not to leave the mansion I was in. 

I say they because I found that I was apparently at the head 
of a household with six servants. Besides Roxanna, my 
nurse-tutor, there was a maid, a cook, and three gardeners. Two 
of the gardeners were married to the maid and cook, 
respectively. How I rated such a royal entourage was beyond 
me. 

Strangely, every one of them had the flu. By the time I 
commanded enough of their language to tell them about the 
Contact capsules in the ship's medical kit, I realized that there 
simply wouldn't have been enough for everybody, and I let it go. 

The area in front of our windows was planted in a carefully 
tended vegetable garden, but the two men and the woman who 
worked there were not the same people as the gardeners I had 
been introduced to. The garden and people apparently belonged 
to some other household, whom the people of our household 
didn't talk to, or look at, or even acknowledge the existence of. 
I tried to get Roxanna to explain about them, and for quite a 
while it almost seemed as though she couldn't even see who I 
was talking about. I put it down as just another mystery that 
would hopefully be answered someday. 

After more than three weeks of convalescing, my nurse 
permitted me to go outside, at least up to our own roof. We 


went up a long spiral staircase, which, in my still weakened 
condition, was enough to force me to stop and sit down twice. I 
was a long way from being the healthy student who worked his 
way through college teaching Karate. 

went up a long spiral staircase, which, in my still weakened 
condition, was enough to force me to stop and sit down twice. I 
was a long way from being the healthy student who worked his 
way through college teaching Karate. 

When I had first met Roxanna's gardeners, I had assumed that 
their task was to tend the decorative gardens that I supposed our 
medieval castle was surrounded with. Now I learned that the 
roof of the incredibly spacious mansion was a carefully tended 
garden from which the household got all of its food, barring 
fish, dairy products, and the very occasional rabbit or chicken. 

Looking about, I soon realized that these gardens were 
contiguous with those of our neighbors. Indeed, with increasing 
wonderment, I saw that every bit of horizontal land within sight 
was carefully used for growing crops. The terrain resembled 
pictures I had seen of the rice paddies of Bali, or of the 
sculpted mountain slopes in Peru. The difference was that the 
vertical surfaces here were covered with large windows and 
open doorways, which suggested that behind them there were 
hundreds or thousands of rooms like the one I slept in. 

It soon became apparent to me that the mansion that I had 
been living in was not a building at all! I had been staying in a 
spacious cave, entirely below ground. My best guess was that 
originally, the mountainous countryside had been terraced to 
provide farmland, at what horrendous cost in labor I could 
barely imagine. Then the spaces below the fields had been 
laboriously hollowed out into huge apartments, work areas, and 
public spaces to free up even more land for farming. 

Furthermore, as best I could see, all of this incredible 
amount of work must have been done by hand, for I saw not one 
single machine more complicated than a hammer, and even 
those more often than not were made of bone or wood or clay. 


Farm animals were rare, and I can remember seeing only one 
ox-drawn plow during my first two months on the island. Even 
stranger, despite all these obvious indications of fabulous 
human industriousness, I don't recall ever seeing anyone 
working overly hard. Oh, people were generally busy at one 
thing or another, but you never saw anyone breaking his back, 
either. 

Farm animals were rare, and I can remember seeing only one 
ox-drawn plow during my first two months on the island. Even 
stranger, despite all these obvious indications of fabulous 
human industriousness, I don't recall ever seeing anyone 
working overly hard. Oh, people were generally busy at one 
thing or another, but you never saw anyone breaking his back, 
either. 

TEN 

About the time that I was able to move about without undue 
pain, I was able to make simple sentences such that, with the aid 
of many gesticulations, I could begin to get some of my 
questions across. Again I asked about where in the heck were 
we. This time, Roxanna had an answer. 

The day before yesterday, I asked this question of a wizard 
for you, she said, and then rattled off some sort of a 
description where we were so many hours and minutes east and 
so many minutes north. It had to be longitude and latitude in 
some manner of coordinate system, but I could make neither 
heads nor tails of it. 

I asked how the sun could rise and set in the same place, as it 
had persisted in doing, but I got no answer because Roxanna 
could not grasp what I was asking about. No amount of 
gesticulating or bad Westronese could get through to her. 


Giving up, I asked why this island was hidden, why my people 
didn't know it was here. 

Giving up, I asked why this island was hidden, why my people 
didn't know it was here. 

How indeed? Fighting down my inclination to shout slowly 
when people don't understand me, I asked about Adam. I was 
given to understand that he was alive, but still too injured to 
move about. After I promised not to tire the guy out, Roxanna 
agreed to lead me to him the next afternoon.

 The forty days is over now, and thus it is permitted, she 
said, though I wasn't able to understand what she meant by that. 
Some sort of quarantine? 

Despite the fact that he was sweating while running a 
middling fever, one of the gardeners was immediately sent with 
a note written by Roxanna requesting permission for a call on 
Adam's mansion. There was nothing like a telephone available. 

Before we could do any visiting out in public, there was the 
matter of clothing. My shipboard wear on The Brick Royal 
normally consisted of a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and while I 
had a single wash-and-wear suit with me, it had been damaged in 
the wreck. 

Locally, except for the ladies' low necklines, dress was pretty 
puritanical. I had yet to see a Westronese ankle. I had been 
going around the house (or rather the cave) in the local 
equivalent of a bathrobe, sort of a belted pullover tunic that 
reached the ground, or maybe it was a caftan without the 
sleeves. Comfortable, I soon got to preferring it over the pants 
and shirt that I had worn all my life. But this, I was told, would 
be most improper to wear in public. 

Roxanna and the maid, Felicia, soon had me up on a stool and 
were measuring me in more places than I had been aware of 
having places to measure. They went away for a few hours and 


came back with their arms full of stuff. There were three other 
people (from the store, I suppose) similarly laden behind them. 
All of it was brightly colored and richly encrusted with 
embroidery. They put some of it out on the bed, and it soon was 
obvious that I was to be dressed in the male equivalent of the 
ladies' outfits. It was sort of Elizabethan, with tights, low boots, 
and ridiculous, puffy shorts. There was a tight jacket, a short 
cape, and a hat with a feather in it. All the getup needed was a 
sword, but when I tried to ask Roxanna about one, she hadn't the 
faintest idea what I was talking about. 

came back with their arms full of stuff. There were three other 
people (from the store, I suppose) similarly laden behind them. 
All of it was brightly colored and richly encrusted with 
embroidery. They put some of it out on the bed, and it soon was 
obvious that I was to be dressed in the male equivalent of the 
ladies' outfits. It was sort of Elizabethan, with tights, low boots, 
and ridiculous, puffy shorts. There was a tight jacket, a short 
cape, and a hat with a feather in it. All the getup needed was a 
sword, but when I tried to ask Roxanna about one, she hadn't the 
faintest idea what I was talking about. 

The other thing about the heap of clothes they brought was 
that, while it all looked fabulously expensive, it was all used. 
There was not a new item in the pile. I asked about this, and was 
told that, of course, there hadn't been time to make anything 
especially for me. I would have to make do for a while, until the 
seamstress that Roxanna had hired could start work on my 
private wardrobe. It seems that off-the-shelf clothes were 
unheard of. 

The next morning, decked out to play in a Shakespearian 
comedy, Roxanna and I set out for Adam's place, in a section 
called Tintzin. To get there we would have to walk the length of 
Lyonnesse, some four miles or so. The maid was told to come 
along with us, I suppose as a chaperone. 

Leaving the apartment, we went through a hallway with three 
right-angled turns. My guess was that it was to control sound. It 
ended with a nicely embroidered curtain, past which we were in 
a public roadway, or hallway. There was no door, and therefore 
no lock on the door. In fact, there weren't any locks anywhere 
on the island that I could see. 

Maybe there wasn't enough wood or metal to put a locked 
door wherever I was used to one, but then I suppose that the 
total community here was so small that everyone knew 
everyone else. If anybody was ever caught stealing, I imagine 
that he'd never hear the end of it from his maiden aunts and his 
great- granduncles. 


The way to Adam's place was entirely underground, through 
tunnels that were used as streets. I was told that farmland was 
entirely too valuable to waste on outdoor roads, and anyway, 
who would want to travel in the rain? The only light was by the 
occasional small glassless window, more often set in the roof 
than in a wall. My eyes adjusted, and it wasn't too dark. 

The way to Adam's place was entirely underground, through 
tunnels that were used as streets. I was told that farmland was 
entirely too valuable to waste on outdoor roads, and anyway, 
who would want to travel in the rain? The only light was by the 
occasional small glassless window, more often set in the roof 
than in a wall. My eyes adjusted, and it wasn't too dark. 

It is something that we must endure, my lord. 

To be sick, yes, must survive. But why, please, everybody 
one time? With my still limited Westronese, it was the closest 
I could come to expressing my question properly. 

Because you and your friend have just brought us this 
plague, my lord. We can only hope that this is the worst that 
you have gifted us with. 

I expressed astonishment at the thought that I was responsible 
for so much sickness. 

But it is quite true. We know that you did not deliberately 
infect us, so we do not hold you morally responsible. Yet this 
illness was unknown to us until four weeks ago. Your friend has 
assured us that it will soon pass, and that it is not deadly, for 
which we give thanks to God. In the past, other visitors gifted us 
with things much worse. The last, more than fifty years agone, 
gave us the curse of measles, and many died. 

Again I was astounded, first at the thought that they had 
willingly risked so much to rescue us, and secondly that 
measles had proved so deadly to them. I thanked her as humbly 
as I could for the rescue, and said that if measles was deadly, 
then maybe the flu was, too. 

We are all in the hands of God, my lord. 

I realized that if I'd had something really deadly, she would 
have been among the first to die. I said as much to her. 

Better that than to be the last, my lord. I have kept myself in 
a constant State of Grace since your arrival. It is all that anyone 
can do. 

Such stoicism was beyond me. I began to wonder if I was a 


moral weakling, and to shut off such dangerous thoughts I began 
noticing the people around me again. Most of them were 
carrying loads of one thing or another, since mechanized 
transport was non-existent. There wasn't even any animal power 
in use that I could see. Aside from the flu, people seemed 
healthy, well fed, and reasonably well dressed, though few wore 
quite as much embroidery as Roxanna and I did. 

moral weakling, and to shut off such dangerous thoughts I began 
noticing the people around me again. Most of them were 
carrying loads of one thing or another, since mechanized 
transport was non-existent. There wasn't even any animal power 
in use that I could see. Aside from the flu, people seemed 
healthy, well fed, and reasonably well dressed, though few wore 
quite as much embroidery as Roxanna and I did. 

Of course, they all know me, and everyone has heard of 
you, she said. They are only being polite to those they 
respect. 

I am most respected one here? I said in my bad 
Westronese. 

You are very respected. Great wealth is always respected, as 
is great learning. But you are not the most respected, of course. 
You are not the duke, or the archbishop, or the warlock, she 
said, using simple words and sentences, as one would do with a 
child. 

I had earlier gathered that the social structure hereabouts 
matched the clothing and technological level, so the priest and 
nobility made some sense. At least it made as much sense as 
anything else did in this strange little fairyland. 

The warlock business bothered me, though. We had gone 
over it very carefully when I had learned the word (which was 
one of the very few that was pronounced the same in both 
Westronese and English). Warlock meant warlock, the same in 
both languages. They had magic here, or at least they believed 
they did. Even more curious was her insistence that I had magic, 
a great deal of it, apparently. When I assured her that I had no 
such thing, she became quiet for a while, and then said that the 
question was for wiser heads than hers. 

I stepped aside to let a man with a huge bundle go by, and in 
the process scraped my knuckles on the wall of the tunnel. 
These walls, like those of the mansion, were plastered and 


painted, but the spot I had managed to hit had been chipped bare. 
The rock underneath was very sharp, like new, rough sandpaper. 
I lost a bit of skin, and it bled. 

painted, but the spot I had managed to hit had been chipped bare. 
The rock underneath was very sharp, like new, rough sandpaper. 
I lost a bit of skin, and it bled. 

We passed into a market section that had bigger skylights and 
was better lit than elsewhere. There was a great deal of buying 
and selling going on, but the goods on sale were all low tech. 
Farther on we walked through a food market that had a lot in 
common with things I'd seen in peasant markets in South 
America. Live animals, dead fish, and crude wooden scales. 
They were using corn husks for packaging. Utopia, this wasn't. 

It was a two-hour walk getting to Adam's place in Tintzin. I 
asked Roxanna about why we were put so far apart, and she said 
that there were only two suitable positions available. This made 
no sense at all to me, but we suddenly had to walk in single file 
to get past a particularly busy stall, and the topic of 
conversation was forgotten for the time being. 

ELEVEN 

Adam was living in a mansion that was much like the one I 
was using, except that it might have been bigger than mine. At 


least, he had seven servants to my six. He was propped up in 
bed, with his left leg and right arm in heavy plaster casts. Two 
attractive, well-dressed ladies attended him. They looked like 
they might be sisters, or possibly a mother and daughter. 

least, he had seven servants to my six. He was propped up in 
bed, with his left leg and right arm in heavy plaster casts. Two 
attractive, well-dressed ladies attended him. They looked like 
they might be sisters, or possibly a mother and daughter. 

So you finally got your Errol Flynn outfit together. Only, it 
needs a sword, boss. 

It was pleasant to hear someone speaking and to understand 
them without having to go through the mental struggle of 
translating it. Adam's Hamtramck accent was still there, but he 
had toned it way down. I had the feeling that he was no longer 
interested in playing the fool or the clown. 

I tried to get a rapier, but nobody here ever heard of one. 

At least you got the beard. 'Course here, everybody's got 
one. The guys, anyway. No razors. 

I noticed. Look, are they treating you okay? 

He put his good arm around the older of the two women, who 
smiled at the attention she received. 

Does it look like durance vile, boss? Then he switched to 
Westronese and said, Why don't you girls go someplace and 
talk nice to this other lady. Me and my friend got a lot of 
catching up to do. 

His Westronese was far better than mine, but I swear that he 
was somehow able to speak it with that damned Hamtramck 
accent. The ladies left, leaving the maid behind in case we 
should want anything. 

I sat down on a spindly, straight-backed chair and said, 
Adam, just what in the hell happened? 

What happened was that you are damn lucky to be alive. The 
real world is not like in the detective stories, you know. It takes 
a serious skull concussion to put a man out cold, and you was 
knocked out twice in one day. That's enough to kill most guys. 

You remember coming to help me bail? Well, you started 
down just after the ladder got carried away by all that junk that 


was floating around belowdecks. The water was sloshing back 
and forth a lot, and you managed to catch it right in the middle 
of a trough. You hit the lower deck when there was only about 
two feet of water down there to break your fall. You was out 
cold, but you was still breathing. I managed to get you propped 
up so your head stayed out of the water, but then I had to get 
back to the pumps, you know? 

was floating around belowdecks. The water was sloshing back 
and forth a lot, and you managed to catch it right in the middle 
of a trough. You hit the lower deck when there was only about 
two feet of water down there to break your fall. You was out 
cold, but you was still breathing. I managed to get you propped 
up so your head stayed out of the water, but then I had to get 
back to the pumps, you know? 

There we was, propped way high up on some kind of a rocky 
beach. A lot of people was running towards us, and they looked 
friendly. I put you down and broke out that rope ladder to help 
them get aboard. About then, another big wave hit the boat in the 
rump, and I went straight off the end of the nose, like two 
stories down to the rocks and stuff down below. That's when I 
got busted up. 

Well, they took me and you into a cave, somebody's house 
by the look of it, and this old girl has six of them hold me down 
while they set my leg without any anesthetics! It hurt like hell, 
and to make it worse, they couldn't understand that in the boat, 
not a hundred feet away, there was a medical kit with morphine, 
Novocain, and all kinds of wonderful things in it! And when they 
got finished with my leg, they started it all up again, this time 
on my arm! 

When they was finally done, they left me alone for a bit, and 
I got a look out a window. They must of had three hundred 
people lined up, getting everything out of the boat and into 
some kind of warehouse. I felt better about that, since even if 
they was maybe robbing us, well, if it went to the bottom, it'd be 
gone forever, but as long as it was safe, we might get it back, 
some of it anyhow. I shouldn't have worried, though, since now 
that I can talk to them real good, they tell me that all of our 
stuff is safe and waiting for us. What's more, if we want to sell, 
they're real eager to buy. 


I said, I'm surprised that you were worrying about our 
property when our lives had just been saved. 

I said, I'm surprised that you were worrying about our 
property when our lives had just been saved. 

I never knew that you collected coins. 

I never much told anybody about it, but, see, my grandfather 
went broke a second time during the Depression when his bank 
folded. Since then, us Kulczyinskis keep our savings in gold. 
That coin collection is mostly uncirculated Krugerrands. About 
forty-six pounds of them. That and I got a few hundred pounds 
of old-style silver quarters. 

Shit on a shingle! I was paying you too much! 

Nah, I could of got paid the same money anywhere. But, see, 
some of that gold was dad's, and a lot of it I got back when gold 
was thirty-five bucks an ounce. Shoulda sold it all when it hit 
eight hundred, but that's life, and anyway, I woulda had to pay 
taxes on it. 

I'm glad your fortune is safe, Adam. But what happened after 
they patched you up? 

Well, your back was still bleeding a bit here and there, and 
the older women was fixing you up, still without anesthetics, 
but at least you was still out cold. 

Then these three guys in long capes come up riding on 
horses, waving their arms and yelling at each other. Everybody 
that wasn't working bows real low to them, but the three guys 
ignore the crowd and keep on arguing among themselves. This 
goes on for the longest time, and everybody sort of got tired, or 
maybe embarrassed about bowing to somebody who didn't seem 
to notice them, so one by one they stood back up and tried to 
look busy. 

Eventually, the biggest one seemed to win whatever it was 
they were yelling about. With the other two horsemen finally 
sitting quiet, he starts talking to the crowd on the beach. This 


guy can talk so loud they could all hear him above the noise of 
the storm. He points around and starts giving orders, and 
everybody starts moving a lot faster. I was picked up by eight 
hefty guys and taken off in one direction, and two of them took 
you in another. After that, you probably know as much as me. I 
been treated real good by the two fine ladies that live here, and 
everybody lives rich and dresses rich while in fact they're all 
absolutely dirt poor! 

guy can talk so loud they could all hear him above the noise of 
the storm. He points around and starts giving orders, and 
everybody starts moving a lot faster. I was picked up by eight 
hefty guys and taken off in one direction, and two of them took 
you in another. After that, you probably know as much as me. I 
been treated real good by the two fine ladies that live here, and 
everybody lives rich and dresses rich while in fact they're all 
absolutely dirt poor! 

That's because they've been digging these holes for at least 
two thousand years, boss. What's more, they got to keep on 
digging them, since the rock here is all volcanic, good 
fertilizer. Rock, animal dung, and human shit are about the only 
fertilizers they got. Plus, of course, a certain amount of soil is 
always being washed away, and it has to be replaced. 

Call it inherited wealth, if you want to. It's still wealth. 

Boss, they got volcanic featherrock, they got a little clay, 
and that's all the minerals they got. Any wood they got was 
raised like in a nursery. They got no coal, no oil, and no ores of 
any kind. What's worse, they got no trade to anyplace else to 
make up for what they ain't got here. I call that poor. 

I guess I've been asking the wrong questions. So their lack of 
technology is due to their lack of materials to use it on. 

Yeah. Only don't sneeze at all of their technology, boss. In 
some ways, they're way ahead of us. Have you taken a good look 
at the clothes they wear? 

Well, it's beautifully embroidered, but I'd hardly call that 
high tech. 

You would if you realized that half the clothes here are 
more than a hundred years old! These people got the growing, 
the processing, and weaving of plant fibers down pat. They do it 
way better that we do back in America. Their stuff lasts almost 


forever. That's why they can afford to spend so much time on 
the embroidery. Anything they make, they'll give to their 
grandkids someday! 

forever. That's why they can afford to spend so much time on 
the embroidery. Anything they make, they'll give to their 
grandkids someday! 

Believe it anyway. Maybe they know about technology and 
maybe they don't. It wouldn't make any difference here, 'cause 
except for plants, there's nothing here to make a machine with. 

It could be you're right. Perhaps they really are poor. Adam, 
they made me promise to not tire you out, but there's one thing 
that has really been bugging me. Have you noticed the way the 
sun seems to rise and set anyplace it feels like? 

Forty days and you ain't got that figured out yet, boss? You 
must have been hit harder on the head than I thought. You're 
asking seriously, aren't you? 

Yes, I'm serious, damn it! 

You'll be embarrassed you didn't figure it out yourself. This 
ain't an island, no matter what they call it. Islands stay in one 
spot. This place floats! 

We're on a stone boat? 

More like a stone raft. The other place you get featherrock 
is in Hawaii. It comes out of this volcano they got there. 
Sometimes it runs all the way to the ocean, and when it does, 
the rock just floats away. The specific gravity is way below one. 
It's so light it floats. 

Huh. That's going to take some thinking. But like I said, I 
promised not to tire you out. 

I'm not tired, and our ladies are the sort who'll throw you 
politely out on your ass when they think I've had enough. But 
before they do, there's something I got to ask you about. 

So ask. Since when did you need to ask permission to ask 
about anything, Adam? 

Okay. You remember all those times you asked me to be 
your partner instead of an employee? 

Sure, although we're both glad now that you never took me 
up on it. If you had, you would have gone bankrupt the same 
time that I did, and then where would your gold and silver coin 


collection be now? Or The Brick Royal, for that matter? 

collection be now? Or The Brick Royal, for that matter? 

Adam, that's crazy. The boat is a wreck, and its salvage value 
probably won't cover the costs of our medical bills, and 
whatever they'll charge us for pulling the stuff out and storing 
it. You'd be taking the short end of the stick. 

No, I wouldn't. There's a lot of metal on that boat, and any 
kind of metal is worth a fortune here. But that's not why I want 
the partnership. The real reason is, well, social. 

Social? I don't follow you. 

Look. In America, I could take your paycheck and still meet 
you after work for a beer. Things don't work like that here. On 
the Western Isles, the word for employee is the same as the 
word for servant. And being a servant here is like being a 
third-class person. Once I'm out of these casts, the fine ladies 
who have been taking care of me won't have nothing to do with 
me if I'm only a servant. It'll be like I'm tainted. If they knew, 
they'd even be embarrassed about having taken care of me. 

Oh. I can see your problem. But why worry? The fact is that 
you have not been my employee since the company went belly 
up. 

Boss, the way they look at it, if I'd ever been a servant, the 
best I could be afterwards would be something like a freed 
slave. Once I got the lay of the land, I told them that we was 
partners, and now I need you to back me up on that. 

I see. Well, don't worry. As of this moment, I hereby decree 
us to be the sole members of an undissolvable partnership, 
retroactive back to the beginning of time. Good enough? 

Great, boss. I knew I could count on you. 

And I'll count on you to give me twenty-three pounds of gold 
for your enlargement to the ranks of free and noble men. 

The gold, you've got, and your share of the silver might be 
worth even more here, since they use silver for money, but gold 
only for jewelry. A tiny silver coin, smaller than a dime and as 


thin as paper is worth . . . well, it's worth a lot. Another thing. 
They take that 'noble' stuff pretty serious around here. You 
really think we should try and fake it that way? 

thin as paper is worth . . . well, it's worth a lot. Another thing. 
They take that 'noble' stuff pretty serious around here. You 
really think we should try and fake it that way? 

Which I happen to be, but which you ain't qualified for. Oh, 
yeah. They take religion real serious around here, too. Keep 
that Atheism shit of yours under your hat, too. 

Now, do I rag you about your religion? Out loud, I mean, and 
in public. And is that any way to speak to your new partner? I 
laughed as the ladies came back. 

TWELVE 

Felix, the Right Honorable Earl of Godelia, Lord of 
Privy Information, the guard beyond the door 
announced. 

The earl entered, bowed, and then locked the door 
behind him out of sheer habit. 

Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI turned from his spacious 
desk. Ah, Uncle Felix. I'm so glad that you could get 
here so quickly. 

My services are always instantly available to the 
crown, Your Grace, especially when your note said that 


all you wanted was my advice, he said, pausing to 
blow his stuffed-up nose. The earl's eyes were watering 
and his sinuses were throbbing as well. For a nobleman 
accustomed to long years of vigorous health, the head 
cold was particularly vexing. 

all you wanted was my advice, he said, pausing to 
blow his stuffed-up nose. The earl's eyes were watering 
and his sinuses were throbbing as well. For a nobleman 
accustomed to long years of vigorous health, the head 
cold was particularly vexing. 

I'm at your service, but I'm not sure what I can 
contribute, just yet. I haven't seen either of them, of 
course, but my men have carefully recorded every word 
they've said in either Westronese or English. What we've 
learned so far, which isn't very much, is that they are 
very probably exactly what they at first seemed to be, 
simply two men with a largish pleasure boat that had 
the bad luck to be caught in the worst storm we've seen 
in fifty years. 

The larger of the two might have been, at some time 
in the past, the servant of the smaller, but the 
relationship seems to have been more like a 
journeyman's service to a master, which isn't servitude in 
the ordinary sense of the word. They have since declared 
themselves to be partners, and I think that we should 
acknowledge them to be such. The larger also claims to 
be a 'Knight of Columbus,' and thus is perhaps a 
chevalier, but I'm not sure that we should consider him 
as such under our law. 

Their precise legal status can be deferred for the time 
being, Uncle. The real question is, are they our 


enemies? 

enemies? 

I see. Was there any difficulty in placing your 
listening devices in the homes of the ladies tending 
them? 

None at all. There was easy access through the 
utility tunnels in both cases, so it was never necessary to 
inform the ladies of our actions. 

The duke said, I suppose that's for the best. I can't 
say that I like this business any more now than when we 
agreed on it in the beginning. I hope that you've been 
able to find a sufficient number of listeners with the 
requisite decency, discretion, and honor such that the 
ladies will never suffer by whatever is heard in their 
homes. 

Of that I can assure Your Grace. They know of the 
horrendous punishment that would fall on them should 
our snooping become common knowledge. But tell me, 
has anything been learned about the unusual 
instrumentation we found on their ship? 

Little, except that it may not be so unusual in their 
eyes. The Warlock is working on it, but he hasn't had 
much to report yet. It is still very early. I'll keep you 
informed, Uncle Felix.

 * * * 

On the way back from Adam's place, I asked Roxanna about 
the two Pelitier women. Were they a mother and daughter or 
two sisters? 


Sisters, my lord. They are separated by twelve years, so your 
confusion is understandable. The younger of the two, Agnes, 
was the wife of the Council Wizard Vintiere, before his 
untimely death. Before the marriage, Maria had been Vintiere's 
lover for many years. 

Sisters, my lord. They are separated by twelve years, so your 
confusion is understandable. The younger of the two, Agnes, 
was the wife of the Council Wizard Vintiere, before his 
untimely death. Before the marriage, Maria had been Vintiere's 
lover for many years. 

Unusual, but within the law, my lord, and the three of them 
were happy enough. You see, Vintiere and Maria were of an age, 
and were lovers before their testing. He was a commoner while 
she was the child of a baron. This alone would not have stopped 
their marriage, had he been of but ordinary abilities. However, 
Vintiere scored at the top of his age group in the testing for the 
Wizard's Academy, and thus was required to attend a long and 
arduous course of instruction. As an undergraduate student, he 
was forbidden marriage. 

But didn't Maria wait for him? 

No, my lord, it was not permitted. She married a fisherman, 
following her father's wishes. Maria had a son by this man. It 
was only after both father and son died in a boating accident that 
she was free to cohabit with her first lover. 

So many questions. Must be patient with me. Baron father 
felt fisherman good husband for daughter? And wizard not good 
husband? 

A student wizard might pass or he might fail, and if he failed 
he would be in a poor position to support a wife. A fisherman 
who owns his own boat is counted as wealthy, and an excellent 
provider. 

Why baron father not want daughter to marry son of another 
baron? Would be like that in my country. I couldn't figure out 
how to say same social class. 

She laughed a bit and said that such a thing would be 
impossible. When I looked confused, she gestured towards a 
bench in an alcove set into the wall of the tunnel-road and we 
sat down, leaving the maid standing and ignored. Adam was 
right. Servants here were treated like third-class humans. 


First, my lord, such a thing would be impossible because all 
of the barons are brothers or cousins, grandsons of the present 
duke's father or grandfather. You see, a duke is encouraged to 
have as many children as possible, to ensure the continuation of 
the line. On the death of a duke, one of his sons is elected by 
the earls, the duke's brothers and uncles, to be the next duke. 
After the election, the other sons, on reaching their majority, 
will become earls in turn. The son of an earl becomes a baron, 
one step lower on the ladder of the nobility. The son of a baron 
becomes a chevalier, although in fact only the duke, the 
archbishop and the warlock actually have horses. The sons of a 
chevalier are commoners. 

First, my lord, such a thing would be impossible because all 
of the barons are brothers or cousins, grandsons of the present 
duke's father or grandfather. You see, a duke is encouraged to 
have as many children as possible, to ensure the continuation of 
the line. On the death of a duke, one of his sons is elected by 
the earls, the duke's brothers and uncles, to be the next duke. 
After the election, the other sons, on reaching their majority, 
will become earls in turn. The son of an earl becomes a baron, 
one step lower on the ladder of the nobility. The son of a baron 
becomes a chevalier, although in fact only the duke, the 
archbishop and the warlock actually have horses. The sons of a 
chevalier are commoners. 

Why, they mostly get married, I suppose, except for those 
who feel a calling for the church, and even then, marriage and 
casual lovers are not forbidden the clergy, as I have heard is 
done in some of the outsider religions. Oh, I see what you 
mean. Well, my lord, you must understand that there is only one 
noble family on the Western Isles, and obviously it would be 
against the laws of God, man, and good breeding for a woman to 
marry back into her own family. Therefore, they must marry 
commoners. Oh, to be sure, they marry the wealthiest of these 
men if they have a choice, for they are of the best stock and 
come with good dowries. And of course, many score high in the 
testing, and marry wizards or clergymen. 

Again you talk of testing. Explain, please. 

Very well, my lord, although it is taking a long while to 
explain that two women are sisters! 

Patience, please. We get back to sisters later. Talk about 
testing. 

As you wish, my lord. At about the age of eighteen, every 
boy and girl in the isles is given a number of tests. The most 
important of these are written, and the young are tested for 
their intelligence, learning and piety. Other tests are physical, 
as in running, jumping and acrobatics. Among the boys, the best 
are selected for furthering their education either with the 


wizards, or with the church. Once they have satisfactorily 
completed their training, they enter into the ranks of those 
organizations. 

wizards, or with the church. Once they have satisfactorily 
completed their training, they enter into the ranks of those 
organizations. 

Those maidens at the top of the lists who are not themselves 
noble are wed to the nobility, and those below them to the 
wizards and clergy. The great majority of both sexes are 
rejected by the tests, and may marry whoever they choose. 

Best girls are forced to marry nobles and wizards? 

Yes, although it is equally true that the young nobles and 
somewhat older wizards and clergymen are forced to marry the 
maidens. Remember that none of the tests were for beauty. 

I didn't like the sounds of this system at all. 

In my country, people marry whoever they choose. 

In your country, you have a population of far greater than our 
twelve thousand. Your gene pool is large enough to permit such 
freedoms. Here we are few in number, and the only way that we 
can assure that genetic drift does not turn our children into 
crippled imbeciles is with a program of deliberate breeding, and 
ruthless culling. 

Roxanna's expression was suddenly hard, but what really 
shocked me was that this apparently medieval lady was suddenly 
discussing modern genetics! 

Culling? You mean killed? 

No, my lord, we are not quite that brutal, except in the rare 
cases of serious birth defects. I could she was getting upset 
with me, but I needed to get at the truth of this business. 

What you mean, then? 

I'd really rather not discuss it now. Come. We must return 
home now if we wish to avoid an overcooked supper or a cold 
one. 

She got up and strode briskly down the tunnel. I was forced to 
follow her, for fear of getting lost in the maze of caverns under 
the surface of the island, if for no other reason. After a half 
hour or so of walking, she seemed to have calmed down, so I 
said, So Agnes scored high on test, and wizard Vintiere marries 


sister of old sweetheart. Very lucky. 

sister of old sweetheart. Very lucky. 

But now poor Vintiere is dead, you say. What happens to two 
sisters? 

You would know the answer better than I, my lord, but it 
seemed to me that your friend Adam was much taken by both of 
them. 

And if Adam does not marry one of them? 

They have money for a year or two, I suppose, during which 
time they might find husbands or lovers. Barring that there is 
always the church. 

From her expression, I could see that I was getting far too 
close to forbidden ground again. I remained silent for the rest 
of the trip, and spoke only of inanities through supper. 

That evening, as I was getting ready for bed, the maid, Felicia, 
came by to see if I needed anything. I said yes, and told her to 
sit down. Since it happened that I was sitting on the only chair in 
the huge, sparsely furnished room, I gestured for her to sit on 
the bed. She did as asked, but she was suddenly very nervous, 
sitting bolt upright with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. 

What's wrong? I say something I should not? 

No, my lord. You are well within your rights. But still, I am a 
married woman. 

What does . . . ? Oh golly! Felicia, I'm not think to have sex 
with you. It is just that on my country, a man does not force a 
woman standing while he is a friendly conversation with her. 
They would be not a polite. Understanding? 

She relaxed, but not totally. What do you wish, my lord? 

I want maybe answers to some few questions. I try to ask 
Lady Roxanna about them, but she is averse to give me 
straightaway answers. Would you help me, please? 

I'm not very learned, my lord. Even my parents were 
servants. Perhaps my husband could give you better help than I. 

I could see that I wasn't going to get much out of a woman 


who was worried about getting raped on the spot, so I said, 
Good. Go now and send back husband. 

who was worried about getting raped on the spot, so I said, 
Good. Go now and send back husband. 

I hope you'll forgive the light, my lord, but my wife felt you 
thought the matter urgent. 

Not really a hurry, but I don't hate you the price of oil. Put a 
lamp on the table and sit down. There are some things I am 
about curious, and that Lady Roxanna doesn't not want it to talk 
about. 

Uh, as you wish, my lord. 

First, what is you name? 

Jacques, my lord. 

Good, Jacques. First time, about the lady herself. I guessing 
that she was used to be married. Who was man and what 
happened to him? 

You mean the Baron Roland, my lord. He was a fine young 
man, he was. He ruled the Barony of Avalon as well as anyone 
had ever done before him, he did. 

And he dead now? 

Yes, poor man. Dead and in Heaven, if there's any justice. 
There was a fight in a tavern between a gardener and a merchant. 
Drunk, the both of them, they was. The baron went to break it 
up, as was his duty, and the merchant hit him on the head with a 
full pitcher of beer. Killed him dead on the spot. They hung the 
merchant for it, of course, but that didn't make the Lady 
Roxanna any less of a widow. It happened almost a year ago, it 
did. 

I see. My friend Adam was put with young widow like me. 
Just the coincidence, or was there some one good reason 
behind them? 

Well, it's not for such as me to second-guess my betters, my 
lord, but don't you see that it just made sense? I mean, 
somebody had to nurse the two of you back to health, and teach 


you how to speak properly and all, so why not put you with 
some people who needed you as much as you needed them? 

you how to speak properly and all, so why not put you with 
some people who needed you as much as you needed them? 

Afford it? My lord, you are one of the two richest men in all 
of the Western Isles, and your partner is the other one. I mean, I 
wouldn't pry, you understand, but I was one of the men who was 
called up to help salvage your ship. There were tons of iron and 
steel and copper on that ship! And gold and silver, too, and 
other metals I don't even know the names of! There was stored 
food by the ton that the Warlock said would last forever, and 
you could see him looking just greedy at all the boxes of magic 
stuff we brought ashore. Yes, my lord, you can afford just about 
anything you can dream of! 

Now, that's hard to me believe, but then maybe again I can 
probably dream a bit higher and broader than you can. So the 
Lady Roxanna is in need of money? Well, I'll be glad to oblige 
her. 

Yes, my lord, she needs cash, and don't we all know it. Not 
that I'm speaking on my own behalf, you understand. I mean, the 
wife and me will make out some way or another, no matter what 
happens. Even if the lady loses her lands and apartment, why, 
we'd probably go right with the land, so to speak, unless the new 
baron had some other servants that he wanted in our stead. Not 
that we'd want to stop serving the lady, of course, but if she 
really lost the land, what could we do for her? I mean, me being 
just a gardener and all. 

Relax. I don't think you lose a job, nor will the others either. 
Like I will say, I'll see that Roxanna is good paid. 

Thank you, my lord, and that's from all of us. And maybe 
we'd all be eating a little higher on the food chain if you could 
see fit to pay her something real soon, he said. 

Certainly. But if urgent things were now, why she say 
anything didn't? 

Because she's a lady, and used to be a baroness. She's got her 


pride, she has. And mostly, I think, because what she really 

pride, she has. And mostly, I think, because what she really 

No, I'm afraid I don't get meaning yours at all, I said. 

Well, confound it, I'm talking way out of line here, my lord, 
and if you want to have me whipped for it, so be it. But 
somebody has got to talk some common sense into you! 

I'm not going to have you whipping, and I've punished never a 
man for speaking the truth. So if you have something to say, go 
out with you! 

Yes, my lord, since you put it that way. The Lady Roxanna 
needs what every young widow needs. Namely, a new husband! 
And here she's been serving you and tending your wounds and 
even bathing you like a helpless baby, and you've not so much as 
patted her on the butt! You haven't kissed her, let alone pinched 
a tit, and what's a woman to think about that? I mean, what is it? 
Are you some kind of a pervert that likes to fondle little boys, 
or some such unholy thing? 

Damn you, I'm not a fucking queer! I had to say it in 
English, since if there was a word for those people in 
Westronese, Roxanna hadn't taught it to me. After a bit, I said, 
Look. I am 'lost' my own wife not too long ago, and, well, I just 
haven't felt like it, that's everything. 

Sorry, my lord, I didn't know. How long ago did it happen? 

A year ago. Just over a year from now. 

Again, sorry. But the time of mourning is long passed for 
you. Any priest would tell you that. You need a wife. Every man 
does, and you'll not find one better than the Lady Roxanna. A 
fine lady, she is. 

I'm . . . I'm not sure that I'm to be ready for that gross of a 
commitment. 

What commitment, my lord? You'll always need someone to 
manage your household, and there's none better for that than 
Lady Roxanna. And if you tire of her, or see another that you 
like better, why, with your wealth you can always take on a 
concubine or two. God's Hooks, my lord, you could afford 
dozens! 


Dammit, I don't want dozens of concubines! One woman 
was everyone I ever need. But the you talk way about it, you'd 
tell me they for sale were. Or, I mean, they aren't, are they? You 
don't own people here, do they? 

Dammit, I don't want dozens of concubines! One woman 
was everyone I ever need. But the you talk way about it, you'd 
tell me they for sale were. Or, I mean, they aren't, are they? You 
don't own people here, do they? 

Like most poor men, he was convinced that money is the 
most powerful aphrodisiac. Having been well off, once, I can 
testify that it just isn't so, but there was no point in spoiling his 
dreams. 

You mean to tell me that around here is everybody into free 
love? 

Well, of course, my lord, everybody isn't into anything. I 
mean, people are all different, you know. A lot of us 
commoners, we married the women we wanted and are happy 
with them. Me and the missus, we're both well content with just 
one another. The nobility and the wizards and the clergy, 
though, well, the law says that they have to breed the best that 
they can, so marriage to them is more like a business contract, 
if you get my meaning. So as long as all the children born are 
from the married husband and wife, well, the husbands have 
their friends on the side and the wives do the same. They do it 
on the quiet or in the open, as it suits them. 

So you have method of baby control? What is it? I asked. 

The wick in the oil lamp started smoking, so the gardener 
adjusted it and put a bit of animal fat nearer the flame to be 
rendered into grease. 

In truth, my lord, I don't know. You'd have to ask a nobleman 


or a wizard. My wife and I are servants who were born of 
servants, and neither of us did really well on the tests, so we 
aren't troubled by that sort of thing. 

or a wizard. My wife and I are servants who were born of 
servants, and neither of us did really well on the tests, so we 
aren't troubled by that sort of thing. 

No, my lord. I mean that we can't have children. We've both 
been sterilized. It's the law. 

THIRTEEN 

In the grey dawn, Roxanna came to me and said that it was 
Sunday. My period of quarantine was over and I was well 
enough to get around, so therefore it was fitting that I should 
join the household and go to church with them. I wasn't happy 
with the idea, but wisdom and maturity had taught me when to 
keep my mouth shut. 

You see, I was raised a Catholic, and I spent my teenage years 
vigorously fighting the system. It wasn't easy. The Christians 
had started indoctrinating me during the first year of my life, 
and they were so proud of this brainwashing of children that 
they publicly bragged about it. 

As the twig is bent, so the tree will grow. 

