The Magic Labyrinth (20 page)

They were astounded. But after they’d recovered, they talked to each other.

And then Okabe said, “Sire, we have been flying for twenty years for you. It’s mostly been dull work though occasionally dangerous. We’ve been waiting for this moment; we’ve known that it would happen. We won’t be facing fellow nationals or former allies, though I understand that my country was an ally of England and France in World War I.

“We will do this. We look forward to it.”

Burton thought,
What are we? King Arthur’s knights? Idiots? Or both?

Nevertheless, part of him approved deeply and was very excited.

The
Not For Hire
had been anchored near the right bank a few miles up from the entrance to the lake. Göring was taken to Anglejo by the launch
Post No Bills.
Clemens sent his apologies to La Viro for not coming to meet him at once. Unfortunately, he said, a previous engagement had held him up. But late tomorrow or possibly the day after, he would come to the temple.

Göring had begged Clemens to make overtures of peace to King John. Clemens, as Hermann had expected, had refused to do so.

“The final act of this drama has been too long delayed. The damn intermission was forty years long. Now nothing is going to stop its being staged.”

“This isn’t a theater,” Hermann said. “Real blood will be shed. Real pain will be felt. The deaths won’t be faked. And for what?”

“For what matters,” Clemens said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

He puffed angrily on his big green cigar. Göring silently blessed him with the three-fingered gesture of the Church and left the pilothouse.

All day long the boat had been readied. The thick duraluminum plates with the small portholes were secured over the windows. Thick duraluminum doors were secured to the exterior entrances of the corridors and passageways. The ammunition was checked. The steam machine guns were fired for a few rounds. The elevation and vertical and horizontal movement machines of the 88-millimeter cannons were tested. Rockets were placed in the launching tubes, and the machinery for bringing more from the bowels of the A deck was checked. The one cannon using compressed air was tested. The airplanes were taken up for a wringout after being fully armed. The launches were also armed. The radar, sonar, and infrared detectors were given a checkout. The boarding bridges were extended and withdrawn.

Every station conducted a dozen drills.

After the batacitor and the grails were charged at evening, the
Not For Hire
went for a five-mile circular cruise, and more drills were conducted. Radar swept the lake and reported that the
Rex
was not within its range.

Before the crew went to bed, Clemens talked to almost all the crew in the grand salon. His short almost entirely serious speech went out over the loudspeakers to those on duty.

“We’ve had a fantastically long ride up The River, the longest river in the universe, perhaps. We’ve had ups and downs, our tragedies, our pains, our boredoms, our comedies, our cowardly deeds, our heroic. We’ve faced death many times. We’ve seen those we love die, though we’ve been somewhat recompensed for this by also seeing those we hated die.

“It’s been a long long ride. We’ve gone 7,200,020 miles. That’s about half of the estimated 14,500,000 miles of The River. It’s been a long voyage. But if we’d walked it, we’d still be walking. We would’ve walked only about 127,500 miles, leaving more than 7,000,000 miles to go.

“Everybody who signed on knew before signing what the ride on the greatest and most luxurious vessel in the world would cost him. He and she were made aware of the price of the ticket. This ride is paid for at the end, not the beginning.

“I know each of you well, as well as one human being can know another. You were all hand-picked, and you’ve all justified my judgment. You’ve gone through many tests and passed them with flying marks. So I have complete confidence that you’ll pass the final, the hardest, test tomorrow.

“I’m making this sound like an arithmetic examination in high school or like the speech a football coach gives before his team goes out to play. I’m sorry about that. This test, this game, is deadly, and some of you alive today won’t be by tomorrow’s end. But you knew the price when you signed up, and none should think of welshing.

“But after tomorrow is over…”

He paused to look around. Joe Miller, sitting on a huge chair on the podium, looked sad, and tears were trickling down his craggy cheeks.

Little de Marbot leaped up then and raised his glass of liquor and cried, “Three cheers for our commander and a toast to him!”

Everybody huzzahed loudly. After they had drunk, tall big-nosed rapier-thin de Bergerac stood up and said, “And a toast to victory! Not to mention death and damnation to John Lackland!”

