The Magic Labyrinth (17 page)

They had left the grand salon and gone to the room at the bow end of the texas. This was semicircular and walled with shatterproof glass. The elevator shaft that went through the room above and to the pilothouse formed part of the rear wall. Here there were chairs and tables, several sofas, and a small bar. As in most places on the boat, music was piped in from a central station. But it could be turned off. After some conversation about the rewinding, which would take two months at least, Göring steered the talk toward the forthcoming battle. He wanted to say, “What good will it do to fight? What purpose could it serve? Why must all these people on your boat and Clemens’ risk death and mutilation and terrible pain just because of something that happened many decades ago?

“I think that you and Clemens are both mad. Why don’t you two call this off? After all, Clemens has his own boat now. What could he do with two boats? Which he isn’t going to have, anyway, because one boat is going to be destroyed, and I suspect it’ll be yours, Your Majesty. Knowing the size and potentiality of Clemens’ boat, there’s little doubt.”

What he said was, “Perhaps it won’t be necessary to fight Clemens. After all these years, could he still thirst for revenge? Do you want vengeance because he tried to kill you? Can’t you forgive him? The passage of time often cools hot passions and allows cool reason to reign. Perhaps…”

John shrugged broad heavy shoulders and raised his hands, palms upwards.

“Believe me, Brother Fenikso, I would thank God if Clemens had regained his mind and become a man of peace. I am not warlike. All I want is fellowship for everyone. I would lift my hand against none if none would lift their hand against me.”

“I am indeed happy to hear that,” Göring said. “And I know that La Viro will be very happy to act as intermediary so that any disputes between you two may be settled amicably. La Viro, all of us here, are eager to avoid bloodshed and to establish good will, love, if possible, between you and Clemens.”

John frowned.

“I doubt that that demon-possessed bloody-minded creature will agree even to a meeting…unless it is to kill me.”

“We can only do our best to arrange a meeting.”

“What troubles me, what makes me think that Clemens will always hate me, is that his wife, his ex-wife rather, was accidentally killed during the battle for the boat. Though they’d parted, he still loved her. And he will hold me responsible for her death.”

“But this happened before the resurrections stopped,” Göring said. “She would have been translated elsewhere.”

“That doesn’t matter. He’ll probably never see her again, so she is as good as dead to him. Anyway, she was dead to him before she died. As you may know, she was in love with that big-nosed Frenchman, de Bergerac.”

John laughed loudly.

“The Frenchman was one of the raiders. I kicked him in the back of the head when I escaped from the chopper. It was also de Bergerac who ran his épée through the thigh of Captain Gwalchgwynn. He’s the only man who’s ever defeated Gwalchgwynn in swordplay. Gwalchgwynn claims that he was distracted, otherwise de Bergerac never would have gotten through his guard. Gwalchgwynn would not like it if Clemens and I made peace. He too thirsts for revenge.”

Hermann wondered if Gwalchgwynn—Burton—did indeed feel this way, but when he looked around, the Englishman was gone.

At that moment, two crewmen entered carrying small kegs of watered alcohol. Göring recognized one of the men. Was this boat loaded with old acquaintances?

He was good-looking, of medium height, and with a slim but wiry physique. His short hair was almost sandy, and his eyes were hazel. His name was James McParlan, and he’d entered Parolando the day after Hermann’s arrival. Hermann had talked to him about the Church of the Second Chance and found him polite but resistant.

What strengthened Hermann’s memory of him was that McParlan had been the Pinkerton detective who’d infiltrated and eventually destroyed the Molly Maguires in the early 1870s. The Molly Maguires was a secret terrorist organization of Irish coal miners in the Pennsylvania counties of Schuylkill, Carbon, Columbia, and Luzerne. Göring, a twentieth-century German, would probably never have heard of it if he hadn’t been an ardent student of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He’d read that the fictional Scowrers, Vermissa, and McMurdo of A. Conan Doyle’s Holmes novel,
The Valley of Fear,
were based, respectively, on the real Molly Maguires, the Pennsylvania coal counties, and McParlan. That had led him to read Alan Pinkerton’s book on McParlan’s exploits,
The Molly Maguires.