They bent so me hard I damn nearly broke. They began 
programming their party line into me long before I was old 
enough to think rationally about what they were saying. They 
dumped a load of undeserved guilt into my young subconscious 
long before I learned enough discrimination to sort their turds 
from their shit. They gave me the same ugly guilt treatment that 


they shoveled into every other helpless child they got their 
hooks into, but because I was more honest, more sincere than 
most, I think that those hooks hurt me more than they hurt most 
of the others. 

they shoveled into every other helpless child they got their 
hooks into, but because I was more honest, more sincere than 
most, I think that those hooks hurt me more than they hurt most 
of the others. 

Western religions all feed on the most fundamental terror 
that a living being can ever face, the innate fear of death. They 
all said that if you would just live your life exactly according to 
the pattern that was given to us on the high mountain, if you 
would give up most of life's little pleasures, and if you would 
shell out a major hunk of your after-tax income for the greater 
glory of God, then by golly, they'd take care of everything and 
you wouldn't really have to die after all! They'd written vast 
piles of impossibly obtuse and deliberately unintelligible 
theology to prove that every word of it was true. 

The real truth was that it was all a bag of nonsense designed 
for the sole purpose of keeping priests well fed and 
comfortable without any of them ever having to work for a 
living. It gave them a high-status job, being the direct 
representatives of the absolute boss, while letting them all live 
as lazily as any cheat on welfare. 

It was so simple. All you have to do is to invent a God and 
then say that everything you wanted to do was on his orders. 
Only to pull that off, you have to explain just what this God 
thing is. Well, to be a God, a being must have at least three main 
attributes. He must be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all- loving. 

What throws a wrench into the works of every Western 
theology is the obvious existence of evil. There is a lot of 
really bad shit happening in this world, and God lets it go on 
happening. The innocent are wrongly punished. The good die 
young. Babies are born with incurable brain cancers. God lets it 
happen. 

Obviously, if He and evil both exist, He either can't get rid of 


evil, or He doesn't know about evil, or He doesn't much care if 
evil exists or not. Yet if He has only two out of the three godly 
attributes, He just doesn't make it as somebody worth 
worshiping. 

evil, or He doesn't know about evil, or He doesn't much care if 
evil exists or not. Yet if He has only two out of the three godly 
attributes, He just doesn't make it as somebody worth 
worshiping. 

If He is all-powerful and all-loving, but not all-knowing, then 
He's sitting somewhere up there like a fat cat thinking that 
everything is just fine with us darkies down below. I could never 
worship so ignorant a being, and even if I did kowtow to Him, 
what difference would it make? If He doesn't know about 
something as obvious as evil, how could He notice something 
as insignificant as me? How would He know if I was worshiping 
Him or not? 

And if He is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not all-loving, 
then the existence of evil proves Him to be one nasty son of a 
bitch. He must like it, that a baby is born with brain cancer! I'll 
be damned if I'll worship such a bastard! I may lack His power 
and knowledge, but I'm still a better, more moral being than He 
is, since if I could cure all the wretchedness and pain of this 
world, I would certainly do so! 

All of which goes to prove that if there is a God, His 
character and abilities are such that He's not worth worshiping. 
Not that there is the slightest bit of evidence proving that such a 
critter exists in the first place. 

It would take a very strange sort of mind to believe both in 
the painful world about us and in a full, three- attribute God. My 
mind isn't strange enough in that direction. 

I'm a rationalist, and if that means that I will be dead when I 
die, and there's no pie in the sky by and by, well then, so be it. 
I'll just tough it out and die dead. Better that than to live out the 
only life I'll ever have as a fraud. 

Curiously, there are people who are both rational and 


religious. My best friend Adam is that way. How he manages to 
do it is beyond me. All I can guess is that he and the others like 
him must have minds that are somehow compartmentalized. 
There are areas where they are rational about everything, and 
areas that are blocked off, like a computer memory in protect 
mode. These are things about which it is not permissible to 
think. Or something like that. 

religious. My best friend Adam is that way. How he manages to 
do it is beyond me. All I can guess is that he and the others like 
him must have minds that are somehow compartmentalized. 
There are areas where they are rational about everything, and 
areas that are blocked off, like a computer memory in protect 
mode. These are things about which it is not permissible to 
think. Or something like that. 

It was a battle that I fought long ago, but along with wisdom 
and maturity comes a certain amount of resigned cowardice. I 
wasn't going to change these people. They were going to keep 
on believing in God no matter what I did. Hell, they still 
believed in magic! 

There was also the fact that if these people sterilized their 
servants and let people starve to death just because they 
couldn't afford the food, I wouldn't put it past them to burn a 
foreign heretic! 

Thus, I went to religious services with Roxanna and the 
servants. Dressed in our best, we walked together for a quarter 
hour to the church. It was in a section called Troicinet, where 
Roxanna had grown up. There was a closer church, but she 
preferred her old one. 

Between the medieval schtick that pervaded this floating 
island, and the fact that Roxanna never mentioned any but the 
one religion, I had naturally assumed that the church that we 
were going to would be Roman Catholic. And maybe it was. 
Sort of. 

Like everyplace else on the island, it was a huge cavern 
hollowed out underneath a field of growing plants. Also like the 
mansion I was living in, the walls and ceiling were heavily 
carved and decorated, but the decorations were not at all what I 


expected. 

expected. 

In fact, glancing about, I saw not one single gory scene of 
slaughter and mayhem. Not one single martyr was being 
pincushioned with arrows or being burned to death at the stake. 
Oh, the decorations were done in a fairly heavy-handed, 
polychromed medieval style, but there was an attempt to 
suggest that maybe they weren't trying to make you worship a 
snuff movie. 

In keeping with the general lack of metals, there weren't any 
of the usual heaps of gold encrusting the bastion of humility 
and austerity that you see in mainland churches, but there was 
instead an incredible amount of color and, of course, 
embroidery. I suppose it was pretty, in an abstract sort of way. 

I leaned back, waiting for the boring thing to get over with. I 
noticed in the service a lot of small differences from the mass 
that I was used to, and I thought at first that I must be attending 
some sort of Protestant ceremony, a thought that pleased me 
not at all. The Catholics, at least, have a certain amount of 
dignity about them. 

Most of the service was in Latin, I think, and could have been 
in Swahili, for all that I could understand of it. There was a 
sermon in Westronese, but what with my still-poor 


understanding of the language and the lousy acoustics of the 
cave we sat in, I didn't understand that, either. After what 
seemed like dozens of hours, the long, dreary, and infinitely 
boring show was finally over and we could leave. 

understanding of the language and the lousy acoustics of the 
cave we sat in, I didn't understand that, either. After what 
seemed like dozens of hours, the long, dreary, and infinitely 
boring show was finally over and we could leave. 

I asked Roxanna how far it was to the place where the wreck 
of The Brick Royal was kept, and it turned out to be pretty 
much on our way home. I insisted on visiting it. 

There were three guards on duty at the only door into the 
warehouse. One each from the duke, the archbishop, and the 
warlock. It gave me the feeling that the local triad of 
powers-that-be weren't all that loving and trusting of one 
another. The guards wore various sorts of waxed leather armor, 
and carried carefully polished quarterstaves, but had nothing of 
metal on them except for small belt knives, with blades barely 
two inches long. 

With Roxanna's help, I managed to convince them that it was 
all right for me to see my own stuff, but they weren't really 
happy about it. I had the feeling that they each wanted to 
immediately report our visit to their respective superior, but at 
the same time, they were each afraid to let the place be guarded 
only by the competition. But that was their problem, not mine. 

The boat itself took up the center of the huge cave. It was 
pretty much lying on its side, since the massive, winged keel 
was still fastened on. I walked around it, inspecting. 


There was an eighteen-inch hole in the bottom, near the keel, 
where the mast had punched through. This was much smaller 
than my memories of the wreck had made it seem. If Adam had 
a bag of concrete on board, and it hadn't gotten wet, doing a 
patch job wouldn't be that hard. The mast itself was surprisingly 
intact, as best I could tell, as was much of the rigging. Even the 
sails looked to be in reasonably good shape, and we had a spare 
set of sails around somewhere, the first ones I had purchased, 
made of Dacron. Crawling up on top, I saw that the cockpit had 
been gutted, but in a careful sort of way. The instruments had 
been removed, presumably for safer storage, but nothing was 
actually destroyed. The upper deck was cracked where the mast 
had come down across it, but the solar still and the solar cells 
seemed to be okay. The hole in the deck where the mast had 
gone through was a mess, of course, but I thought it was 
repairable. With a month or two of work, The Brick Royal 
could be made ready for sea again. 

There was an eighteen-inch hole in the bottom, near the keel, 
where the mast had punched through. This was much smaller 
than my memories of the wreck had made it seem. If Adam had 
a bag of concrete on board, and it hadn't gotten wet, doing a 
patch job wouldn't be that hard. The mast itself was surprisingly 
intact, as best I could tell, as was much of the rigging. Even the 
sails looked to be in reasonably good shape, and we had a spare 
set of sails around somewhere, the first ones I had purchased, 
made of Dacron. Crawling up on top, I saw that the cockpit had 
been gutted, but in a careful sort of way. The instruments had 
been removed, presumably for safer storage, but nothing was 
actually destroyed. The upper deck was cracked where the mast 
had come down across it, but the solar still and the solar cells 
seemed to be okay. The hole in the deck where the mast had 
gone through was a mess, of course, but I thought it was 
repairable. With a month or two of work, The Brick Royal 
could be made ready for sea again. 

My lord! I had heard tales of your wealth, but the seeing of it 
confounds me! You ate with utensils of solid silver? 

We used those for eating, but they're not silver. Silver 
tarnishes. That stuff is all stainless steel. It's harder and tougher 
than silver, and less expensive, too. 

But there is so much of it, and all for just you two men? 

Well, first place off, while you people get along just fine 
with one only single spoon each, a formal place setting in my 
country wants two forks, two spoons and a dinner knife, plus a 
steak knife if we're digesting big slabs of meat, which is many 
times. Then too, please, we started out with more that fifty 
people in boat, but most them got tired of sailing beside an 
ocean after a few months. I think Adam said that we had a table 


service for eighty with us, I said. 

service for eighty with us, I said. 

It was pretty nicely crowded. Then, too, in my country, 
people don't have so much living space as you do here. Wealthy 
people live in houses that are ten times smaller than your 
apartment. 

Could . . . could we take some of this back with us, my 
lord? 

Certainly. Take whatever it pleases you want. Just remember 
that half of it belongs to equal partner Adam, I said. 

Well, we wouldn't need half of it, but perhaps a service for 
ten? 

Fine. Don't forget some plates, bowls, cups, and some sort 
of thing. All around here it's someplace. And let's make up a 
likely similar set to send for the Adam and Pelitier sisters. 

It took me two hours to find what I was looking for. Adam's 
coin collection. It was half mine now, and I needed the money. 
There were two iron safes that each had a key lock with the keys 
still in them. Apparently, Adam had been less worried about 
someone robbing him than he was about losing the keys. The 
silver was all loose in one hefty strongbox that I couldn't begin 
to lift. The box was fireproof, and squeezed in on one side was a 
Manila envelope filled with passports, wallets, identification, 
and insurance papers. It was a good spot for all that currently 
useless stuff, and I left it in there. The gold was packed with 
each piece in a separate little plastic pouch to protect the finish 
of the beautiful coins, and then ten to fifty pouches, depending 
on the denomination, to the sturdy canvas bag. I took two bags 
of the gold, one for Adam and one for myself, and used four of 
the bags to hold a few fistfuls each of old silver quarters. Heavy 
stuff, it was all that I wanted to carry. I locked the chests and put 
the keys in my pouch, my present outfit not having any pockets. 

Roxanna and the servants had the tableware sorted out by 
then, and had put some kitchen utensils in with them, which was 
fine by me. They were all ogling and talking about everything, 
even the plastic garbage bags that everything had been wrapped 


in. A minor case of culture shock, I suppose. 

in. A minor case of culture shock, I suppose. 

As I put my reavings along with theirs, Felicia looked at the 
medicine chest and screamed. Soon, they were all crowding 
around the mirror, mumbling about what an incredible piece of 
magic it was. I was the longest time getting them calmed down, 
trying in my poor Westronese to explain that it was only a 
simple device, with nothing unholy about it. They eventually 
relaxed, but they never believed that it wasn't magic. In their 
eyes, I had become a mighty sorcerer. 

Well, you never look down on bowl of water? You never see 
face looked back? I asked Roxanna. 

Yes, of course, but then water is magic, too. 

I shook my head and went back to scrounging. The local beds 
were narrow, hard, and lumpy, so when I came across one of the 
big, queen-sized air mattresses that married couples had used 
early in the trip, and a sleeping bag to fit it, I put the bag and 
mattress into the take it home pile. I thought a bit, and put a 
second set of bedding in Adam's pile, since big people have 
even more trouble getting comfortable that us ordinary critters. 
Then I went back a third time and brought over enough air 
mattresses for our hosts and both sets of servants. They were 
people, too, no matter what the local mores said. 

I found a sewing kit, and threw it in with Roxanna's booty, 
along with a few pounds of tea for myself. 

You'll especially want to throw away the thread, from what 
Adam tells me about your clothmaking abilities here, but you 


might find the scissors, needles, and thimbles useful, I said. 

might find the scissors, needles, and thimbles useful, I said. 

The inflatable life raft was there, and still fully inflated, but I 
think perhaps that Roxanna didn't recognize it as being a boat. 
She was gesturing towards the yacht's twenty-foot-long tender. 

The Concrete Canoe. Yes, what about it? 

I was going to suggest that it could be put to good use as a 
fishing boat, my lord. I saw no nets among your equipage, but 
there were many hooks, lines, and such, she said. 

I don't know as how I would like to be a full-time 
fisherman. 

No, of course not you, my lord. But a crew could be easily 
hired. It could be very profitable, as well as providing both your 
household and your friend's with the freshest of fish. 

Okay, if you wish. Would you see about hiring some suitable 
men? 

Certainly, I would contact them, and select the best, my lord, 
but as to my actually paying their wages . . . 

You can't, because you are just about out of money, I said, 
handing her one of the sacks of old silver quarters. You should 
have said something about that sooner, but here. Take this and 
figure out how much more I owe you. 

She spilled some of them into the palm of her hand and 
turned pale. It . . . it is too much, she stammered. This is a 
hundred times, more than that, more than I have earned for my 
hosting of you! 

That much, eh? Well, keep it anyway. What I'd given her 
couldn't have been more than fifty dollars in quarters. I wasn't 
sure what the old silver ones were worth, but certainly I hadn't 
given her much more than the price of a good meal for two at a 
nice restaurant. Adam had definitely been right about metals 
being worth a lot here! I left Roxanna staring speechless at the 
money and went to scrounge up some food. 

Everyone had gone to Communion except me, so we had 


skipped breakfast. The munchies were hitting pretty hard, so I 
broke out some food, the sort that didn't need cooking. Corned 
beef, Spam, Pringles and bean dip, some warm Cokes and some 
Snickers bars for dessert. Everybody loved everything, even the 
Spam. 

skipped breakfast. The munchies were hitting pretty hard, so I 
broke out some food, the sort that didn't need cooking. Corned 
beef, Spam, Pringles and bean dip, some warm Cokes and some 
Snickers bars for dessert. Everybody loved everything, even the 
Spam. 

We ate our fill, and I had Felicia take the leavings and an 
extra can of Spam to the guards. I was wondering where we 
should throw the trash when Roxanna carefully collected up all 
the tin cans and such and gave them to the cook for washing and 
preservation. Metal was that scarce here. I imagine that some 
craftsman will someday end up making something useful out of 
them. 

It was well past noon before we were finally ready to leave. I 
gave two pouches of silver and one of gold to Felicia's husband 
Jacques, and told the three male servants to take them to Adam 
along with his share of the housewares, air mattresses, some 
instant coffee, sugar and a jar of Cremora. These people didn't 
drink anything with caffeine in it, and Adam used to need a few 
gallons of coffee a day to keep himself going. The men were to 
tell him that I would be dropping by tomorrow morning. The 
servants and Roxanna were astounded at my trust in the men, but 
I wasn't really worried. I mean, it was only a few hundred bucks 
worth, so what the heck. 

Roxanna felt otherwise. She took the money back from 
Jacques, opened each of Adam's pouches and carefully counted 
out the contents, recording the amount, before returning the 
money to him. 

It is not polite to lead a good man into temptation, my lord, 
she said. 

I tipped the guards a quarter each, thanking them for guarding 
my property so well, and telling them that I wanted them to 


keep up the good work. The truth was that mostly I just wanted 
to see the expressions on their faces. It was worth it, even with 
the one who couldn't believe that a coin so large could actually 
be made of solid silver! 

keep up the good work. The truth was that mostly I just wanted 
to see the expressions on their faces. It was worth it, even with 
the one who couldn't believe that a coin so large could actually 
be made of solid silver! 

I laughed at her, and gave each of our servant women four of 
the quarters, telling each them to give half of the money to her 
husband. It was fun. I hadn't exactly been poor in America, but 
here I was rich! 

FIFTEEN 

Sorry to be so long reporting back to you sir, but 
Lord Felix's people have managed to damage our 
listening equipment an average of three times a day 
since I installed it for them, Aldrich Skybolt said. 
Since our illustrious nobility wouldn't admit to being 
able to tighten a loose wire, even if they did know how, 
they've been keeping me busy. 

Easy, my young friend. If they didn't think they 
needed us, they wouldn't support us, and we'd all have 
to go out and get honest jobs, the warlock chuckled. 

If you can call this business honest. Really, sir, we're 
snooping on three honest widows and a pair of 
shipwrecked yachtsmen. It's dishonorable, it's illegal, 


and it's a waste of time. 

and it's a waste of time. 

Yes, some of those monks think that it is more 
important to maintain our version of Christianity than it 
is to keep our people alive. 

All too true, my boy. As to our eavesdropping, there 
can't have been much to report yet. Our visitors can 
hardly be out of their sick beds yet. 

True enough, sir. In the course of keeping the duke's 
microphones working, I've managed to read everything 
his snoops have written down, and what they've learned 
isn't much more than that our guests aren't anything 
more than what they seem. 

* * * 

The next day, I shaved before breakfast. Roxanna was 
shocked. 

I saw your face that way when first you came here, my lord. I 
thought at the time that you must have been badly burned. You 
did this to yourself deliberately? 

I said that I had, that it was the custom of most men in my 
culture to shave regularly, and that I couldn't grow a decent 
beard in any case. Roxanna shook her her head but said nothing. 

I took Felicia along so I wouldn't get lost and set out for 
Adam's place. I found him with some wooden poles lashed 
together to form a tripod, with a thin string hanging down, 
supporting a series of heavy weights. Apparently he was doing 


some tests on the strength of materials. 

some tests on the strength of materials. 

Six men was about right, Adam's size being what it is. 

I've already been down there, of course. She's not in bad 
shape, all things considered. The hole in the bottom is about a 
foot and a half across, and the deck is cracked up a bit, but if 
you stored some cement on board, we should have her in shape 
in a month or two. 

No sweat. We had six bags, and each was wrapped up 
separately. We got everything else we'll need, too, if not too 
much is missing. 

Adam, I don't think that anything at all has been stolen. All 
the electronic stuff is gone, and so are all the books and maps 
and such, but I think that they did it just for safekeeping. I mean, 
if they were going to steal, they would have taken the gold, don't 
you think? 

You're probably right, but then, different cultures do things 
different. Anyway, we don't really need any of the electronics. 
It's handy stuff, but we could sail out of here without it. And in a 
pinch, we could even do without the maps. I mean, if we just sail 
east, we'll come to the American coast, eventually. 

You're so eager to leave? I had the feeling that you were 
thinking about getting domestic on this weird little island, I 
said. 

You know, maybe I am. The girls here are so different from 
the ones back in America. I don't know quite how to put it, but 
it's like they're real women. The girls back home spend all their 
time playing games with your head, or trying to, anyway, since 
most of them don't have the brains to know that any man with a 
positive IQ can see right through it. They want to be respected, 
they say, and they want you to treat them like an equal. But if 


you try to do just that, to make like they're one of the guys, they 
get all pissed off 'cause they say you're talking vulgar in front of 
them. They say they want to be respected for their minds, but 
not one in a hundred has ever done anything to make her mind 
worth respecting. I mean, if they've read anything since they left 
school, it wasn't any more challenging than a teenage romance. 
They say they want to talk with you, but what they really mean is 
that they want to talk at you. Then they don't have anything 
better to talk about than what the other mindless broads had to 
say at work. Give them a chance, and they will recite to you, 
verbatim, every single word that every silly twit muttered from 
her first coffee break to her rush for the door at quitting time. 
And they'll get mad if you don't act interested in every stupid 
word of it! 

you try to do just that, to make like they're one of the guys, they 
get all pissed off 'cause they say you're talking vulgar in front of 
them. They say they want to be respected for their minds, but 
not one in a hundred has ever done anything to make her mind 
worth respecting. I mean, if they've read anything since they left 
school, it wasn't any more challenging than a teenage romance. 
They say they want to talk with you, but what they really mean is 
that they want to talk at you. Then they don't have anything 
better to talk about than what the other mindless broads had to 
say at work. Give them a chance, and they will recite to you, 
verbatim, every single word that every silly twit muttered from 
her first coffee break to her rush for the door at quitting time. 
And they'll get mad if you don't act interested in every stupid 
word of it! 

Yeah, maybe a few. But by the time they get their heads 
squared away, odds are that their bodies have gone to shit. It's 
all the fault of the lousy training they get at home and in school. 
They all grow up believing every word of what those dykes who 
run the National Organization of Women tell them. 

Well, I know that most of their leaders have admitted to 
being lesbians, but that doesn't make all of them sick that way, 
I said. 

Yeah? Well, I figure that if every libber in the United States 
was laid end to end, they'd all be a lot happier. Anyway, they've 
got the women of our country believing that they have to be 
both men and women. Trying a stunt like that, they just 
naturally do a piss-poor job of it and end up being neither. 

I've sometimes felt a little that way. Personally, I think that a 
lot of the fault rests with the news media. 

By media, you mean television, since most of them never 
read a newspaper beyond the comics and their horoscope. And 
yeah, TV news has a lot to answer for, when it comes to 
wrecking the whole damn country. One person gets a bad 
headache tablet and they hype it up until they have every twit in 


the country afraid to take an aspirin. Some kid eats a bad 
hamburger in Oregon, and they get a hundred million 
housewives to pass up the ground beef in the supermarkets. Do 
they ever think about what they're doing to the whole drug 
business? Or the thousands of people who depend on it for their 
livelihood? About how many cattlemen went belly-up because 
they couldn't get half of what they expected for their stock? But 
even so, it isn't all the media's fault. They're just out there trying 
to sell advertising time. It's the silly twits who believe every 
word of it who cause the real damage. These modern women 
lack perspective, they lack the discrimination to see the 
difference between a random incident and a real threat. Hell, 
they've even tried to make 'discrimination' a dirty word! 

the country afraid to take an aspirin. Some kid eats a bad 
hamburger in Oregon, and they get a hundred million 
housewives to pass up the ground beef in the supermarkets. Do 
they ever think about what they're doing to the whole drug 
business? Or the thousands of people who depend on it for their 
livelihood? About how many cattlemen went belly-up because 
they couldn't get half of what they expected for their stock? But 
even so, it isn't all the media's fault. They're just out there trying 
to sell advertising time. It's the silly twits who believe every 
word of it who cause the real damage. These modern women 
lack perspective, they lack the discrimination to see the 
difference between a random incident and a real threat. Hell, 
they've even tried to make 'discrimination' a dirty word! 

I don't believe that. For one thing, men have bigger brains 
than women, about twenty-five percent bigger. Women average 
nineteen billion brain cells up against our twenty-four billion. 
The male American is far more likely to take a rational view of 
things than the female. Women feel perfectly free to emote 
about things rather than considering them intellectually, 
whereas a man would be properly embarrassed if he let most of 
his emotions hang out in public. And this difference is not 
entirely caused by culture and environment. I tell you it's right 
in the wiring, and in the genes that programed that wiring. An 
intelligent man and an intelligent woman can take exactly the 
same input data, process it, and come to the same conclusion, 
yet I swear to God that their brains each took a separate path 
getting there. 

On that one, you're right, Adam. PET scans of brain energy 
consumption during problem solving show different patterns in 
men than in women. But that doesn't mean that one way is 
necessarily better than the other. 

I always knew it. And I'm not saying that the women of the 
world are playing with half a deck. What I'm saying is that us 
men are using a poker deck and all the girls back there are using 


tarot cards. 

tarot cards. 

Yeah, they are, somehow. It's like they know they're women, 
and they know that's nothing to be ashamed of. They don't try to 
be what they're not, and they don't try to make you into 
something that you're not, either. They know that men are 
different from women, and that there's nothing wrong with that 
difference. That men and women can and should complement 
each other, in the mathematical sense of the term. Like nuts and 
bolts that work together, with neither being the most important, 
and with each being pretty much useless without the other. 

So which one are you going to marry, and can I be your best 
man? 

Hey, there's no hurry, boss. Marriage here is more of a 
contract for having children. Until we're ready for that, there's 
no point to it. Anyway, maybe we ought to make it a double 
wedding. That was a real keeper you brought by here a few days 
ago. 

You too, huh? I've got a gardener who's trying to get me to 
marry his boss. 

Well, like I said, there's no big hurry. Maybe I'll really settle 
down here, but before I do there are a few hundred questions I 
got about this place. And if I don't like some of the answers that 
they give me, well, I'd feel a lot better if The Brick Royal was 
ready to sail at a minute's notice. 

I said that I had questions of my own, and we spent an hour 
updating each other on what we'd learned. He just nodded when 
I explained the testing they put their kids through, and the 
forced marriages and all. He'd suspected something of the sort. 

For his part, he had found at least six strange vegetable 
products that had to be unique to this weird little island. 

There's this 'hemp' they grow which produces a fiber that I 
swear is stronger than Kevlar! Do you realize that they can't 
even cut the thread they use? They have to burn it through, and 
they do the same with the cloth they make! When the time 


comes to harvest their hemp, they have to pull it up by the 
roots. Then they just throw it into a tank, wet it down, and wait 
until it rots. What's left over is made into rope and cloth! 

comes to harvest their hemp, they have to pull it up by the 
roots. Then they just throw it into a tank, wet it down, and wait 
until it rots. What's left over is made into rope and cloth! 

I think that they must have more and better medicinal plants 
than we do. We was both cut up pretty bad, but we healed up 
quick, with no infections and darn little scarring. And they tell 
me that these casts are coming off in a week. Can you beat that? 
A month and a half to heal five compound fractures, and me 
pushing forty-six from the wrong side? 

All of their dyes are vegetable, and they got as many bright 
colors as we do. What's more, those colors don't fade! They last 
hundreds of years, just like the cloth they're used on. 

The walls of all these rooms are plastered with something 
they get from a gourd plant, grind up and mix with water. There 
are some preservatives that I haven't checked out yet, but have 
you looked at the paper they use? It's not really paper! It's the 
leaf of a plant that grows without the usual veins in it. They just 
harvest it, press it flat while it's drying, and use it. It even turns 
white by itself as it dries. 

I said, So it's like you were saying the other day, they do 
have a technology, but a very different technology than ours. 

Right. And there's a bloody huge fortune to be made from 
both sides by getting them together. We could do these people 
here a world of good by setting up a trading company. 

For which we need the boat. Incidentally, with your 
permission, partner, I've already taken the first small step 
toward our commercial empire here. Roxanna wanted to hire 
some fishermen and put The Concrete Canoe to work as a 
fishing boat. We never really used it much, and we've still got 
the inflatable life raft, so I told her to go ahead. That okay by 
you? 


Sure, and I'm way ahead of you, boss. I had some fishnet 
makers in earlier today, and got them started on a 
two-mile-long drift net, something these people never heard of. 
Did I mention that this hemp of theirs doesn't rot, either? 
Whatever that stuff is, it sure ain't cellulose! 

Sure, and I'm way ahead of you, boss. I had some fishnet 
makers in earlier today, and got them started on a 
two-mile-long drift net, something these people never heard of. 
Did I mention that this hemp of theirs doesn't rot, either? 
Whatever that stuff is, it sure ain't cellulose! 

Who cares? The duke here never signed any international 
agreements, so where does some foreign country get off, 
telling him how to fish? And even if he had, do you think 
somebody's going to catch us using them? Hell, boss, they 
haven't even found this whole damn floating island yet! 

Yeah, Adam, and why haven't they? I think that bothers me 
more than anything else. 

Me too. But for now, let's get the girls to pack a picnic lunch 
and go down to the boat. 

SIXTEEN 

We made quite a procession, what with Adam and his six 
bearers, both of his lady friends, who were dying to see the 
ship, all of his servants except his three gardeners, plus Felicia 
and me. It was past noon when we got there, and within minutes 
Roxanna showed up with four fishermen in tow. We broke out 
the lunch we'd carried with us and augmented it from our ship's 
stores. 

After some time spent on exclamations about the strange and 


wondrous things we'd brought (like paper plates and catsup in 
plastic bottles), the subject of conversation got around to the 
remuneration that Adam and I owed to the island's people for 
rescuing us and saving all of our property. It seems that local 
custom was for us to decide such things, rather than for them to 
present us with an exaggerated bill for us to argue over, as it 
would have been done in the outside world. 

wondrous things we'd brought (like paper plates and catsup in 
plastic bottles), the subject of conversation got around to the 
remuneration that Adam and I owed to the island's people for 
rescuing us and saving all of our property. It seems that local 
custom was for us to decide such things, rather than for them to 
present us with an exaggerated bill for us to argue over, as it 
would have been done in the outside world. 

Indoor real estate rented cheap in the Western Islands. Eight 
silver quarters rented us the warehouse for the next two years. 
We didn't argue about that, since landlords generally get more 
than they deserve. 

When the ladies worked their way up to the duke, the tables 
were suddenly turned, and while we were trying to hold them 
back, they were trying to give away the store. The duke, they 
felt, should get one third of our gold, and the archbishop and the 
warlock one sixth each! Plus the same distribution in silver. 
This was something like a hundred thousand dollars, cash 
money American! And in a place where a quarter dollar fed a 
family for a year! The ladies simply felt that since we had it, the 
patriotic thing to do was to give it to the government. 

I tell you, the IRS would have loved these women. 

I couldn't see why we should volunteer to give them anything. 
Who ever heard of voluntarily giving money to the government? 
Governments always went in and stole whatever they wanted 


anyway. The only thing that ever slowed them down was the fact 
that they wanted you to be alive and productive so they could 
rob you again next year. If we started out being that generous, it 
would only whet their appetites. Look what happened when 
Montezuma sent whole baskets full of gold to Corts, eh? And I 
should give real money to the bastards who run the local 
religion racket? No way, baby! 

anyway. The only thing that ever slowed them down was the fact 
that they wanted you to be alive and productive so they could 
rob you again next year. If we started out being that generous, it 
would only whet their appetites. Look what happened when 
Montezuma sent whole baskets full of gold to Corts, eh? And I 
should give real money to the bastards who run the local 
religion racket? No way, baby! 

We argued for more than an hour. In the end, we decided on 
two pounds of gold and four of silver for the duke, and half that 
for each of the other two high- muckety-mucks. 

Even then, I insisted that Adam give all the money to the 
church, while I took care of the warlock. We went along with a 
suggestion from the ladies and threw in some other gifts in 
addition to the money. Some dinnerware and glasses, a few air 
mattresses, some food and drink, and a few dozen of the felt-
tip pens that Roxanna was particularly taken with. 

During all this time the servants just sat around, ignored, and 
astounded by the conversation. Nobody worked by the hour, so 
the general feeling was that their time wasn't worth very much. 

Okay, I said at last, throwing Roxanna the keys to the 
strongboxes. You girls make up the lists as to who gets what, 
and count or weigh it all out. Adam and I have to get busy with 
the boat. 

Before we could get into what should be repaired and how, 
there was the matter of the four fishermen and The Concrete 
Canoe. 

It was a canoe to the extent of being pointed at both ends, but 
that was about it. In general proportions, it was more like a 
tubby whaleboat, or a fat lifeboat. Twenty feet long, it was seven 
feet wide and five high. It had an easily set up aluminum mast 
and was sloop-rigged with Dacron sails. It also had a small 
diesel inboard motor, and it was this motor that gave the 
fishermen trouble. 


The sails were no problem, although they said that they would 
have preferred a gaff-rigged mainsail to the Bermuda rig we 
had. While the sail stays we used were new to them, they soon 
understood what they were for without any difficulty. They had 
never seen anything like a retractable centerboard, but once it 
was explained to them, they loved the idea. They adapted to 
what we had with surprising rapidity, especially considering that 
the local boats were more like kayaks than anything else I was 
familiar with, and we were told that the frames had more whale 
bone in them than wood. In fact, many of the things that I had 
taken for wood turned out to be bone with a sort of glued on 
cloth covering, to improve the tensile strength. 

The sails were no problem, although they said that they would 
have preferred a gaff-rigged mainsail to the Bermuda rig we 
had. While the sail stays we used were new to them, they soon 
understood what they were for without any difficulty. They had 
never seen anything like a retractable centerboard, but once it 
was explained to them, they loved the idea. They adapted to 
what we had with surprising rapidity, especially considering that 
the local boats were more like kayaks than anything else I was 
familiar with, and we were told that the frames had more whale 
bone in them than wood. In fact, many of the things that I had 
taken for wood turned out to be bone with a sort of glued on 
cloth covering, to improve the tensile strength. 

The fishing nets Adam had ordered wouldn't be ready for a 
few weeks, but our modern rods and reels would work for the 
time being. The fishermen were at first awestruck at being 
trusted with something as fabulously valuable as our fishing 
reels obviously were to them. Metals of any kind were 
extremely valuable on the Western Isles. I suppose that it was 
like giving a group of American carpenters a bunch of solid 
diamond hammers and telling them to go to work. 

On finding out how weak (by their standards) our fishing 
lines were, they were soon talking about replacing them with 
the local product, for fear of losing a valuable hook or spinner. 
Nonetheless, they picked up on casting and reeling in pretty 
quickly. Actually, they were a very intelligent bunch of guys, a 
lot sharper than the sort of workers that you likely would have 
hired off the street in downtown Bay City. 

Their reaction to the auxiliary diesel engine was less 


impressive. An hour's discussion on the theory and practice of 
internal combustion engines went right over their heads. We 
fired it up for a few seconds, the most we dared on dry land, 
without water in the cooling jacket, and they just got scared. 
Finally, Adam and I were reduced to teaching them by rote the 
names of the parts, had them chant through a litany on how you 
started a small diesel engine, and let it go at that. 

impressive. An hour's discussion on the theory and practice of 
internal combustion engines went right over their heads. We 
fired it up for a few seconds, the most we dared on dry land, 
without water in the cooling jacket, and they just got scared. 
Finally, Adam and I were reduced to teaching them by rote the 
names of the parts, had them chant through a litany on how you 
started a small diesel engine, and let it go at that. 

It was late in the afternoon when we got all the men 
(including the guards) together and hauled The Concrete Canoe 
out to the water. It was quite a job, without machinery, or even 
rollers, and we barely had the manpower available to do it. 
Much later, it struck me as curious that none of the men, 
including Adam and me, ever even suggested that the women 
there should lend a hand, and that none of the six ladies present, 
even the servants, thought to volunteer. 

The fishermen sailed around Avalon Bay for a while, until we 
could see that they were competent seamen who had the feel of 
The Concrete Canoe. We waved good-bye to them so they 
could get in a few hours of deepwater fishing before nightfall. 

It was getting dark by the time Adam and I had settled on our 
work schedules for repairing the ship. We would use the 
bearers he'd hired as laborers, since otherwise they'd spend the 
time just standing around anyway. 

We probably wouldn't need more men until we were ready to 
launch her, since more would be just that much harder to 
supervise. But come launch time, we'd need as many men to put 
her back as it took to haul her out, three hundred, at least. All of 
which meant that sneaking out between two days was out of 
the question, even if we wanted to. 

At about the same time that we had things settled, the ladies 


had their task done and the fishermen were coming back as 
well. They had been lucky, and had brought back two dozen 
large Pacific salmon and a freshly killed bottle-nosed dolphin. 

had their task done and the fishermen were coming back as 
well. They had been lucky, and had brought back two dozen 
large Pacific salmon and a freshly killed bottle-nosed dolphin. 

Dammit, we can't let them go on killing dolphins, I said in a 
stage whisper. 

And dammit, boss, you can't go blowing your top every time 
you run into a local custom that you don't approve of. We are 
strangers here in a strange land. These people have gone way 
out of their way to be nice to us, but they can change their 
minds about us any time they feel like it. If they want to eat 
large sea mammals like whales and dolphins, it's their business 
and not yours, Adam said, his nose inches from mine. 

But you're talking about some very intelligent animals! It 
isn't right to eat them! 

What makes you think that those critters are so smart? They 
don't act smart. Whales would just bask around on the surface 
while those old-time whalers rowed up and speared them dead 
by the hundreds, and that's got to be acting about as stupid as 
you can get, he shouted. 

Those 'critters' have got huge brains, I yelled. We were both 
shouting in English, and the ladies, servants, and workers were 
staring at us, but what the heck. I had my dander up. 

Proves nothing. Maybe they need huge brains to control 
their huge bodies. Then again, monotremes all have abnormally 
large brains, and they're all dumber than your average empty 
beer can. They say that they don't have REM sleep, and the 
brains that they have aren't organized very well. Well, maybe 
cetaceans don't have REM sleep, either. Nobody's ever tried to 
find out, you know. Maybe they don't sleep at all, what with 
having to live under water and breathe at the surface or 
something. The fact is that we don't know. What we do know is 
that our dolphin was stupid enough to bite down on an unbaited 


hook, and that it was dead before we ever saw it, he said. 

hook, and that it was dead before we ever saw it, he said. 

Bullshit. A pig is a very intelligent animal, probably smarter 
than a dog and much smarter than any cat. Yet I've seen you 
order pork five nights a week and bacon every morning. 
Anyway, where do you get off telling another people what they 
should or should not eat? Hell, some of your countrymen eat 
monkey brains! And as for that fish juice you're so fond of, hell, 
I got sick when they told me how they make it! 

Now that takes the cake! A Polack criticizing somebody 
else's eating habits! You people eat duck's blood soup with 
prunes in it, for God's sake, and I've read the ingredients on a 
package of kishka! 

I could see Roxanna wondering if she should intervene, and 
then deciding that she was afraid to. 

Adam said, It is flat ignorant to read the ingredients label on 
anybody's kind of sausage, stupid, and tchanina is the Food of 
the Gods! All of which goes to prove that if the islanders want 
to eat dead cetaceans, it's their damn business! 

Well, I'm not going to eat any! 

Done! Adam switched to Westronese, and was suddenly 
speaking quietly and politely. Lady Roxanna, we've just 
decided. He would prefer not to eat any of the dolphin, so don't 
fix him any of it. 

I smiled and nodded to her in affirmation. 

Astounded to see us agreeing, when she had been expecting 
us to get violent, Roxanna meekly nodded yes. 

Glad that's settled, I said. 

Good. Now you get to invite my whole crowd over for the 
night, 'cause it's getting too dark for us to take a two-hour walk 
home. 

Oh. All right. Roxanna, please make arrangements so that 
our guests here can spend the night with us. 

She nodded yes again, and sent three servants scurrying off 


somewhere to do something. 

somewhere to do something. 

I said, Adam, I'm sorry I called you a Polack. 

Why should you be sorry about that? I mean, it's what us 
Polacks all call each other. 

I know that, but I'm not one of your people. You know. One 
Black Man can call another one a Nigger, but that doesn't mean 
that anybody else can get away with it. 

Well, niger is Latin for black, and it means nothing but the 
color, or rather the lack of one. To the ancient Romans, who 
spoke Latin, black didn't have the connotations of evil that it has 
for Northern Europeans. The Romans themselves were not the 
least bit racist. I mean, they'd enslave you no matter what color 
your skin was. 

Usually, when you want to say something that might offend 
somebody, it's safer to say it in a foreign language. If you're 
embarrassed about saying the Anglo-Saxon word 'shit,' it's 
generally okay to say 'defecate,' which is 'shit' from the Latin. 
Or to a baby, most mothers say 'kaka,' which was 'shit' in ancient 
Greek. Ditto with 'piss' and 'urinate.' So when 'Black' is a polite 
enough word, 'Niger' or 'Nigger' really shouldn't be considered 
derogatory when said by anybody. 

Well, they certainly seem to think it's derogatory, and if you 
have any doubts, just go yell it for a while in some of the darker 
areas of Detroit, I said. I wouldn't shout 'Nigger,' and I 


shouldn't have shouted 'Polack.' 

shouldn't have shouted 'Polack.' 

Polka? Like in the dots? 

Right. 'Polka dots' means like 'lady dots,' and 'dancing the 
Polka' means 'dancing the woman,' Adam said. You know, 
maybe the reason why the Blacks don't like the word 'Nigger' is 
because Latin isn't one of their languages. Maybe if we could 
find out how to say it in Swahili or Ibu or some such, we could 
find something to call them that they would be willing to use 
for more than three weeks. 

I doubt it. I think that they just do it for kicks. Every time the 
Blacks change their minds about what they want to be called, 
every liberal wimp in the country gets flustered and feels 
obligated to line up, kneel, and kiss every Black foot available, 
reciting the litany of the newly approved word. Some people 
like having their feet kissed, I said. And anyway, I've seen a lot 
of Poles get fighting mad about being called 'Polacks.' 