Sam stayed up late that night. He paced back and forth for a while in the pilothouse. Though the boat was anchored, there was a full watch in the room. The
Not For Hire
could up-anchor and paddle wheel into the lake at top speed within three minutes. If John should try a night attack despite his promises not to, Sam’s vessel would be ready for it.

The pilothouse watch said little. Sam left them with a good night and walked for a few minutes on top of the flight deck. Ashore, many fires blazed. The Virolanders knew what was coming tomorrow, and they were too excited, too apprehensive, to get to sleep at their customary time. Earlier, La Viro himself had appeared on the bank in a fishing boat and requested permission to board. Clemens had told him, through a bullhorn, that he was certainly glad to meet him. But he could not discuss anything until after tomorrow. Sorry. That was the way it had to be.

The big dark man with the lugubrious features had departed, though not before blessing Sam. Sam felt ashamed.

Now Sam walked the length of every deck on both sides to test the alertness of the sentries. He was happy with the results, and he decided it was foolish to spend any more time prowling the boat. Besides, Gwenafra would be expecting him to come to bed. She’d probably want to make love, too, because one or both of them might not be alive after tomorrow. He didn’t feel like it at the moment, but she had some irresistible ways of arousing his spirits, among other things.

He was right. She did insist on it, but when his lack of enthusiasm became obvious, and she couldn’t generate any, she quit. Nor did she reproach him. She only asked that he hold her tight and that he talk to her. It was seldom that Sam didn’t have time to talk, so they spent at least two hours in conversation.

Shortly before they drifted into sleep, Gwenafra said, “I wonder if Burton could be on the
Rex
? Wouldn’t that be funny if he were? I mean, peculiar, not laughable. It would also be horrible.”

“You’ve never gotten over your little-girl crush on him, have you?” Sam said. “He must have been something. To you, anyway.”

“No, I haven’t,” she said, “though I couldn’t be sure, of course, that I’d like him now. Still, what if he were one of King John’s men, and we killed him? I’d feel terrible. Or what if someone
you
loved were on the
Rex
?”

“It’s just not very probable,” he said. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

But he did. Long after Gwenafra was breathing the easy breath of the deep sleeper, he lay awake. What if Livy were on the
Rex
? No, she wouldn’t be. After all, it was one of John’s men who’d killed her in Parolando. She’d never come aboard his boat. Not, that is, unless she wanted to kill him for revenge. No, she wouldn’t do that. She was too gentle for that, even though she’d fight fiercely in defense of her loved ones. But revenge? No.

Clara? Jean? Susy? Could one of them be on the
Rex
? The chances were very very low that they could be. Yet…the mathematically improbable sometimes happened. And a missile fired from his boat might kill her. And she’d be lost forever to him since there were no more resurrections.

Almost, almost, he rose from bed and went to the pilothouse and had the radio operator send a message to the
Rex.
A message that he would like to make peace, to call off the battle and the hatred and lust for revenge.

Almost.

John would never agree anyway.

How did he, Sam, know that he wouldn’t unless he tested him?

No. John was incorrigible. As stubborn as his enemy, Sam Clemens.

“I’m sick,” Sam said.

After a while, he slid into sleep.

Erik Bloodaxe pursued him with his double-headed ax. Sam ran as he had run in so many nightmares about this terrible Norseman. Behind him, Erik screamed, “
Bikkja!
Droppings of Ratatosk! I told you I’d wait for you near the headwaters of The River! Die, you rotten backstabbers! Die!”

Sam awoke moaning, sweating, his heart pounding.

What irony, what poetic justice, what retribution if Erik should happen to be on the
Rex.

Gwenafra murmured something. Sam patted her bare back and said, softly, “Sleep, little innocent. You never had to murder anyone, and I hope yon never will.”

But, in a way, wasn’t she being called on to commit murder tomorrow?

“This is too much,” he said. “I must sleep. I must be in top physical and mental condition tomorrow. Otherwise…an error on my part…fatigue…who knows?”