In October 1873 McParlan, under the name of James McKenna, succeeded in insinuating himself into the secret society. The young detective was in grave danger many times, but he slipped through safely by his courage, aggressiveness, and quick wits. After three years in this perilous disguise, he exposed the inner workings of the Maguires and the identities of its members. The chief terrorists were hanged; the power of the Molly Maguires was broken. And the mine owners continued for many decades to treat the miners as if they were serfs.

McParlan, going by Hermann on the way out, glanced at him. His face was expressionless. Yet Hermann believed that McParlan had recognized him. The eyes had flicked away too quickly. Moreover, the fellow was a trained detective, and he’d once told Göring that he never forgot a face.

Was it the discipline of a marine on duty which had prevented McParlan from reintroducing himself? Or was it for another reason?

Burton entered and joined the party. After a few minutes he went into the toilet by the elevator. Hermann excused himself and followed him in. Burton was at the far end of the urinal, and no one was near him. Hermann came up to his side and, while urinating, spoke in German in a low voice.

“Thanks for not telling your commander my natal name.”

“I didn’t do it for love of you,” Burton said.

Burton dropped his kilt, turned, and went to a washbasin. Hermann quickly followed him. Under cover of the gushing faucets, he said, “I am not the Göring you knew.”

“P’raps not. I fancy I don’t like either of you.”

Hermann burned to explain the difference of the two, but he dared not take the time. He hurried back to the observation room.

John was waiting to tell him the party was going to step out onto the deck. They would have a more open view of the lake, which the boat was just entering.

Ahead, for as far as they could see, rock spires of various heights and many shapes rose from the surface of the water. These were mostly rose-colored, but there were also black, brown, purple, green, scarlet, orange, and blue rocks. About one in twenty was striped horizontally in red, green, white, and blue, the stripes being of different widths.

Hermann told them then that at the western end of the lake the mountains curved in and formed a narrow strait about two hundred feet wide and between smooth vertical walls seven thousand feet high. The force of the current was so strong that no manual- or wind-driven vessel could go against it. The traffic by boat was all one-way, downRiver, and there was little of that.

However, some travelers had long ago cut out a narrow path on the southern cliff. This was about five hundred feet above the strait and went a mile and a half to the end of the strait. So there was some foot traffic.

“Just beyond the strait is a rather narrow valley, though The River there is a mile wide. There are grailstones there, but no one lives there. I suppose because of the current, which is so strong it precludes fishing or sailing anywhere but through the straits. Then, too, The Valley gets little sunshine. There is, though, a sort of bay about a half-mile up where boats may anchor.

“A few miles above the bay, The Valley widens considerably. There begins the land of the enormous-nosed hairy giants, the titanthrops or ogres. From what I’ve heard, so many of these have been killed that half the population is now your ordinary-sized human.”

Göring paused, knowing that what he would say would, or should, be vastly interesting to the others.

“It’s estimated that it’s
only
twenty thousand miles from the strait to the headwaters of The River.”

He was trying to give John the idea that it might be better to keep on going. If the headwaters were so close, why should he stop here to fight? Especially, since he was likely to be defeated. Why not go to the headwaters and from there launch the expedition toward the misty tower?

John said, “Indeed.”

If he had taken the bait, he gave no sign of having done so. He seemed interested only in the strait and the immediate area beyond it.

After some questions from John about these, Hermann understood what John was considering. The bay would be an excellent place for the rewinding. The strait would be near ideal for waiting for the
Not For Hire.
If the
Rex
could catch it while it was coming through the strait, it could loose some torpedoes in the passage. These would have to be remotely controlled, though, since the strait curved at least three times.

Also, if John docked in the bay, he would keep his crew from the pacifistic influence of the Second Chancers.

Göring’s speculations on John’s thinking were right. After a day’s visit with La Viro, John up-anchored the
Rex
and took it through the strait. It anchored again at the bay, and a floating anchored dock was built from the shore to the vessel. From time to time, King John and some of his officers, or just his officers, would come in a launch to Aglejo. Though invited to stay overnight or longer, they never did so.