Yeah, well, then again, some people just like to fight. 

We gave a hefty package to each of the three guards for them 
to take to their respective boss's boss's boss. Roxanna had 
included a duplicate inventory list with each package so as to 
keep the men out of temptation's way. I once read that such 
inventories were the reason why writing was invented in the 
first place. 

What with being in mourning for her last husband, and after 
that being financially challenged (that's Political Correctese for 
broke), it had been a long time since Roxanna had thrown a 
party. Since this was to be the first time that she and I were to 
have guests over, Roxanna decided to splurge and do it up 
brown. A formal dinner on the Western Isles was a lot like 


those served in ancient Rome, except that the furniture was 
different. The Romans went in for big, bulky stuff, whereas on 
the Western Islands, the high strength of materials and the high 
price of them combined to make for some very spindly looking 
furniture. It was so skinny, in fact, that it was weeks before I 
felt comfortable using it. Supporting Adam's huge bulk, it 
always looked as though the furniture was about to collapse, not 
that it ever actually felt shaky. 

those served in ancient Rome, except that the furniture was 
different. The Romans went in for big, bulky stuff, whereas on 
the Western Islands, the high strength of materials and the high 
price of them combined to make for some very spindly looking 
furniture. It was so skinny, in fact, that it was weeks before I 
felt comfortable using it. Supporting Adam's huge bulk, it 
always looked as though the furniture was about to collapse, not 
that it ever actually felt shaky. 

They used very little furniture, and kept their mansions very 
sparsely furnished. But whether it was out of storage or just 
rented, Roxanna arranged for enough for everybody. Besides 
Adam and his ladies, Roxanna's brother and his wife Melinda 
were there, and Roxanna's sister came in the company of the 
two men she lived with. I don't know why the idea of two men 
living with one woman should bother me, but somehow it did. I 
couldn't think of any reason why it should be any different, 
morally, than two women living with one man, as with Adam and 
the Pelitier sisters. So I just tried not to let my irrational 
feelings show. It's not for me to judge. 

Another quirk of Westronese social customs was that when 
you invited someone over, you automatically invited their 
servants as well, so we actually had about thirty people at the 
party instead of just ourselves and the eight invited. These extra 
people helped our servants out with all the preparations and 
serving during the party, and with cleanup afterward. And in a 
strange way, they also joined the party. 

When we got to the dining room, the servants had a bunch of 
couches arranged in a circle, and you laid down rather than 
sitting at a table. Each person had a sort of TV table in front of 
him, and the maids kept the food coming. There were dozens of 
beeswax candles burning, evidence of Roxanna's newfound 
wealth. 

Silverware was ordinarily restricted to a clay, bone, or 
wooden spoon for soup and a sort of fondue spear for anything 


solid and messy. They used their fingers for everything else. 
Tonight, though, Roxanna had set out American-style place 
settings, to honor us, I suppose, though it turned out to be not 
such a good idea. A fork doesn't work very well when you're 
lying on your side, because your mouth is now vertical rather 
than horizontal. And you can't use a knife and fork properly 
when you need your left hand to prop your head up. By the third 
course, we all were eating in the traditional Westronese way. 

solid and messy. They used their fingers for everything else. 
Tonight, though, Roxanna had set out American-style place 
settings, to honor us, I suppose, though it turned out to be not 
such a good idea. A fork doesn't work very well when you're 
lying on your side, because your mouth is now vertical rather 
than horizontal. And you can't use a knife and fork properly 
when you need your left hand to prop your head up. By the third 
course, we all were eating in the traditional Westronese way. 

They had a three-piece woodwind and percussion band, a 
stand-up comedian and two dancing girls. At first, the music 
was simple in structure, mostly a sort of plainsong, or a bit like 
folk music, at least while we were eating. Afterwards, while the 
tunes stayed simple, some of the rhythms got incredibly 
complicated. 

I got to studying it and counting on my fingers, and as best I 
could tell, the lead drummer was beating out a nine count with 
his left foot and a thirteen count with his right hand. His other 
extremities were doing even stranger things, with the net result 
that the music acted in a way analogous to the interference 
patterns you can get when you're playing with laser beams or 
moir patterns on clear plastic films. They sort of 
automatically built up to a series of internally consistent 
crescendos. Hard to explain, but really interesting to listen to. 

While the servants were generally ignored at all times when 
they weren't actually wanted for something, they in turn felt 
completely at ease at such times to ignore us. They would 
wander in, sit down on the carpet, and enjoy the show when they 
didn't have other duties elsewhere. Even the cook and the 
gardeners came in uninvited and watched what was going on, 
talking quietly among themselves as if we upperclassmen were 


pictures on a television. 

pictures on a television. 

Most of the comedian's humor was topical, about local 
celebrities that I'd never heard of, and it went right over my 
head, but the ladies, our guests, and the servants thought it was a 
riot. 

And the dancing girls, well, they were an eye- opener. First 
off, they were both outstanding dancers, they were remarkably 
attractive, and they were as lithe and energetic as Olympic 
gymnasts. Secondly, well, what with the almost complete 
coverage of most of the clothing worn on the island, and all the 
many and pious references to religion, I had gotten the 
impression that these were an overly strait-laced sort of people. 
I was wrong. 

What these fine young dancers eventually built up to was 
wilder and sexier than anything I'd ever seen in New Orleans, 
Las Vegas, or even the western suburbs of Detroit! Long before 
their act was through, they were completely naked, and taking 
remarkable liberties with our aging male bodies. Oh, I've seen 
things raunchier before, but only at a stag party and never in 
front of a mixed audience. Yet Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters 
seemed to be enjoying the show as much as anyone else! 

Talking with Adam about it later that evening, he said that 
dance was the Glorification of Woman, and since our ladies 
had no doubts about their own femininity, they didn't feel 
threatened by any one else's. They took our applause as 
compliments to themselves. If American women took offense 
to such things, he claimed, it just supported his thesis that they 
were trying to be both sexes while in fact being neither. 

And did you notice that neither of the dancing girls had a 
hair growing anywhere below their necks? Adam said. If 
nobody here ever heard of a razor, they must have some sort of 


vegetable product that's one hell of a depilatory. You might 
want to look into it, if you decide to keep your face 
cleanshaven, since your supply of blades won't last forever. 

vegetable product that's one hell of a depilatory. You might 
want to look into it, if you decide to keep your face 
cleanshaven, since your supply of blades won't last forever. 

Stop! No more of this! In our country, we do not enjoy 
watching beautiful women risk their lives. Waste not, want not, 
after all. So get rid of those knives and do something else. 

Which was the right thing to say, with just the right touch of 
levity. I only wish that it had been entirely true. 

We had brought a selection of wines, carbonated beers, and 
various liquors from the ship, including one of the barrels of 
rum that we had picked up in Puerto Rico. All of these were 
new to the locals, who had never tasted carbonated beverages, 
fortified wines, or distilled liquors before. The servants and 
performers joined in, of course, both because Adam and I, 
being Americans, are natural born egalitarians, and because our 
ladies stayed with the local habit of pretending that servants 
were not there when they weren't needed. Perhaps because of 
their inexperience with hard liquors, the party got pretty loud 
and rowdy, but even then the two social classes didn't 
acknowledge each other's existence. It was as if two parties 
were taking place in the same space. 

When I went to talk to some of Adam's litter bearers, they did 
a bit of a double take, as though I had just somehow 
materialized right in front of them. Then they talked to me 
formally, as one would to a superior in a work situation, rather 
than as a fellow party goer. 

The performers were an exception to this strange dichotomy, 
apparently being members of both planes of existence. But 
then, I suppose that show business people are on a different 


plane everywhere. Anyway, I was introducing this supple and 
still-naked young thing to the mysteries of a rum and Coke, 
with a twist of lemon peel, a local product, when Roxanna came 
up. In the States, this might have caused an embarrassing 
moment, but here there was none of that sort of thing. And 
Roxanna fell in love with Cuba Libres, too. 

plane everywhere. Anyway, I was introducing this supple and 
still-naked young thing to the mysteries of a rum and Coke, 
with a twist of lemon peel, a local product, when Roxanna came 
up. In the States, this might have caused an embarrassing 
moment, but here there was none of that sort of thing. And 
Roxanna fell in love with Cuba Libres, too. 

I woke up on the floor with the morning sun in my eyes, with 
my head propped up on the small of a sleeping dancer's bare 
back and Roxanna curled up at my side, her head on my 
shoulder. 

It's actually not such a bad life after all. 

EIGHTEEN 

The Reverend Cardinal Deacon James of Ys 
approached the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, 
D.D., Archbishop of the Western Isles. He knelt, kissed 
The Ring, and looked up, awaiting instructions. 

Ah, James. You may stand. I have need of your 
thoughts. Tell me, what do you think of of the new 
strangers? 

Well, Your Excellency, in the short term, they are a 
public nuisance. Almost everyone on the islands has 


been infected by their influenza. Thus far no one has 
been killed, but I call your attention to the many 
thousands who died during plagues brought to us by 
just such outsiders cast up on our shores in the past. 

been infected by their influenza. Thus far no one has 
been killed, but I call your attention to the many 
thousands who died during plagues brought to us by 
just such outsiders cast up on our shores in the past. 

In the long run, they are far more dangerous. In the 
past, it was a simple matter to keep rescued outsiders 
from bringing the entire outside world down upon us. 
We needed only to keep them away from the boats. If one 
still escaped despite our precautions, and somehow 
managed to make it home alive, he would never be 
believed because any ship sent in search of us would 
find nothing but open sea. But now, it is my 
understanding that the new ship contains 
communication devices far in advance of what the 
Warlock possesses, devices that could call the outsiders 
directly to us, no matter where we moved. Droves of 
outsiders with their diseases, their weapons, and their 
ungodly ways. 

Yes, James, and I think that last point is what 
bothers me the most. They tell me that not one outsider 
in fifty considers himself to be a Christian, and even 
among those few, well, have you ever listened on the 
Warlock's devices to what passes for a sermon out 
there? 

Yes, Your Excellency. I learned the English language 
just so that I could understand them. For my pains, all I 
heard was a so-called 'preacher' who was screeching 
about God in the most atrocious manner possible. Yet 
this person repeatedly claimed to be a Christian! I fear 
for the souls of our people if such foreign influences were 
let abroad on our islands. 


Indeed. And those so-called 'spiritual' infamies are 
but a part of their bad influences. Many of our people 
have fallen to the sins of drunkenness when 
overindulging in the beer and wines made on our 
islands. Now, rumor has it that the two outsiders have 
brought in no less than eighteen new forms of drink to 
tempt our people. What other abominations can yet be 
in store for us? 

Indeed. And those so-called 'spiritual' infamies are 
but a part of their bad influences. Many of our people 
have fallen to the sins of drunkenness when 
overindulging in the beer and wines made on our 
islands. Now, rumor has it that the two outsiders have 
brought in no less than eighteen new forms of drink to 
tempt our people. What other abominations can yet be 
in store for us? 

As do I, my son. Come, let us pray . . . 

* * * 

Shortly thereafter, the dancer got up, bid us a polite and 
somewhat formal good-bye, and left, still completely naked. 
Roxanna kissed me lightly on the cheek, went to her bedroom, 
and wasn't seen until evening. 

I started to sober up. 

This condition was soon combined with the grandmother of 
all hangovers. It was past noon before Adam and I got back to 
the warehouse where The Brick Royal was stored. The main 
reason why we went there at all that day was because we hadn't 
thought to bring the medical kit with us the day before. 

After a long search through our scattered property, I found it 
at last, and the Alka-Seltzers. Felicia already had two plastic 
glasses of water ready and, bleary-eyed, Adam and I toasted our 
survival of the previous night. 

Then I sent the maid home with blue packages for Roxanna, 
Maria, Agnes, and, almost an afterthought, for Felicia herself, 
since her eyeballs looked as bad as Adam's. Or my own, I 
suppose, though the technology hereabouts didn't run to 
mirrors, and I hadn't been up to shaving that morning. 

Vitamins! I said, enunciating carefully. The only way that I 
could possibly feel this bad is that I must be suffering from a 
severe vitamin depletion. They must not put enough vitamins in 


the food here. You stored lots of vitamins, didn't you? 

the food here. You stored lots of vitamins, didn't you? 

Maybe, I said slowly and quietly, carefully enunciating each 
word so as not to be accused of inebriation. But a hangover has 
definite physiological causes, like dehydration, and salt 
depletion, because you pissed it all away, and a depletion of the 
soluble vitamins, like B, C, and the rest, for the same 
inalienable reason. Had my vitamin and mineral levels been up 
there where they belong, I wouldn't be feeling nearly this bad. 

I found what I had been scrounging for, and mouthed down 
some One-A-Days, a couple of B-50s, a gram of number C, and 
then some vitamin E, because it was there. 

You want some, Adam? 

They couldn't make me feel any worse, he said, chewing up 
a random handful. 

We ought to give some Alka-Seltzer to your bearers, I said. 

What for? I didn't invite them to the party. Did you invite 
them to the party? So why should we be beholden to a bunch of 
party crashers? 

Don't be that way. They're in pain, and the thing about pain is 
that it hurts a lot. Anyway, if they all quit you, you'll be stranded 
here, because I'm not going to carry you anywhere today. 
Furthermore, they were invited. When I invited you, the invite 
covered them. Local custom. Roxanna said so. So be nice to the 
boys. 

If I gotta. 

He waved them over, handed out some of our dwindling 
supply of tablets, and told them how to take them. 

Maybe there is something to these people having some 


vitamin deficiencies. Let's get the girls on vitamin supplements 

vitamin deficiencies. Let's get the girls on vitamin supplements 

I said, Good idea. 

About then, two gaudily dressed individuals came up to us, 
bowed, and presented us each with an oversized envelope. Adam 
had the presence of mind to open his first. 

Well. It seems that I have been formally invited to lunch 
tomorrow with 'His Excellency, the Most Reverend Phillias 
XIV of Caduz, Archbishop of the Western Isles.' 

Wonderful, I said. Me, too. Only I get to meet the warlock, 
just after lunch. I wonder what you wear to a formal meeting 
with a warlock? 

I don't think it much matters as long as you bring the proper 
gifts with you. Some bat wings would be nice, or maybe a roc's 
egg, and don't forget a negative pound or two of phlogiston. 

I've already sent him a positive pound of gold, and after that, 
he's just going to have to suffer or live with it, I said. 

Not much got accomplished that afternoon, and, since it was 
still a two-hour walk back to his place, I invited Adam back to 
Roxanna's place again. 

Yeah, thanks, but you know, we can't keep doing this forever. 
I mean, if it was just you and me, there wouldn't be any problem, 
but women got these nesting instincts. Roxanna and my girls act 
real friendly and all, but if we force them together too much, 
they'll start infringing on each other's territoriality. I think I got 
to buy or rent someplace near this warehouse to live in. 

Seems silly to me. I mean, I got a good fifty thousand square 
feet at Roxanna's place. Why should we bother with getting 
more? 

I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying we got to do it or 
we'll eventually have a female explosion on our hands. I don't 
want to lose mine, and after last night, you don't want to lose 
yours, either. So be reasonable and do it my way. 

If you say so. Anyway, we're rich. You can afford it. 

Supper that night was quiet and subdued. 


The next morning, Roxanna invited me to the local bathhouse, 
a weekly bath being the local norm. I'd gotten to looking 
forward to the sponge baths she'd been giving me, but I was out 
of quarantine now and I wasn't an invalid any more. Also, I 
thought that I'd better look my best, if I was to meet a warlock 
in the afternoon. 

The next morning, Roxanna invited me to the local bathhouse, 
a weekly bath being the local norm. I'd gotten to looking 
forward to the sponge baths she'd been giving me, but I was out 
of quarantine now and I wasn't an invalid any more. Also, I 
thought that I'd better look my best, if I was to meet a warlock 
in the afternoon. 

Roxanna and I went through a curtained doorway into a small 
changing room. Without any preamble, Roxanna promptly 
stripped herself completely naked. Just not what I had expected, 
at all. 

Her actions, that is, not her appearance. She looked just like 
what I'd been dreaming of for weeks. Fine, firm breasts with 
tiny pink nipples, a very small waist, nicely flaring hips and 
wonderfully long legs that went all the way down to the floor. 
Like the dancers of a few nights before, she was completely 
depilated, a custom that I found myself liking. 

But this was not the right place for an erection, not when I 
could hear a crowd of people on the other side of the curtain. 
There was nothing for it but for me to strip down as well, hang 
my clothes up beside hers, and hope that my body wouldn't do 
anything embarrassing. 

We went into a huge room full of naked people, and I soon 
started to feel less awkward. I mean, if everybody was doing it, 
well, why not? After a bit, I realized that I would probably have 
felt more awkward if I had been the only one who had clothes 
on. 

In some ways, the bath was sort of Japanesey. I mean, you 
washed up first, and then you took a bath. Roxanna led the way 
to where a fountain squirted warm, fresh water into the air 
almost like a shower. We wet ourselves down, and went to the 
side to suds down with a soft, brown soap. She scrubbed down 
my newly healed back, so I returned the favor by doing the same 


to her back. 

to her back. 

Once we were sitting in the almost too warm water, I said, 
Roxanna, why were you walking different? 

Walking different? What do you mean? 

Well, when you women are wearing a long dress, you sort of 
glide along, as if you were on skids, or skates, or wheels. Now 
that you're naked, you walk like everybody else I've ever known. 
Why is that? 

You don't like the way I walk? 

I absolutely love the way you walk. I only want to know why 
you walk one way some times, and another way at other times. 

Oh. Well, it looks nicer that way. 

I don't understand. 

All right. Look. She got out of the pool and walked away. 
When your legs aren't covered, you want them to look as nice 
as possible, yes? 

She walked towards me in a normal fashion, her feet pointed 
straight forward. 

Yes, Roxanna, you have very lovely legs. 

She accepted the compliment as only being her due. She 
walked away again, and came back walking like some comedian 
from a silent movie, with her toes spread out almost sideways 
and her knees slightly bent. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but 
after a bit I realized that this strange method of locomotion 
made her body above the waist absolutely motionless. 

You're right, I said. I can see now why you'd want a thing 
like that covered by a long dress. 

She had really been walking like that all the time? Well, some 
cultures think that a bone through the nose is the high point of 


beauty, and by comparison, I suppose that I lucked out. 

beauty, and by comparison, I suppose that I lucked out. 

Perhaps I had a misspent childhood, and was entirely too 
serious and formal myself, but this was my first actual 
experience with public nudity, at least when I was one of the 
nudes. 

It's a very odd thing. At a stag party, where the ladies aren't 
wearing clothes and you are, you just naturally feel lecherous 
towards them. But when you're naked too, and in public, you 
just don't feel that way anymore. Oh, you can certainly 
appreciate a beautiful body, in an intellectual sort of way, but 
the sexy feeling isn't there anymore. Maybe that's why less than 
one American in a thousand is a nudist. It's not that nudists are 
being overly sexual with each other, but the precise opposite. 
And most people, given the choice, would really rather be 
lecherous. 

Which launches another thought. In most countries in the 
civilized world, church and state agree vigorously in 
condemning public nakedness. They instill this taboo into their 
people with great vigor and effectiveness, to the point that 
people have been known to choose death by fire rather than 
leave a burning building naked. Many men (and some women, 
although they seem to be less effected than we are) would 
prefer torture, mutilation, and bankruptcy to walking down the 
street without their pants on. The prohibition of nakedness 
seems to be stronger than that condemning theft, or even 
violence. Being naked in public is probably the most common 
childhood nightmare, far more prevalent than bad dreams about, 
say, stealing from the neighbors. 


I suspect that the reason for this is that the leaders of both 
church and state desperately want to increase the size of the 
populations subordinate to them. More people means more 
taxpayers, more cannon fodder, and more contributors to the 
holy cause. They say that whenever the old Indian chiefs got 
together, the main topic of conversation was always the relative 
lack of Indians. 

I suspect that the reason for this is that the leaders of both 
church and state desperately want to increase the size of the 
populations subordinate to them. More people means more 
taxpayers, more cannon fodder, and more contributors to the 
holy cause. They say that whenever the old Indian chiefs got 
together, the main topic of conversation was always the relative 
lack of Indians. 

Consider the way the populations of the Arab countries, 
where women are often forced to wear mobile tents, are 
exploding. On the other hand, in the Scandinavian countries, 
Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, where public nudity is 
common, populations are actually declining. 

The next time you see a particularly attractive young person 
undulating along across the street, and you wish that she was 
wearing a whole lot less, just remember that you are but the 
victim of yet another wretched government plot. 

NINETEEN 

His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI sat with 
one hip on the corner of the desk of Tom Strong, E.E., 


Warlock of the Western Islands. 

Warlock of the Western Islands. 

Less than I'd hoped, Your Grace. Over the 
shortwave, they have been talking for fifty years about 
the rapid progress that has been made outside in 
electronics, but it wasn't until I actually saw some of it 
that I realized, on a gut level, just how much has really 
been accomplished. Everything is a thousand times 
smaller than what we used in the war. It does a 
thousand times more, and seems to use less than one 
hundredth of the power to do it with. With most of the 
devices I've opened up, the truth is that I don't have any 
idea of how they work. I often don't even see how they 
could be built in the first place. Wires almost too tiny to 
be seen are somehow glued to thin sheets of hard 
plastic, and then soldered somehow to the legs of other 
devices as small as insects. I daren't try to unsolder 
anything, for my own equipment is so crude by 
comparison that I would surely do damage. And my 
understanding is far cruder than my equipment! 

But surely there's something that you've learned. 

I think that I know what some of this stuff is 
supposed to accomplish, Your Grace. Five of these 
things are radios of various sorts, that operate on 
various frequencies. This suggests that the shortwave 
sets that I have managed to keep operating can receive 
only a small portion of the broadcasting that is actually 
going on out there. 

There are several televisions, which receive a 
full-color moving picture, along with the sound that an 


ordinary radio would reproduce. There are two devices 
that also reproduce a picture, but do it on paper. This is 
in addition to a printing device that connects only to a 
thing called a 'computer,' but which seems to do other 
things besides computation. This disc, clearly labeled 
'The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' fits into a slot in the 
computer, which suggests all sorts of things. 

ordinary radio would reproduce. There are two devices 
that also reproduce a picture, but do it on paper. This is 
in addition to a printing device that connects only to a 
thing called a 'computer,' but which seems to do other 
things besides computation. This disc, clearly labeled 
'The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' fits into a slot in the 
computer, which suggests all sorts of things. 

When I was out there, it was a set of large volumes 
printed on very thin paper that took up seven feet of shelf 
space. It was a summation of all human knowledge. 

And now all of that is apparently on this small, shiny 
disc, along with all the new things that they've learned 
in the last fifty years. Yes, I see your problem. I take it 
then that you will recommend that our visitors explain it all 
to you. 

Yes, Your Grace, and that they get it all working 
again. This equipment can teach us a great deal about 
the outside world, things that we will need to know, if we 
are ever to deal with them on any but disastrous terms. 

And you think these men can be trusted? When 
helping us might mean hurting their own world? 

Sire, you are used to thinking of the outside as being 
a single entity, as the Western Islands are a single 
social, political, and economic entity. This is a mistake. 
The outside world consists of many separate, 
disorganized governments, with many conflicting 
interests. This fact is one of the few in our favor.

 We have other strengths, Tom. Don't forget that we 
of the Islands are each the result of seventy-five 
generations of very careful selective breeding. We are a 
superior people, and that will tell more than any other 


factor when we go out to face the world. 

factor when we go out to face the world. 

* * * 

Spiffed up and dressed in my best, it was with considerable 
trepidation that I followed the warlock's page past two clerks 
who doubled as armed guards, up a bodaciously long spiral 
staircase, over a stone bridge that spanned a cleft in the central 
mountain that had to be over three hundred feet deep, and 
finally into the great man's inner sanctum high above the Bay of 
Avalon. 

It wasn't at all what I had been expecting. The room was huge, 
as were almost all rooms on the Western Isles, but whereas 
every other area I'd seen was extremely underfurnished, to the 
point of looking naked, this place was crowded with tables that 
were piled high with arcane equipment. 

The equipment wasn't what Hollywood told you a warlock's 
workshop should have, either. There was not one eye of newt or 
ear of toad in the place. No bubbling retorts, no imps and devils 
staring out from sealed bottles. 

On the wall, where one would have expected stuffed owls and 
mummified bats, there was instead a hand- drawn chart of the 
Periodic Table of Elements, with the last ten or so at the 
bottom missing. There was some ceramic chemistry equipment 
standing long unused in one corner, but mostly the place was 
filled with books and old electrical junk. In truth, the room 
looked more like a World War II electronics lab than anything 
else that came to mind, with lots of ancient tube-type 
equipment lying around in various states of disrepair. 

In addition to all the old stuff, three big tables were covered 
with all of the new electronic stuff that had been taken from 
The Brick Royal, while a fourth held much of our library. 

Ah! G'day, mate, said a voice in English with a strong 


Australian accent. Tom Strong here. Welcome aboard and all 
that. 

Australian accent. Tom Strong here. Welcome aboard and all 
that. 

Thanks for the gifts you sent me, though you really sent too 
much. The gold in particular, well, you might as well take it 
back. I just wouldn't have any use for it. Later on, if you still 
feel generous, maybe I can talk you out of some of your 
incredible electronic gear. 

As you wish, sir. You're Australian? I said. 

Right. I was on a bomber during the last big war, one of your 
B-17s, actually, when our navigator and our pilot got each other 
lost on a dark and stormy night. The twits had us a thousand 
miles in the wrong direction, the fuel ran out, and the pilot had 
to make a dead-stick landing on the island. Made a complete 
hash of it. Been here ever since. Have a chair, won't you? 

What happened to the rest of you? I said, sitting down. 

Well, only three us survived the crash, and one of the 
gunners was killed a few months later doing something really 
stupid. That was over fifty years ago, and Johnny died last year. 
Cancer, I think it was, although they're not much for autopsies 
around here. I'm the last one left. It's one of the reasons that I'm 
so happy that you bastards have arrived. Someone from the 
outside world to talk to, you see. 

I reminded myself that bastard was a polite term, if you 
were an Australian. 

Then why have you waited two months before you asked me 
to visit you? 

In part because of the quarantine rules, in part to give you 
time to heal from your wounds, and to give you a bit of time to 
start learning the language. Also, it took me a few weeks to 


recover from that mild form of influenza that you chaps gifted 
us with. Then, too, there's a bit of politics going on between me 
and the good archbishop, but you don't want to hear about that. 
Anyway, after fifty years, what's a few more months? 

recover from that mild form of influenza that you chaps gifted 
us with. Then, too, there's a bit of politics going on between me 
and the good archbishop, but you don't want to hear about that. 
Anyway, after fifty years, what's a few more months? 

Oh, at first I did, but there was really no way to do it. I didn't 
bring a boat the way you folks did, and the old bird I came in on 
was total loss and no mistake. Then, after a while, well, this 
place sort of grows on you. I married, settled in, and prospered. 
But look here. I'm the one who is supposed to be questioning 
you, and not the other way around. He pulled out a sheaf of 
papers. Nguyen Hien Treet. That's Indochinese, isn't it. 

Vietnamese, actually. 

But it says here that you're a U.S. citizen. 

I am. I was born and raised in the United States. In fact, this 
'vacation' is my first extended trip away from there. 

And how does a Vietnamese fellow like you get born in the 
U.S.? 

It didn't take much talent, I assure you. After the same war 
that you fought in, my parents found work as a nanny and a 
gardener, employed by a British general. He promised them 
long-term employment and British citizenship if they would go 
back to England with him. Naturally, they jumped at the chance, 
and sailed there with him. But after the war, England was forced 
to go on an extreme austerity program. The general found that 
he could no longer afford many servants, and was forced to let 
my parents go. He was an honorable man, however, and even 
after they were no longer his employees, he used his influence 
to see to it that they received the promised citizenship papers. 
Despite this, my parent's financial prospects in England were 
not good. Those few jobs that were available always seemed to 
go to Anglo-Saxons. In time, though, they discovered that as 
British subjects, it was fairly easy to get a visa to the United 
States, and their friend the general was able to arrange free 
military transportation for them to Michigan. They got there in 


1948, and eventually, as you say, they prospered. I was born in 
1953. 

1948, and eventually, as you say, they prospered. I was born in 
1953. 

I'm sorry to say that growing up, I learned very little 
Vietnamese. My parents felt that I would be better off learning 
only English. The problem with that was that they barely spoke 
the language themselves, so my first language was actually 
broken English. To make matters worse, they used Vietnamese 
between themselves when they wanted to discuss something 
that we children shouldn't know about. I think that I must have 
internalized the strange attitude that somehow, other languages 
were something that I shouldn't know. Anyway, in school, I 
really blew it, trying to learn Latin and later Russian. 

But I understand that your Westronese is coming along quite 
well, Treet, he said in Westronese. 

I think they call it total immersion. But look. Could you 
answer just a few questions for me? 

Certainly, mate, in a few minutes. First though, what was 
your profession? I mean, you seem to be an educated man, but 
what did you do with yourself? 

I was an engineer, working in the special machine tool trade 
in Michigan. My partner and I owned our own company, and we 
mostly designed and built special machines for the auto 
companies. 

Special machines? That's like lathes and drill presses? 

Hardly. Most of the machines we built were completely 
automated, without any workers at all. They did things like 
assembling automatic transmissions or rebuilding used 
crankshafts. 

Humph. Not much call for that sort of thing around here, I'm 
afraid. Your friend Adam Kulczynski was also an engineer? 

Yes, we were partners. Mostly, he took care of the shop and 
I took care of sales, although we each filled in wherever 
needed. 

Pity. Well now, I'll answer your questions then. Within 


reason, of course. 

reason, of course. 

Now that takes quite a long answer. I don't imagine that 
there's any chance that you brought any tobacco with you, is 
there? 

Sorry. I used to smoke, but everybody back home is quitting 
it now, since the habit was proved to cause long-term damage to 
one's health. We've got some Foster's beer stored somewhere, 
though, if you could see fit to answer my questions. 

Bribery, I see. Very well, then. I'll expect a few cases 
tomorrow. To answer your question, I suppose that the story 
starts some fifty thousand years ago, during the last ice age. So 
much water was tied up in the ice caps that covered half of 
Europe, Asia and North America that the sea level was down 
several hundred yards, and most of the world's continental 
shelves were exposed. 

A series of volcanoes erupted in an area that was then dry 
land, but is now a hundred miles off the west coast of France. 

Now, most volcanoes come in one of three varieties. They 
spit out either lava, or dust, or mud, or sometimes all three. But 
there is a very rare sort where the lava is glassy and has just the 
right amount of gasses absorbed in it. When this sort of lava 
oozes out slowly, the absorbed gasses come out of solution and 
form bubbles in the lava. There's one like that in Hawaii, they 
tell me, and when the molten rock flows out on the ocean, the 
fluffy stuff just floats away. Well, the lava from our ice-age 
volcanoes didn't float away just then because it was a hundred 
miles from the ocean. It just kept on oozing and solidifying, and 
piling higher, wider, and deeper. 

When the ice age ended, the sea level rose and our 
volcanoes became a collection of islands. Now they didn't float 
away because they were stuck quite firmly to the continental 
shelf, and there they sat for the next forty-nine thousand years 
or so. 


In time they were discovered by people. It happened quite 
early, we think. While we have no records of the first landings, 
there are written records on this island that go back to 2754 
b.c., and since they used to have five times our current land 
area, there were about as many people then as now. The old 
histories make fascinating reading. You might have that lady 
friend of yours check out some of our early books from the 
library, when your reading skills pick up, that is. 

In time they were discovered by people. It happened quite 
early, we think. While we have no records of the first landings, 
there are written records on this island that go back to 2754 
b.c., and since they used to have five times our current land 
area, there were about as many people then as now. The old 
histories make fascinating reading. You might have that lady 
friend of yours check out some of our early books from the 
library, when your reading skills pick up, that is. 

Also, we were the first nation in the world to become 
Christians. You've heard of the apostle, Doubting Thomas? 
Well, about in the middle of the first century he came to our 
islands, and converted us from paganism without much fuss and 
bother at all. St. Thomas became our first bishop, and the 
church he founded has been the only one here ever since. 

I gather from your expression that you're not very religious, 
but you have to realize that Christianity is a powerful force 
hereabouts, and has been for almost two thousand years. Aside 
from our unique geology, it's been the dominant molding force 
both for the culture and technology of the islands. 

Christianity is responsible for your low level of 
technology? I said. 

No, mate. It has been responsible for the high level of our 
technology. We both know that on the mainland, there has 
always been a tension between science and religion. It's not that 
way here, the current political differences between me and the 
archbishop notwithstanding. 

Think about the stories that you've heard concerning 
Doubting Thomas. He wouldn't believe that Christ had arisen, 
even after he had personally seen Him himself. He insisted on 


positive proof, putting his fingers into Christ's nail holes, and 
his arm into the spear wound in Christ's side. 

positive proof, putting his fingers into Christ's nail holes, and 
his arm into the spear wound in Christ's side. 

And you are the current head of this scientific 
organization? I asked. 

Right. The Wizards. Oh, the titles and all are a bit archaic, 
but that's to be expected with so old an organization. We've 
been carrying on our scientific researches for almost two 
millennia. 

Then why are you so far behind the rest of the world? I said. 

First off, we're not as backward as we might appear to be. 
True, our clothing styles haven't changed much in the last five 
hundred years, but that's because of some of our high 
technology, not because of any lack of imagination on our part. 
When any article of apparel can be expected to last several 
hundred years, there is very little incentive to make much new 
clothing. We have no group of garment manufacturers here 
eager to increase their sales by making last year's fashions 
obsolete. What little new clothing we need to make is done as a 
hobby by the women here. They like to compete with each other 
on their embroidery, but if they changed the basic styles, 
everything they inherited from their grandmothers would be 
obsolete. A change in style would make them poorer, not 
richer. 

Then too, as you well know, in certain fields, horticulture, 
for example, and the study of ocean currents and weather 
patterns, we're considerably ahead of the rest of you. 

But for the rest, there are several obvious reasons why we're 
presently behind. You know that we have always been in a really 


dismal state when it comes to raw materials. We have no ores, 
no fossil fuels, and almost no minerals at all. Furthermore, 
there are damn few of us. There are only about twelve thousand 
people on all of the islands together, compared to upwards of 
six billion of you in the outside world. 

dismal state when it comes to raw materials. We have no ores, 
no fossil fuels, and almost no minerals at all. Furthermore, 
there are damn few of us. There are only about twelve thousand 
people on all of the islands together, compared to upwards of 
six billion of you in the outside world. 

TWENTY 

But we're getting sidetracked, and you asked for a history 
lesson, the Australian warlock said. 

So, for a thousand years after the coming of St. Thomas, the 
Western Isles prospered. While we avoided most of the 
invasions that plagued Europe, and managed to beat off three 
major Viking attacks, we did stay in touch to a certain extent. 
The Romans never got around to invading us, but we did enjoy a 
lively trade with them until the Germans took over the western 
half of Roman Empire. Luckily for us, the Germans never were 
much good with boats, so we stayed free. Still, there was a 
certain commerce going on in goods, and pilgrims, and ideas. 

Then why didn't your islands show up on the maps that the 
ancient Romans made? I asked. 

I suppose that they did. The curious thing is that not one 
single authentic ancient Roman map managed to survive into the 
modern world. We have Ptolemy's text on how to draw a map 
properly, but none of his maps themselves. The only thing 


approaching them, outside of our libraries here, of course, are 
some highly distorted medieval copies. The Western Isles show 
up on them, of course. On the famous tenth-century Beatus 
map, they are clearly shown right where they are supposed to 
be, south of England and west of France. Your modern scholars 
have decided that they must represent Scotland, of all things, 
though what Scotland is doing as a separate island and south of 
England is left unexplained. 

approaching them, outside of our libraries here, of course, are 
some highly distorted medieval copies. The Western Isles show 
up on them, of course. On the famous tenth-century Beatus 
map, they are clearly shown right where they are supposed to 
be, south of England and west of France. Your modern scholars 
have decided that they must represent Scotland, of all things, 
though what Scotland is doing as a separate island and south of 
England is left unexplained. 

Precisely. There were even a few tourists back then, going 
both ways. King Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, was born not 
two miles from here, and despite what your history books will 
tell you, St. Patrick was born here a mile in the other direction. 
It was our church that baptized Ireland and parts of Scotland, 
not the Church of Rome. In fact, the Irish did not join the 
Romans until the time of Henry the Eighth. When he made the 
Church of England split from Rome, the Irish joined the Roman 
Catholic Church, mostly as a political protest. But I'm 
digressing again. 

So a vast mass of bubbly glass was stuck to the French 
continental shelf, and I'll leave it to you to think about the 
stresses involved. Glass, of course, is slightly soluble in water, 
and glass under stress is degraded faster than unstressed glass. 
In the winter of 1099, when everyone else in Europe was 
looking eastward at the First Crusade, a storm of monumental 
proportions swept in off the Atlantic Ocean, and broke the 
Western Islands free of the ocean bottom. The earthquakes 
were devastating, and there was hardly a building left standing. 
The entire city of Ys was completely lost. Some four thousand 
of our people died in a single night, most of our winter's stores 
of food were destroyed, and our standing crops were ruined. If 
the duke's library hadn't been kept in a mountain cave, our 
records would have been lost as well, but we thank God for 
small favors. 


As soon as the storm had blown itself out, our duke ordered 
every ship to be launched, to go to the mainland and beg for aid. 
This in itself turned out to be no easy feat, for to the 
wonderment of all, the very level of the sea had gone down six 
yards, and this was no mere freak tide. Indeed, as far as anyone 
could tell, there were no longer any tides at all! Our land area 
had increased considerably. But despite all the strangeness, 
some eighty ships were launched. Of these, only two returned, 
after great hardship and long voyaging, for when our ships got 
back to where the islands should have been, our islands were 
gone entirely! The Western Islands had floated off with the 
Gulf Stream, and we stayed on that great merry-go-round for 
seven hundred and fifty years. 

As soon as the storm had blown itself out, our duke ordered 
every ship to be launched, to go to the mainland and beg for aid. 
This in itself turned out to be no easy feat, for to the 
wonderment of all, the very level of the sea had gone down six 
yards, and this was no mere freak tide. Indeed, as far as anyone 
could tell, there were no longer any tides at all! Our land area 
had increased considerably. But despite all the strangeness, 
some eighty ships were launched. Of these, only two returned, 
after great hardship and long voyaging, for when our ships got 
back to where the islands should have been, our islands were 
gone entirely! The Western Islands had floated off with the 
Gulf Stream, and we stayed on that great merry-go-round for 
seven hundred and fifty years. 

Well, we did, and fairly often at first, until we had the ocean 
currents thoroughly mapped. Once, we were hung up on the 
west coast of Ireland for three years. But the action of sea and 
tide eventually broke us free, which made us glad. You see, 
there were some very nice advantages to being adrift in the Gulf 
Stream, and the biggest of these was the weather. With a bit of 
coaxing, it was possible to spend the winters in the warm, 
southern latitudes, and the summers in the cool north. We 
found that we could easily get two and three crops a year from 
our fields. 

Excuse me, I said, But how do you go about 'coaxing' 
something as massive as these islands are, without any 
machines to speak of? 

There are ways. You can drop an anchor at one end of them 
and cause the rest to spin around. You can put down cloth sea 
anchors-rather like parachutes-into a lower ocean current, and 
pull yourself a bit in that direction. The currents below are not 
always the same as those above, you see. We've even used huge 
kites, on occasion. But no more of these digressions, or the 
tale will never come to an end. 

Another advantage to floating free was that our travels took 


us as far south as South America, along what would one day be 
known as the Spanish Main, and past Central America as well. 
There were still forests on our islands then, and we could still 
build fair-sized ships. With them, we could bring back still 
more timber. We still had a fair stock of metal tools to work 
with then, as well. We traded with the natives as much as we 
could, and picked up from them many interesting plants and 
animals, but no tobacco, more's the pity. Most of our dyes and 
medicines were acquired during this period, and of course, 
we've been improving on them ever since. We'd developed the 
rules of simple genetics in the third century, you see. Oh, 
nothing like the recombinant DNA work that has been going on 
in the last few years outside, but a few thousand years of careful 
selection and breeding can work wonders. 

us as far south as South America, along what would one day be 
known as the Spanish Main, and past Central America as well. 
There were still forests on our islands then, and we could still 
build fair-sized ships. With them, we could bring back still 
more timber. We still had a fair stock of metal tools to work 
with then, as well. We traded with the natives as much as we 
could, and picked up from them many interesting plants and 
animals, but no tobacco, more's the pity. Most of our dyes and 
medicines were acquired during this period, and of course, 
we've been improving on them ever since. We'd developed the 
rules of simple genetics in the third century, you see. Oh, 
nothing like the recombinant DNA work that has been going on 
in the last few years outside, but a few thousand years of careful 
selection and breeding can work wonders. 