But the
Not For Hire
was too much larger than the
Rex,
too much more heavily armored and armed, not to win.

He must sleep.

He sat up suddenly, staring. Sirens were wailing. And from the intercom on the wall, Third Mate Cregar shouted, “Captain! Captain! Wake up! Wake up!”

Clemens rolled out of bed and crossed to the intercom. He said, “Yes, what is it?”

John was making a sneak attack? The rotten son of a bitch!

“The infrared operators report that seven people have gone overboard, Captain! Deserters, it looks like!”

So…his little speech about everybody having passed the test, about their proven courage, had been wrong. Some men and women had lost their bravery. Or, he thought, had come to their senses. And they’d taken off. Just as he had when the War Between the States had started. After two weeks in the Confederate volunteer irregulars in Missouri, after that innocent passerby had been shot by one of his comrades, he had deserted and gone west.

He didn’t really blame the seven. He couldn’t allow anyone to know that he felt that way, of course. He’d have to put on a stern face, rave and rant a little, curse the rats and so on. For the sake of discipline and morale, he must.

He had no sooner stepped into the elevator to go up to the pilothouse than the revelation came.

The seven were not cowards. They were agents.

They had no reason to stay aboard and perhaps be killed. They had a higher duty than to Clemens and the
Not For Hire.

He walked into the pilothouse. The lights were on all over the vessel. Several searchlights showed some men and women carrying grails on the bank. They were running as if their deepest fears had been embodied and were about to seize them.

“Shall we fire on them?” Cregar said.

“No,” Sam said. “We might hit some of the locals. Let them go. We can always pick them up after the battle.”

The seven would undoubtedly take sanctuary in the temple. La Viro wouldn’t turn them over to Clemens.

Sam ordered Cregar to make a roll call. When the missing seven were identified, Sam looked at the list of names on the message screen. Four men and three women. All had claimed to have lived after 1983. His suspicions about this claim were valid. But it was too late to do anything about it.

No. Just now he couldn’t act. But after the battle he would find some way to abduct the seven and to question them. They knew enough to clear up at least half of the mysteries that perplexed him. Perhaps they knew enough to clear up all.

He spoke to Cregar.

“Turn off the sirens. Tell the crew that it’s a false alarm, to go back to sleep. Good night.”

It wasn’t a good night, though. He woke up many times, and he had some frightening nightmares.

High noon in the valley of Virolando.

For thirty years, the sky beneath the zenith sun had been a kaleidoscope of multicolored gliders and balloons. Today, the blue was as unflecked as a baby’s eye. The River, which was always streaked with boats, with white, red, black, green, violet, purple, orange, and yellow sails, was today a solid green-blue.

The drums beat along both banks.
Stay away from the air and the water and keep away from the banks.

Despite this, multitudes crowded the left bank. The majority, however, were on the spires or the bridges among the spires. They were eager to see the battle, their curiosity overriding their fear. No amount of exhortations by La Viro to stay on the hills could keep them away from this spectacle. They ignored the wardens who tried to press them back to a safe distance. Not having experienced anything like twentieth-century weapons, or, indeed, any weapons more advanced than those of 1
A.D.
, they had no idea of what would happen. Few of them had seen violence on even a small scale. And so the innocents flocked to the plains or climbed the spires.

La Viro, on his knees in the temple, prayed.

Hermann Göring, having failed to console him, went up a ladder to the top of a rock tower. Though he hated this viciousness, he intended to watch it. And, he had to admit to himself, he was as excited as a child awaiting the first act of a circus. It was deplorable; he had a long way to go before the old Göring was completely destroyed. But he could not stay away from the battle and its bloodshed. No doubt, he would regret this bitterly. But then nothing like this had ever happened before on the Riverworld. Nor would it happen again.

He was not going to miss it. In fact, for a moment, he longed to be flying one of the airplanes.

Yes, he had a long way to go. Meanwhile, he might as well enjoy this as much as he could. He was willing to pay for it with soul-suffering afterwards.