John assured La Viro that he was not going to venture out onto the lake for a battle.

La Viro pleaded with him to negotiate for an honorable peace with La Viro as intermediary.

John refused during the first two meetings with La Viro. Then, on the third, he surprised La Viro and Göring by agreeing.

“But I think it will be a waste of time and effort,” John said. “Clemens is a monomaniac. I’m sure he thinks of only two things. Getting his boat back and killing me.”

La Viro was happy that John was at least willing to make the effort. Hermann was not so happy. What John said and what John did were often not the same.

Despite La Viro’s urgings, John refused to permit missionaries to talk to his crew about the Church. He had set up armed guards at the end of the cliff-path to insure that the missionaries didn’t come over it. His excuse, of course, was that he didn’t want to be attacked by Clemens’ marines. La Viro told John that he had no right to prevent nonhostiles from crossing over. John replied that he had signed no agreement with anyone concerning passage on the path. He held it, and that made him the determiner of the rights.

Three months passed. Hermann waited for his chance to get Burton and Frigate to one side when they came to Aglejo. Their visits were very infrequent and when they did come in he could never get them alone.

One morning, Hermann was summoned to the Temple. La Viro gave him the news, which had just come via the relay drums. The
Not For Hire
would be at Aglejo in two weeks. Göring was to meet it at the same place he’d boarded the
Rex.

Even though Clemens had not been friendly when Hermann had known him in Parolando, he hadn’t been murderous. When Göring went up to the pilothouse, he was surprised to feel happy at seeing Clemens and the gigantic titanthrop, Joe Miller. Moreover, the American recognized him within four seconds of their introduction. Miller claimed to have known him within a second by his odor.

“Although,” Miller said, “you don’t thmell ekthactly as you uthed to. You thmell better than then.”

“Perhaps it’s the odor of sanctity,” Hermann said and laughed.

Clemens grinned, and said, “Virtue and vice have their own chemistries? Well, why not? How do I smell after these forty years of travel, Joe?”

“Thomething like old panther pithth,” Joe said.

It wasn’t quite like old friends meeting after a long absence. But Göring felt that, for some reason, they were as pleased to see him as he was them. Perhaps it was a perverted kind of nostalgia. Or guilt may have played some part in it. They may have felt responsible for what had happened to him at Parolando. They shouldn’t, of course, since Clemens had done his best to make him leave the state before something violent happened to him.

They told him in brief outline what had occurred since they’d last seen him. And he described his experiences since then.

They went down to the grand salon to get a drink and to introduce him to various notables. Cyrano de Bergerac was called down from the flight deck, where he’d been fencing.

The Frenchman remembered him, though not well. Clemens described again what Hermann had been doing, and then de Bergerac recalled the lecture Göring had given.

Time had certainly worked some changes with Clemens and de Bergerac, Hermann thought. The American seemed to have shed his great dislike for the Frenchman, to have forgiven him because he had taken Olivia Clemens as his mate. The two now were on easy terms, chatting, joking, laughing.

There came a time when the good time had to end. Hermann said, “I suppose you’ve heard that King John’s boat came to Aglejo three months ago? And that it’s waiting for you just beyond the strait at the western end of the lake?”

Clemens swore and said, “We’ve known that we were closing the gap between us fast. But no, we didn’t know that he’d stopped running!”

Hermann described what had happened since he’d boarded the
Rex.

“La Viro still hopes that you and John will be able to forgive each other. He says that after this long a time, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was in the beginning. He says…”

Clemens’ face was red and grim.

“It’s easy enough for him to talk of forgiveness!” he said loudly. “Well, let him talk from now until doomsday about forgiveness, and I won’t stop him! A sermon never hurt anybody, and it’s often beneficial—if you need a nap.

“But I haven’t come this far after all the hardships and heartaches and treacheries and griefs just to pat John on the head and tell him what a good boy he is beneath all that rottenness and then kiss and make up.