I said, But how did you keep yourselves hidden? 

Why, we didn't even try to! Lots of people saw us. The 
legends of Ireland are full of sightings of our islands, and many 
a mariner and fisherman has gone home with tales to tell about 
us. The simple truth was that nobody believed them. There was 
no way for any of those people to substantiate what they saw. 
We were moving around, you see, and anytime anyone went out 
to find us again, we simply weren't there any more! People even 
went so far as to invent an optical illusion to explain what 
people who saw us thought they saw, the Fata Morgana. 

But the Atlantic Ocean is one of the most heavily traveled 
bodies of water in the world! Eventually, enough consistent 
sightings would convince people that you really existed, I said. 


So what? It is not as though we were actually trying to hide, 
after all. As long as no one sent an invasion fleet out after us, 
we really didn't care what the world thought about us. We 
merely wanted the world to leave us alone. Until around 1850, 
that is. Then it was that we realized the biological trap that we'd 
fallen into. You see, we'd picked up some shipwrecked sailors, 
and one of them had smallpox. It cost us a third of our 
population, even though we learned the accepted methods of 
treating it from one of the other castaways, who had been a 
ship's doctor. We simply had no immunity against the disease, 
nor, as it turned out, for any of the thousand other ills that 
mankind is heir to. 

So what? It is not as though we were actually trying to hide, 
after all. As long as no one sent an invasion fleet out after us, 
we really didn't care what the world thought about us. We 
merely wanted the world to leave us alone. Until around 1850, 
that is. Then it was that we realized the biological trap that we'd 
fallen into. You see, we'd picked up some shipwrecked sailors, 
and one of them had smallpox. It cost us a third of our 
population, even though we learned the accepted methods of 
treating it from one of the other castaways, who had been a 
ship's doctor. We simply had no immunity against the disease, 
nor, as it turned out, for any of the thousand other ills that 
mankind is heir to. 

Well, sir, when I first came in, I pegged you at about sixty, 
but I guess you must be a bit older than that, from what you 
say, I said. 

I'm much older than that. I was thirty-six when I crash-landed 
here. I wasn't regular aircrew at all, you see. I was in charge of 
aircraft electronics at my base, and when a radio operator got 
sick, and I got a chance to see something of the actual war, I 
jumped at it. Treet, you are looking at a ninety-two-year-old 
man. Clean, healthy living and the lack of disease can do 
wonders for you. The immune system takes a lot of one's vital 
energy to run, but mine hasn't had much work to do at all. But if 
I were to go back to Australia now, I likely wouldn't last the 
month out. Every disease that I hadn't gotten before would jump 
on me all at once, and that would be the end of me. 

So, as I was saying, in 1852, the wise men of the islands 
realized that we could no longer risk being discovered by the 
outside world. They held a major public debate about what to do 
about the situation, and the grand council decided to leave for a 
less populated part of the world's oceans. Together, we 
managed to steer the islands from the Gulf Stream south to the 


similar current in the South Atlantic. From there, it was south 
of the Cape of Good Hope, through the Roaring Forties, which 
by all accounts deserve their name, south of Australia and then 
north into the fairer climes of the South Pacific. It was a rough 
trip, but we made it, and it served us well for almost a hundred 
and fifty years. 

similar current in the South Atlantic. From there, it was south 
of the Cape of Good Hope, through the Roaring Forties, which 
by all accounts deserve their name, south of Australia and then 
north into the fairer climes of the South Pacific. It was a rough 
trip, but we made it, and it served us well for almost a hundred 
and fifty years. 

So now you need a way to keep your island hidden from 
satellite surveillance, I said. 

That would solve one of our problems, but not the other 
one. 

We were interrupted as a young woman came in wearing an 
abbreviated version of the warlock's robes. All of the other 
women's costumes I'd seen on the island had floor-length skirts, 
even when the bodice was cut as low as possible. This outfit 
exposed nothing below the neck, but the loose black smock 
ended just below the serving girl's crotch. 

Always been a leg man, myself, and my mother always said 
that a woman should never expose both ends at the same time, 
the warlock said. 

When I agreed that it would be a shame to cover up such 
attractive legs, the warlock nodded in agreement, and the young 
woman winked at me. I'd been impressed with the warlock's 
status before, but a man's having so much power that he could 


actually get the ladies to dress in a fashion that pleased him, 
well, it was a thing that was beyond all experience! 

actually get the ladies to dress in a fashion that pleased him, 
well, it was a thing that was beyond all experience! 

We weren't the only plane to crash here during the war, he 
explained. A Jap patrol plane pulled the same stunt, and one of 
their gunners turned out to be a pretty good cook. 

You were saying that you had yet another problem, I said. 

Right. You see, we're sinking. Over the centuries, water has 
been slowly working its way into the tiny gas bubbles that keep 
the place afloat. We've been able to compensate for this 
reduction in buoyancy by hollowing out all of the mountains 
above the water level, and by sinking shafts below it, again to 
reduce our weight, but as one of your songs has it, we've 'gone 
about as far as we can go.' And the coral buildup on the 
underside hasn't helped things a bit! 

Just how fast is it going down? 

We've sunk a foot in the last six years. In twelve more years, 
a major storm might be able to flood out some of our lower 
galleries, and that would bring on a total disaster. Do you see 
the spot we're in? We can't leave and we dare not stay! 

It can't be that bad. I don't know much about medical things, 
but I'm a hell of an engineer. Why don't you simply go down 
below the islands and scrape off the coral and the waterlogged 
featherrock? 

The islands draw more than half a mile, that's why, and 
there's a little problem with breathing down there! 

Going all the way down to the bottom might be a problem, 
but there has to be a lot of excess weight within a few hundred 
feet of the surface. Ever heard of a SCUBA rig? 

There have been a few scattered references to such a thing 
on the radio, but they weren't very clear, he admitted. 

SCUBA. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus. We 
have two of them with us, along with a compressor to pump up 


the tanks. You are welcome to them, and we'd be happy to teach 

the tanks. You are welcome to them, and we'd be happy to teach 

Marvelous! Can we start tomorrow? 

No reason why not. Also, while I'm not sure of all of your 
needs, there might be a lot of other things that we can help out 
with. 

That's the spirit, mate! Now then, before you go, could you 
explain to me some of this equipment you had on your boat? 

Which got us into a three-hour-long conversation, and this 
time with me doing all the talking. On parting, we agreed to 
meet the next morning down at the boat. 

TWENTY-ONE 

I got home to find that everyone else had started supper 
without me. As I caught up with the rest of them, I filled them in 
on my remarkable conversation with the warlock. 

So what they have is a very old, do-it-yourself scientific 
organization, with a little World War II technology thrown in. 
There isn't any magic at all, I said. 

But, you say that you are able to see hundreds of miles in the 
dark, that you can look down to the bottom of the ocean, and 
that you can hear people speak when they are on the other side 
of the world. If that isn't magic, I would very much like you to 
tell me just what is! Agnes said. 

With Americans, I guess that you could say that technology 
is something that we understand, and magic is something that 


we don't, I said. 

we don't, I said. 

Call it magic, if you want, Adam said. One word's as good 
as another, but 'magic' has two syllables and 'technology' has 
four. 

I suppose that the symbols themselves aren't important, but 
I'd still rather be called an engineer than a magician, I said. 
But tell me, Adam, how went your meeting with the 
archbishop? 

It was beautiful, he said, with a calm and glowing smile. I 
don't think that I've ever met so holy a man before in my entire 
life. They're Christians here, but it's a purer sort of Christianity 
than anything I've ever heard tell of. It's like they are all living 
by Christ's actual teaching rather than what a bunch of 
abstracted theologians have done with those few parts of it that 
they understood. There's . . . Aw, you wouldn't understand it, 
Treet, but there's sort of a joyful acceptance here of the beauty 
of God's world, with love being far more important than sin, and 
heaven being emphasized more than damnation. I don't think that 
these people even believe in Hell, or if they do, they aren't 
worried about it. It's like Christ is too nice a guy to do that to 
somebody. 

You almost sound as though you're ready to convert, I said. 
In fact, he sounded more like he had gone through the kind of 
brainwashing that the Chinese Communists always wanted to be 
able to do, but never could quite get down pat. But I couldn't tell 
him that. Trying to argue with a fanatic just hardens his resolve. 
All I could do was wait and see if he recovered. 

I might convert. I just might, once I've learned more. 
Anyway, I will be taking religious instruction from one of their 
priests, starting the day after tomorrow. 

I never thought that I'd see you giving up on being a 
Catholic. 

Maybe I'm not. Right now, I don't see why I have to stop 
being one thing in order to start being another. I don't know 


enough about this whole setup yet, but I intend to find out, and 
soon. 

enough about this whole setup yet, but I intend to find out, and 
soon. 

Okay, I said. There seems to be some sort of friction 
between the warlock and the archbishop, but the warlock didn't 
want to talk about it. Did the archbishop say anything 
enlightening? 

Some. There's a big faction in the church hierarchy that 
doesn't want to have anything to do with the outside world. They 
cite the problems that the warlock mentioned, you know, the 
problem with diseases and the fact that the island is slowly 
sinking, but those aren't the biggies with them. They're more 
worried about cultural inundation, only they don't call it that. 
They say the big problem with outside contact is that it would 
make the people here materialistic and sinful. That the people 
would leave the ways of their forefathers and pick up on an evil 
American lifestyle. 

You mean that the churchmen are worried about losing some 
of their influence, not to mention their cushy lifestyle, I said, 
and then noticed the shocked expressions on the faces of the 
servants and our ladies. 

A heathen like you might put it that way, Adam said in 
English. I think that they are worried about more spiritual 
matters. 

Whatever. So the church as a whole takes no great joy at our 
arrival here. 

I didn't say that, Adam said, switching the conversation back 
to Westronese. I said that there was a faction that was worried 
about us. There's another faction that looks forward to going 
out and converting the godless, so-called Christians in the rest 
of the world back to what Christ had in mind in the first place. 

I said, Doesn't sound like there's much we can or should do 
about it. 


True. Getting messed up in somebody else's politics is 
dumb. Our best shot is to try to prove to them that we're really 
very nice guys. 

True. Getting messed up in somebody else's politics is 
dumb. Our best shot is to try to prove to them that we're really 
very nice guys. 

Not when they need it as bad as they do. What's more, we 
got to start thinking about some kind of submarine, to really 
give the bottom a good scrape, and maybe rig some kind of 
additional flotation devices down there as well, some kind of 
big air bags or something. 

Makes sense. We also ought to think about donating some 
of our duplicate electronics stuff to them. All they know about 
the outside world, they're getting from some old AM and 
shortwave radios, and they can only keep them working about a 
quarter of the time, I said. 

I've been thinking about that, too. We don't really need the 
satellite stuff, or the solar cells, or the genset, for that matter. 
The televisions can go, as well as the VCR, the tapes, and the 
CD library. See, eventually, the Western Isles will have to be 
integrated in with the rest of the world. The archbishop doesn't 
like the idea, but I don't see how anybody can stop it from 
happening. And when it does happen, the Westronese had better 
know a lot more about the outside world than they do now. 
Some serious preparations are going to have to be made, and all 
the legal angles figured out. And it wouldn't hurt a bit if the 
people here all learned to speak English. I mean, it's the closest 
thing to a world language there is. 

You're figuring on making a pretty big commitment to these 
people? I said. 

Hey, Treet. We fell into something really big here, you 
know? I mean, most people spend most of their lives doing 
their jobs and trying to be decent and all, but never getting a 
chance to do anything really significant. Here, we've got a shot 
at doing something absolutely earthshaking. Something that can 
really make a difference in the world. I say we go for it! 
Anyway, you got anything better to do? 


I thought about it for a while, and you know, I really didn't 
have anything better to do. I leaned over to his couch so that I 
could shake his hand. Adam, you're right! Let's do the job, full 
bore and balls out! 

I thought about it for a while, and you know, I really didn't 
have anything better to do. I leaned over to his couch so that I 
could shake his hand. Adam, you're right! Let's do the job, full 
bore and balls out! 

The ladies weren't exactly sure of what had just happened, but 
they picked up on the way Adam and I were happy and confident, 
so they were happy, too. 

Roxanna and I didn't say much to each other through supper, 
and later, as we all had a few drinks, we just sort of held hands 
for a bit. Then, when it was time for bed, we went to her room 
as though it was the most natural thing in the world, as if we 
were an old, married couple who had done this a thousand times 
before. The night was calm, wondrous, and lovely, and when I 
awoke the next morning, I found that I was thinking of myself as 
a married man again. For the first time in years, I felt a lovely, 
warm, confident glow. The dark, empty depression that had 
plagued me for over a year was totally, absolutely gone and 
buried. 

Roxanna, let's get married. 

My lord. You pick the strangest times to say things! 

What? I mean, you don't want to? 

I didn't say that. It's just that you must learn to do things 
properly, and proposing matrimony while lying naked in a lady's 
bed is not the way it is done! 

All right, all right. Forgive my ignorance, but it's all your 
fault. You are supposed to be my instructor, after all, and if I 
wasn't told something that I should have known, it's not my 
doing. In my country, the typical lady would have at least kissed 
me for the biggest compliment that a man can give to a woman, 
even if she was going to turn him down. 

She kissed me, and lingered at it. 

There. I trust that your customs are now satisfied. Now then, 
to satisfy mine, you must first approach me when we both are 
fully dressed, and before witnesses. You must go down on one 


knee, you must accurately describe both your affections and 
your financial situation, and you must ask my permission to 
speak to my father. If I give it, and if you then talk to him, and if 
he gives you his formal permission, then you may put your 
proposal to me, but not before. End of lesson. 

knee, you must accurately describe both your affections and 
your financial situation, and you must ask my permission to 
speak to my father. If I give it, and if you then talk to him, and if 
he gives you his formal permission, then you may put your 
proposal to me, but not before. End of lesson. 

Yes. You should spend a lot more time thinking the whole 
matter out. Talk it over with your good friend, Adam. I think that 
he might be wiser than you. 

I should have been smart enough to keep my mouth shut at 
this point, but I wasn't. 

You think that Adam is smarter than I am? I asked. That his 
IQ is higher than mine? 

That put Roxanna off on another one of her long lectures. 

Again, that's not what I said. From what you've told me, your 
people seem to measure mental abilities along a single 
dimension. Here, we use three dimensions, and after testing, we 
place an individual's mental abilities within a three dimensional 
solid, rather than along a straight line, as is your people's 
custom. 

The horizontal X-axis is graduated to display education, with 
ignorance at the left and learnedness at the right. Education is 
what can be taught in school. One's position on that axis 
indicates how much one has actually learned. 

The vertical Y-axis is for innate problem solving ability, 
with stupidity at the bottom and intelligence at the top. This 
faculty is controlled by one's genetics, although severe 
environmental factors can sometimes degrade it. It cannot be 
taught. 

The Z-axis is used to display the ability to make appropriate 
actions at the appropriate time, with foolishness at the far side 
of the cube, and wisdom towards the viewer. The nature of 
wisdom is much debated among our educators, since it above 
all else is what we humans strive for in the mundane world. 


Suffice it to say that each of these three is independent of 
the others. People exist with every possible combination of 
these attributes. There are no blank places in the cube. It is 
quite possible, for example, to be wise while also being stupid 
and ignorant. The traditional old peasant was often like that. The 
teachers of higher education are sometimes intelligent and 
learned while still being foolish. 

Suffice it to say that each of these three is independent of 
the others. People exist with every possible combination of 
these attributes. There are no blank places in the cube. It is 
quite possible, for example, to be wise while also being stupid 
and ignorant. The traditional old peasant was often like that. The 
teachers of higher education are sometimes intelligent and 
learned while still being foolish. 

The whole situation had gotten about as unromantic as it 
could get, and I found myself thinking that maybe she was right, 
maybe I was rushing things. And maybe I was getting myself 
involved with a rather cold fish. Only there had been nothing 
frigid about her the night before! 

I think that I must have dozed off for a bit, because when I 
woke up again, I was alone. When I got to the balcony that we 
used for breakfast, the maid told me that Adam and his ladies 
had already eaten. He and his bearers were at the boat, and 
Maria and Agnes were out looking for an apartment closer to 
the warehouse than their home was. 

Roxanna didn't show up, and I ate alone. 

TWENTY-TWO 

Arriving at the warehouse where our ship was stored, I found 
Adam directing his workers in further disassembling the ship. 
They were laboriously chipping out the plastic that had been 
poured around the ship's batteries, down next to the keel. Adam 


felt that if we were going to give the warlock the solar cells, 
we'd better give him most of the batteries as well. 

felt that if we were going to give the warlock the solar cells, 
we'd better give him most of the batteries as well. 

Right, I said. We don't need battery acid all over the place, 
or wrecked batteries, either. 

I climbed up into the hull, which was still on its side, and 
checked out what the men were doing. It was slow going, but 
they had gotten down to the batteries in two places, and were 
carefully working around them. I got back out. 

Looks fine to me. You figure on giving the warlock all of 
them? 

All but two, and we'll need the starter battery for the engine. 
That's all we really need to run her, and the electronics. Without 
the solar cells and the genset, we'll have to fire up the engine 
every other day, but what the heck. I figure that we'll only be 
shuttling between here and South America, and that's less than a 
few thousand miles. 

Makes sense. What about the prop-shaft generator? Won't 
that help? 

I was thinking that by hooking that generator up to some 
wooden blades that could be made locally, we could rig up a 
windmill and put it on top of the mountain here. With enough 
wind, it could probably make more juice than the solar cell 
array. 

Why not? We can replace it all in Lima, anyway, I said. 

Right. Now then, there's one little job that you're going to 
have to handle alone, since I'm wracked up and I'd rather that 
nobody else knew about it. 

What's that? 

The arsenal. It's encapsulated just forward of the batteries. 

I stopped and stared at him for a bit. You never told me we 
had an arsenal on board. Why do you have it, and why didn't you 


tell me about it? Just what do you have in there that had to be 
kept so secret? 

tell me about it? Just what do you have in there that had to be 
kept so secret? 

If I'd wanted to kill myself, I could have jumped overboard 
any night. 

I know, and if I coulda hid the ocean, I woulda done it. The 
guns I could just not talk about. 

All right, and I suppose I owe you my thanks. But for now, 
just what exactly do you have buried over the keel up by the 
stem? 

Two of everything I thought we might need. There are some 
Remington autoloading 30-06s with Leopold scopes, for hitting 
something hard when you don't want to get near it. Some 
Remington 12-gauge autoloading shotguns, for blowing it away 
if it's up close. Some Remington Nylon 66 .22 caliber plinking 
guns, with scopes, for target practice and small game. Some 
Browning 9mm Hi Power automatic pistols, purely for 
self-defense. Some Ruger .22 caliber plinking pistols, for just 
screwing around with, and some Street Sweepers, for when 
we're not screwing around. All the guns are made out of 
stainless steel and plastic, so corrosion won't ever be a 
problem. There's two thousand rounds of each kind of ammo, 


except for the .22 long rifle. We got twenty thousand rounds of 
that, plus cleaning equipment, spare clips, belts, holsters, some 
knives, and other accessories. It's a good little arsenal. 

except for the .22 long rifle. We got twenty thousand rounds of 
that, plus cleaning equipment, spare clips, belts, holsters, some 
knives, and other accessories. It's a good little arsenal. 

It's a 12-gauge autoloading shotgun with a twenty-five-round 
drum magazine. It has a collapsible stock and a shoulder sling 
like what you use with a submachine gun. It has a minimal legal 
length barrel, and a flashlight that mounts on top where you'd 
think a scope would go. Where the spot shows is where your 
shot pattern hits. I thought they would be nice to have if we ever 
had to stand guard duty. 

What? No Uzis, assault rifles, or grenade launchers? I said 
facetiously. 

The Uzi is a very overrated weapon. It's as big as a real gun 
but it only fires puny pistol ammo. As to assault rifles, I think 
that the army went over to those .223 caliber M-16s because 
militarily, you're better off wounding an enemy than killing 
him. After all, you wound a man and they have to dedicate three 
medics to haul him away and take care of him. It's that or 
getting a hell of a morale problem when they start abandoning 
their own injured. Wounding an enemy takes four of them out 
of the fight, but if you kill him, he's just one more dead martyr. 
But I don't ever plan on fighting an army, and if I ever have to 
shoot somebody, I want him dead! Grenades? They're illegal and 
way too dangerous. If we had explosives aboard, somebody 
would likely drop one, and blow a hole in the bottom of the boat 
and us, too. 

Thank God for small favors. 

You shouldn't say things like that unless you mean it. 
Anyway, we are among a bunch of very peaceable people here, 
and I think the guns would make a bad impression. I'd hate to 
have to throw them away, so I figure to just hide them 
somewhere. 

Why not just leave them where they are? 

Because it's three hundred more pounds that could be cargo, 
each way, every trip. 


Whatever you say. I think that it was stupid to have them in 
the first place. Anybody we'd have to defend ourselves against 
would know so much more about that kind of fighting than we 
do, that shooting back at them would just get us killed quicker. I 
mean, I used to be pretty good at Karate, and I've always had the 
feeling that you were something of a street fighter when you 
were a kid. If it came to trouble, we could probably make a 
good showing for ourselves with our fists and our feet. But with 
firearms, we'd be flat outclassed. 

Whatever you say. I think that it was stupid to have them in 
the first place. Anybody we'd have to defend ourselves against 
would know so much more about that kind of fighting than we 
do, that shooting back at them would just get us killed quicker. I 
mean, I used to be pretty good at Karate, and I've always had the 
feeling that you were something of a street fighter when you 
were a kid. If it came to trouble, we could probably make a 
good showing for ourselves with our fists and our feet. But with 
firearms, we'd be flat outclassed. 

So how do I get the arsenal out of the boat without taking 
five hours to chip it out of the plastic? I mean, I know you, so I 
know you wouldn't put something like guns someplace where 
we couldn't get at them if they were needed in a hurry. 

Well, chipping would work, and it would only take a half 
hour or so, even if you had to be quiet about it. Or there are the 
explosive squibs. 

I figured as much. 

A squib is sort of a hydraulic cylinder that uses a powder 
charge to move the piston. They work fine. Once. There's an 
engineering joke about a new military quality-control 
specification for squibs. They required one hundred percent 
testing. That's funny when you say it in Engineerese. 

Yeah, well, if you want to blow the squibs, there's a 
screwdriver in a clip right near the stem. Next to it, there's a 
screw that's just barely covered with clear plastic. Clean out the 
slot in the screw and then twist it ninety degrees clockwise, like 
you were driving it farther in. Ten seconds later, the guns 
should pop up nice and easy. 

Okay, I'll do it while everybody else is at lunch. What 
happens if I turn it the other way? 

You expected a booby trap, maybe? Nope. Not when I could 
be the one to get boobied. But the screw will come off and you 
won't be able to get it back on again. 


TWENTY-THREE 

TWENTY-THREE 

The meeting of the two rivals took place on the nearest 
thing they had to neutral territory that was secure from 
public notice, the rectory of the Monastery of St. Thomas 
the Doubter. Although the monks here constituted a 
religious order, as part of the Regular Clergy, they were 
completely independent and not subordinate to the 
archbishop's Secular Clergy. Furthermore, the Order of 
St. Thomas the Doubter spends most of its efforts on 
scientific research, much of it in coordination with the 
wizards. 

Ah, Thomas! It is so delightful to see you again! the 
archbishop said, with not a trace of insincerity in his 
well- trained voice. He sat down at the stone table, 
opposite the warlock, in the otherwise empty room. 

The feeling is completely mutual, I assure you, 
Phillias, the warlock said, smiling. I feel that we need 
to talk with regard to our recently rescued castaways. 
They will soon be helping us with the sinking problem, 
and it would be good if we could coordinate our 


programs, so as to cause as little confusion as possible 
among our respective subordinates and the people at 
large. 

programs, so as to cause as little confusion as possible 
among our respective subordinates and the people at 
large. 

Well, your priests have their pulpits, Phillias. When 
it comes to influencing the masses, you are far stronger 
than I. As to the duke, well, he seeks the counsel of 
many, of course, but makes his mind up for himself. And 
while I don't want to be a spreader of false hope, you 
know as well as I that our guests have access to the new 
technology that has recently been developed out there. 
They seem willing and able to assist us in solving many 
of our problems, major as well as minor. 

The major problems that I am concerned with are 
the bringing of the diseases of the outside world to the 
bodies of the people of our islands, and the bringing of 
its many unholy ideas to their minds. We do not need the 
outsiders' help to alleviate these problems. They 
themselves are the problems. 

That seems unduly harsh, Phillias. They seem to be 
decent enough sorts. Isn't one of them taking religious 
instruction from your people already? 

Well, we could hardly decline such a request. Yet still 
it remains that the best help they could possibly give us 
would be for them to cease to exist. Then I could get on 
with my proper work of saving people's souls. 

We have survived diseases a hundred times before, 


Phillias, and since our faith is strong, you need not fear 
that any other belief will supplant it. But you cannot 
save souls unless the bodies they inhabit are alive! I 
have told you again and again that the featherrock the 
island is made out of is slowly getting waterlogged! In 
the past, we were able to compensate for our loss in 
buoyancy by enlarging and extending the tunnels we 
have inside, especially those below the waterline, but it 
is getting to the point that further digging will begin to 
destroy the island's structural integrity, weaken it until a 
major storm could crack us in half. 

Phillias, and since our faith is strong, you need not fear 
that any other belief will supplant it. But you cannot 
save souls unless the bodies they inhabit are alive! I 
have told you again and again that the featherrock the 
island is made out of is slowly getting waterlogged! In 
the past, we were able to compensate for our loss in 
buoyancy by enlarging and extending the tunnels we 
have inside, especially those below the waterline, but it 
is getting to the point that further digging will begin to 
destroy the island's structural integrity, weaken it until a 
major storm could crack us in half. 

Changing tactics, the warlock said, Has it occurred 
to you that this is the only place on earth where our 
particular variety of Christianity is practiced, 
Archbishop? That if the Western Islands are lost, your 
religion will be lost along with everything else that we 
have here? 

You are such an alarmist, Warlock. If the tunneling 
that your men are doing is weakening the island, then 
by all means bid them to stop doing it! Surely that's 
simple enough for even you to understand! The islands 
have been afloat for a thousand years, and all previous 
warlocks were competent enough to keep them thus. The 
end of our world will not happen this afternoon. 

Perhaps not this afternoon, Your Excellency, but it 
could well happen this decade, or even this year. As to 
stopping the digging, the waves now lap to within three 
yards of the main entrances of the island. If sea water 


ever started to flow in with any large volume, it would 
flood the lower galleries, and the island would promptly 
sink. Call me an alarmist if you wish, Your Excellency, 
but I definitely prefer being a living alarmist to being a 
dead nitwit! 

ever started to flow in with any large volume, it would 
flood the lower galleries, and the island would promptly 
sink. Call me an alarmist if you wish, Your Excellency, 
but I definitely prefer being a living alarmist to being a 
dead nitwit! 

And you are as bone-headed, as self-seeking, and as 
stupid as you've always been, Archbishop! You'd be a 
laughable clown, if you didn't have the power to get us 
all killed! The warlock was standing, glowering at his 
adversary. 

All conversation with you is a waste of God's good 
time, the archbishop pontificated, standing and 
leaving by the nearest exit. 

* * * 

The warlock arrived with his entourage, some two dozen 
people. 

Our workers stopped what they were doing and bowed to him, 
so I thought it would be a good idea to do the same. Adam did 
the best he could from his sedan chair. 

Thanks, mates, the warlock said in English. That sort of 
thing isn't necessary when we're alone, but it helps keep up 
appearances when in public. My, this is a fine-looking craft you 
have here. I understand that you built it yourselves. 

Not exactly, my lord, Adam said. I directed our workers in 
the construction of The Brick Royal. 

That's about what I meant, the warlock said, switching back 
to Westronese for the benefit of his entourage. I've brought six 
apprentices with me who are particularly good swimmers. I'd 
like to have them start cleaning off the coral and waterlogged 
featherrock as soon as possible, so if you would be so kind as 
to show us these SCUBA rigs you mentioned, we can get on 


with it. 

with it. 

That would be excellent. 

In a few minutes, the tanks, weights, masks, flippers, depth 
gauges, and other paraphernalia were gathered up and put in 
front of the sedan chair, and Adam was talking to a rapt 
audience. After a half an hour or so, the warlock was starting to 
look a bit bored, so I took him aside to talk with him about the 
master plan Adam and I had started working on the night before. 

My lord, we've started to develop a plan that would let us 
help you and your people out of your current difficulties. 
Talking with you yesterday, you mentioned the problem of the 
Island's sinking, and the problem of the way your people don't 
have immune systems ready to fight off modern diseases. 

Well, we're starting work on the first problem this very 
minute, with the SCUBA rigs. Also, we have aboard a dozen or 
so snorkle outfits, which are simpler. They consist of nothing 
but a pair of flippers, a face mask, and a short breathing tube, 
and they're normally used for fishing and sightseeing near the 
surface. We've got the compressor and a few hundred feet of 
hose around, and between them, we think we can cobble up 
some system that will let another dozen men work under water, 
but not very deep. Still, any weight removed from the island is 
to the good, so it won't hurt at all to get to the easiest stuff first. 
We plan on making a number of trips back to the outside world, 
and one of the first things we plan to bring back will be a larger 
compressor, one that could support perhaps a hundred workers, 
down to about one hundred feet. Some time later, perhaps we 
can come up with some sort of machine to give the bottom of 
the island a proper scraping, since our preliminary estimates 
make it look as though putting in some sort of additional 
flotation would not be cost effective. Nonetheless, the work we 


do now will gain us time. 

do now will gain us time. 

As to the medical problem, well, as I said, neither of us is a 
doctor. But we can get one. When we get to the mainland, we 
can find a good immunologist, or whatever what we need is 
called, and hire him, or her. These islands are such a wonder 
that I don't think we'll have any problems keeping him once he's 
here. Also, thinking about it, we don't think that the problem 
here is either as bad or as unique as you have made it out to be. 
After all, isolated jungle tribes turn up every now and then in 
the Amazon or New Guinea, and they don't all die the first time 
a missionary shows up. To be sure, in the long run, the 
population of these tribes does go down, but for the most part 
those natives don't get proper medical attention, and we will see 
to it that your people do. 

I see. Well, you realize that I don't have the final say about 
all of this, but so far, I'm impressed. Go on, please, he said. 

Adam and I both feel that the eventual joining of your 
culture with that of the outside world is inevitable. It's going to 
happen, whether anybody wants it to happen or not. It would be 
better if it was put off as long as possible, but at the same time, 
you'd better start preparing for that eventuality right now. The 
first step is cultural. We have to teach your people about the 
outside world. For a start, we've got a VCR and a tape library 
here. That's sort of like a movie projector and a lot of movies. 
I'll set it up sometime in the next few days, and show it to you. I 
think you'll love it, and since our tapes are all in English, it 
should encourage your people to learn what is becoming the 
world language. We would like to see you start some formal 
classroom courses in English as well. 

Yes, I don't see why that can't be done, the warlock said. 

Some legal preparations ought to be made. I don't know what 
this will entail, exactly, but when the world discovers you, we'd 
better have all the legal angles covered. I mean, twelve thousand 
is a very small population for an independent nation in this 
world. Possibly you might be best off being under the 


protection of some larger power. A number of small nations are 
currently doing this, and without exception, they are better off 
for it. Nauru, for example, is under the protection of Australia. 
Monaco has an arrangement with France, and San Marino is 
somehow connected with Italy. I don't know what Liechtenstein 
and Andorra do, but I can find out. All of these countries have 
populations of about your size. 

protection of some larger power. A number of small nations are 
currently doing this, and without exception, they are better off 
for it. Nauru, for example, is under the protection of Australia. 
Monaco has an arrangement with France, and San Marino is 
somehow connected with Italy. I don't know what Liechtenstein 
and Andorra do, but I can find out. All of these countries have 
populations of about your size. 

Then there is the welfare of your people. Your country is 
currently doing a number of things that I'm sure that most of 
you wish it didn't have to do, simply because you have more 
people than you have land. I'm talking about such draconian 
measurers as sterilizing people who have been servants for two 
generations, for example. With trade, we can easily solve these 
problems. Consider. The current price for grain on the Chicago 
market runs between three and seven cents a pound, depending 
on which grain we're talking about. I think that we could sell that 
high- strength fiber of yours for at least fifty dollars a pound. In 
terms of vegetable mass, that's a ratio of something like a 
thousand to one. One pound of fiber for a thousand pounds of 
grain. You've got the room to house a far larger population than 
you have, and with trade, you can feed them better than you ever 
have before. Besides food, there are a thousand other products 
that you could use. I'll bet that some chemical fertilizers would 
do wonders for your crop yields. Electric lights would give you 
three or four more hours a day to enjoy yourselves in, and they 
are a lot healthier than breathing the fumes of smoky oil lamps, 
too. Not to mention obvious things like good steel tools, as 
well as some sort of transportation devices. Heck, a 
wheelbarrow would triple the productivity of your porters, and 
some very simple farm machinery could vastly multiply the 
work your gardeners get done. Do you realize that in the United 
States, which is the world's largest food exporter, less than 
three percent of the population works on the land? 


Interesting, mate, but I'm not sure that we should become 
just another one of your 'modern countries,' he said. 

Interesting, mate, but I'm not sure that we should become 
just another one of your 'modern countries,' he said. 

I'm delighted to see that the two of you are taking our 
welfare so much to heart. While I'm sure that you are very 
generous men, still I expect that you will want more than just a 
handshake for all of this. What is it you want in return? 

We want two things. The first is a monopoly on the trade 
between your islands and the outside world, with this monopoly 
to last until at least ten years after the Western Isles have been 
discovered by the outside world. The advantages to you are that 
we will be doing our darnedest to keep you a secret for as long 
as possible, and that through us, you will be able to control 
exactly what comes in and what goes out. The second thing we 
want is money. We propose that we will bring in anything that 
you want on an item cost plus transportation cost basis. We will 
sell any of your products for all that we can get, and keep 
twenty-five percent of the selling price for ourselves. We 
suggest that the duke should take fifty percent of that selling 
price and use the money for improvements on the islands, and 
that the producer of the product get the remaining twenty-five 
percent. Thus, if, say, two pounds of fiber were to sell for one 
hundred dollars, then we would get twenty-five dollars, the duke 
fifty, and the producer twenty-five. Since the producer could 
then buy five hundred pounds of grain with his money, he won't 
be hurt by the transaction. 

And you won't make any profit on what you sell to us? he 
asked. 

We would charge you only for our actual costs in purchasing 
it and getting it here. Our books will be open to you. We will 
provide you with the manufacturer's catalogs and price lists on 


any product that you might want to buy, so you'll know that 
you're not being cheated. Since we will be making our profit 
only on what we sell, you can be sure that we will try to get the 
best prices possible for your products, and since we want you 
to produce as much as possible for us to sell, we will want your 
people to need money, and thus we will be trying to get them to 
buy as much as possible from the world outside. It's as fair a 
deal as we could come up with. Also, Adam and I plan to live 
here as much as we can, and so much of our profits will be 
spent right here, with the money going right back into your 
economy. 

any product that you might want to buy, so you'll know that 
you're not being cheated. Since we will be making our profit 
only on what we sell, you can be sure that we will try to get the 
best prices possible for your products, and since we want you 
to produce as much as possible for us to sell, we will want your 
people to need money, and thus we will be trying to get them to 
buy as much as possible from the world outside. It's as fair a 
deal as we could come up with. Also, Adam and I plan to live 
here as much as we can, and so much of our profits will be 
spent right here, with the money going right back into your 
economy. 

Well, we must get the boat repaired. That will take a few 
weeks, but then it would be best if we let the patch cure for at 
least two months, to harden properly. During that time, there 
will be plenty of mechanical and electrical things to keep us 
busy. After that, it will be another week before she is ready for 
sea. While all that is happening, I think that I should spend much 
of my time doing an inventory of the local products available 
here on the Western Isles. We've talked about your amazing 
high-strength fibers, but I'm sure that you have many other 
things that would be of interest to the outside world. 

Good. That will give me perhaps three months to work on 
the duke and, more importantly, the archbishop. As to 
familiarizing you with the state of our technology, I will arrange 
for you to have a technically competent guide to show you the 
island, and to take you through our various horticultural and 
animal husbandry research facilities. Perhaps we can schedule 
it in a few days. But for now, it looks as though your good 
ladies have a lunch prepared for us, so I think that we should 
oblige them. 

Agreed, my lord. One last thing. You might want to mention 
to your friends that it would be a profitable idea to plant as 


much of your high-strength hemp as possible. Adam and I will 
be putting our entire fields in hemp, and buying such food as we 
need. 

much of your high-strength hemp as possible. Adam and I will 
be putting our entire fields in hemp, and buying such food as we 
need. 

Indeed, while I had been talking with the warlock, Roxanna 
and the Pelitier sisters had arrived. They had set up an 
American-style banquet table, and were loading it with food. 
The fine ladies here took pride in taking good care of their men. 

The table was filled with the usual Western Islands fare, but 
as a treat for our guests, I broke out some of our supply of 
foreign delicacies, such as canned sardines, Hershey bars, and 
Spam. Again, Spam was a major hit, so I passed out cans of the 
stuff for people to take home with them. Adam must have 
gotten that canned pork fat cheap, since we had cases of the 
greasy stuff. I never could stand it, myself. I found the case of 
Foster's I'd mentioned to the warlock, and gave him one of the 
oversized cans. 

It's warm, I'm afraid, but then you Brits like your beer warm, 
don't you? 

First off, mate, I'm not a Brit. I'm an Aussie. Second, while 
there are some British ales that are better served at room 
temperature, Foster's is a lager, and is best served chilled. 
Switching back to Westronese, he said, Page! Run these off to 
one of the nearest cold shafts, won't you? And the rest of you, 
take some of these other beers and wines there as well. 


As the men went to the door with cases of beer and wine, I 
said, A cold shaft, my lord? What's that all about? 

As the men went to the door with cases of beer and wine, I 
said, A cold shaft, my lord? What's that all about? 

That's quite a system, Adam said. But you're cooling down 
the air and then moving it up. That requires external power. How 
are you doing it? 

The water is raised by the ramming force of the winds and 
water currents around us. In general, we are moving with the 
ocean currents, of course, but wind and chance make for some 
slight differentials. The water taken in isn't warmed very much, 
so its density isn't very different going up or going down. Only 
friction has to be paid for, and that's kept small by the large size 
of the tunnels. 

As to the air currents, well, on the ocean there's generally a 
wind about, and there are tunnels all about the islands with 
shutters on them that let air in, but not out. To get back out, the 
air must flow over the cool ponds before it can come out 
through someone's house. This cools only the leeward half of 
the islands, of course, but we see to it that the islands turn fairly 


often. The stone they're made of has a lot of thermal mass, so 
being without cooling for a day or two isn't noticed. We have to 
be in a dead calm for a week before it gets uncomfortable 
around here, and that's a very rare event. Come visit my office 
and I'll show you a diagram of the system. 

often. The stone they're made of has a lot of thermal mass, so 
being without cooling for a day or two isn't noticed. We have to 
be in a dead calm for a week before it gets uncomfortable 
around here, and that's a very rare event. Come visit my office 
and I'll show you a diagram of the system. 

There's another thing that's bothering me, I said. I can see 
how they could dig tunnels down to below sea level, so long as 
there wasn't any water in them. But how did they mine their way 
through to the ocean without drowning the workers? 

They used gunpowder to blast their way out. We've had 
gunpowder here since the fourth century. How else do you 
think that a bunch of peaceful farmers and scholars could have 
beaten off three major Viking raids? the Australian warlock 
said. 

I'm surprised that I never heard of any legends of such a 
battle. 

That's simple enough. We don't write songs about killing 
people, and the Vikings didn't live long enough to sing about it! 

After the meal, it was decided that the smaller cans of 
Budweiser were cool enough to drink, and the party settled back 
for a while. I figured that this would be a good time to do 
something about the stupid arsenal that Adam had hidden 
aboard. 

Excusing myself, I climbed up into the boat, and used a 
ten-foot ladder to get from the hull wall up to the keel. I found 
the screwdriver and the screw that Adam had talked about. I had 
only used a squib once before, but I knew that despite the fact 
that they were powered by an explosive charge, one going off 
really isn't much of an explosion. It's more like a fast, strong 
push, and they are not all that noisy when they are used 
properly. This was one of Adam's engineering jobs, so I wasn't 
worried about bothering anyone in the least. I cleared the 
encapsulating plastic from the screw, inserted the driver and 


gave it the clockwise twist that would energize the squibs. 

gave it the clockwise twist that would energize the squibs. 

I spent a few moments wondering if both my legs were 
broken before everyone started crowding into the hull of the 
ship. So much for secrecy. The warlock was the first one to get 
to me. 

Are you all right? Try wiggling your toes, he said as he 
removed rifles and boxes of ammo from my battered body. 

I seem to be all right, my lord. More damage to my pride 
than anything else. 

Good. I'd hate to lose you. What are all these guns for? 

They were Adam's idea. I didn't know about them until today. 
He was worried that we might run into some rough characters 
on the high seas, and, well, better safe than sorry, you know? 
But now, since we are in civilized company, we thought that it 
might be best if we just hid them somewhere, so as not to give 
you the wrong impression of us. 

I see, he said, pulling the case from a shotgun. This is quite 
a beauty! Chrome plated? 

Stainless steel. They all are. Please understand that all of 
these weapons are legal back where we come from. There are 
no machine guns or heavy explosives. 

Right. Well, if you were just going to store them 
somewhere, how about if I took care of that for you? We could 
put them in the duke's arsenal with the rest of the weapons. 

The duke's arsenal? 

Yes. It's mostly just a bunch of interesting antiques, but all 
of the machine guns and ammunition from my old B-17 and the 
Jap plane are there as well. We haven't had any need for such 
things here, of course, but waste not, want not, you know. 


My lord, we would be delighted if you would take these 
embarrassing things away and store them properly. 

My lord, we would be delighted if you would take these 
embarrassing things away and store them properly. 

The one time you really screw up an engineering job, and it 
has to be with a truckload of guns in front of the number two 
man on the whole island! Damn you, Adam! 

Yeah, well, your timing could have been a bit better, you 
know. Why did you have to do it when everybody was here? 

We agreed that I should do it during lunch. 

That was before we knew who else would be here eating with 
us. You should have thought it out better. Anyway, it's all 
worked out just fine. The guns are gone, and maybe we can 
make the duke a gift of them. I mean, if he keeps an arsenal, he 
must like guns. Most guys do, you know, Adam said. 

All right. So why did your squibs overreact? 

I'd sized them to lift the cases straight up, boss. I forgot that 
with the boat sideways, no lifting was necessary, and the 
resultant extra energy had to go someplace. In your lap, as it 
turned out. 

Grumble. 

Some time later, the warlock was getting ready to leave. 

My lord, I said. One thing you might want to do is to start 
writing up a wish list, things that you would like us to buy for 
you once we get to the mainland. And you might suggest to the 
archbishop that he write up such a list as well. 

A clever thought, that. If he gets his mind going on what he 
wants you to bring back, he might forget that he was against 
your going in the first place! Oh, yes. What did you want done 
with all of your electronic equipment that is up in my 
chambers? Shall I have my people bring it down here to you? 

Adam and I have talked that over, my lord, and we've decided 
to give you everything that is not essential to running the ship. 
Perhaps I could come up there tomorrow, and we could sort 
through it together. 

Uh, Treet? Tomorrow is not a good day. They're taking my 


casts off tomorrow, and somebody is going to have to take the 
boys swimming, Adam said. 

casts off tomorrow, and somebody is going to have to take the 
boys swimming, Adam said. 

Despite my new bruises, I got home feeling that it had been a 
profitable day. We were well launched on what I felt sure was to 
be the most profitable and worthwhile business venture of my 
life, and it was certain to be the most interesting. At dinner, 
Adam and the ladies were equally enthused. Roxanna was intent 
on learning English, with the hope that the duke would give her 
permission to join us on the voyage to South America. Maria 
and Agnes soon joined in with her plans, and the meal turned 
itself into an impromptu language lesson. It was late when we 
turned in. After Roxanna's rejection of my methods of proposal 
that morning, I was afraid that I would have to go back to 
sleeping alone. 

Luck was still with me, though, and Roxanna had returned to 
being her loving self. 

TWENTY-FIVE 

After breakfast, I went down to the warehouse and found four 
of the warlock's apprentices waiting for their first swim with a 
SCUBA rig. Some of them might have been waiting there for an 
hour, but ten minutes went by before the last two straggled in. 


It wasn't as though these were slovenly or recalcitrant 
students. They were all enthusiastic and eager to learn. They 
were being as prompt as they had ever been, for anybody or 
anything. It was simply that there was no such thing as a clock 
or watch on the entire island. They couldn't get there on time 
because they didn't have the slightest idea of what time it was! 

It wasn't as though these were slovenly or recalcitrant 
students. They were all enthusiastic and eager to learn. They 
were being as prompt as they had ever been, for anybody or 
anything. It was simply that there was no such thing as a clock 
or watch on the entire island. They couldn't get there on time 
because they didn't have the slightest idea of what time it was! 

Wrist watches. Our first cargo back had to contain at least a 
thousand wrist watches. 

Because of the sharpness of both the coral and the underlying 
featherrock, it was customary for these people to swim fully 
clothed, even to wearing thin socks and gloves. Their swimsuits 
looked like long winter underwear, but they were made of the 
same incredible fiber that all their other clothes were made of. 
That is to say, they were not only coral proof, and featherrock 
proof, but they were probably bulletproof as well. 

We gathered up the SCUBA equipment, as well as the 
snorkeling stuff, and headed for Avalon Bay. On arrival, I 
discovered that the air tanks were empty. As a safety measure, 
Adam must have drained them after the last time we used them, 
back in the Caribbean Sea. 

I decided that some snorkeling practice should be held first. I 
was starting them out with the snorkeling rigs to get them used 
to flippers and face masks, and to being under water, I said. 
They loved it. 

They'd been swimming all their lives, but without goggles or 
a face mask, you can't see anything down there but a fuzzy blur. 
Water has about the same index of refraction as the cornea of 
your eye, and with no air gap in front of it, your eye's optics 


simply don't work properly. 

simply don't work properly. 

There was much to see. The structure of the island went 
entirely under the bay, such that the average depth was about 
thirty feet. While I'm no marine biologist, I'm sure that I saw 
both Atlantic and Pacific varieties of fishes there. The Bay of 
Avalon was as rich with sea life as any coral reef I'd ever seen 
on television, and it was totally unpolluted. Magnificent! 

Unfortunately, this marvelous coral structure was just what 
was sinking the islands, and threatening to kill everything, 
including the coral itself. After all, if the island did sink, the 
coral and most of its attendant sea life would be at the bottom 
of the Pacific Ocean, where it couldn't live any more than I 
could. Yet clearing the lagoon out down to the featherrock 
seemed like a crime. 

In the end, I resolved to start chipping at the edge of the 
island, where the rock cliffs dropped sheer down into the 
nothingness that was below. And in truth, it would be much 
easier, per pound, to simply break loose the coral and 
waterlogged rock, and let them fall to the ocean bottom, than to 
have to put what we'd loosened on some sort of raft and haul 
that raft off to the edge of the lagoon for dumping. 

It made me feel much better to have a sound, engineering 
reason for doing what I wanted to do in the first place. There 
was plenty of other weight elsewhere to get rid of, and maybe 
someday I could get the warlock down here and convince him 
that the bay should be set aside as a nature preserve. Maybe. 

At lunch time, as we had arranged, Roxanna had a meal set up 
for us on the small beach by the bay. As we ate, she talked to 
the boys about the advantages of learning English, and it turned 
out that half of them already had at least a smattering of the 
language. By the end of the meal, it was decreed that all 
instruction would henceforth be given in my native language 
rather than theirs. 


The old saw about not going swimming for an hour after 
eating, because of the danger of stomach cramps, is nothing but 
a stupid old wives' tale. In the first place, unless you've eaten 
something that has given you ptomaine poisoning, there's no 
particular reason for newly eaten food to cause cramping. Nor 
is there anything about being in the water that can cause them. 
Severe stomach cramps are a rare malady. And even if you do 
get the cramps while you are in the water, there is no reason for 
them to be any more dangerous there than on dry land. Stomach 
cramps don't interfere with your breathing, after all, or with the 
use of your arms. You can keep on swimming with your face 
above the water even if your knees are up around your chin. 

The old saw about not going swimming for an hour after 
eating, because of the danger of stomach cramps, is nothing but 
a stupid old wives' tale. In the first place, unless you've eaten 
something that has given you ptomaine poisoning, there's no 
particular reason for newly eaten food to cause cramping. Nor 
is there anything about being in the water that can cause them. 
Severe stomach cramps are a rare malady. And even if you do 
get the cramps while you are in the water, there is no reason for 
them to be any more dangerous there than on dry land. Stomach 
cramps don't interfere with your breathing, after all, or with the 
use of your arms. You can keep on swimming with your face 
above the water even if your knees are up around your chin. 

It was pretty easy to tell what needed removing and what 
should remain. If it was coral, break it off and let it sink. If it 
was rock and it didn't put out a spray of bubbles when you poked 
it, get rid of it. If it floated to the surface after you broke it 
loose, you did it wrong, stupid, and don't do it again! 

We didn't accomplish much that first afternoon, but we did 
work out the basic techniques needed for the job. Picking and 
chipping didn't work well under water, but prying did. We 
resolved to get some longer and stronger bars made up soon. 
Also, a lot of time was wasted going up and down, so we rigged 
some weighted lines down to the work area. It was easier to pull 
yourself up and down than to swim the whole way. 

By midafternoon, the light down there was getting bad, and 
we knocked off. We were exhausted, anyway. When you haven't 
been swimming in months, seven hours in the water takes a lot 
out of you, especially if you are working your way, very gently, 


into middle age. 

into middle age. 

I had been thinking of them as boys since I was over forty and 
they averaged about twenty. Young men would have been a 
better term. 

Watching them leave, I felt a lot of admiration for them. I've 
worked with many groups of men in my life, most of the time 
as their leader. For the last ten years, most of my subordinates 
have been very competent people, degreed engineers and 
skilled tradesmen, mostly. But I swear that I have never worked 
with an entire group of people before who were all as 
exceptionally intelligent, outstandingly eager, unflaggingly 
hardworking, and uniformly lighthearted as these young men all 
were. I tell you, it was like working with a totally different kind 
of humanity, a better kind. 

I've heard that the Japanese average about ten points higher on 
IQ tests than white Americans. It is difficult to write an 
accurate interracial or cross-cultural test, but if the data are 
true, I suspect that it might be because, for a thousand years, a 
Japanese Samurai was morally required to immediately 
decapitate any commoner who didn't act in the manner 
expected. Since the Japanese had an extremely complicated 
code of behavior, it must have taken a fairly intelligent person 
to always know just what the manner expected was, in any 
given situation. I think perhaps that the Japanese were not only 
selecting for people who were well mannered, but also for 
those who were intelligent, or at least smart enough so as to 
have been able to learn all the rules. 

The policy of reducing the population by selectively 
sterilizing the less successful members of their society must 
have done the same thing for the people of the Western Isles, 


only much more so, since it was systematic. I can't say that I 
approve of the method, but I can certainly admire the results. 

only much more so, since it was systematic. I can't say that I 
approve of the method, but I can certainly admire the results. 

I had to get the genset up and running as well as the diesel 
engine that powered the SCUBA tank compressor. It took me 
the better part of two hours to partially disassemble both rigs, 
and to repair the damage caused by the dunking they got when 
the boat was sinking. Then I was over an hour figuring out a way 
to get diesel fuel from the big tanks built into the boat, which 
was on its side, to the small tanks on the small engines. 

Once I had the diesel engines producing both pneumatic and 
electrical power, I started filling the SCUBA tanks. Then I put 
the batteries Adam's men had extracted from The Brick Royal 
to charging, since we had exhausted them in trying to bail her 
out during the storm. Scrounging around, I found some of our 
electric lights and set them up, ready to switch on, come dark. 

About that time, some of the warlock's men came by with all 
of the electronic gear that had been taken from us by him for 
safekeeping. They brought a letter from him saying that we 
might as well keep everything together, and could I please see 
what could be done about generating some power for them. I 
answered his question by switching on the lights for his men. It 
would have been more dramatic had it been dark, but they acted 
impressed, anyway. 

I set up the satellite dish just outside of the cave, and soon 
got its automatic tracker going. The guards stared bug-eyed and 
nervous at the dish, never having seen an inanimate object move 
before. Culture shock all over the floor. 

After that, I got antenna wire, data lines, and power cables to 
the computer, the television, and the VCR before deciding that 
the system needed a more thorough test and that I wanted a 


break, anyway. I was just getting into a tape of Star Wars when 
Adam and his dripping-wet crew came in. The boys were 
enthralled. 

break, anyway. I was just getting into a tape of Star Wars when 
Adam and his dripping-wet crew came in. The boys were 
enthralled. 

Gentlemen, this entertainment is best seen from the 
beginning. Before we start, I want to mention that one of the 
highest art forms practiced in the outside world is called 
science fiction. It exists mostly in the form of written stories 
and in theatrical presentations like the one you are about to 
enjoy. In this art form, the writer creates not only the 
characters and all of the things that happen to them, but also the 
very universe that all of the action takes place in. Thus, he is 
absolutely free of all constraints, and may exercise his art to 
the limits of his creativity. Done properly, this fictional world 
is as internally consistent as the real world around us, so that it 
becomes easy for the reader or viewer to suspend his disbelief 
and become thoroughly immersed in the story. 

I tell you this because to you, the real world outside of your 
island might seem to you to have some of the aspects of 
science fiction. Out there, they have many devices and forms of 
communication and transportation that you are not yet familiar 
with. Please remember that they do not have ships that can 
travel between the stars, or robots that can talk and think like 
human beings, or weapons that can destroy entire planets, 
although they are working on it. Anyway, the following is 
fiction, it has no purpose but to stretch your mind while you are 
enjoying yourself, and I wish you a pleasant few hours. 

Then I turned the set back on and let them watch those 
marvelous opening scenes. Judging from their comments, they 
seemed to be able to follow the plot reasonably well, despite 
their lack of proficiency in English. It was dark when I sent 
them home. They had missed supper, except for some junk food 
I'd broken out of stores, but they didn't seem to mind. They'd 
just seen their second totally new world in two days. 


TWENTY-SIX 

TWENTY-SIX 

I heard that the boys who are spending their days 
working underwater to keep the rest of us afloat saw one 
of those 'movies' we've been hearing about for the last 
fifty years. By all counts, they completely enjoyed 
themselves. And as to the lack of religious content in the 
thing, well, Phillias, would you really have been 
happier if the hero had been worshiping the God of the 
Jews, or perhaps one of the many Hindu Gods? 

No, I suppose not, Your Grace. Still, there is great 
danger in these entertainments. They will have to be 
controlled. 

I suppose that you are right. Did you know that 
almost every political body in the outside world makes 
some efforts to control the sort of entertainments 
available to its citizens? Some of those nations are so 


haphazard that it boggles the mind to try to think of 
what it is that they could possibly find offensive. Indeed, 
I'm not sure that I want to know. 

haphazard that it boggles the mind to try to think of 
what it is that they could possibly find offensive. Indeed, 
I'm not sure that I want to know. 

I'll agree with that in principle, although the details 
of how it is done and what precisely will be forbidden 
will have to be worked out. It is too early yet to do 
anything definite. 

But not too early to at least think about it. Thank 
you, Your Grace, the archbishop said as he left the 
royal chamber. 

* * * 

The next morning, I was getting ready to go back to the 
warehouse, eager to get to work, when Roxanna reminded me, 
rather coldly, that this was Sunday. Working on anything but 
absolutely necessary tasks was improper, and anyway, we had to 
go to mass. 

Adam was right again. There wasn't any point in getting 
married, since I could get plenty of nagging without having to 
go through the bother of the ceremony. I gritted my teeth and 
wasted half the morning sitting with a room full of other 
equally bored people, listening to some fool in a fancy outfit 
spout off about something or another that I neither cared about 
at the time nor ever remembered afterward. 

In the afternoon, we joined Adam and the Pelitier sisters and 
went to the beach. The girls had heard about snorkeling, and had 
to try it. It was a busman's holiday for two men who had just 
spent two days under water, but what can you do? Furthermore, 
the scenery at an American beach is much better than the beach 
scenery on the island, what with their use of long johns instead 


of bikinis or less. The girls fell in love with the face masks, the 
flippers, and the snorkeling rigs, but I'd been spending enough 
time underwater lately. 

of bikinis or less. The girls fell in love with the face masks, the 
flippers, and the snorkeling rigs, but I'd been spending enough 
time underwater lately. 

I spent the next morning getting the rest of our electronic 
equipment going. I started without very high hopes. Our 
equipment had all been through a shipwreck, with all the 
mechanical shock, saltwater immersion, and other trauma that 
implies. It had been dismantled by clumsy if well-meaning 
hands, hauled all the way up to the warlock's chambers and there 
inspected by who knows how many less than competent people. 
It had then been hauled back down to the warehouse, and left on 
the floor, where I was trying to get it all back together again. 
Some of it, like the navigation gear, had been built to withstand 
the rigors of a nautical environment, but much of the rest, like 
the stereo equipment, was only built to the usual, shoddy 
commercial standards. 

Most of the nautical gear had originally been mounted in the 
aft cockpit, but that was on its side now along with the rest of 
the ship, so I set all the gear out on top of garbage bag covered 
cases of who-knew-what and started wiring it up with cables I'd 
scrounged from the boat. I gave myself even odds that I could 
get maybe seventy percent of it going again in three days, but I 
surprised myself. 

By noon, I had every single piece of equipment up and 
running. Every single one of the radios, transmitters, 
telephones, fax machines, stereos, navigation gadgets, and 
computers worked. Not to mention the refrigerator and the 
microwave from the galley. Amazing! Even the radar and sonar 
equipment checked out, though of course they weren't actually 
working, the radar dome and sonar transponders still being 
affixed to The Brick Royal, which was on dry land and in a 
stone warehouse. 

When they had gotten back to their barracks last Saturday 


night, the boys had naturally told all of their friends about the 
wonders of television and Star Wars. By noon, Sunday or not, 
word of these wonders had filtered all the way up to the warlock 
and the duke himself. 

night, the boys had naturally told all of their friends about the 
wonders of television and Star Wars. By noon, Sunday or not, 
word of these wonders had filtered all the way up to the warlock 
and the duke himself. 

On the islands, they do what people must have been doing 
throughout the history of mankind, until recently. Everybody 
knew everything because of constant gossiping. It is a 
remarkably efficient system, and I have had things that I told to 
people as I was leaving the warehouse repeated back to me 
within minutes of my arrival home. 

And while television or radio news will let you know, in 
general, what is happening to the nation at large, gossip can be, 
and often is, personalized. Each bit of information actually 
tends to direct itself to those people most concerned. The case 
in point was that one of our workers told Adam that the duke 
was coming over. He'd heard about it through a string of nine 
people starting with his grace's chamberlain. 

Think about that. Since people tend to talk about what their 
listeners want to hear about, the information steered itself 
through increasingly more interested people until it got to us! 

The modern world lost a lot when we traded gossip for the 
news, although we just might be getting some of it back with the 
internet. Time will tell. 

Not that knowing about the duke's visit made me any happier. 
I wasn't looking forward to meeting the duke, or the archbishop 
either, for that matter, for the very same reason that I have 
never looked forward to meeting any other governmental 
figure. 

Governments are essentially negative organizations. Their 
whole function in life seems to be to tell you to not do the 
things that you want to do. Since you naturally don't want to not 


do the things that you want to do, they then take great pleasure 
in causing you as much pain as possible when you do them 
anyway. (Think of it as a cryptogram.) 

do the things that you want to do, they then take great pleasure 
in causing you as much pain as possible when you do them 
anyway. (Think of it as a cryptogram.) 

Oh, governments also tell you not to do the things that you 
don't want to do, too, but that doesn't count, since you can 
generally ignore such rules and not get into too much trouble. 
The fact is that they have so many laws that it is impossible for 
anyone, including the numberless and nameless people who 
work for the government, to know exactly what all those rules 
are. 

To get on in this world, your best bet is to do what you want, 
to do it in as quiet a way as possible, and to avoid governments 
whenever you can. It's the only way to get anything done. One of 
the quickest ways to spot a nonachiever is to see if he starts out 
on a project by asking somebody's permission. The shakers and 
the movers of this world just go ahead and do things, and the 
best ones try hard not to be noticed by anyone. The people who 
show up in the news and on talk shows are mostly phonies. 

The ladies had again provided an excellent seafood dinner, I 
had some Mozart going on the stereo, and Adam and the boys 
were eating with us when a gaudily dressed herald stepped in 
and announced that His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo 
XXI was here, along with Thomas Strong, E.E., Warlock of the 
Western Islands. The dozen or so people who were with them 
were not announced, and therefore must have been flunkies. 

I felt a moment of panic, not knowing what to do. Then 
everyone else stood and bowed deeply, which made me feel 


better. Now I knew what one did when the duke interrupted your 
lunch. You stood up and then bent over. 

better. Now I knew what one did when the duke interrupted your 
lunch. You stood up and then bent over. 

The duke was a tall, athletic-looking man, and looked to be in 
his mid-fifties, though his white hair and white full beard 
suggested a greater age. His clothing was vaguely Elizabethan, 
like that worn by everyone else on the islands, except that his 
was richer in texture, and the embroidery was much finer. When 
he came close, you could see that the needlework was so tiny 
that it gave the impression of being photographic lithography, 
rather than being done by hand. He wore a simple, unpretentious 
crown made of gold wire that was not much thicker than a man's 
wedding ring, but it was his bearing that hit you first and 
hardest. Here was a man who was born and bred for leadership, 
and no one who saw him could possibly doubt it. All told, he 
was pretty impressive, having nothing in common with the 
typical American politician. 

Welcome, Your Grace, I said in my best Westronese. I 
hoped your grace was right. 

Yes, welcome, Your Grace and Your Excellency. Could we 
offer to share our poor dinner fare with you? Adam seconded. 

Why, thank you, yes, the duke said in English that had the 
slight Oxford accent favored by announcers on the BBC. I've 
heard a great deal about the excellent preserved food that you 
brought with you, and I'd rather enjoy trying some. 

With pleasure, Your Grace, I said as I went to the cases of 
canned food we had there. 

I picked up at least one of everything, plus four cans of the 
absurdly popular Spam. Back in Bay City, I would have been 
embarrassed serving Spam to my lowest minimum-wage 
employee, but here, well, if the duke wanted Spam, he would get 


Spam. I was but a stranger in a strange land. 

Spam. I was but a stranger in a strange land. 

The duke sat down opposite me, and the rest of the entourage 
took their places without further ceremony. Our ladies then 
started to sit, so Adam and I took the hint and joined them. 

Why a pair of staunchly egalitarian Americans like us should 
feel so awkward around an insignificant country's nobility was 
hard to explain, but there it was. It probably had something to do 
with the way the duke had trained long and hard in the art of 
being impressive, and we poor slobs had never been exposed to 
the tricks of his trade before. 

The duke puzzled for a moment with a fork and then put it 
down. I opened a can of Vienna sausages, showing how the key 
worked, and the duke promptly opened a can of Spam in the 
same fashion. 

What method is used to keep the meat from spoiling? he 
asked, switching back to Westronese so everyone else could 
understand. Seeing me use a fork, he promptly used his in the 
same manner. 

First sealing the food away from any further contamination, 
and then cooking, to kill any decay organisms present. In 
practice, the meat is soldered into the cans when raw, and the 
cans are cooked under pressure for several hours to insure 
sterility, I said. 

Interesting. Still, it seems an expensive way to do things. 
The duke was sampling each offering directly from the can. 


Naturally, nobody tried to stop him long enough to put the 
things on a plate. 

Naturally, nobody tried to stop him long enough to put the 
things on a plate. 

Hmm. And what would be the wage differential between 
your least and most skilled workers? 

Having tried everything I could offer, and passing the cans 
down to his subordinates, the duke settled in on a can of Spam, 
as I had somehow known he would. He was really chowing 
down. 

Oh, perhaps five dollars an hour for the least capable 
beginner up to perhaps fifty for a master machinist or model 
maker. Certain professions, medical doctors and lawyers, make 
much more, although they pay for their own offices, equipment 
and staffs. 

I see. On the Western Isles, the range is not so large. The 
man was actually opening another can of Spam. 

True, Your Grace, but here, people spend much of their 
income on food, whereas in the United States, a person can buy 
enough to survive on for ten or twenty dollars a week. Oh, they 
spend more than that on food, normally, but most of the 
difference goes to buying more-convenient, already-prepared, 
or better- tasting food. What I'm trying to say is, among us, 
most of what most people earn goes towards the purchase of 
things that they don't absolutely need, but merely want. 

So with their most basic needs easily supplied, they spend 
their time earning money to buy toys. Yes, I suppose that makes 
sense. 


It's also true that most of our people worry so much about 
their toys that they have made them into absolute necessities, 
psychologically, at least, Adam said without a trace of his 
usual Hamtramck accent. Because of this, from an objective 
standpoint, all wealth beyond a certain point is largely an 
illusion. Still and all, I think that we lead richer lives than your 
people do. We are better informed, physically more 
comfortable, and intellectually more stimulated, on the average, 
than I think the people of the Western Islands are. 

It's also true that most of our people worry so much about 
their toys that they have made them into absolute necessities, 
psychologically, at least, Adam said without a trace of his 
usual Hamtramck accent. Because of this, from an objective 
standpoint, all wealth beyond a certain point is largely an 
illusion. Still and all, I think that we lead richer lives than your 
people do. We are better informed, physically more 
comfortable, and intellectually more stimulated, on the average, 
than I think the people of the Western Islands are. 

Yes, Your Grace, it certainly would be far more moving as a 
live performance. And Mozart, were he still alive, would be 
annoyed at our treating his music so casually. In fact he was 
annoyed with the noblemen of his time who had hired him, 
when they proceeded to talk while he was performing. You see, 
they chose to ignore him just as we are currently choosing to 
ignore the servants who are waiting on us. This gets us to 
another advantage of an industrialized culture. In America and 


the Western world, there are very few servants, except for the 
case of a working mother who sometimes needs help with her 
children. Here, the wealthy enjoy a leisurely life largely at the 
expense of the poor. Among our people, the poorest are at least 
theoretically equal with the richest. I, for example, have often 
met with my own employees after work and enjoyed a beer or 
two with them. 

the Western world, there are very few servants, except for the 
case of a working mother who sometimes needs help with her 
children. Here, the wealthy enjoy a leisurely life largely at the 
expense of the poor. Among our people, the poorest are at least 
theoretically equal with the richest. I, for example, have often 
met with my own employees after work and enjoyed a beer or 
two with them. 

There had been no change in the duke's pleasant demeanor, 
but his words said that he was not entirely pleased with my 
ideas of democracy. Sometimes I think that I have a permanent 
case of foot-in-mouth disease. 

Adam came to the rescue. Your Grace, I wonder if I might 
interest you and your vassals in seeing some of the sights of 
your own islands that you have never seen before. Would you 
like to go swimming in Avalon Bay with a snorkeling rig? The 
coral and fishes down there are unbelievably beautiful. 

Yes, I definitely would. It was one of the reasons that I came 
down here today. I also want to see your television and such, but 
I expect that the bay would be better seen while the sun is yet 
high. 

Everyone on the islands could swim, and the duke's party had 
brought their swimsuits because of the rumors they'd heard. 

As Adam led them off with fins and masks borrowed back 
from the boys, the warlock stayed behind for a moment to talk 
to me in English. 

Look, you ninny! he said in a whisper. You can hardly 


expect a hereditary absolute ruler to be enthralled with the 
glories of democracy! He is a good lord who takes the welfare 
of his people very seriously, but he also has an obligation to 
almost a hundred generations of ancestors, to hand his country 
intact down to his successor. He takes that duty very seriously 
as well. Any more nonsense out of you and you could spend the 
rest of your life under house arrest! Understood? 

expect a hereditary absolute ruler to be enthralled with the 
glories of democracy! He is a good lord who takes the welfare 
of his people very seriously, but he also has an obligation to 
almost a hundred generations of ancestors, to hand his country 
intact down to his successor. He takes that duty very seriously 
as well. Any more nonsense out of you and you could spend the 
rest of your life under house arrest! Understood? 

Good. Don't forget it. 

The warlock followed the rest of the group to the beach, and I 
sat back down and put my head in my hands, wondering just how 
badly I had screwed the whole thing up this time. 

TWENTY-SEVEN 

Roxanna came up behind me and started rubbing my neck and 
shoulders. My lord, it is not that bad. The duke is a very wise 
and understanding man. He knows all about the social customs 
of your country, and you have not seriously offended him by 
telling him again about them. Come. You have yet to show me 
the wonders of your television and your VCR. Show me 
something light and amusing. 

A truly marvelous woman. I resolved to propose marriage to 
her again, and this time with all the formalities. 

Roxanna's English wasn't up to understanding the verbal 
byplay of most comedies, so I found a pair of old silent films, 
Harold Lloyd's His Royal Slyness and then his Haunted 


Spooks. And by the end, I was laughing as much as the ladies, 
apprentices, and servants, or perhaps a bit harder. 

Spooks. And by the end, I was laughing as much as the ladies, 
apprentices, and servants, or perhaps a bit harder. 

Adam started at the far end of the warehouse with some of 
the navigation equipment, displaying a laser ROM disk that 
contained charts of every sea, coastline, and harbor in the 
world. Then there was the Global Positioning System, that 
could locate us to within ten meters of our actual position. 
Combining these two, it was possible to navigate in complete 
darkness, without radar or sonar, through most of the channels, 
coral reefs, and harbors of the world. Providing, of course, that 
you didn't hit something that wasn't on the electronic charts. 
Another ship, for example. 

He talked about how the radar and sonar worked, but couldn't 
actually demonstrate them with the ship being where it was. 
Then there were the radios. An all-band receiver and two 
marine-band transceivers. The duke was familiar with 
shortwave. Indeed, it had been his main source of information 
about the outside world. The satellite phone system really 
surprised him, however. 

Do you mean to tell me that it is possible to contact any 
single person anywhere in the world? Instantly? 

Anyone who has a telephone, Your Grace, which is most 
people in the civilized world. And almost instantly. There's a 
half-second delay. Watch. I'll demonstrate. It's been too long 
since I called my mother, anyway. She worries about me, you 
know, Adam said. 

And with that, he picked up the handset, dialed up her number, 
and put the phone on speaker mode, so everyone could listen in. 

Hello? 

Good morning, Ma. It's Adam. 

Adam! Where are you? You haven't called in months! I was 
getting worried that you got shipwrecked or injured or 


something horrible like that. 

something horrible like that. 

Then Adam, if either one of them will take you, you should 
marry her right now before the poor girl comes to her senses! 
If you are ever going to get me any grandchildren, you'd better 
start soon, because you're already almost too old. 

Forty-six is not too old to get married, and I'll keep you 
posted on the ladies. Got to run now. 

Good. About the nice girls you've met, I mean. You call me 
every two weeks from now on, you hear? 

Yes, Ma. Good-bye. 

Good-bye, Adam. 

The line went dead. 

You see, Your Grace. It's that easy. 

Remarkable. Those buttons you pushed before you 
contacted her, they were some sort of instructions for the 
machine? 

Yes, Your Grace. It's called a phone number. They have 
books listing them, or if you know where a person lives, and 
that person has not given instructions that they wish their 
number to be kept a secret, an operator, a person who works for 
the phone company, will give you their number. 

I see. So if a person wishes privacy, he is granted it. 

Yes. Privacy is very important in our culture. If there had 
been an emergency, however, the police would be able to 
contact anyone who needed contacting, Adam explained. 

So your people don't have privacy from their government. 

Well, yes and no, Your Grace. Sometimes it's difficult to 
know exactly where to draw the line, if you get my meaning. 

Indeed, I do. Another thing. I just observed you telling your 
mother a lie. Two lies. You were both shipwrecked and 


seriously injured. Do you often tell her lies? 

seriously injured. Do you often tell her lies? 

The duke thought about it a moment, then shook his head, 
declining comment. 

The next item was a personal computer, and explaining 
everything it could do took a half hour. The only surprise for 
me was when Adam produced a CD-ROM that had the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica on it. I hadn't known that we had 
such a thing, but then most people never use an encyclopedia 
anyway. It's just important to have one. 

That left the entertainment equipment. After the stereo, there 
was only the TV and the VCR. Some of the duke's party wanted 
something religious and others wanted an adventure story, so 
Adam put on Ben Hur. 

All four hours of it. 

It was well past dark when the last tape finally started to 
rewind, and I was eager to get home and in bed with Roxanna. 

People were actually getting up to leave when Adam said, 
Your Grace, were you aware of the various news channels 
available to us? 

And so we watched CNN until midnight, which left not nearly 
enough time for properly loving Roxanna. Sometimes Adam 
blows it, too. 

Entirely too early in the morning, five more of the warlock's 
subordinates were waiting for us. Three were scholars who 
wanted to do research with our computerized encyclopedia, one 
was to watch the news channel and take notes for the bulletin 
boards, the local equivalent of a newspaper, and the fifth, who 
was to take us on the warlock's promised tour of the islands, 
was Journeyman Judah ben Salomen ha-Cohen. 


A remarkable name for a Christian, I said. 

A remarkable name for a Christian, I said. 

You certainly got it, Adam said. 

It took only a few minutes to get the reporter and the 
researchers set up and familiar with the controls of their 
equipment. As I've often said, these people were all remarkably 
intelligent. Roxanna used the time to give instructions to her 
cook about making sure that the apprentices were fed lunch, 
since she wanted to take the tour as well. 

Judah ben et cetera had brought a map with him, the first I 
had ever seen of the Western Islands. It was now obvious why 
they were sometimes referred to in the singular and sometimes 
in the plural. It was one single land mass, one rock, really, 
which naturally made it singular. This rock was irregular in 
shape, about seven miles long and four miles across at the 
widest. Most of the rock was not above the waterline. There 
were five separate peaks that went above the waves, so that from 
the surface there appeared to be five islands plus a number of 
smaller, mostly barren outcroppings. Hence the frequent use of 
the plural. 

These peaks enclosed a fair sized lagoon, the Llyr, toward the 
center of the complex, and a number of channels going out to 
the ocean. Much of the islands' local transportation went on in 
these protected waters, along with some fishing, aquaculture, 
and water sports. 

With Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters along, we had a 
pleasant day. I won't bore you with the whole tour, but some 
things we saw are worth relating. 

There was a lot more depth to the culture of the islands than I 
had been led to expect. Besides libraries and churches, there 


were concert halls, dance halls, bars, inns, and restaurants. They 
had public beaches, small but carefully tended parks, and picnic 
grounds. Many people were active in sports, and they were 
served by gymnasiums, playing fields and arenas, most of which 
were underground. In fact, everything that could possibly be 
underground, was, including most of the beaches. At least, they 
usually had a massive overhang cantilevered above them, with 
carefully cultivated plants growing on top. There was even a five 
team semipro league, playing a sort of water polo. 

were concert halls, dance halls, bars, inns, and restaurants. They 
had public beaches, small but carefully tended parks, and picnic 
grounds. Many people were active in sports, and they were 
served by gymnasiums, playing fields and arenas, most of which 
were underground. In fact, everything that could possibly be 
underground, was, including most of the beaches. At least, they 
usually had a massive overhang cantilevered above them, with 
carefully cultivated plants growing on top. There was even a five 
team semipro league, playing a sort of water polo. 

I've heard that the reason why native speakers of Japanese 
have difficulty pronouncing the L and R sounds in English is 
that they never learned, as small children, to differentiate 
between the two. To them, both sounds are alike, and they can't 
hear any difference. Well, if acculturation can account for such 
an obvious (to me) auditory illusion, why can't the same 
process result in a visual one? Maybe the islanders actually 
could not see members of the other class when they were in 
certain social situations! 

Not having been raised in their culture, I could see everybody 
who was there, and I never could get used to the Westronese 
way of ignoring some people. It was never obvious to me how 
they told a member of one class from a member of the other. 
There was no class difference in the swimming suits worn, for 
example, but everyone still seemed to know who was who. It 
couldn't have been that they all knew each other as individuals, 


not with twelve thousand people around. 

not with twelve thousand people around. 

The school system was run by the church, for the first twelve 
grades, and was both free and mandatory for all children. Yet 
here too, the double world thing went on, with the nobles and 
the wealthy sitting to the right while the servants sat to the left. 
Instruction was absolutely equal, but also absolutely separate. 

Instruction was absolutely unequal and separate when it came 
to sex. From grade one, the girls went to some classes and the 
boys went to others. Girls had women teaching them and boys 
had men. Women's Lib wouldn't get very far around this place. 

After graduation, the kids were tested, as I mentioned earlier, 
and some of the boys were sent off to get a higher education. 
The rest found jobs. Some of the girls were sent off to 
mandatory marriages, and the low scorers got to find the 
husbands that they wanted. I wondered how many of the girls 
tried very hard on the tests, and how many boys deliberately 
passed up a higher education in order to marry the girls they 
wanted. 

I suppose that any child anywhere has a hard time expressing 
his individuality, but the amount of personal freedom allowed 
them on the islands was less than anyplace else I've ever heard 
of. When I was a child, I'm not sure that I could have stood it 
here. Or maybe I could. Kids are pretty malleable. But if I had 
gone through this educational system, I would have been a much 
different person than I am today. It makes me wonder if I would 
have been a better one. 

We ended the day at a pleasant bar with a three-piece dance 
band. A curious island custom was that the woman normally 


paid the tab, anywhere she went with her husband or protector. 
This was in line with the way they handled all the other 
household expenses, but it struck me as being rather strange. In 
the real world where I came from, the man always prefers to 
pick up the tab, in part to affirm his dominance over the 
situation. Here, the wife always acted subordinately, yet she had 
complete charge of all the money. I don't think that it could 
have worked in America. In Japan, maybe. 

paid the tab, anywhere she went with her husband or protector. 
This was in line with the way they handled all the other 
household expenses, but it struck me as being rather strange. In 
the real world where I came from, the man always prefers to 
pick up the tab, in part to affirm his dominance over the 
situation. Here, the wife always acted subordinately, yet she had 
complete charge of all the money. I don't think that it could 
have worked in America. In Japan, maybe. 

Our guide said that the next day's portion of the tour would be 
more technical, and thus probably wouldn't interest the ladies. 
They promptly agreed with him, saying that they had found 
suitable lodgings near the warehouse for Adam and the Pelitier 
sisters, and would rather spend the day getting the new 
household set up. That night in bed, I asked Roxanna if she had 
really wanted to go on the next tour. 

A woman should never go where it is suggested that she 
might not be amused. 

An American woman wouldn't say a thing like that, I said. 

Would you rather that I was an American woman? 

No. 

Then you should consider yourself answered. 


TWENTY-EIGHT 

TWENTY-EIGHT 

Gentlemen, I have called you together for a short 
meeting of the privy counsel to discuss what we each 
have learned about our guests, Mr. Kulczynski and Mr. 
Nguyen. This is to be a preliminary discussion only, but 
sometime in the next several months a series of decisions 
must be made concerning them. I will ask our good 
Warlock to start us out. 

Thank you, Your Grace. The short of it is that my 
own impressions have been entirely positive. Both men 
are well educated, remarkably intelligent, and quite 
competent in both engineering and business. They are 
basically honest and hardworking. They are becoming 
increasingly dedicated to the best interests of the 
Western Islands, in part because Your Grace's choice of 
women for them was particularly good. Both men are 
bonding well with the ladies who have been hosting 
them. 


As I have often said to both of you before, it is 
becoming increasingly necessary for us to prepare to 
come to terms with the outside world. Aside from the fact 
that we are sinking, we are becoming increasingly 
visible to their satellite cameras. Our discovery is 
inevitable, and our political and economic positions will 
be far better if we go to them than if we wait and then 
have them come to us. Especially since they just might 
come to us with an army behind them! Do you realize 
that a single one of their aircraft carriers can have more 
adult men aboard than we have on our entire island? 
There are hundreds of unruly nations out there with 
armies big enough to conquer us without difficulty. 

As I have often said to both of you before, it is 
becoming increasingly necessary for us to prepare to 
come to terms with the outside world. Aside from the fact 
that we are sinking, we are becoming increasingly 
visible to their satellite cameras. Our discovery is 
inevitable, and our political and economic positions will 
be far better if we go to them than if we wait and then 
have them come to us. Especially since they just might 
come to us with an army behind them! Do you realize 
that a single one of their aircraft carriers can have more 
adult men aboard than we have on our entire island? 
There are hundreds of unruly nations out there with 
armies big enough to conquer us without difficulty. 

The archbishop was getting increasingly fidgety, so as 
the warlock sat down, the duke gestured for the 
clergyman to take the floor. 

Divinely inspired? Damn you! I'll tell you what's 
divinely inspired! 

I'm sure that God is delighted to hear that, the 
warlock drawled. 

The archbishop was red faced, and sputtering so 
badly that the duke said, Phillias, relax a moment and 
get yourself under control, so that you can calmly 
explain your views to us concerning our guests. 

Long minutes passed before the archbishop again 


stood up. 

stood up. 

I am worried about the health of the bodies and 
souls of every one of your subjects. The danger of 
diseases is well documented. Small numbers of outsiders 
have repeatedly started plagues that have killed off one 
third to one half of our entire population. That is four to 
six thousand of your people dead! Now, think about 
what could happen if hundreds, even thousands of 
outsiders come all within a short period of time. 
Hundreds or thousands of plagues could be started 
simultaneously, and every single one of us could die! 
Even those who are sick but not deathly ill, and who 
might have recovered, will not, for lack of anyone to tend 
them! 

The outsiders themselves, who, over the painful 
centuries, have developed immunities to most of their 
diseases, worry daily about their own safety. The U.S. 
Centers for Disease Control would seem to be an 
organization as large as our whole nation, yet it can not 
control the diseases it tries to eliminate. 

With our handicaps in size and immunity, we would 
be helpless, and soon dead. Our religion, so carefully 


preserved over the ages, would be gone. Our culture, so 
carefully nurtured by over seventy generations of your 
ancestors, would be no more, and your heir would be 
nonexistent. Our people, bred to be brighter, more fit, 
and more civilized over so many difficult years, would be 
gone, and all their promise a wasted effort. 

preserved over the ages, would be gone. Our culture, so 
carefully nurtured by over seventy generations of your 
ancestors, would be no more, and your heir would be 
nonexistent. Our people, bred to be brighter, more fit, 
and more civilized over so many difficult years, would be 
gone, and all their promise a wasted effort. 

We may be the future of all mankind! Think long 
and hard on that before you debase us into becoming 
just one insignificant nation among hundreds of 
others! 

The duke was silent for several minutes before he said, 
Now that is a remarkably heady thought, and one that 
the Warlock and I will have to ponder long on before we 
dare make comment. Certainly, I will have nothing more 
to say today, so I think that we might as well consider 
this council closed. 

* * * 

In the morning, we spent a half hour at the warehouse getting 
a few details ironed out. Adam's six bearers were laboriously 
chipping the concrete away from the edges of the hole that the 
mast had made, to insure that the patch would be grounded on 
sound ferrocrete. Another day should do it, we figured, and that 
included the damage to the upper deck as well. 


There were two SCUBA divers working separately from the 
snorkel crew now. Their program was to go down to a hundred 
feet or so and clean up a six-foot-wide swath, working upwards, 
to the fifteen foot level where the other divers had to leave off. 
That took them three hours, and exhausted their tanks. They 
took a two-hour lunch break while their tanks were being 
refilled, and then repeated the operation in the afternoon. 

There were two SCUBA divers working separately from the 
snorkel crew now. Their program was to go down to a hundred 
feet or so and clean up a six-foot-wide swath, working upwards, 
to the fifteen foot level where the other divers had to leave off. 
That took them three hours, and exhausted their tanks. They 
took a two-hour lunch break while their tanks were being 
refilled, and then repeated the operation in the afternoon. 

Journeyman Judah arrived to take us on his tour, and Adam 
and I left with him. Again, I'm only going to give you a 
summation of the high points of the day's activities. 

Because of the space required, orchards, forests and 
vineyards were in the hands of private growers, but the wizards 
themselves maintained extensive experimental fields of annual, 
biennial, and nonwoody perennial plants, and we toured these 
first. 

The total number and variety of plants there was surprising, 
until we found that the majority of them had no known practical 
use. Some of their lovingly-cared-for plants were known weeds, 
and I actually spotted a patch of carefully cultivated crabgrass. 
It was simply their policy, if possible, to never let a species of 
plant get lost, on the theory that you never knew what would 
turn up as useful someday. 

The chief gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, took us 
through those veggies whose usefulness had been proven. There 
were a lot of these. 

They had more than fifty spices that I had never heard of. We 
made a note to buy a large variety of dried spices on the open 
market to take with us to the mainland. We'd have to see if any 
of them attracted any commercial interest. 

There were sixteen plants from which insecticides were 
prepared. Each of these was quite specific, repelling or killing 
only a distinct type or class of pest. One of them was a 
repellent for black flies, and I knew we had a sure winner there. 


Northern Maine and much of Canada are almost uninhabitable 
for months during the summer because of these pests, and here 
we had a defense against the little bastards! 

Northern Maine and much of Canada are almost uninhabitable 
for months during the summer because of these pests, and here 
we had a defense against the little bastards! 

More than two hundred varieties of plants were used for 
making dyes and pigments. Since all the possible colors were 
already available to the outside world from chemical dyes, I 
said we had little hope of commercial success with these 
vegetable ones. This hurt Maimonides' feelings a bit, since dyes 
had always been a special interest of his. 

You're wrong, Treet, Adam said. Their dyes don't fade with 
washing, age, or sunlight. Furthermore, they work on the local 
Super-Hemp, and we don't know how that stuff will react with 
our chemical dyes. 

We promised to take back samples and to try to find a market 
for them. Even if Adam was wrong, it was good PR. 

The extracts of seven plants were known for their 
preservative qualities. Since we had no way of comparing these 
with commercial, chemical preservatives, all we could do was 
to figure on taking samples and instructions to a testing lab, and 
see what they said. 

There were several plant extracts that I suppose you could 
call cosmetic, but they weren't paints or oils. One was the 
depilatory we'd noticed the effect of. It was claimed to stay 
effective for over a year. Another reduced wrinkles, and a third 
turned all your hair blond, permanently! 

Thinking about what women in the United States paid for 
treatments that only claimed to do such things, temporarily, all 
I could see were dollar signs floating in front of my eyes! 

Almost five hundred varieties of plants supposedly had 
various medicinal qualities. Most medicines on the island were 
mixed up as a sort of tea or soup and simply drunk by the 
patient. None of them was claimed to cure cancer, and nobody 
here had ever heard of AIDS, but there was one that made a 
male contraceptive. They said that one dose lasted six months. 


There was a female contraceptive available as well, and it was 
good for a year. There were also two drugs that induced 
permanent sterility, one for men and one for women. 

There was a female contraceptive available as well, and it was 
good for a year. There were also two drugs that induced 
permanent sterility, one for men and one for women. 

Curiously, none of the long list of medicines were for use 
against pain. Since Adam had recently been treated to the 
delightful pastime of having five bones set without an 
anesthetic, he just naturally had to ask Master Miamonides 
about this strange lack. 

We used to have a number of pain removing drugs, but some 
two hundred years ago, people got to growing them and using 
them for pleasure, the chief gardener said. It seems they got 
drunk on them, or something similar to that. Furthermore, it 
was a kind of drunkenness where the victim soon cared about 
little else besides getting drunk again. Men stopped supporting 
their families and women forgot their proper duties. And it 
wasn't just a few fools, either, but a fair part of the population 
that was doing it. Punishing them was to no avail. They were 
soon back at their old habits, no matter what was done. Nothing 
seemed to work, save killing them, of course, and that seemed a 
bit extreme. All sorts of things were tried, but none of them 
worked. In the end, the duke of the time-I misremember his 


name-had every single plant that produced a drug of that type 
destroyed, along with every single seed. A draconian measure, 
to be sure, but the only one that finally proved effectual. 

name-had every single plant that produced a drug of that type 
destroyed, along with every single seed. A draconian measure, 
to be sure, but the only one that finally proved effectual. 

Indeed? And what did your rulers do about it? 

They're still at the stage of trying a lot of things that don't 
work. 

But that means that there is a market here for the pain killers 
we use in the rest of the world, I said. If we bring in only 
refined chemicals, that can't possibly reproduce, and distribute 
them only through legitimate medical people, it should be safe 
enough. 

With the duke's permission, of course, Adam said. 

Of course. 

Then there were the food plants, and again, there were a lot of 
them. Even after we were told what they were, I only recognized 
about two out of five of them. People eat all sorts of things. But 
there were a few conspicuous plants missing. 

You don't have any rice here, I said. 

True. We have those food sources that were available from 
Europe, where we started from, and from the Americas, where 
we explored and traded extensively, but we are sadly lacking in 
those from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Perhaps your 
coming will help to rectify these faults in our collection. 

Not to mention your diet, Adam said. You are also missing 
coffee, tea, and bananas, and you don't have one single kind of 
pea or bean. 

I thought that beans were known in medieval Europe, I said. 
We do have bananas, but they are the original South 
American variety, and aren't very popular. We used to have 
beans, but there was a blight, some forty years ago, when I was 
still an apprentice. We worked for years, trying to stop it, but 
we failed. In the end, we lost every single legume in the world. 
In your world, maybe, Adam said. We brought a few tons 
of them with us on The Brick Royal. They were our emergency 


food supply. 

food supply. 

No. They were just dried beans. You could plant them if you 
wanted to. There's no reason why they shouldn't grow. 

And I could have samples of these? The old guy was 
suddenly excited. 

You can take every bag of the things we got. It was probably 
a dumb idea to bring them along in the first place. Give what 
you don't need to the farmers here, or eat them yourself, for all 
I care, Adam said. 

My lord, you are a true Christian! 

Thank you. Send a crew around first thing in the morning and 
pick them up. Sorry that we can't help you with the rice, but all 
we got is milled white rice, and it wouldn't grow. 

With a bit of a flourish, we were shown the island's pride and 
joy, their indestructible high-strength fiber, or rather the hemp 
plant it came from. 

They tell the story of the discovery of this strain to every 
new class of gardeners, the chief gardener said. It was in the 
fall of 1477, when a poor widow, Mrs. Eileen Tittle, was 
harvesting her hemp. Like all trained gardeners, she had always 
been taught to look for anything unusual in the plants she 
tended, but to the eye, this one was absolutely normal. It looked 
not a bit different from any of the hundreds of hemp plants 
growing around it. The hemp fields were much larger then, 
since with the way everything wore out so quickly, they had to 
plant many acres of hemp to clothe themselves, and still they 
could do but a poor job of it. Many of the poor went cold in the 
winter. 

So nothing was known to be different until she went to 
harvest her field. It was late in the day, and she was tired, when 
the strange thing happened. She grabbed the top of the plant 
with her hand and struck the base of it with her sickle, just as 
she had done a thousand times that day. But to her great 
surprise, the sickle bounced right off! What's more, the plant 


had pulled a bit in her hand, and when it did, it cut her, straight 
across the palm. 

had pulled a bit in her hand, and when it did, it cut her, straight 
across the palm. 

They did this every day and every night for two weeks, until 
the single bud matured. Then, and only then, did she pull up the 
plant to find out just why her sickle had bounced off. Oh, it was 
eleven more years of selective breeding and propagation before 
the first good crop came in and old Eileen Tittle became the 
wealthiest woman on the islands, but if she hadn't kept her wits 
about her in that first moment, the only mutant hemp plant in 
God's universe would have been lost forever. 

Quite a story, Adam said. You know, had she been 
harvesting with the kind of machinery we use in America, the 
plant would have been lost and the machine wrecked. 

That is probably true, my lord. It goes to show that 
sometimes the old ways are the best. 

We were shown the plant that they made paper out of, with its 
large, smooth, and veinless leaves, but we saw no commercial 
use for it. At best, it made only small, single sheets of paper, 
and modern printing practice demands huge, seamless rolls of 
the stuff. The same interesting-but-useless label was put on the 


gourds that were ground up and made into a sort of plaster. It 
was needed on the islands, but not needed in the outside world. 

gourds that were ground up and made into a sort of plaster. It 
was needed on the islands, but not needed in the outside world. 

It was getting late in the afternoon when we finally left 
Master Maimonides. He had promised to have his people 
collect samples of everything that we felt would be 
commercially interesting, along with instructions, in standard 
English, on how to use each one. We planned to carry only 
extracts of each plant back with us, and never a viable plant or 
seed. We were after trade, after all, not charity. 

If any of these plants were to be grown elsewhere, we'd lose a 
bloody fortune, and so would everyone else on the islands. 

TWENTY-NINE 

Since Adam and I had a full day planned for repairing the 
boat, we agreed to having our guide make a quick trip through 
the animal caves, rather than putting it off for a day. 

There were flocks of ducks and geese that lived off the plant 
life in the waterways around the islands. These were privately 
owned, though licensed, to keep their numbers from 
overgrazing. As far as we could see, they were no different 
from any other aquatic birds, and Judah confirmed this. 


Breeding them into something better had been difficult because 
they sometimes mated with wild birds, which upset things 
considerably. 

Breeding them into something better had been difficult because 
they sometimes mated with wild birds, which upset things 
considerably. 

In part, my lords, it is because we get much of our protein 
from the sea, the head keeper, Master Azzo d'Este, told us. 
For feed, we have little else but those parts of the plants that 
people cannot eat, and indeed, our laws forbid the feeding of an 
animal with anything that a human could use for food, table 
scraps excepted. That does not permit the vast herds that I have 
heard your people possess. Also, it is my understanding that our 
animals are more productive than yours. 

He then went ahead and proved his statements. There were 
two flocks of chickens in the complex of caves, one for eggs 
and one for early eating, just as is the practice in the rest of the 
world. The difference was that the eating chickens were full 
grown in three weeks flat, compared with the outside record of 
five weeks. Also, they managed this without using growth 
hormones, and without feeding the birds anything more than 
what amounted to being hay. The egg layers were averaging four 
eggs per day per hen, and again, doing it on waste vegetable 
matter. Compare that with the grain-fed chickens back home 
that put out one egg a day. 

There were rabbits that grew about as fast as the eating 
chickens, but whether that was superlative or not, we didn't 
know. They had just one single mature sow and her sixteen 
offspring. Being omnivores, just like people, pigs have a diet 
that competes with ours. The small herd was fed on the table 
scraps collected from all over the island, and ate them all. Pork 


was in short supply, and sold for astoundingly high prices. 
Perhaps this accounted for the popularity of Spam. Or perhaps 
it was the scarcity of fats in their diet. Chickens, rabbits and 
fish are fairly fat free. In any event, I saw us importing a lot of 
canned ham. Then came the real surprise. 

was in short supply, and sold for astoundingly high prices. 
Perhaps this accounted for the popularity of Spam. Or perhaps 
it was the scarcity of fats in their diet. Chickens, rabbits and 
fish are fairly fat free. In any event, I saw us importing a lot of 
canned ham. Then came the real surprise. 

I think it's a cow, Adam said. But I wouldn't bet serious 
money on it. 

It was standing upright, but those spindly limbs couldn't 
possibly have moved it very far. Judging from its legs and neck, 
the animal looked to be in the final stages of death by 
starvation. Yet there was a full manger of greens in front of it 
and a tub of water nearby, so it wasn't being maltreated. It was 
only when we stepped back and saw it from the side that we 
realized that the animal was mostly udder. The huge milk gland 
ran from just behind the forelegs and all the way back to the 
tail. It was wider than the rest of the beast, and the teats actually 
hung down into a hole in the floor dug to accommodate them. 
They milked the critter from the floor below! 

We milk her every two hours, day and night, Master d'Este 
said. She produces some four hundred of your gallons of milk 
a day, and her three sisters each do about as well. 

Unbelievable, I said. 

You don't believe me? You call me a liar? 

No! Please! I'm sorry. My command of your language is still 
poor. You must forgive me. 

Well, I suppose, if I must. 

I meant to say that I couldn't believe my own eyes. Your 
accomplishment is astounding, an amazing scientific 
achievement. 

Oh. Well, that's different. Thank you. 

How large is your total herd? Adam asked. 

Two. Plus the other two on the other islands. Or six, if you 
want to count the new heifer and the bull as well. We generally 
have him rented out for plowing and suchlike work. 

And four cows produce enough milk to satisfy twelve 


thousand people? 

thousand people? 

We bid Master d'Este good-bye, and started back. 

They satisfy the dairy needs of twelve thousand people with 
only four cows. Adam, there's a fortune to be made here. 

How? I don't see any way to do it. No matter how productive 
each cow is, we can't feed them here on imported grain and ship 
fresh milk back to the world outside. If we take something as 
strange-looking as that animal back to the States, she's going to 
be noticed in no time flat, and if she is as valuable as we both 
know she is, somebody is going to steal her. Or kill her just to 
prevent the competition. 

You're right, I suppose. Anyway, it would be a very 
long-term project. As slow as cows reproduce, it would take 
thirty years to build a big herd. What's more, most of your 
arguments apply to the rest of these animals, too. 

I'm not so sure. I think something could be done with 
chicken eggs, but we won't have time for it on the first trip, he 
said. 

Yeah. Maybe, someday, we can sell some of these animals 
to breeders back in the States for good prices, but that's not 
going to be for a long while. It's a pity. Well, it's getting late and 
I'm getting hungry. The girls won't be expecting us for a while, 
so let's go find a restaurant with a good bar. 

Moved, seconded, and passed by general acclaim, Adam 
said. 

Our guide, Judah, told us of a small, unpretentious men's club 
deep in the bowels of the island. We'd been following his lead 
all day long, and we saw no good reason to stop now. 

Oil lamps were few in the tunnels getting there, and Adam 
had to light our way with the penlight he always carried. For a 
while, the way was so long and dark that I thought that Judah was 
pulling our leg, but when we finally got there, the place was as 
advertised. It was a quiet, all-male sort of establishment, except 
for the help, who were mostly attractive young ladies, and naked 


at that. A single dancer undulated on a small stage, to the music 
of a drum and a single flute. The decor, except for the women, 
was nonexistent, and our waitress started out by offering us a 
menu, a beer and wine list, and herself. 

at that. A single dancer undulated on a small stage, to the music 
of a drum and a single flute. The decor, except for the women, 
was nonexistent, and our waitress started out by offering us a 
menu, a beer and wine list, and herself. 

There's something very relaxing about having a surplus of 
naked ladies about. It tends to eliminate a certain sexual tension 
that nags you from back in your subconscious and gets in the 
way of your thinking. Or perhaps it's that it gives the sexual part 
of your mind full reign, so that your libido in turn lets the rest 
of you get on with what you really wanted to do. In any event, I 
liked the establishment, and I didn't hear Adam making any 
complaints, either. The food was good and the beer outstanding, 
even though, like all the beer on the island, it was flat. With 
Judah's help, we started outlining just what would go into our 
first cargo back to the real world. 

The real world. I'd actually gotten to thinking about it that 
way. These islands, and to a certain extent the yearlong trip 
getting here, had sort of a dreamy quality to them that was 
pleasant enough, but was somehow unreal. A part of me was 
ready to go back to Bay City, and open up a new machinery 
factory. But that wouldn't happen for a while. If ever. Anyway, 
we had an important job to do right here. 

After a half dozen beers, each, we had our supper digesting 
and the program worked out. It was time to go. Our ladies would 
be waiting for us back home, and we called for the check. 


Fumbling for our money, we found that neither Adam nor I had 
anything smaller than a silver quarter, which was a huge sum on 
these islands. 

Fumbling for our money, we found that neither Adam nor I had 
anything smaller than a silver quarter, which was a huge sum on 
these islands. 

In truth, it was the first time that either of us had actually 
been asked to pay for anything since we had been shipwrecked, 
the custom being for the women to take care of that sort of 
thing when they were around. Our guide offered to pick up the 
tab, but we refused him. After all, we were far more wealthy 
than he was, and he had spent the entire day doing us a favor. 

Adam, it's only a quarter, I said, turning to the waitress. 
Miss, please take this anyway. Pay the bill, give yourself a tip 
of equal size, and have the manager put the rest on a tab for 
Adam and me. I think that we'll become regular customers here, 
in time. 

The size of the tip delighted her. She squealed pleasantly and 
ran for the back room. Shortly, the manager came out to meet 
us, a big man with a limp and a scarred face. He introduced 
himself as Chevalier Iwo, confirmed with us what we had told 
the waitress, and offered us another round, on the house. We 
thanked him, said that our ladies were waiting, and declined the 
round. We started to leave. Iwo then became more persistent, 
insisting that we stay longer. We, in turn, insisted on leaving. 
Adam, in fact, even got a bit rude about it. As we left, I saw 
there was a certain look of sadness in the big chevalier's eye. 


THIRTY 

THIRTY 

Nor did I, but our orders come directly from the 
archbishop, himself, and he is having us do this to ease 
the burdens on the duke. 

But if brutal things must be done, why can't they be 
done by men trained for brutality? Why can't the duke 
do his own dirty work himself? And if this is really God's 
work, why can't we don our cassocks? 

That was all covered in the archbishop's speech. 
Weren't you listening? Now, hush. Here they come. 

* * * 

Once outside the door, Judah ben Salomon asked if it would 
be all right if he left us there, since he lived in the opposite 
direction from where we were going. 

Certainly, but how do we find our way home? 

There were no street signs on the island, no street or tunnel 
names, and no house or apartment numbering system. Since the 
island was mobile, even directions were hard to give. 
Designations like East, North, and South were meaningless. To 
make matters worse, few tunnels were straight. Dug over the 


centuries, they met each other at odd angles, most of them 
curved, and they were as apt to slant up or down as they were to 
go left or right. Some tunnels managed to do all four. 
Everybody on the island except us had lived there all their lives 
and already knew where everything was. 

centuries, they met each other at odd angles, most of them 
curved, and they were as apt to slant up or down as they were to 
go left or right. Some tunnels managed to do all four. 
Everybody on the island except us had lived there all their lives 
and already knew where everything was. 

That's easy enough, but how do we get there in the dark? My 
penlight won't last forever, Adam said. 

The manager will sell you a lantern. The taverns all have 
them for sale. 

Adam stepped back in and came out with something similar 
to a Japanese paper lantern on a long, thin bamboo stick. We bid 
our guide good night and headed out on our way. 

That didn't feel right, Adam said. 

What didn't feel right? 

The way our guide took off. That innkeeper knew something 
we don't, too. Something's wrong. 

It's late and he's been drinking. Probably, he was just in a 
hurry to get home to his girl. A lot of us are, I said. 

Adam was shifting his glance, trying to cover both directions 
of the long dark tunnel. I'm serious, Treet. Keep your eyes 
open. 

You're getting paranoid. Anyway, there's nothing to see, I 
said, looking often over my shoulder. I like to argue with Adam, 
but I'm smart enough to take his advice. 

Look, you didn't grow up in the slums of Detroit the way I 
did. 

I thought you grew up in Hamtramck. 

I lived in Hamtramck. I grew up two blocks away, in Detroit, 
if you get my meaning. On the streets, you get a kind of feeling 
about when trouble is coming. 

Maybe I wasn't raised in Detroit, but everybody has trouble 
growing up. 

Maybe Bay City was a lot less violent than Detroit, but I grew 


up as the only Oriental kid in my class, and I was always much 
smaller than the rest of the guys, besides. After being pounded a 
few times by the local hoodlums, I suppose that I 
overcompensated the way any other boy would. With the 
shining example of those Bruce Lee movies they were showing 
back then, I studied the martial arts all through high school 
under a Korean Tae Kwan Do master. After a while, the bullies 
learned to stay away from me. 

up as the only Oriental kid in my class, and I was always much 
smaller than the rest of the guys, besides. After being pounded a 
few times by the local hoodlums, I suppose that I 
overcompensated the way any other boy would. With the 
shining example of those Bruce Lee movies they were showing 
back then, I studied the martial arts all through high school 
under a Korean Tae Kwan Do master. After a while, the bullies 
learned to stay away from me. 

After I got my sheepskin, I grew up some, and have never 
needed to resort to violence since. I had been twenty years 
without even seeing a fight, let alone having to get involved in 
one. 

Until that night with Adam in the tunnel. 

I first noticed that something was definitely wrong when 
somebody hit me in the back of the head with a club. 

I went flying down on my knees and elbows, but fighting is a 
lot like riding a bicycle. Once you learn, your head might forget 
how it's done, but your body remembers just exactly what to do. 
I slapped the ground, yelled, and came up on the bounce, 
smashing someone's testicles in the process. 

A whole platoon of thugs was pouring out of a small doorway 
in the side of the tunnel. I caught a flash of Adam propping his 
lantern against the tunnel wall with one hand while swinging 
with the other, and then there were other things to do. It seemed 
like I was surrounded by dozens of the bastards! 

In the movies, the hero can take on vast numbers of bad guys 
because the stunt men have the courtesy to come at him one at a 
time. That way, he only has to fight one opponent at a time, ten 
times in a row. If your enemies have any brains and 
coordination at all, they will mob you, all of them at once, and 


then you will go down, no matter how good you are. At best, 
you might take out one or two before you are deleted. 

then you will go down, no matter how good you are. At best, 
you might take out one or two before you are deleted. 

I swear that there were at least fifteen of them on me alone. 
Against odds like that, you fight to win, without thinking about 
the damage, jail time, or lawsuits you might be generating. The 
places you go for are right down the center, the weak seam 
where the two halves of the body seem to join together. Eyes, 
noses, throats, solar plexi, guts and testicles. That and the 
knees, and I've always been partial to knees. Knees are low and 
easy to get to without the flashy, dangerous, high kicks that 
some of the other good targets require. Also, knees break 
easily, they put your opponent down fast, and barring modern 
surgery, they generally don't heal properly for years, if they 
heal at all. 

I guess I broke a lot of knees that night. Six or eight, at least. 
In a while, the still-vertical portion of the crowd had thinned out 
quite a bit, and it was actually starting to get fun when a shot 
rang out loud in the stone corridor, and everything stopped. 

Figure it out, you bastards! I got five shots left and there are 
eight of you! Adam said with a gun in his hand and blood 
running down his face. All you need are five heroes who want 
to die, and the rest of you can get me! Okay! Step right up! 
What? No heroes? Okay, I'll pick 'em myself. How 'bout you, 
ugly? Want to impress your girlfriend with your heroic dead 
body? 

As Adam pointed the pistol at him, the fellow who had been 
singled out froze, then broke and ran. That started the the rest of 


our playmates running for home, limping, bleeding, and 
dragging some of their friends behind. In a few moments we 
were alone, except for nine would-be muggers who were out 
cold on the floor. A few of them were groaning a bit, but none 
of them looked ready to get up. 

our playmates running for home, limping, bleeding, and 
dragging some of their friends behind. In a few moments we 
were alone, except for nine would-be muggers who were out 
cold on the floor. A few of them were groaning a bit, but none 
of them looked ready to get up. 

You okay, Treet? Adam said, leaning wearily against the 
wall. 

A bump on the back of the head and a few bruises, but I'll 
live. Your face is bleeding. 

Face wounds bleed a lot, but they heal fast, too. See if you 
can get a bandage or a handkerchief or something on it, would 
you? 

I stepped over a few enemy casualties as I went over to him. I 
stood on top of one to get a better view of Adam's head. That 
still left me shorter than Adam, and the cut was near the top of 
his head. I stepped down, piled two more muggers on top of the 
first, and then stepped up to the top of the heap. Better. 

I didn't know you were carrying a six-gun, I said as I 
worked. 

The wound was a laceration, a tear in the skin. I cleaned it a 
bit with my handkerchief, and Adam handed me his own from 
his pouch as well. 

I wasn't. That was my penlight. 

Your penlight? Then what about the bullet I heard go 
through that guy's throat? 

It wasn't exactly a bullet. It was a fifty caliber Gyro-Jet. 

I haven't heard of one of those things in twenty-five years. 

That's when I built one into the bottom of my penlight. Back 
when I was in high school. It seemed like a good idea at the 
time. Ouch! 

Well, hold still. I'm surprised that it did as much damage as 
it did. I'd always thought of those little rockets as being one of 
those neat ideas that didn't quite work out. They were too 
inaccurate to hit anything at a distance and too slow-moving up 
close to make much of a hole. 


I used my handkerchief as a compress and Adam's, which was 
bigger, to wrap around his head to hold the compress in place. 

I used my handkerchief as a compress and Adam's, which was 
bigger, to wrap around his head to hold the compress in place. 

There, that should do it, at least until we get home. So your 
idea worked. But I don't see how you could do that with the 
other five rounds. 

What other five rounds? How much room do you think there 
is in a penlight? It was a single shot. All that talk about the other 
shots was just showmanship. 

Adam, if it works, it's sound engineering. Do you need help 
getting home? 

Nah, I can walk okay. 

Good. Then how about you helping me? 

I was beginning to realize that I was more bashed up than I had 
thought. 

All right. I'll carry you if you carry the lantern. 

Deal. 

I counted eight of them still on the floor as we limped home. 
One must have snuck out. 

Treet, I think somebody around here doesn't like us 
anymore. 

You think that this was a hit of some kind? Bullshit! It was a 
mugging. Our sin was hubris. We deserved worse than we got. 
We've been strutting around these islands with 
two-hundred-year's pay in our pouches like a couple of oil-fed 
Arab assholes. With that kind of money on us, we were sure to 
get mugged. Maybe most of the people here are peaceful, but 
every place in the world has an underworld, and you know it! 

Bullshit right back at you. Those guys weren't thugs. Their 
clothes were too clean, and they didn't have any calluses on 
their hands. They were students or office workers or some 
such. What's more, they didn't know jack shit about fighting, or 


a couple of old farts like us couldn't have taken out so many of 
them like that. 

a couple of old farts like us couldn't have taken out so many of 
them like that. 

You got some strange ideas about fun, Treet. They had to be 
part of some kind of a political outfit. The islands don't have an 
underworld, Adam said, shaking the blood out of his eyes. 

How do you know that? 

Because nobody in this whole place puts locks on their front 
doors. They mostly don't even have front doors, Adam said. 

You've got a point there. 

Did you notice that all those guys used clubs, instead of 
knives or guns like hoods in the States would use? 

It figures, considering the way everybody here always wears 
what amounts to bulletproof clothing, I said. Then there's the 
fact that I've seen darn few decent knives since I got here, and 
no firearms but our own. 

Yeah. Just another case of technology modifying human 
behavior, Adam said as he staggered home. 

We got to my place, pushed aside the heavy curtains that did 
duty for a door, and got through the zigzag hallway that gave 
some additional privacy before Roxanna caught sight of us. 

She stared at the two of us for a second and then screamed, 
and I mean the full-lunged, 
movie-heroine-being-eaten-again-by-the-monster, 130 dB ear 
bone smashing air-raid siren variety of noise. 

Painful. My ears hurt worse than the rest of me. 

Adam's women were still at my place, and they came running. 
Once assembled, all of them, servants included, promptly went 
into hysterics right along with Roxanna. You'd think that they'd 
never seen someone come home bloody before. 

I don't know. Maybe they hadn't. 

Roxanna! I shouted above their noise, Stop acting like a 
silly little girl! It doesn't suit you, and anyway, I thought you 
were made of better stuff than that! Get hold of yourself! 


Adam wearily put me down and we stood there bleeding while 
they took a few more minutes to calm themselves down. 
Finally, they managed it, and the decibel level dropped below 

Adam wearily put me down and we stood there bleeding while 
they took a few more minutes to calm themselves down. 
Finally, they managed it, and the decibel level dropped below 
Better, I said. It's pretty sad when the injured have to tend 
to the healthy before they can get any help themselves. Now, 
Roxanna, send someone out for whatever passes for a doctor 
around here. And send somebody else for the police. I want to 
report an assault with the intent to murder. 

That last statement of mine got them all to screaming again. 
We continued with our standing and bleeding for a while longer, 
and I added shaking my head to our repertoire. These people 
were so admirable in so many ways, but they were just not the 
sorts you wanted on your team when you had an emergency 
going on. 

Eventually, the same lady doctor who patched us up last time 
arrived. Adam's head was sewn up, this time with the aid of 
some novocaine from our first-aid kit, and then she went over 
both of us, tending to dozens of abrasions, lacerations, and 
contusions. We were even more bashed up than I had thought. 

I got my nose reset, and was given something that was 
supposed to save the teeth that had loosened up during the 
ruckus. There was a bump on the back of my head the size of 
half a grapefruit. It was so big that when I put my hand on it, my 
fingertips couldn't reach my skull. We both got rubbed down 
with something that was supposed to help bruises, and towards 
dawn, we were finally permitted to go to bed. 

I had to be led there, since by that time, both of my eyes had 
swollen shut. 


THIRTY-ONE 

THIRTY-ONE 

I'm sorry to have to get you both out of bed, but then your 
actions have forced me to be up for hours, so I'm probably 
being more than fair. Now then, we'll have a formal hearing, and 
quite possibly several full legal trials before this mess is 
settled, but for now I want to hear your versions of what 
happened this night. 

Adam gave him a straightforward explanation of what had 
happened, and I confirmed his statement. 

So you say that you were attacked without provocation, you 
admit to carrying and using concealed firearms, and you admit 
to leaving dead and wounded men in a public walkway without 
even attempting to render them any medical assistance? 

Yes, Your Grace. As to the wounded, well, please remember 
that we were badly wounded ourselves, and that their friends 
who had run off had to be close by. We assumed that as soon as 
we were gone, they would obtain the necessary help, Adam 
said. 

True enough, to the extent that they got their associates to a 
medical woman as soon as the two of you had left. That doesn't 
excuse you from your legal duties, however. But then you don't 
know your legal obligations here, do you? 

I suppose not, Your Grace. But please consider that they 


also left the scene without rendering aid to us, Adam said. 

also left the scene without rendering aid to us, Adam said. 

Thank you, Your Grace, Adam said. We are much 
relieved. 

You may be, but I am not! I am not used to this sort of crime 
in my domains. I am profoundly embarrassed that my subjects 
should behave in this manner. It is unconscionable, that 
nineteen healthy young athletes should, with weapons in their 
hands, feloniously fall on two middle-aged foreigners who were 
in poor physical condition, and who had only recently gotten 
out of their sickbeds after very serious injuries. 

And it is infuriating, that my young athletes should then have 
the incredible effrontery to lose the bloody bedamned fight! 
They had four of their number killed outright, and at least nine 
others crippled or maimed, probably for life, some of whom 
may yet die! 

It doesn't say much for your selective-breeding program, 
does it, Your Grace, Adam said. 

No it doesn't, dammit! In fact, it calls into question the 
efficacy and morality of over fifteen hundred years of 
controlled marriages, of which, up until now, we were so proud! 

Don't you realize that our athletes, drawn from a population 
of only twelve thousand, regularly outperform the records of 
your Olympic champions? They do it in track and field, where 
things are easily measurable. Physically, we are a superior 
people! And mentally, why, you yourself, Treet, have 
commented about how intelligent our people are! Yet the two 
of you made hash out of the best we breed! 

Surely, there is nothing physically outstanding about either 
of you two. Quite to the contrary, I should say, judging by your 


appearances. Yet you won when you had no chance of winning! I 
mean, that gun of yours only killed one man. You smashed all 
the others, almost ripped them apart, with your bare hands! 

appearances. Yet you won when you had no chance of winning! I 
mean, that gun of yours only killed one man. You smashed all 
the others, almost ripped them apart, with your bare hands! 

Physical condition is only a small part of combat 
effectiveness, I said from flat on my back. Knowledge of the 
warrior's arts is equally necessary, and the most important thing 
of all is the martial spirit. The killer instinct. The eagerness to 
kill and the willingness to die. 

The martial spirit? The willingness to die? 

Yes, Your Grace. The true warrior lives every minute of his 
life ready to die at that instant, if need be. Between the antipain 
drugs we'd been given and the glorious high of knowing that we 
had won a rough fight over impossible odds, I suppose I was 
getting insufferably pompous. Then again, I was just quoting my 
old Karate master. 

Hmmm. Would you teach us these arts? 

Are you really sure that's a good idea, Your Grace? Adam 
asked. 

No. No, I'm not. 

Neither am I. 

* * * 

A week went by before I felt like moving around and getting 
busy again, and Adam took four days longer than me to get 
himself mobile. Somehow, big people always seem to take 
longer to heal than us little guys do. Maybe it's simply that 
there is more body tissue on them in need of fixing, or maybe 
it's that when somebody Adam's size falls down, he falls a lot 
harder than ordinary people do. 

Or maybe Adam just likes being waited on hand and foot by 
two lovely women. 


I split my time between getting the boat fixed, and helping 
out with the island-scraping project. We only had the one diesel 
powered compressor, and it did double duty. During evenings 
and lunchtime, it filled the compressed-air bottles that the two 
deep workers used, the ones who went down to a hundred feet 
or so, and worked their way up, decompressing as they went. 

I split my time between getting the boat fixed, and helping 
out with the island-scraping project. We only had the one diesel 
powered compressor, and it did double duty. During evenings 
and lunchtime, it filled the compressed-air bottles that the two 
deep workers used, the ones who went down to a hundred feet 
or so, and worked their way up, decompressing as they went. 

The workers got used to it quickly enough, and before long 
were trading jobs with the SCUBA twins, for fun, the 
experience, and to even out the risk of the bends. Eventually, we 
got two complete fourteen-man teams trained, and work went 
on even on Sundays, once we had the bishop's written 
permission. 

We had some two thousand gallons of diesel fuel on The 
Brick Royal, in four integral fuel tanks built into the ferrocrete 
hull, enough to keep the compressor going for many months. 

The problem was getting it out. With the ship on her side, 
draining out fuel to serve the compressor and occasionally the 
genset was not a simple task. We spilled a fair amount of the 
smelly stuff on the floor of the warehouse until we worked out 
a safe way to do it. Once we had the fuel out of one of the big 
tanks we were forced to store most of what we had removed in 
plastic containers. Not what an American Fire Safety Board 
would approve of, but like the song goes, it's what you do with 
what you got that counts. Anyway, we figured that diesel fuel 
has a fairly high flash point, and that the risk of fire wasn't all 
that great. 

With the ship itself, we had the damage cut away, and the 
metal reinforcement sewn in by the time Adam was up and 


about. I had held off with doing the concrete replacement work 
myself, since Adam had supervised the original construction 
and, for the most part, I hadn't even been there. I'd been out 
playing salesman, and it's always best to put the most 
experienced man in charge. It was just as well that I'd waited for 
him, since, as it turns out, I would have screwed it up if I had 
started out alone. 

about. I had held off with doing the concrete replacement work 
myself, since Adam had supervised the original construction 
and, for the most part, I hadn't even been there. I'd been out 
playing salesman, and it's always best to put the most 
experienced man in charge. It was just as well that I'd waited for 
him, since, as it turns out, I would have screwed it up if I had 
started out alone. 

Hell, how can anyone possibly glue anything to a liquid? 

When I start hearing something like that, all of my bullshit 
indicators let loose. Inside my head, the lights start flashing, the 
fireworks go off, and the little American flags come out from 
the back of the machine and start waving. 

Naw, I said. Absolutely no way possible. 

You're just not thinking about it right, Adam said. A liquid 
is a liquid because the molecules in it don't stick to each other 
in a permanent way, they just sort of slide around, right? In a 
setting liquid, like concrete or epoxy, the molecules attach 
themselves to each other either chemically or mechanically or 
both. The molecules of this particular epoxy can attach 
themselves to the molecules of both wet concrete and hardened 
concrete. What's so hard to believe about that? 

Somehow, it just doesn't ring right. 

It's the truth, Adam said. I have it on the advice of 
four-count 'em, four-separate, independent experts that this 
stuff works, and that it's well worth the ridiculous price you 
incidentally paid for it. 

I paid for it? I don't remember any such thing on any bill of 
materials. 

Of course not. Who could possibly remember the technical, 
chemical name of any complex epoxy? Some of those words 


run to maybe forty, fifty letters. It's easier to remember the 
names of some of those ancient Mexican gods. I just slipped it 
in with some of the paints and lubricants we also needed for the 
boat, and you signed it. 

run to maybe forty, fifty letters. It's easier to remember the 
names of some of those ancient Mexican gods. I just slipped it 
in with some of the paints and lubricants we also needed for the 
boat, and you signed it. 

Yeah, but I'm your partner now. Don't it make you feel 
glad? 

I'll feel gladder if the stuff actually works. Have you ever 
used it before? 

Nope. But then I never had to fix a broken concrete boat 
before, either. Relax, Treet. Uncle Adam will make it all 
better. 

The actual cementing was done in a day, and then Adam got 
busy with the rest of the boat. The engine had to be drained, 
flushed out, and cleaned, and everything that salt water had 
touched had to be inspected, thoroughly cleaned and often 
repaired. We planned to convert The Brick Royal from a rather 
spacious motor sailer to a tiny cargo ship of the same size, and 
that involved removing a lot of furniture, bulkheads, and 
decking inside. 

I let Adam handle it while I set about getting our cargo 
together. The most exciting product the Westronese had was 
their high-strength fiber, Super-Hemp, we'd decided to call it. 
I'd hoped to be able to buy a few tons of the stuff, but no such 
luck. The clothing, fishnets, and other fabrics made from 
Super-Hemp were so indestructible that very little replacement 
was required. This meant that very little hemp needed to be 
grown, and so very little of it was on the market. Even less than 
usual, since a lot of it had been bought up to make Adam's drift 
net. 

I ended up touring every market square on the Islands, 
offering twice the going price, and still coming home with only 
a few hundred pounds of the stuff. Then I went out buying 
finished thread, finished cloth, and was eventually reduced to 
buying used clothing before I had enough to fill the smallest 
forward hold in The Brick Royal. 


I got home one day to find that a delivery had been made to 
me there rather than to the warehouse, probably by mistake. The 
chief gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, had come 
through on his promise of samples of all the other products that 
we'd agreed might have some commercial value in the outside 
world. 

I got home one day to find that a delivery had been made to 
me there rather than to the warehouse, probably by mistake. The 
chief gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, had come 
through on his promise of samples of all the other products that 
we'd agreed might have some commercial value in the outside 
world. 

In return, we gave Maimonides some one thousand nine 
hundred pounds of various kinds of plant seeds, mostly peas and 
beans, everything we had that was growable from Adam's 
emergency food supplies. Each side went away convinced that 
they had come out far ahead of the other side. To put it another 
way, a good deal was had by all. 

THIRTY-TWO 

One of the duke's couriers came by and delivered a formal 
proclamation concerning the upcoming court case of those 


people who had attacked us. Since neither Adam nor I had as yet 
any command of written Westronese, we had Roxanna read it to 
the group. 

people who had attacked us. Since neither Adam nor I had as yet 
any command of written Westronese, we had Roxanna read it to 
the group. 

The crimes that Adam and I had committed, carrying and 
using a concealed weapon, and the failure to give aid to the 
wounded, would be fined at the rate of two pounds of silver 
each, but since we had already gifted the crown by this amount, 
the debt would be considered paid. 

It looks like a standard coverup job, I said. Everything is 
left just where it stands, and the courts put their stamp on it. 

Yeah. That business of fining us an amount equal to the 
amount we'd already given says something, though, Adam said. 

Like what? 

The duke is letting us off, but he's saying that he doesn't owe 
us any more favors. 

Wonderful. A score of hoodlums tries to kill us, and we're 
supposed to be grateful for being let off. Not that the same sort 
of horseshit hasn't happened often enough in the States. 
Anyway, we gave the duke a lot more than just the four pounds 
of silver, I said. He got a couple of pounds of gold, and three 
or four big boxes of other things. 

Around here, silver is money. The gold and the rest of that 
stuff isn't. People think differently about social gifts as 
opposed to money. Gifts are friendly. Money is serious. 

Roxanna had followed our conversation in English fairly 
well. She was picking up my language far faster than I had 
learned Westronese. In a mixture of broken English expanded 


with Westronese where necessary, she explained her views on 
the subject, which were that the duke was a fine man, and that by 
eliminating the trial, and thus not wasting our valuable time, he 
was doing us a great favor. 

with Westronese where necessary, she explained her views on 
the subject, which were that the duke was a fine man, and that by 
eliminating the trial, and thus not wasting our valuable time, he 
was doing us a great favor. 

Roxanna was a fine and intelligent person in many ways, and 
Adam's ladies were stamped from the same cookie cutter, but 
they all were incredibly naive. They'd never heard of power 
politics, or of the innate sneakiness of governments in general. 
The duke might be a fine man personally, but as soon as he 
acted as a head of state, he naturally became a conniving 
bastard. It had to be that way, if he was going to continue being 
the man in charge. Wimps don't last long in this world, unless 
they are content to live near the bottom of the pecking order. 

Eliminating the trial does something definite for the local 
powers-that-be, I said. Officially, it renders mute the question 
of just who attacked us, and far more importantly, why they did 
it. I mean, just what is their bitch against us? Is it open to 
discussion? Or negotiation? Do we have something that they 
want? I'm not talking about the individuals involved, since I don't 
much care who they are. We gave them a licking that they won't 
forget, and they're not likely to try the same thing again. What I 
would like to know for sure is just what organization wanted us 
to be damaged or dead. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's some of the 
archbishop's boys, but I'd like to really know. 

There's no possible way that the archbishop could be behind 
it, Treet. You've never met the man, Adam said. But, yeah, I 
would truly like to know who it is that has it in for us. More 
importantly, are whoever they are still out to get us, and what 
are they going to try next time? I'm beginning to wish that we 
hadn't donated my arsenal to the duke for his royal safekeeping. 
I wish we had those guns still hidden in the bottom of the boat. 

I'm starting to feel the same way. The problem is that if 
you're right about the need for protection, we won't get the guns 
back no matter what we do. And if you're wrong, and we don't 


need the damned things, we can probably have them returned to 
us anytime. 

need the damned things, we can probably have them returned to 
us anytime. 

Adam and I looked at them, looked at each other, and shook 
our heads. There was nothing that we could say. We'd known all 
along that we'd come from a totally different world than they 
did. 

We loved these island women, but we were both beginning to 
develop a lot more respect for the sort of American woman 
who can stand up to adversity, and who can think things out for 
herself! 

We tried to find those attackers who had survived the 
encounter, just to talk to them, but no luck. The medical people 
said that they never kept such records, and had forgotten who 
they had worked on. 

When we applied to the keeper of the royal arsenal for the 
return of our weapons, we were told that citizens were not 
permitted to have offensive weapons in their possession. When 
we objected that we weren't citizens, we were told that 
foreigners weren't allowed them, either. 

The duke and his noble subordinates couldn't quite find the 
time to see us. The press of important business, we were told. 

There was a local baron who functioned like a neighborhood 
cop. We went to see him and explained our problem. He said 
that he was sure that there could be no possible repeat of the 
fighting incident, since violence was so rare on the islands. In 
any event, the duke had taken the matter into his own hands, and 
thus it was no longer the concern of the baron. 

The islands had nothing like a press corps. There were no 
muckraking reporters who knew how to dig into a story and get 
the facts out. All they had were some bulletin boards. We put up 


a series of posters, eventually offering very considerable 
awards for information, but we got no takers. 

a series of posters, eventually offering very considerable 
awards for information, but we got no takers. 

Judah ben Salomon was missing. He hadn't been seen since 
the night of the fight. 

There was no such thing as a lawyer on the Western Islands. 
When I first learned this fact, months before, I'd claimed that it 
proved that these people were totally civilized. Now that I 
wanted to sue somebody, my opinions were a lot different. 

Adam tried to see the archbishop, but was unable to get an 
appointment. 

I was able to see the warlock, but he maintained that he was as 
mystified by the situation as we were. 

Even the priest who was still giving Adam lessons in the local 
religion couldn't or wouldn't answer his questions about who 
our adversaries were, or why they were out to do us damage. 
After a while, Adam stopped going to the classes. 

There is only one way that a blanket of silence this thick can 
be held down this tight, I told Adam one night. It has to be all 
three of the high mucketymucks working together. 

Yah. I'll be a whole lot happier when we get The Brick Royal 
in the water. 

Me, too. I think I'll start lending you a hand, tomorrow 
morning. 

A week later, in the short grey dawn of the tropics, we were 
all awakened by shouts of FIRE! 

I dressed as quickly as possible, but even so, I was the last 
one out of the house and into the hallway. Buckets in hand, 
hundreds of people were streaming by, so I followed along with 
the hurrying crowd. The people here all had various civic duties 
to perform when an emergency occurred, and helping to fight a 


fire was one of them. I didn't have a bucket, and I wasn't sure 
where one was stored, but everyone on the island took their 
duties very seriously. I dared not appear to be a shirking coward 
because of going back to the house and searching for a fire 
bucket. 

fire was one of them. I didn't have a bucket, and I wasn't sure 
where one was stored, but everyone on the island took their 
duties very seriously. I dared not appear to be a shirking coward 
because of going back to the house and searching for a fire 
bucket. 

In a few minutes, I got to a place where I could smell smoke, 
and I realized that the all-too-familiar smell was that of burning 
fuel oil. Suddenly, I knew that The Brick Royal was burning, and 
all our property, all our plans, and all our hopes were burning 
with her. 

A bucket brigade was already set up, and sea water was 
already being energetically thrown on the blaze. The people 
were remarkably efficient, except that what they were doing 
was exactly the wrong thing to do with an oil fire! 

Adam was already on the scene, and trying to take over 
command from the local equivalent of a fire chief. Nobody 
would listen to him, or to us, when I added my shouts to 
Adam's. The Westronese volunteers with the buckets were all 
well trained for the emergency, and they didn't need any damn 
foreigners trying to interfere with their noble rescue efforts. 

Volunteer rescue people are like that everywhere. They train 
and train, working long, hard, and thankless hours, all in the 
hopes of one day being in the position of doing something 
heroic, something meaningful, something that can justify their 
otherwise humdrum lives. When that once in a lifetime chance 
finally comes, they are not about to waste it just because 
somebody they never met before is shouting at them. They want 
the shouter to get out of the way so that they can continue being 
heroic. 


Adam went on trying to explain to them the dangers of 
throwing water on an oil fire, but I knew that it was hopeless. In 
calmer times, they would be glad to hear from him about the 
three classes of fires, and what to do about each of them, but 
not now. 

Adam went on trying to explain to them the dangers of 
throwing water on an oil fire, but I knew that it was hopeless. In 
calmer times, they would be glad to hear from him about the 
three classes of fires, and what to do about each of them, but 
not now. 

Everything was burning. The boat. The electronic equipment. 
The life raft with all its emergency stuff. The cargo that I had 
been purchasing. It obviously could be nothing but a total loss. I 
could see fuel oil spilling in flames out of the ruptured tanks in 
the hull, running on the floor, and being spread further by the 
water that the fools were throwing at it. 

I saw the cathode ray tube in the old-style television implode, 
blowing shattered glass and burning plastic around the huge 
room, and out on the people who were still throwing in buckets 
of water. Cans and jars of food were exploding as well, with 
some pickles quenching a bit of the fire, and the ubiquitous 
cans of Spam adding their grease to the flames. 

As things got hotter, I saw bits of cement crumble and fall 
from the glowing steel ribs of our once-magnificent ship. It was 
gone. 

It was all gone, and there was no hope left for us at all. I sat 
down on the ground, with my arms on my knees and my head on 
my arms, and I cried. 

Later that day, as Adam and I were going through the mess, 
seeing what, if anything, there was that could be salvaged, the 
warlock came by. 

I was devastated to hear about all this, he said. I came as 
soon as I could. Can you save anything? 

Not much, I said. The gold and silver coins were in 
fireproof strongboxes, but just about everything else is gone. 
Great, huh? The only things that couldn't be hurt by the fire 
were the only things protected from it. 


The air compressor was out on the shore near the SCUBA 
equipment and the snorkeling stuff, so it's okay, but there isn't 
enough diesel fuel left out there to run the compressor for 
more than a day or two. I'm afraid that we won't be able to stop 
your island from sinking after all, Adam said. 

The air compressor was out on the shore near the SCUBA 
equipment and the snorkeling stuff, so it's okay, but there isn't 
enough diesel fuel left out there to run the compressor for 
more than a day or two. I'm afraid that we won't be able to stop 
your island from sinking after all, Adam said. 

Maybe, Adam said. But we don't have any batteries 
anymore, and we don't have an electric motor left of any 
description, let alone one big enough. That diesel engine on the 
compressor may not look like much, but it puts out five brake 
horsepower. A fit human being can put out maybe a tenth of a 
horsepower on a continuous basis. Do you see a way to connect 
fifty people to the shaft of the compressor? Well, I don't, not 
with what we have available. 

What about the windcharger, mate? 

That thing might be able to generate one horsepower, if the 
wind is perfect, I said. 

But you two are so resourceful, I'm sure that you could 
come up with something. 

There's a certain problem of motivation, Adam said. This 
fire didn't just happen, you know. The lighting here was electric, 
and there weren't any open flames. Even if something started 
leaking by itself, diesel fuel isn't that easy to start on fire. It's 
fairly safe stuff, and that's the main reason why we powered the 
boat with a diesel engine, rather than with a smaller and 
lighter-weight gasoline motor. 

What Adam's saying is that somebody on this island started 
the fire, deliberately. I'd be convinced of it even if we hadn't 
been assaulted a few weeks ago, but now the pattern is all too 
clear. Somebody here doesn't want us around. 

Yeah, Adam said. First they tried to kill us, and now 
they've burned almost everything we had. Now, I've got a 
question for you, Mister Warlock. One of your men was 


supposed to have been on guard here last night. We were paying 
for three guards to be on duty at all times, following the same 
pattern that you people set up when we first got here. One from 
the church, one from the duke, and one from you wizards. Now 
we can't find any of the guys who were supposed to be here. 
Somehow, they are all gone, and there weren't any dead bodies 
in the ashes. 

supposed to have been on guard here last night. We were paying 
for three guards to be on duty at all times, following the same 
pattern that you people set up when we first got here. One from 
the church, one from the duke, and one from you wizards. Now 
we can't find any of the guys who were supposed to be here. 
Somehow, they are all gone, and there weren't any dead bodies 
in the ashes. 

It was one of your people, Judah ben Salomon, who set us up 
for the beating we got a few weeks ago, I said. And nobody 
seems to have seen anything of him since. 

And we're not suggesting anything, Adam said. We're 
saying that this is one tightly controlled little island, and if 
anything major is going down out here, it's being done by you or 
the duke. 

Or more likely yet, by the archbishop, I added. 

But can't you understand? The warlock said, I'm your 
friend! I'm on your side. I'm one of the good guys! 

Then why aren't you doing something about stopping the bad 
guys? I asked. 

I didn't get an answer. 

THIRTY-THREE 

So, Brother Bartholomew, is all in readiness? the 
archbishop said. 


If you mean, have I done your dirty deed, the answer 
is yes, Your Excellency. 

If you mean, have I done your dirty deed, the answer 
is yes, Your Excellency. 

So that word of your deeds will not be bandied about 
the church? And if you must make me kill, why must you 
make me kill in such a long, drawn out, and painful 
manner? 

Because it will be better if the deed takes place off 
our island. Bartholomew, you are becoming rude, 
undisciplined, and impertinent! Any more of that and 
you will be in line for some serious disciplining, boy! 
Now, be off with you! 

* * * 

It was grey dawn again, twenty-four hours after the fire that 
killed The Brick Royal. Our ladies were lined up on the shore 
of the island, surrounded by their servants and employees, all of 
them looking tired. Getting ready to go had cost us all a night's 
sleep. The small sails of The Concrete Canoe were drawing 
well, and Adam and I were at sea once more. 

We weren't exactly running away between two days, but early 
dawn was close enough. We were waving good-bye to our 
women on shore. All three of them had wanted to come with us, 
but that was plainly impossible. For one thing, there wasn't 
much room on The Concrete Canoe, and most of what there 
was was taken up by food, three barrels of water, and the three 
crates of agricultural oddities that the chief gardener had given 
us. For another, well, they were all good, warm, and tolerant 
women. They were intelligent, learned, and competent. They 


were beautiful, loving, and sexy. But they weren't tough women, 
and we had one hell of a tough trip ahead of us. 

were beautiful, loving, and sexy. But they weren't tough women, 
and we had one hell of a tough trip ahead of us. 

We were bugging out, and neither of us liked it. It isn't easy 
to leave a fight unfought, and it isn't easy to leave a woman you 
love behind, but it had to be done, so we were doing it. 

Whoever the bastards were, they had tried to kill us, but they 
had failed, and they hadn't stopped us from going ahead with our 
plans. Then they tried arson, and while that had worked all too 
well, they still hadn't stopped us, although they sure had slowed 
us down. We were worried that their next attempt would have 
something to do with our ladies, a kidnaping attempt or some 
such, and we couldn't let that happen. Our women were just too 
fragile, too naive, and too trusting of their world. Being 
exposed to reality's raw side would be a soul-shattering 
experience for them. 

We could see no practical way to guard and protect our 
ladies, not while we were there on the Western Islands, and the 
targets of some unknown organization's hate. We were vastly 
outnumbered, and while they knew who and where we were, we 
knew absolutely nothing about them. 

However, without us, the girls should be perfectly safe. We 
ourselves had to be the threat that the bad guys were reacting 
against. Nobody would have any reason to touch our ladies once 
we were gone. Still, just to be on the safe side, we had retained 
the services of the fishermen and of Adam's porters, we had 
paid them each three years in advance, and we had made them 


each swear to defend Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters with their 
lives. 

each swear to defend Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters with their 
lives. 

Because we most definitely intended to return, even if we did 
have to sail across the Pacific Ocean in a twenty-foot open 
boat. 

Once, before the fire, we'd owned a complete set of 
navigational charts, showing every square foot of salt water in 
the world. What with our electronic gear, we'd never used 
anything so crude as paper charts, except a few times to show 
people where we'd been and where we were going. Now that we 
really needed them, they were gone. Murphy's Law still rules. 

Our electronic navigation gear was gone, along with all of the 
radios, telephones, and faxes. We had no sonar, no radar, and no 
satellite weather hookups. Hell, we didn't even have running 
lights! 

We lacked even a pocket calculator, and the sole bit of 
electronics available to us was my wristwatch. Adam had lost 
his in the fire. We had debated fastening my watch to the 
binnacle, but we finally decided that leaving it on my wrist 
would keep its temperature more stable, and thus help maintain 
its accuracy. We did have a compass, mounted on the binnacle, 
and Adam's antique brass sextant had survived the fire, though 
its mirrors were a bit scorched. Most importantly, the one man 
on the island that we were sure that we could trust, the chief 
gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, had managed to 
obtain a Westronese ocean navigational chart for us, and he was 
able to give us a fix on our position. Thus, we knew where we 
were, and from that, we could figure out how to get to where we 
wanted to be. 


Or perhaps I should say, we thought we knew where we were. 
The Western Islands drifted around one of the loneliest areas in 
all of the oceans, not too far from the equator and a few 
thousand miles west of South America. Get a globe, find the 
place where the manufacturer has chosen to put his company 
logo, and you're likely to be near the spot where the Western 
Isles are. 

Or perhaps I should say, we thought we knew where we were. 
The Western Islands drifted around one of the loneliest areas in 
all of the oceans, not too far from the equator and a few 
thousand miles west of South America. Get a globe, find the 
place where the manufacturer has chosen to put his company 
logo, and you're likely to be near the spot where the Western 
Isles are. 

The distance from the North Pole to the South Pole was 
divided into twelve latitude hours, which were just a tiny bit 
shorter than the hours of longitude. This difference in length 
was due to the way that the spin of the Earth bulges the equator 
and flattens out the Earth at the poles, changing it from a 
perfect sphere into an oblate spheroid. Theirs was as rational a 
system as any, I suppose, except for the way that their fixed 
reference point no longer existed. 

In medieval fashion, the world map that we were given had 
East at the top, at zero hours, and Europe at the bottom. What 
wasn't medieval was that the rest of the world was now charted 
out in between. 

The North Pole was stretched out to a vertical line on the 
left, while the South Pole was another line to the right. Their 
arrangement greatly distorted the areas around the poles, but 
then the Westronese never went near the Arctic or the 
Antarctic, so to them it didn't matter. Theirs was a very 
pragmatic technology, with little foundation in the way of 
theoretical science. For the tropical waters that they were 
interested in, their maps were more than adequate. 

Their system put the latitude numbers across the top of the 


sheet, going from zero to twelve hours, left to right, and the 
longitude, going from zero to twenty-four, top to bottom. 
Which, I suppose, seemed normal enough to them. To us, it was 
turned sideways. Furthermore, it was written in Westronese, 
and the spelling and phonic value of the letters in Westronese 
are at least as random as they are in English. 

sheet, going from zero to twelve hours, left to right, and the 
longitude, going from zero to twenty-four, top to bottom. 
Which, I suppose, seemed normal enough to them. To us, it was 
turned sideways. Furthermore, it was written in Westronese, 
and the spelling and phonic value of the letters in Westronese 
are at least as random as they are in English. 

When we started doing the math to translate the Westronese 
system into something that we could think in, we discovered 
that we did not have a single writing instrument aboard. Not a 
pen, not a pencil, not a piece of burned stick. Not an auspicious 
beginning. 

Well, we left in an awful hurry, Adam said. I just wonder 
what else we forgot to remember. 

Still, we were engineers, and nobody gets good with 
machinery without having a good sense of visualization. We sat 
down and worked it out in our heads. After a few hours, we both 
actually managed to come up with the same answers. 

About twenty-two hundred miles west of the Galapagos 
Islands, and about three hundred north of the Equator, I said. 

Yeah. That puts us just about due south of San Diego, Adam 
said, but I don't think that we should try for it. It's too far away. 
Actually, the islands of French Polynesia are our closest 
landfall, but we're in the Equatorial Counter Current, and getting 
there might be rough. 

Not to mention the problems of hitting a small island in a 
big ocean. I don't have that much faith in our navigation. The 
same argument holds for trying for the Galapagos Islands. 

Nah, I could do it. I can come to within a couple of minutes 
of the right latitude easy enough with the sextant, and then we 
could just drive along that line of latitude until we got there. 


You can watch for land birds, too, and the skies above an island 
are supposed to look greener than those above the ocean. 

You can watch for land birds, too, and the skies above an island 
are supposed to look greener than those above the ocean. 

You have very little faith, Treet. 

I have none at all, as you've often noted. No, we have to 
make for the nearest large body of dirt we can find, namely the 
coast of Mexico, and our course is due northeast. That keeps 
everything easy. 

Or as easy as a twenty-three hundred mile long trip in an 
open boat is likely to be. 

I said, At our best speed, say maybe three miles an hour in 
this tubby boat with its little sails, we might be able to do that in 
a month or so. We've got all of five weeks worth of supplies 
aboard, so what's to worry about? Have faith, my friend. Trust in 
God. 

Adam was looking for something that he could throw at me, 
something that we could afford to lose. He couldn't find 
anything in that category, and eventually he gave up on it. 

A little before noon by my watch, I handed Adam his sextant, 
and we went through the drill of shooting a noon sighting. 

After twenty minutes of fiddling with the ancient contraption, 
and another hour of doing arithmetic in our heads, we decided 
that our latitude seemed to be about right, from what we 
remembered of what the sun should be doing at this time of the 
year. We could check it with greater accuracy at night, 
assuming that we could find the North Star. 

The big problem was with the longitude. After much mental 
juggling with numbers, we came to the annoying conclusion that 
either we had been given a longitude reading that was four 
hundred seventy-one miles off, or that my wristwatch was 
wrong by twenty-seven minutes, or that our math was screwed 
up something fierce. We both did the math all over again, and 
we both came up with the same bad answer. 


Screw it! I finally said. It doesn't really matter where we 
actually are! Knowing precisely where we are won't change our 
actual arrival time one bit. If we just keep going northeast, we'll 
hit land eventually. 

Screw it! I finally said. It doesn't really matter where we 
actually are! Knowing precisely where we are won't change our 
actual arrival time one bit. If we just keep going northeast, we'll 
hit land eventually. 

If we're going to die, do you really want to know about it in 
advance? 

Yes, actually, I certainly do. I, at least, have a soul, and it 
would be nice to have the time to get it in order, Adam said. 

Adam seemed to prefer conning the boat, and since it didn't 
make much difference to me, I let him do it. I was content to 
trim the jib, bail the bilge, and break out stores as required. I 
took over and manned the tiller when Adam got sleepy, but that 
didn't happen in the first three days. Neither of us could sleep 
for the first seventy-two hours, what with the way a small boat 
bounces around on the Pacific ocean. 

Even when the weather is nice. 

THIRTY-FOUR 

There are some dark clouds there on the horizon, I said. 

I saw 'em. More important is the fact that they are to 
windward. Not that we can do anything about it. Everything that 
can be tied down already is, and we can take the mast down in a 
few minutes if we have to. So take the Chinaman's advice, and 
relax. 


Right. You know, Adam, I've been thinking about something 
you said once on the island, about how it didn't matter if you 
called something magic or technology. I think you were 
wrong. 

Right. You know, Adam, I've been thinking about something 
you said once on the island, about how it didn't matter if you 
called something magic or technology. I think you were 
wrong. 

I don't need one. Unlike certain others, I still have all my 
hair. I meant what I said. Technology is something that you 
understand, or at least something that you could understand if 
you wanted to spend the time studying it. Magic is something 
that is inherently not understandable, but works on rules of its 
own. It is a phony alternative to the laws of physics. 

If you want to define your terms that way, fine. I can't see 
where it makes any difference. We form concepts as a first step 
in comprehending the varied universe around us. Names are 
merely the arbitrary labels we put on those concepts, handles 
that make for easy carrying. As long as we agree on which 
concept is attached to which label, we can communicate with 
each other. It doesn't matter if the label is pink or blue. 

But it does make a difference. A big one. All the horse shit 
going around about politically correct speech is happening 
because the annoying people pushing it believe in magic. 

Bullshit. 

I'm serious. One of the big rules of magic is that anything 
may be substituted for its symbol. If you want to manipulate 
something or someone, you make or get a symbol for that thing 
or person, and then you manipulate the symbol. You'll find the 
same rule in European Witchcraft, African Voodoo, and even in 
the various forms of American Indian, India Indian, and Oriental 
magic. 

So? All that proves is that crazy people think alike. Or, if 
you want to state it in a politically correct fashion, it undeniably 
substantiates the postulation that certain mental aberrations 
tend to be predominately species specific rather than being 
substantially culturally engendered. Not that that's a particularly 
politically correct thought. The people biggest on political 


correctness are the schoolteachers who want politicians to pay 
them to make the world bright, beautiful, and suitably respectful 
of schoolteachers and politicians. Therefore, people of all 
flavors have to be amenable to education, indoctrination, and 
persuasion. Strange ideas like inherited intelligence and innate 
ability must therefore be condemned as basically wrong, if not 
downright evil. 

correctness are the schoolteachers who want politicians to pay 
them to make the world bright, beautiful, and suitably respectful 
of schoolteachers and politicians. Therefore, people of all 
flavors have to be amenable to education, indoctrination, and 
persuasion. Strange ideas like inherited intelligence and innate 
ability must therefore be condemned as basically wrong, if not 
downright evil. 

Adam moved us a half point farther off the wind, and said, 
Personally, I think that political correctness has a lot to do 
with the art of memorizing meaningless or at least inane 
phrases so as to keep your lungs and vocal cords in operation 
while your disengaged brain tries to think its way out of the 
dumb shit question that some pushy person with a microphone 
just asked you, hopefully while offending as few politically 
active people as possible. In American politics, of course, 
people who are not politically active simply don't count, and the 
only important point for a politician is to not offend inactive 
people enough to make them active for the other side. 

Political correctness is a mixture of mental judo, verbose 
blandness, and yoga, and is very useful for politicians who are 
trying to convince the voters that they are the least obnoxious 
of the various assholes currently running for office. 

Adam, you are becoming a lot more wordy than you used to 
be. You're swearing more, too. 

Current circumstances have deprived me of anything better 
to do with my time than to spend it on furthering your sadly 
neglected education. The minor profanity simply enhances the 
descriptive accuracy. 

The wind picked up a bit, and Adam adjusted the rudder and 
stern sheets, while I decided that the jib was okay for now. 

The subject of this conversation was magic, not the speech 
patterns of assholes, I said. Now then, the symbol involved 
may be a physical object, like the wax doll used in so many 


kinds of magic, but the most powerful symbols we humans use 
are words. We communicate in words, we think in words, we 
perceive the whole universe filtered through our words. And the 
people who believe in magic believe that if you can change the 
word, the symbol for a thing, you can change the thing itself. 

kinds of magic, but the most powerful symbols we humans use 
are words. We communicate in words, we think in words, we 
perceive the whole universe filtered through our words. And the 
people who believe in magic believe that if you can change the 
word, the symbol for a thing, you can change the thing itself. 

Take a neutral example, a group of people that nobody hates, 
like handicapped kids. Sometimes, because of some chemical 
screwup in a kid's DNA, or something going wrong while the 
fetus was in the womb, a kid is born wrong. It's usually nobody's 
fault, and certainly the kid didn't do anything wrong, but there it 
is. And in a lot of cases, there isn't anything we can do about it. 
Someday, maybe, the medical types will learn enough about the 
process and we can fix it. Or maybe not. We all feel bad about 
it, but what to do? The politically correct have an answer. They 
say that if we can't fix the kid, we can at least try to make him 
happy, and the place to start is to be less rude about what we 
call him. We won't call him 'handicapped' any more. We'll call 
him 'special,' and that will make it all better. In one swell foop, 
the whole problem of handicapped children is solved, and we 
don't have any of them to worry about any more. 

Of course, we now have a problem with all these 'special' 
kids hanging around, but we can forget about that since nobody 
will start an Association for the Advancement of Special Kids 
for a while. If sometime later somebody does get bitchy about 
it, we can always solve the problem again by calling the little 
gimps 'challenged.' The fact that the kids involved still can't play 
like the other children doesn't bother them, but the kids 
themselves are not that stupid. What they know is that 'special' 
is now just another word for 'handicapped,' and nothing else has 
changed. What the kid never knew was that 'handicapped' started 
out as a politically correct word for 'crippled,' and 'crippled' 
was once the politically correct way of saying 'gimpy.' 

I could give you dozens of examples of how these people 
are trying to make things go away by changing the symbols we 
use on them. Leman. Whore. Prostitute. Lady of the Night. 


Hooker. Each word was supposed to correct the problem, and if 
you didn't use the currently correct term, you were not only 
inhumane and insensitive, you were downright nasty and wicked. 
However, the change in wording hasn't eliminated the problem 
of women selling sex on a short-term basis, and those women 
who sell it on a long-term basis, called wives, are still horribly 
offended by the ladies who are still taking it in lying down. But 
don't give up hope, since I have no doubt that they'll be coming 
up with another new word soon. 

Hooker. Each word was supposed to correct the problem, and if 
you didn't use the currently correct term, you were not only 
inhumane and insensitive, you were downright nasty and wicked. 
However, the change in wording hasn't eliminated the problem 
of women selling sex on a short-term basis, and those women 
who sell it on a long-term basis, called wives, are still horribly 
offended by the ladies who are still taking it in lying down. But 
don't give up hope, since I have no doubt that they'll be coming 
up with another new word soon. 

Eh? 

Working girl. That's the new word for hooker. The good 
General Hooker's descendants can now rest easier, because of 
the kind ministrations of the politically correct, Adam said. 

Thank you. As I was saying. Moor. Blackamoor. Nigger. 
Negro. Colored. Black. Afro-American. It's the same story 
again exactly. What should be perfectly obvious is that reality is 
not about to change just because we changed the symbols we 
used on it. 

I think I see what you mean, Adam said. Like the only way 
that you can get a dinosaur to move is to get another dinosaur to 
kick it. But don't bad-mouth these word switchers too much, 
Treet. Think about it. The entire United States Army Corps of 
Engineers worked their balls off for two hundred years, 
attempting to drain the filthy, disease ridden swamps in the 
U.S., trying hard to turn them into useful farmland, and they 
only got about twenty percent of the job done. Then the 
politically correct came along, and bam! There suddenly isn't a 
swamp left in the whole country! 

Yeah, but the mosquitoes are still a nuisance in the 
'wetlands,' and malaria is on the rise. 

Details. 

All this playing with word games takes the emphasis off 
working on the problems themselves. If we spent as much time 
and energy working on engineering solutions to some of these 
problems as we do on half-baked social 'solutions,' we'd be a lot 


better off. 

better off. 

Adam said, Most folks don't know how to work on 
engineering solutions. The people you're bitching about don't 
know how to do much of anything except walk around with 
signs designed to attract airtime on the news shows, and free 
airtime just naturally attracts politicians the way shit attracts 
flies. The people you hear making all the noise are the people 
who don't count. It doesn't matter what they do, since all of 
their time is always wasted anyway. The productive people in 
this world are already doing all they can. I mean, personally, I 
don't know of any really good engineers who are out of work. 
Most of us are working longer hours than we want to. Getting 
uptight about what the useless people do with their time is just 
being neurotic. Treet, your problem is that you don't have any 
sense of humor. 

I don't think malaria is funny, so therefore I don't have a 
sense of humor. Remarkable. 

Sure. You don't seem to understand that laughter is the 
normal human reaction to pain. Preferably, someone else's 
pain, but pain none the less. Think about it. Think about any joke 
that you thought was funny, and you'll end up with somebody 
having to endure pain. 

I said, I don't feel like thinking about anything just now. 

Then chew on this for a while. Consider the fact that we 
human beings are members of the only species on earth that 
expresses pleasure by exposing our fangs. 

The wind came in hard, and for a minute I thought that the 
back stay would part. It held, and then we were busy furling the 
sails, taking down the mast, and stowing it all as best we could. 

The waves were getting huge, taller than five-story buildings, 
and every time we went over the top of one it seemed like we 
were airborne for an inordinate amount of time. I was getting 
worried about something being thrown out of the boat (like me, 


for instance) when Adam broke out the boat cover and we both 
got busy fastening it down. This cover wasn't part of the boat's 
original equipment, since The Concrete Canoe had not been 
mounted on The Brick Royal's deck, but was rather in its own 
special, covered compartment. It was something the fishermen, 
or maybe Roxanna, had seen the need for and had had made. It 
was made of Super-Hemp, and we were very glad to have it. 
Once it was on, the boat might be upside down, but at least it 
would be floating and all in one piece. Having it on meant that 
we had to crawl around the bottom of the crowded boat in a few 
inches of water, but I got to bailing again while Adam took the 
anchor off its rope, replaced it with the fishing net the 
fishermen had left aboard, and trailed the net and about a 
hundred yards of the rope off our stern. 

for instance) when Adam broke out the boat cover and we both 
got busy fastening it down. This cover wasn't part of the boat's 
original equipment, since The Concrete Canoe had not been 
mounted on The Brick Royal's deck, but was rather in its own 
special, covered compartment. It was something the fishermen, 
or maybe Roxanna, had seen the need for and had had made. It 
was made of Super-Hemp, and we were very glad to have it. 
Once it was on, the boat might be upside down, but at least it 
would be floating and all in one piece. Having it on meant that 
we had to crawl around the bottom of the crowded boat in a few 
inches of water, but I got to bailing again while Adam took the 
anchor off its rope, replaced it with the fishing net the 
fishermen had left aboard, and trailed the net and about a 
hundred yards of the rope off our stern. 

I bow to your wisdom, I shouted back as I continued bailing. 

In a while, I could switch from a bucket to a can, and then to a 
sponge. Within a quarter of an hour, the interior of the boat was 
fairly dry, despite the torrential rain and spray coming down 
hard on the boat cover, inches above our heads. 

We're not getting stuffy in here, Adam said, but we're 
staying dry. There must be some kind of semi-permeable 
coating on the boat cover. Do you know anything about it? 

No, but I have looked on it and I have found it to be good. 

Just another piece of amazing Westronese technology. I 
hope we have a sample of whatever it is in the crates the chief 
gardener sent us, Adam said, hunkering down on the 
floorboards and getting as comfortable as things permitted. 
Your last statement was almost biblical. Could it be that this 
storm is finally leading you to religion? 

Not a chance. If I've got to die, I'd rather do it as an honest 
man, not as a wimp groveling on my knees in front of a spook. 

Adam just shook his head, unwilling to open up on an 
argument we'd been through a dozen times. 


I said, I have read the Bible, though, something that you 
Catholics never do. At least it was something I never did until I 
quit being a Christian, and then only because I needed all the 
ammunition that I could get. 

I said, I have read the Bible, though, something that you 
Catholics never do. At least it was something I never did until I 
quit being a Christian, and then only because I needed all the 
ammunition that I could get. 

Reasonable. It really is a dirty book. Look at what Abraham 
did to poor Hagar. 

I don't want to hear about them. 

The storm showed no signs of lightening up, so I crawled 
forward, dug out the sleeping bags and air mattresses, and tried 
to make us as comfortable as possible for the duration. 

THIRTY-FIVE 

Three days later, I awoke bleary eyed in what I was sure was 
early morning. Adam was still asleep. There wasn't anything that 
we could do except wait for the storm to go away. There hadn't 
seemed to be much sense in keeping one man awake, on watch, 
since we had already done what little there was to do. 
Everything that could be tied down, sealed up, or otherwise 
secured already was. If the sea and storm were going to kill us, 
they would do so without our permission whether we were 
asleep or not. 

Lying awake there, I suddenly realized that something was 


strange. The incessant, joint-wrenching pitching of the waves 
had stopped, but the noise of the storm, which we were sure by 
then was a full-blown hurricane, was as loud as ever. But the 
weirdest thing was the way that the bow of the boat was at least 
five feet lower than the stern. I reached over and shook Adam 
awake. 

strange. The incessant, joint-wrenching pitching of the waves 
had stopped, but the noise of the storm, which we were sure by 
then was a full-blown hurricane, was as loud as ever. But the 
weirdest thing was the way that the bow of the boat was at least 
five feet lower than the stern. I reached over and shook Adam 
awake. 

I don't know, but I think maybe we're sinking. The bow is low 
in the water. 

Adam was nearest to the tiller, and he started undoing the 
lacing that held the boat cover in place. 

Treet, wiggle your way forward and see how much water 
we've taken on. 

Right. 

It made sense. Small people are better at crawling through 
tight places than big people. I slithered downward on my belly, 
headfirst over lashed down crates and barrels, all the way down 
to the bow to find that everything there was still reasonably dry. 
I could feel the boat moving. We weren't on shore and hung up 
on something. Mystified, I crawled back up to the stern. 

It's dry! I shouted. Could something have grabbed us and be 
pulling us down? 

By this time, Adam had enough of the boat cover off to stick 
his head out into the air above the boat. 

He pulled back his head and said, Nope. Partner mine, we are 
surfing! We are on the side of one bodacious wave, and if we 
aren't doing thirty miles an hour, I'm a German's uncle! 

I had to pull him down, shove him away from the hole, and 
stick my head out, before I dared believe what he was telling 
me. 

It was awesome! Not three feet behind us, the huge wave was 
breaking, spraying frothing white water all about us. In front, I 
looked down into a massive trough at least a hundred and fifty 
feet ahead of the bow of our little boat, and then the water 
heaped up, and up, I don't know how high. The scale of things 
was simply beyond the range of my ordinary thinking. To left 


and right, the wave seemed to go off into infinity, and to do it in 
an almost straight line. The wind was strong in my face as I 
looked forward, which was the opposite of what one would 
ordinarily expect. I was a while thinking about how the wind 
pushes the waves forward, and how, just below the crest of a 
wave on the leeward side, there has to be a barrel rolling 
counterwind going. It was a while before I finally brought my 
head back in, to let Adam have another look. 

and right, the wave seemed to go off into infinity, and to do it in 
an almost straight line. The wind was strong in my face as I 
looked forward, which was the opposite of what one would 
ordinarily expect. I was a while thinking about how the wind 
pushes the waves forward, and how, just below the crest of a 
wave on the leeward side, there has to be a barrel rolling 
counterwind going. It was a while before I finally brought my 
head back in, to let Adam have another look. 

I was so stunned by what I had just seen that I couldn't think 
of a suitably cutting rejoinder to Adam's digs. But such is the 
transience of human nature that even the most incredible 
spectacle eventually gets boring, and in a few hours we laced 
the boat cover back down and broke out breakfast, cold Spam 
and colder creamed corn that Roxanna had once appropriated 
from the warehouse to her own pantry, thus saving it for our 
current epicurean repast. 

For the last few days, we had been spending most of our time 
swapping old jokes, and since Adam had a better memory for 
such things than I did, I was forced to invent some to keep even 
with him. 

You heard the one about Jack and Jill? I asked, knowing that 
he couldn't have since I had just thought of it. 

Do you mean the clean poem, the dirty poem, or the 
children's poem with all the gratuitous violence? 

None of the above, but remember the dirty one for when it's 
your turn. No, Jack and Jill were two young people who hired 
into a production shop on the same day. For a few months, 


everything went well for them, since they were both cheerful, 
energetic types, and everybody around the shop liked them. 

everything went well for them, since they were both cheerful, 
energetic types, and everybody around the shop liked them. 

The trouble was that he didn't want to do it. They were both 
very hardworking kids, and what's more, he really liked both of 
them. So naturally, he procrastinated. A week went by, and then 
two, and he still hadn't laid either of them off. Finally, the plant 
superintendent called the foreman up to the head office and 
chastised him for his blatant dereliction. 

'I know that you like both of those kids, but you have to lay 
one of them off. Which one is up to you, but either Jack or Jill 
has got to be laid off.' 

'You're right,' said the foreman. 'It's my job, and I'll do it. I'll 
tell you what. It's lunchtime now, and they're both out, but the 
first one of them to come back, well, I'll take him or her to my 
office and explain the facts to 'em.' 

It turned out that Jill was the first one back, so the foreman 
called her to his office. 

'Jill, I'm sorry, but, you see, well, it's come to the point 
where I've either got to lay you or Jack off.' 

And Jill said, 'Well, I'm sorry too, boss, but I've got a 
headache, and so I'm afraid you'll just have to jack off.' 

Adam laughed politely as we went surfing into the evening. 
He launched into a long and improbable tale about how his 
grandfather got robbed on his first day in New York City, but I 
can't relate it since I fell asleep in the middle of the story. 

The boat pitched and crashed, and again I woke up knowing 
that something was very strange. The noise outside was still 


loud, but different, somehow. I was surprised to find that the 
bow of the boat was no longer five feet lower than the stern. It 
was four feet higher. My first thought was that we were 
somehow going backward. 

loud, but different, somehow. I was surprised to find that the 
bow of the boat was no longer five feet lower than the stern. It 
was four feet higher. My first thought was that we were 
somehow going backward. 

It can't. 

Then how can we be surfing on the 'up' side of a wave? 

We can't. Look, stupid, we're not surfing any more. We're 
not even floating. We have arrived. We have landed. This is a 
beached boat! What part of that don't you understand? 

Adam crawled out of The Concrete Canoe and I followed. 
We were not on the rocky beach that I had envisioned, but 
rather in the shambles of a once-impressive building, a hotel, by 
the look of it. The bow of our boat was propped up on the 
copper top of a full-service bar. The wave that we had been 
riding for three days had driven our boat right through a set of 
boarded-up picture windows that had once looked out onto the 
beach. Water was still receding out of the hole we'd made, 
taking various tables, chairs, and other fixtures with it out into 
the blustery night. 

The bartender, two attractive (if wet and bedraggled) 
waitresses, and four drunken customers were staring at us in 
disbelief. 

Adam turned to them and said, Are we too late for last call? 

We had not made landfall at Acapulco, as Adam had 
predicted, but at Zihuetanejo, just over a hundred miles west of 
it. All things considered, it would have been a remarkably good 
piece of navigation if it hadn't been such an incredible load of 
blind luck. 

Luck, hell! Adam said, Why can't you believe that I have 
God on my side? 

This time, I let it go, and ordered another round for all 
present. We had no Mexican money, but my credit cards 
worked. One of the waitresses, using her limited English rather 


than my nonexistent Spanish, eventually got around to asking 
about our strange clothing. I told her that we had been acting in 
an amateur Shakespearian comedy when we had been 
shipwrecked, and the story was believed. Buying new clothes 
was the first item on our agenda in the morning. Adam had to 
settle for some strange-looking beachwear until a specially 
made suit, shirt, and even necktie could be tailored for him, but 
then people his size always have a problem with buying clothes. 

than my nonexistent Spanish, eventually got around to asking 
about our strange clothing. I told her that we had been acting in 
an amateur Shakespearian comedy when we had been 
shipwrecked, and the story was believed. Buying new clothes 
was the first item on our agenda in the morning. Adam had to 
settle for some strange-looking beachwear until a specially 
made suit, shirt, and even necktie could be tailored for him, but 
then people his size always have a problem with buying clothes. 

It certainly beat the heck out of having them decide that we 
had stolen the forty-two pounds of gold we had on board, and 
retaining it for evidence. 

I was about to reset my watch to local time when Adam 
stopped me. At his insistence, we carefully checked its time 
against the time given us by the phone company. It was only a 
cheap electronic watch made by an unknown outfit called 
Innovative Time, but the thing proved to be dead nuts accurate. 
With this information, and a book of navigation tables, we were 
able to calculate our true position at the time of the first fix we 
took after leaving the Western Isles. Then, given satellite 


weather photos, and modern charts of ocean currents, we 
figured that we would be able to make a good guess at the 
approximate location of the Western Islands for the next few 
months. 

weather photos, and modern charts of ocean currents, we 
figured that we would be able to make a good guess at the 
approximate location of the Western Islands for the next few 
months. 

My credit cards stopped working. It seems that the bank in 
the States hadn't heard from me for over a year, and had put a 
stop on the account. Adam had never used a personal credit card 
once in his life, since they were issued by bankers and other 
unsavory people that he preferred not to associate with. His old 
company credit card was, of course, as defunct as his old 
company. 

We bundled up all of our insurance forms along with our 
claims on the policies to send them off to our lawyer, Alan 
Greenberg, back home. I phoned him to tell him what was 
coming, and he just said, Come home, both of you. Bring the 
papers with you. Do it now. 

So we gave away the rest of the food, supplies, and other gear 
that we had on the boat, mostly to the hotel bartender in thanks 
for his forbearance. We both thought that serving us politely 
showed a lot of class, considering the way we'd just demolished 
his bar. After we'd given it away, we discovered that both of our 
unopened water barrels were still filled with some of the rum 
we'd bought back in Puerto Rico. Had the trip lasted much 
longer, and with us trying to survive on rum instead of water, 
Adam and I could have died of dehydration, a nasty death. 

Adam, do you think that the rum could have been a third try 
at doing us in? 

Nah. It was just some stupid mistake. We was real rushed, 
that morning, and tired, too. Anyway, nobody would be so rotten 
as to make you die of thirst with sixty gallons of booze right 


next to you. 

next to you. 

Damn. You've got to be right. So whoever started the fire, 
stole the booze before they did it. Then they somehow switched 
these rum barrels for two of our water barrels. We are dealing 
with some nasty sons of bitches, there. And if they're that bad, 
are they going to hurt our ladies when we're not there? Even 
when it can't do them any good? 

Adam? Would you pray for our women? 

And such was our distress that neither one of us thought my 
request unusual. 

The barrels never had any markings on them, since the rum 
was probably bootlegged in the first place. But studying the 
three barrels we had aboard, these two were obviously machine 
made, and the almost empty water barrel was just as obviously 
made on the island. Still, we had no use for them, and in fact we 
had already given them to the bartender. 

The bartender was delighted to have the rum, and presumably 
put it to various good and profitable uses. At least, rum drinks 
were on special for the rest of our stay in Mexico, and 
presumably for a long while after we left. 

We paid off our hotel bill with my credit card (which, after 
my third begging and pleading session with the bank, was again 
working), rented an old but well-cared-for car, and picked up 
Adam's newly tailored clothes, so he had something to wear 
besides tights, a terry cloth serape, and a loud bathing suit. We 
bought two small carry-on suitcases to hold a change of 
underwear, a few trinkets, and twenty-one pounds of gold each, 
and we caught a plane that morning out of Acapulco for Detroit. 


THIRTY-SIX 

THIRTY-SIX 

I know that the two of you have a year and a half's worth of 
stories to tell, but we have to spend the afternoon in court, and 
what we're seeing the judge about concerns the two of you. 
Now then, pursuant to your instructions, as implied by the 
powers of attorney that you gave me, I have looked into the 
strange circumstances surrounding the demise of your fortune, 
your company, and your marriage, Treet. 

What strange circumstances? 

The fact that it all took place at the same time, and entirely 
too quickly, for starters. Normally, a company bankruptcy will 
drag out for a year or so, and a personal bankruptcy takes at 
least half of that. And no way does Michigan law allow a 
divorce to be granted in three weeks flat! 

Then how did the judge allow it? 

The judge didn't allow it. He caused it. He was conspiring 
with that carnivorous ex-wife of yours. Together, they came up 
with a plan that gave her not half of your wealth, but all of it. 

But why would he do such a thing? 

Why? That's usually a hard one to answer, but in this case, 
it's fairly clear. Exactly one week after the two of you left town, 
your ex-wife married the judge, but they had been working on 


the plan for a long time. 

the plan for a long time. 

But, we got Brazilian bankruptcy forms, and letters from 
Brazilian lawyers, I said. 

They were forged, and drop mailed through Brazil from 
here. Look in the back of Popular Mechanics for a listing of 
foreign companies that do drop mailings and that sort of thing. 
It usually costs a couple of bucks to get a foreign stamp put on 
your letter and to get it dropped off at a foreign post office. 
Deadbeats use the system all of the time. 

Fact two. Your company's bankruptcy sale was never 
properly advertised. No legitimate buyers showed up for it, and 
everything was sold to one bidder at less that five cents on the 
dollar. Needless to say, this bidder was working with the judge 
and your ex-wife. 

Fact three. Or maybe this isn't a fact, since I can't prove it, 
but it appears that an attempt was to be made on your life, while 
you sailed through the Panama Canal, but apparently it 
misfired. 

Dere was somebody dat was supposed to shoot him? Adam 
asked. His phony accent had come back the moment he stepped 
off the plane in Bay City. 

Yes, that's what I heard, from another client of mine who's 
presently in jail. 

Well, dey did shoot somebody on our boat back den. A 
young girl named Dawn Daleki. She was maybe tree feet from 
Treet when dey killed her wit a long shot from a rifle. 

Greenberg wrote the name down, and said, Shit. Murder 


One. That opens another can of worms. But let's finish up with 
what I was saying, before we get into this murder case. I'll go 
through all the details and show you the file on your case later, 
before you get my bill for all of this work, but the short of it 
was that the judge deposited your Brazilian check in his trust 
account, but was hesitant about disbursing the money while you 
were still alive. I brought considerable pressure on him, which 
eventually got him disbarred and impeached, and seventeen 
point three million of your money is now in my client trust 
account, awaiting your pleasure. 

One. That opens another can of worms. But let's finish up with 
what I was saying, before we get into this murder case. I'll go 
through all the details and show you the file on your case later, 
before you get my bill for all of this work, but the short of it 
was that the judge deposited your Brazilian check in his trust 
account, but was hesitant about disbursing the money while you 
were still alive. I brought considerable pressure on him, which 
eventually got him disbarred and impeached, and seventeen 
point three million of your money is now in my client trust 
account, awaiting your pleasure. 

Now then, the public humiliation of all of this proved to be 
too much for the judge, and he committed suicide twelve days 
ago. Any animosity you might have for him is now moot, but 
there is still your ex-wife. What do you want me to try to do 
about her? The terms of your divorce settlement have also been 
overturned, and she got absolutely nothing out of it except for 
some personal property and the bill from her lawyer. She has 
already been stripped of most or perhaps all of the financial 
gains she'd hoped to make, but we can still see that criminal 
action is taken against the woman. 

I was stunned by all of this. It was a few moments before I 
said, I don't know. This is all coming too quickly at me, and I 
just don't know what to do. I paused for a while, thinking. No. 
I don't hate Helen. I know it sounds crazy, but I think that some 
part of me still loves her. I don't want to hurt her. I just don't 


want to ever see her or hear from her again. 

want to ever see her or hear from her again. 

Dat sounds just fine, Treet. But what about Dawn? Don't we 
owe her sumptin? I mean, she was wit us, and we let her get 
killed. 

True. Alan, just what can we do concerning Dawn's death? 

Thinking about it, probably not much. She was apparently 
accidentally murdered in a foreign country by a foreign hired 
assassin, who won't be easy to find. I didn't hear whether or not 
your ex-wife had anything to do with it. It's possible that it was 
totally the judge's doing. The information that I got on it was 
from a multiple felon, who claimed to have heard about it from 
another prison inmate who has since died. I really don't see how 
the prosecutor could put together a case out of it, even if he did 
have jurisdiction. I'll look into it for you, but don't expect too 
much. 

Greenberg looked at his watch and said that he was going to 
have to leave in order to get to court on time. He said that since 
I didn't want to continue any further legal actions against my 
ex-wife, and didn't want to see her, it wouldn't be necessary for 
me to show up personally in court. His legal secretary could 
take care of the insurance claims forms for us. 

He was halfway out the door when Adam yelled, Hey, you 
want dinner wit us tonight? Dat place at da river, Knot's 
Landing? I'm buying! 

You're on. Seven. And Alan was gone. 

I said, Adam, your Hamtramck accent is back. 

Natch. I'm back in Bay City, ain't I. 

We took over Alan's office, since we had a lot of planning to 
do. The claims on The Brick Royal came first. Adam had it 
insured for almost three million dollars, with lots of 
documentation and photos in a safe-deposit box to back up his 
claims. Rather than trying to explain a case of arson on a 
mysterious floating island, which the insurance company 
wouldn't have believed, and which would have kicked off a 
round of lawsuits and countersuits that would have dragged on 


for years, he just put it down as sunk in the storm that blew us 
into Mexico. Officially, it was his ship and his insurance policy, 
so I just kept my mouth shut. 

for years, he just put it down as sunk in the storm that blew us 
into Mexico. Officially, it was his ship and his insurance policy, 
so I just kept my mouth shut. 

Once the insurance claims were attended to, the secretary 
tried gently to get us out of there. 

Adam said, Come on, Sarah, we got work to do. You guys is 
makin' probably a coupla million bucks off us, so can't you let 
your best customers borrow an empty office for a coupla 
hours? 

She allowed that put that way, it seemed reasonable. 

As she left the room, I said, We have a lot more money 
going for us than I thought. That means that we can start our 
project in a lot bigger way than what we had originally planned. 

Yeah, but you keep sayin 'we' and 'us.' Dis is mostly your 
money, ain't it? I mean, except maybe for da boat. Maybe it 
would be fair to call da boat 'ours,' and I did pay for dat 
insurance myself, you know. 

Didn't we agree to be partners? 'Retroactive back to the 
beginning of time'? You can't wiggle out of it now, Adam. 

But you're bein' way too generous wit dis ting. 

Nope, it's going to cost you, maybe more than you'll want to 
pay. 

Like what? 

Like if you want in, you've got to stop using that God 
damned phony Hamtramck accent! The damned thing drives me 
crazy! From now on, you've got to speak like a normal human 
being, or our whole deal is off! 

Oh. Well, if you feel that strongly about it, okay, I'll speak 
Midwest Standard whenever I'm around you. But if it bothered 
you so much, why didn't you ever say anything? 


The next two months were interesting times. 

The next two months were interesting times. 

Our lawyer's bill came to twenty percent of what he'd saved 
for us, a huge sum, but considering that we wouldn't have gotten 
anything at all without him, we considered it money well spent. 
We were both surprised that Greenberg wasn't interested in 
buying any stock in our new corporation, and being on the board 
of directors, even after, having sworn him to secrecy, we told 
him the whole true story. 

You are passing up the opportunity of a lifetime, Adam told 
him. 

I'm still aghast at your newfound diction, Adam, but no. I 
work best as an individual, not as a member of a group. But 
thanks for the offer, anyway. 

So, we put him on a retainer as our corporate attorney, and let 
it go at that. Personally, I think that he thought we were both 
more than a little crazy, and that no such island could possibly 
exist. 

Shirley, my old office girl, accountant, and receptionist 
jumped at the chance to come back and work for us. She didn't 
care whether the islands existed or not, she said, and she 
claimed that she already knew that we were both crazy. She said 
she'd known that for years. Mostly, she just wanted to be part of 
the team again, and was downright antsy to get out of Chrysler 
Corporation, where she'd been working for the last year or so. 
Her husband, who also used to work for me, felt the same way, 
and while we didn't need a machinist just now, you can always 
use an intelligent and honest man, so we hired him anyway. All 
this despite the fact that we were moving the office to San 


Diego, and before we told her that we were doubling her salary. 

Diego, and before we told her that we were doubling her salary. 

When you need to get a lot of things done, you have to start 
working on your long lead time items first. The thing that we 
needed to do that would take the most time was to design and 
build a machine to scrape the coral and waterlogged featherrock 
from the bottom of the Western Islands. Having such a machine 
working would show the duke that we were seriously concerned 
with the long-term welfare of his people. 

We spent a week looking for a company that could build us 
an underwater, remote-controlled, inverted bulldozer, until we 
finally found the outfit that makes those underwater 
remote-controlled submarines that are used for deep-sea 
exploration and salvage. What we wanted was bigger than 
anything they'd ever built before, but we figured that they knew 
enough about the special engineering problems that are faced in 
deep, high-pressure water to handle our job. 

We faced a problem in that we couldn't tell them exactly what 
we wanted to do with the machine we were asking for. We had 
to keep secret the fact that the Western Isles existed. Public 
disclosure would be socially, medically, and politically 
disastrous for the islanders. It would also be financially 
disastrous for Adam and me, and would destroy any hope we 
might have of reconciliation with the powers that be on the 
Western Islands. 

The people at Modern Oceanographics couldn't help being 
curious when all we could tell them was what the dozer had to 
do, and not where it would be used or why it was needed. 

Finally, Adam said, Look, if you want us to tell you lies, just 


say so. Otherwise, please shut up about it. 

say so. Otherwise, please shut up about it. 

Adam and I are machinery designers, and it would have been 
fun to do the design job ourselves, but in design work, the fun 
jobs are those where you are doing something different from 
what you have done before. That is to say, where you don't quite 
know what you are doing. Making something that works 
properly requires that you do know what you're doing. Situated 
between fun and accomplishment is education, and educating 
yourself with only mother nature for a teacher is always a very 
expensive and time-consuming proposition. 

Even so, one of us, usually Adam, flew out to New England 
about once a week to keep an eye on what was happening, until 
we were ready to go back to the Western Isles. By then, the 
design was complete, but the dozer itself wouldn't be 
completed for another three months. Also, by then the dozer 
was no longer a dozer. It was now a submarine with caterpillar 
treads on the roof and a set of vertical milling cutters in front. 

As Murphy's Law required, we were three weeks getting our 
Westronese agricultural samples through customs, and after 
two weeks we had to put Greenberg on the case, but eventually 
we were successful. 

Shirley and her husband got going on the three crates, the 
four books, and the electronic version of Thomas Register, 
trying to match each item up with a company or two that might 
have some use for it. Soon, they were going international in 
their company search. 

We started negotiations with dozens of outfits, and had sent 
samples to six of them before we shipped out. Not that being on 
shipboard would stop us from negotiating anything, what with 
modern communications and all. There was no significant 
income from all this yet, but it would come. 

In the meantime, we amassed canned meat and grains, enough 
to feed twelve thousand people for a year. 

We bought an estimated two-year supply of commercial 


fertilizers. 

fertilizers. 

We bought samples of hand tools and gardening equipment of 
a hundred different types. Indeed, we bought enough hardware 
of all kinds to open a fair-sized store, which was just what we 
planned to do. 

We bought lumber, steel, and glass. 

When the cost of silver coins proved to be much higher than 
the cost of silver, we had our own coins made, slugs, really, but 
in the denominations in use in the Western Isles. Copper 
pennies, on the other hand, were cheaper than the cost of 
copper slugs, thanks to the strange ways of the U.S. 
Government. 

We bought diesel generators sufficient to electrify about a 
quarter of the island, and wiring and lights enough for all the 
regularly traveled tunnels. 

We bought fuel enough to run those generators for a year. 

We bought televisions, VCRs, and radios. And a big 
projection system, for auditorium-style viewing. 

We bought compressors, hoses, and SCUBA gear for fifty 
men. 

We bought a small but complete machine shop, with a small 
electric smelter and a modern forge, to fix anything that broke, 
and to make anything that we might have forgotten. 

We bought a cellular, digital phone system, with two hundred 
handsets. And a satellite communication system to tie into it. 

We bought more navigation, communication, and remote 
sensing equipment than we had on the old Brick Royal. 

The biggest, long lead time items like generators and 
machine tools were often bought secondhand, but most of the 
rest was new, with factory warranties. 

And we had a ball doing it, spending much of our newfound 
wealth. 

We found and hired a medical doctor and her nurse, two 
women with experience in mass immunizations in faraway 


lands. We were vague about where we told them we were going, 
but we let them buy what they felt they needed to take care of 
twelve thousand people. 

lands. We were vague about where we told them we were going, 
but we let them buy what they felt they needed to take care of 
twelve thousand people. 

Dare we try to run the ship ourselves? I said. 

If it was in good enough shape to begin with, and not likely 
to break down, I don't see why not. Navigating a big ship is no 
different than navigating a rowboat, Adam said. Except for the 
fact that it would be against the law. It takes all kinds of 
licences and permits before they let you run a commercial, 
oceangoing freighter. 

Well, what if we buy a boat registered in Nigeria or Ecuador 
or something. Doesn't that get us around the law? I asked. 

Maybe, I'm not sure. But I still don't like it. There's a lot 
more to running a ship than a sailboat. If we blow it, we could 
get a lot of people killed. Including us. Tell you what. Let's go 
talk to a bonding company. They sell a sort of insurance on 
people, where if somebody cheats on us, or gives away 
company secrets like the Western Isles, we get paid a lot, and 
the crook gets shafted properly. 

So that's what we did. We got recommendations on a captain, 
and had the bonding company check him out. Then we told him 
exactly what we were doing, paid him half again what was usual, 
and had him check out and recommend the ship to buy. We even 
let him hire his own, minimal crew, although they also had to 
pass the bonding company's muster. 

We used the same approach on our security team. Soon, we 
had our own, well-paid, twelve-man police force. Their leader 


was Colonel Jezowski, and Major Perkins was his executive 
officer. Of the other ten, some of them were ex-SEALs, and the 
rest were ex-Special Forces. They were all retired sergeants or 
navy chiefs, and all had some civilian police training. And yeah, 
they were expensive, but this time, Adam and I weren't going to 
be beat up, burned out, and chased out of town. 

was Colonel Jezowski, and Major Perkins was his executive 
officer. Of the other ten, some of them were ex-SEALs, and the 
rest were ex-Special Forces. They were all retired sergeants or 
navy chiefs, and all had some civilian police training. And yeah, 
they were expensive, but this time, Adam and I weren't going to 
be beat up, burned out, and chased out of town. 

We set sail on a fine morning, under a clear blue sky, which 
was ordinary enough for San Diego, but a special delight for a 
couple of men born and raised under the often grey skies of 
Michigan. With Shirley and her husband holding down the 
office in San Diego, Adam and I were returning to the Western 
Islands, and to our ladies fair. 

Our ship was fueled, loaded and crewed. Captain Cyrus 
Johnson was the sort of man who exuded trust and confidence, 
almost too much of it, with his close-clipped white hair, his 
ramrod-straight posture, and his impeccably tailored uniforms. 
He was an Annapolis graduate, had been a career U.S. Navy man, 
and had spent the last ten years as a merchant captain before he 
had been forcibly retired at seventy-one. He was physically 
healthy, mentally alert, and wanted to stay at sea. If some idiot 
shipping company insisted on letting him go, that was their sad 
problem. Adam and I figured that we would have been fools to 
pass him by. 

The members of his seven-man crew had similar 


backgrounds, and they always saluted him in military fashion. It 
just came natural around the man. Even Adam and I had to 
restrain ourselves from saluting, genuflecting or kowtowing in 
some manner. Here he was, working for us, and there we were, 
working hard at not subordinating ourselves to him. But I could 
hardly criticize a man for being too much of what we had asked 
for in the first place. We figured that if we ever needed 
someone to stare down his grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI, 
Captain Johnson was our man. 

backgrounds, and they always saluted him in military fashion. It 
just came natural around the man. Even Adam and I had to 
restrain ourselves from saluting, genuflecting or kowtowing in 
some manner. Here he was, working for us, and there we were, 
working hard at not subordinating ourselves to him. But I could 
hardly criticize a man for being too much of what we had asked 
for in the first place. We figured that if we ever needed 
someone to stare down his grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI, 
Captain Johnson was our man. 

Adam and I toyed with changing the name, since nobody had 
the slightest idea who James Crawford was or had been. But the 
captain wasn't enthusiastic about it, so we let the matter lie. 

Our Chief of Police, or perhaps I should call him our Guard 
Captain, Colonel Jezowski, had a fair amount in common with 
Captain Johnson. A West Point graduate, with a distinguished 
career in the U.S. Army, he had been a police chief in a 
middle-sized Oregon town until he too had been forcibly 
retired. 

This business of hiring retirees wasn't accidental. We wanted 
steady, calm, and experienced men, not fire breathers. We 
wanted to keep the peace, not win a war. 

Our police force was fit and well armed. Although we hadn't 
seen the need for any heavy weaponry, or explosives, we were 
strong on detection equipment, bugging devices, and 
surveillance cameras. Since our enemies on the island were not 
likely to know of the existence of such things, we resolved to 
use them discreetly, and to mention them not at all. 

Our new CD library was well stocked in most areas, but not 
in spy movies and police melodramas. Oh, the islanders would 
be able to pick up just about anything off the satellite hookup, 
but having them learn later rather than sooner was all for the 


better. 

better. 

I don't think one person in ten completely believed us, but via 
the internet, they'd seen that their pay was being deposited into 
their bank accounts in San Diego, and that's enough for most 
people. 

We had Captain Johnson check out our calculations, guesses 
really, as to the position of the Western Islands. We showed 
him Adam's antique sextant, which he found to be quaint, but 
accurate, and told him how we checked out my watch, a week or 
so after the sighting. The captain had us shoot a noon fix, and he 
couldn't fault our equipment, our technique, or our calculations. 

It wasn't until we showed him the map we'd gotten on the 
island that he really perked up. He asked all sorts of questions 
about it, and even about the paper it was drawn on. Eventually, 
I got the feeling that the good captain was starting to believe 
that we were telling the truth about the islands. 

Maybe we should have showed everybody the crates of 
agricultural products we'd brought back, instead of keeping 
everything as secret as possible. Some of the stuff, like 
Super-Hemp, was as impressive as all hell. The simple fact was 
that I had never had trouble making people believe me before, 
and neither had Adam. We had thought that our problem would 
be to keep the place secret, to keep the profits up, and to keep 
our promises to the duke. That everybody would think we were 
liars had simply never occurred to us. If we hadn't had enough 
money to convince people to come along even if we were 
crazy, the whole project would have ended in that smashed-up 
Mexican hotel bar. 


We had some island clothing with us, saved for our grand 
entrance there, and one day I showed a group of security people 
my gorgeously embroidered jacket. When they looked 
unimpressed, I challenged them to rip it up, and once they saw I 
was serious, five big men gave it their best shot. Not so much as 
a wrinkle! One of them had a fighting knife at his belt, and I told 
him to go ahead and cut it up. He tried, without doing anything 
but dulling his knife. 

We had some island clothing with us, saved for our grand 
entrance there, and one day I showed a group of security people 
my gorgeously embroidered jacket. When they looked 
unimpressed, I challenged them to rip it up, and once they saw I 
was serious, five big men gave it their best shot. Not so much as 
a wrinkle! One of them had a fighting knife at his belt, and I told 
him to go ahead and cut it up. He tried, without doing anything 
but dulling his knife. 

A huge ex-SEAL said, I don't know, sir, but that's the 
prettiest piece of Kevlar I ever saw! 

I picked up my jacket and walked away, my head hung low. 
Somehow, I'd make them believe. 

We started giving a series of talks and seminars about the 
Western Islands, explaining their history, their technology, and 
their customs. We even tried to teach our new employees a bit 
of the language, simple stuff like Hello, Thank You, and 
Take Me To My Leader, Since I'm Lost. Attendance was 
dismal, even when we told people that attending was part of 
their job. 

We got more excuses than warm bodies. Part of the reason 
for the seminars was to convince people that the islands really 
existed, but we still hadn't made believers out of them. 

It took us just over a week to arrive at our estimated position 
for the island. We were on deck, along with most of our people, 
but there was nothing to look at but an empty ocean. The island 
wasn't there, but we weren't worried. Even though it was 
statistically the most likely place for the Western Isles to be, 
we had calculated that there was only about a one in twenty 
chance that we could see them from where we were. The islands 
moved, after all, with the winds and the currents. 

We started in on a standard search pattern, spiraling outward 
from our point of origin. Besides having at least two men on 
lookout at all times, we had both radar and sonar going 
continuously as well. We'd find it. 


Adam and I continued working, checking on the progress of 
our submarine milling robot, encouraging the negotiations on 
the island's products, and generally keeping busy. The truth was 
that we both had first-rate cases of nerves. We each found 
excuses at least six times a day to go up on deck, have a look 
around, and see nothing but the empty sea. 

Adam and I continued working, checking on the progress of 
our submarine milling robot, encouraging the negotiations on 
the island's products, and generally keeping busy. The truth was 
that we both had first-rate cases of nerves. We each found 
excuses at least six times a day to go up on deck, have a look 
around, and see nothing but the empty sea. 

Treet! You heard the news? 

We found the island? 

No. That lab got back to Shirley about what Super-Hemp is 
made out of. 

The chemical formula? So? I said. 

It's polyethylene. Super-high molecular weight 
polyethylene. 

Bullshit. Polyethylene is the cheapest plastic around, and it 
was almost the first one invented. If it could be made that 
strong, somebody would have done it years ago. 

I'm serious! Ordinary, commercial polyethylene is weak 
because the molecules are short, they slide against each other, 
and slip apart. Super-Hemp has molecules three feet long! To 
break it, you have to break a covalent bond, and that's not an 
easy thing to do. 

I said, It still doesn't make sense. The molecules would have 
to be thousands of times longer than the cells of the plant they 
were formed in. How could that be? 

So maybe they stick out a hole in the cell wall. Did I say I 
was a botanical cytologist? All I know is that we are dealing 
with a high-molecular-weight plastic. 

Interesting, but I don't see where it changes anything. No 
news on the island, huh? 

No. 

The ship's crew and our police, who were standing deck 
watch, were doing their duty in a calm, professional manner, but 
I had the feeling that they didn't really expect to find anything, 
much less a fabulous floating island. Several times, we heard 


laughing from the crew's quarters, and we were pretty sure that 
they were making jokes about us. 

laughing from the crew's quarters, and we were pretty sure that 
they were making jokes about us. 

We're now circling our starting point at a radius of four 
hundred and thirty miles, Adam said. 

We've been gone from the islands for over a hundred days, I 
said. At one mile an hour, which is slow for an ocean current, 
that gives them time to go two thousand four hundred miles. 

I know. And if we go on circling and searching for another 
hundred days, our radius will be only twenty-two hundred miles, 
while they could easily have gone a total of forty-eight hundred 
miles by then. What it adds up to is that if they want to run and 
hide in some other area of the ocean, we can't catch them by 
searching, even though we're twenty times faster than they are, 
Adam said. 

So we have to go on the assumption that they aren't 
deliberately running from us. Let's continue using the present 
search pattern two more days, and see what turns up. 

Okay. For now, I'm going to see if I remember how to do a 
Drunkard's Walk analysis. 

You do that, I said. I'm going down to the mess to do some 
empirical tests on the same problem. 

You're going to get drunk and then try to walk. 

Right. 

Being drunk does not make your problems go away, but it 
does make enduring them seem to take less time. When the two 
days had gone by without incident, we went to the captain and 
asked him to return to our original position and to try the 
search pattern again, only running it clockwise this time. After 


all, a standard search pattern can be guaranteed to work only if 
the target stays in one place, and ours was obviously not doing 
that. 

all, a standard search pattern can be guaranteed to work only if 
the target stays in one place, and ours was obviously not doing 
that. 

At three the next morning, I was beating on Adam's cabin 
door. 

Adam, wake up. Tell me, how would the Western Islands 
show up looking from a geosynchronous weather satellite? 

We checked that out once, he said groggily. An area the 
size of the islands is just on the edge of detectability from a 
weather satellite. It would appear to be about the size of a single 
pixel. A spy satellite can read the headlines on a newspaper, but 
they have to be pointed at what you want to see, like the 
telescopes they are, and nobody much cares about this part of 
the ocean. 

Right. So what we need is the raw data from several months 
of weather satellite observations. We look for anomalies, 
glitches and noise right on the edge of detectability that are 
close to other glitches that showed up on the previous day's 
photo. When we have a string of glitches in a row, we know the 
position of the islands! 

By this time, Adam was fully awake. 

It's easier than that, he said. We know the starting position, 
the date and place of our first sighting on the Concrete Canoe. 
We need some computer programmers, and there's an outfit I 
know of in New Dehli that works cheap. Also, they'll be awake 
right now. 

But, we can't tell them about the islands! 

Right, but not because they'd believe us. Nobody believes us 
about the islands! We need a story that they will believe. How 
about we lost a huge drift net that got tangled up with a lot of 
flotsam at a certain time and place, and the ship that left it there 
had to run from a storm. Now we need to find it to stop it from 


causing further ecological damage. 

causing further ecological damage. 

Good point. That way they'll know that we were using it and 
want to get it back before we're caught. 

I said, Then you are letting them think that we committed a 
crime! 

True. That way they'll keep it quiet, since if we get arrested 
and our accounts are frozen by the courts, the programmers 
won't get paid. 

Adam, you have a devious mind. 

Don't it make you feel proud? Adam almost slipped back 
into his Hamtramck accent, caught himself, and continued on in 
English. Come on, let's put in a call to New Dehli! 

* * * 

Captain Johnson continued our search pattern for five more 
gut-wrenching days before the Indian programmers finally got 
back to us. They had a definite fix on the islands, and a chart 
showing where they had been almost every day for the last four 
months. 

As it turned out, we had been within a hundred miles of the 
islands on three separate occasions since the search began, but 
had just missed them each time. I razzed Adam about his God's 
on my side statements, and he didn't even get decently mad at 
me. 

We wired the programmers a check for their services, 
along with a nice bonus, with the understanding that they were 
to destroy their files on the job and tell no one about the work 
they'd done for us. 

This they promised to do, thanking us for the prompt payment 
and the gratuity. We were confident that they would keep it all 
quiet, since they thought that they had participated in an 
international crime, using a drift net on the open ocean. 

We changed course for the island's present position, and our 
captain said that we would be there by the next afternoon. 

The captain soon had the crew cleaning and polishing the 


ship, and our police promptly joined in. The next morning was 
spent cleaning ourselves, since a mostly male group can get 
pretty rank at sea. 

ship, and our police promptly joined in. The next morning was 
spent cleaning ourselves, since a mostly male group can get 
pretty rank at sea. 

A crate of old signal flags had been among the extra 
equipment we'd inherited when we bought the ship, and I told 
the captain that I wanted them flying when we reached the 
island. When he asked what I wanted them to say, I said that the 
ones in front should read, Roxanna, I'm back! 

Our ship had every flag on board flying and we were all in our 
best, as first the radar, then sonar and finally the watch on the 
bridge sighted the impossible floating islands. 

Adam and I were in our fanciest, festive island clothing, 
brought along and saved for the occasion, when we finally saw 
our home again with our own eyes. 

A huge crowd of islanders was waiting for us at the entrance 
to the island's central lagoon, the Llyr. They all seemed to be 
happy to see us, and nowhere was there the angry face of 
someone who wished us ill. 

The duke was in the forefront, smiling and waving, and beside 
him stood the warlock. Adam searched the crowd carefully with 
binoculars, and said that the archbishop was conspicuously 
absent. 

We spotted the Pelitier sisters, and standing next to them, 
laughing and cheering us in, was my own true love, Roxanna. 


THIRTY-EIGHT 

THIRTY-EIGHT 

So. It's them? There can be no mistake? 

No, Your Grace. I could read the signal flags they 
are flying. Treet calls Roxanna by name, and tells her 
that he's returned, the warlock said. 

Then there is little more to say. If we oppose them 
further, we shall lose everything. The only sane thing to 
do is to admit defeat, and offer our services as 
administrators to our conquerors. That way, we can at 
least protect our people and maintain our crown. 

That would be a dastardly thing, a cowardly thing 
to do! shouted the archbishop. Your forefathers were 
made of better stuff! Has your line become nothing but 
the trail of slime-covered slugs? Fight them! Your people 
would follow you to the death, if you but asked them! 

Yes, they would, because they love me and trust me, 
just as I love and trust them. How then could I lead them 
into certain destruction? No. We are beaten, but we can 
still put a good face on things. We will all give them a 
cheerful welcome into the harbor, we will invite them to 
a feast, and we will do everything that they ask, to prove 


to them that we will be good and faithful servants to 
them. They, being as intelligent as we are, will know 
that we will be able to serve them well only if the people 
see us still as their leaders. In name at least, I will still 
be duke, and you will still be my noblemen, my 
churchmen, and my wizards. 

to them that we will be good and faithful servants to 
them. They, being as intelligent as we are, will know 
that we will be able to serve them well only if the people 
see us still as their leaders. In name at least, I will still 
be duke, and you will still be my noblemen, my 
churchmen, and my wizards. 

But for now, our path is clear. We must be united in 
welcoming our new masters to power. 

The archbishop stood, shaking with defiance. And I 
swear to all of you that I will never do such a foul 
thing! 

The duke looked at him for a full minute, while all in 
the room sat silent, half afraid to breathe. Finally, he 
said, Very well, you need not join us. Indeed, it is only 
fitting, since it was due to your advice, and your covert 
actions, that we find ourselves in this sorry condition. 
Uncle Felix, take the good Archbishop out and kill him. 
Make it look like an accident. 

At the top of an open-centered spiral staircase that 
seemed to go down into infinity, Earl Felix and the 
archbishop were approached by a tall young man in a 
monk's cassock. 

Bartholomew! the Archbishop cried. Thank God 
it's you! Help me! Save me from this man, who means to 
kill me! 


The monk stepped closer, but Earl Felix raised one 
hand and said, Stop! This man has offended the Duke, 
who has ordered his death. 

The monk stepped closer, but Earl Felix raised one 
hand and said, Stop! This man has offended the Duke, 
who has ordered his death. 

The earl nodded. 

Thank you, my lord. Then again, may I do the job 
for you?

 * * * 

The water by the stone wharf proved to be deep enough so 
that we could tie the ship up without difficulty. The ancient 
dockage at the mouth of the Llyr could not have been built for 
ships as large as ours, and most harbors in the world are 
gradually silting up, getting shallower unless they are regularly 
dredged out. However, since the Western Isles were sinking, its 
harbor was actually getting deeper. We'd have to watch the 
situation carefully, once we got to scraping the bottom of the 
island, to make sure that we didn't beach our ship. 

Adam was the first one ashore, and I was inches behind him 
going down the gangplank, eager to give Roxanna a proper hug 
and a kiss. 

After allowing us a few minutes with our ladies, the duke 
himself came up to greet us. He made a short speech, first in 
Westronese and then in English, welcoming us back, and 
granting all the men on the ship visas to stay on the islands for 
as long as they wished. He even threw in a line to the young 
ladies of his realm, asking that they give his new guests a warm 
welcome. He acted as though we had left and had returned with 
his understanding and permission, rather than having been beat 
up, burned out, and then forced to sneak away in the early dawn 
with only a third of the water we'd need to survive the trip. 


Adam glanced at me, I nodded, and wordlessly we decided 
that if the duke wanted to put the best face possible on the 
situation, we would let him do it. We had the power, now, and 
we could afford to be generous. When the colonel stationed 
armed guards around our ship, most of them standing on the 
sovereign territory of the Western Islands, the duke said not a 
word about it. 

Adam glanced at me, I nodded, and wordlessly we decided 
that if the duke wanted to put the best face possible on the 
situation, we would let him do it. We had the power, now, and 
we could afford to be generous. When the colonel stationed 
armed guards around our ship, most of them standing on the 
sovereign territory of the Western Islands, the duke said not a 
word about it. 

Adam and I, along with the captain, the colonel, the doctor, 
and our ladies, were invited to a royal feast that afternoon. 
Within minutes, we received formal written invitations, with the 
ink still wet on them. 

We only had about two hours before we would have to leave 
for the palace, a place that Adam and I had never been to before. 
Our group broke up, the nobles to the palace, our officers to get 
into their best dress uniforms, Adam and his ladies to their 
place for a quick sprucing up. 

Walking to Roxanna's to change into clothing that would be 
appropriate for a royal banquet, I was stopped by the warlock. 

Well, Treet, you seem to have done everything properly. 

Properly? 

Yes. You've arranged matters such that the duke's only 
option is to act as though none of the unpleasantries of the past 
ever happened, and that you went away and came back entirely 
with his permission. He knows that if you and Adam, drunk and 
just out of your sickbeds, could wipe out a score of his top 
athletes, the trained fighting men you've brought with you could 
easily conquer the entire island, if it came to that. His grace's 
best hope is therefore that it will be more convenient for you to 
rule through him, rather than trying to do it yourselves, 
directly. 

My head was spinning. These people actually thought this 


way? That under the bland, civilized exterior, we and they had 
been playing some sort of game of power politics all along? 

way? That under the bland, civilized exterior, we and they had 
been playing some sort of game of power politics all along? 

Simple. He knows that you would not dare to return without 
one. Since you have returned, the force must be there. 

His Grace is doubtless correct. Again, it was all I could 
think of to say. 

Of course. Trying to manage an unruly population would be 
expensive and bloody. The duke's presence can do you a great 
deal of good. So, to put it simply, you've won. You know you've 
won, and the duke knows that you've won. He knows that all that 
he can do now is to aid in making the transition as painless as 
possible. 

Good, I said, feeling I was in way over my head. I'm glad 
that's all cleared up. But for now, the less said, the better. 

Of course. I only wanted to add that if there is anything that I 
or my people can do, you have only to ask. 

Good. Uh, it might be nice if the archbishop would stop 
trying to stir up trouble, I said, taking a stab in the dark. 

That matter has already been taken care of. Our good 
archbishop suffered an unfortunate fall on a long stairway only 
an hour ago. We'll all go to his funeral in a few days. You'll get 
an invitation. Until the banquet, then. 

And then he left. 

Roxanna seemed to be in shock after hearing the warlock 
talk, and said not a word during the rest of the walk home. An 
hour later, she was back to normal. Later, when I asked her for 
her thoughts about what the warlock had said, she claimed that 
he had said nothing, that the warlock had never spoken to me at 
all! 

My only conclusion is that her mind was made up of little 
boxes, and that like all Christians, there were areas that 
contained things that she simply wasn't able to think about at all. 

I was happy to meet Adam on the way to the palace. I waved 
the women on ahead of us and then told him word for word what 


the warlock had said. 

the warlock had said. 

Plan? I said, What plan? We never had a plan! And since 
when were we playing power politics on that level? 

Since we left with our tails between our legs, survived the 
trip back, set up our trading company exactly like we told the 
people here we were going to do, and came back with a small, 
but very competent army to back us up. I mean, why else did we 
hire those ex-SEALs and the ex-Special Forces types? 
Rent-A-Cops would have been a whole lot cheaper. I was real 
impressed with your style all the way along there. 

But I never really had a plan, Adam. I was just doing what 
seemed right at the time, making sure that we could get back 
here to the girls, and making sure that we could protect them. 

And now they will be perfectly safe. You planned this 
outcome right from the beginning. Without a well thought out 
plan, it never could have worked out this perfectly. 

I tell you, Adam, I never had a plan! 

Yes, you did, even if maybe you didn't know about it. You 
see, Treet, you have one of those 'compartmentalized' minds, 
the kind that can be totally rational in most things, but with 
some areas that are sort of like a computer in 'protect' mode, 
where you aren't allowed to think about what's in there. I mean, 
how else could you be such a good engineer, and still believe in 
that Atheism shit you're always spouting? Anyway, we gotta get 
going, or we'll be late to our own victory celebration, that the 
duke's throwing for us. 

I stood there speechless, with my mouth open, until Roxanna 
took my arm and dragged me after the others. 

The End 