The giant boats, the
Not For Hire
and the
Rex Grandissimus,
plowed through the waters, headed for each other. They were at this time separated by six miles. The agreement was that when they were five miles apart, they would stop. Unless, that is, the air battle was over before then. After that, everything went, no holds barred, may the best boat win.

Sam Clemens paced the deck of the pilothouse. For an hour, he had been checking all stations and had been rehearsing the battle plan. The crew assigned to the SW were in A deck now, waiting. When the signal came, they would bring up the SW and mount it behind the thick steel shield which had once protected the fore steam machine gun. This had been removed, and the platform which had held the gun was ready for the SW.

The steam-gun crew had been startled when the orders had come down to remove it. They had asked questions which were not answered. Rumors flew through the boat from prow to stern, from deck to deck. Why had the captain made this strange move? What was going on?

Meanwhile, Clemens had talked three times to William Fermor, the marine lieutenant guarding the SW crew. Sam had impressed on him the importance of his duty.

“I am still worried about John’s agents,” he said. “I know that everybody has been triple-cleared. But that doesn’t mean much. Any saboteur sent by John will be as full of duplicity as a Missouri barnyard is of crap. I want everybody who comes near the SW room checked.”

“What could they do?” Fermor said, referring to the SW men. “None of them are armed. I even looked under their kilts to make sure they’re not concealing anything there. They did not like that, I tell you. They feel that they should be trusted.”

“They should understand the necessity,” Clemens said.

The control-room chronometer indicated 11:30. Clemens looked out on the rear port. The flight deck was ready. The airplanes had been brought up on the elevators, and one was now mounted on the steam catapult at the far end of the deck. There were two, the only single-seaters to survive the long voyage, and these had been wrecked and repaired several times.

Both original single-seaters, monoplanes, had been destroyed, one in battle, one in an accident. The two replacements, constructed from parts from the storage rooms, were biplanes with inline alcohol-burning motors capable of pulling them at 150 miles per hour at ground-level. Originally, they had been fueled by synthetic gasoline, but the supply of this had long ago run out. Twin belt-fed .50-caliber machine guns were on the nose just ahead of the open cockpit. They were capable of firing lead bullets from the brass cartridges at five hundred rounds a minute. The ammunition had been stored through the voyage for just such an event as today’s. Several days ago, the cartridges had been refilled with new charges and each had been rechecked for exact length, width, and straightness to insure against their jamming the guns.

Sam checked the chronometer again and then went down the elevator to the flight deck. A small jeep carried him to the planes, where the flight crew, the reserve pilots, and two chief pilots waited.

Both craft were painted white, and on the rudder and on the underside of the lower wings of each was painted a scarlet phoenix.

One bore on its sides a red stork in flight. Just below the cockpit were letters in black.
Vieux Charles.
Old Charlie. Georges Guynemer’s nickname for the planes he had flown during World War I.

On each side of the cockpit of the other plane was the head of a black and barking dog.

Both airmen were dressed in white palefish leather. Their knee-length boots were trimmed with red, as were their jodhpurs. Their jackets bore a scarlet phoenix on the left breast. The fliers’ leather helmets were topped by a tiny spike, the tip of a hornfish horn. Their goggles were edged with scarlet. Their gloves were white, but the gauntlets were red. They were standing by Old Charlie, talking earnestly with each other, when Clemens got out of the jeep. As he approached them, they snapped to a salute.

Clemens was silent for a moment, eyeing them. Though the exploits of the two men had happened after he had died, he was thoroughly conversant with them.

Georges Guynemer was a thin man of medium height with burning black eyes and a face of almost feminine beauty. At all times, or, at least, outside of his cabin, he was as taut as a violin string or a guy wire. This was the man whom the French had called “the Ace of Aces.” There were others, Nungesser, Dorme, and Fonck, who had shot more Boches out of the sky. But then they saw more action, since Georges’ career had been ended relatively early.

The Frenchman was one of those natural fliers who automatically became part of the machine, an airborne centaur. He was also an excellent mechanic and technician, as careful in checking out his airplane and weapons or devising improvements as the famous Mannock and Rickenbacker. During the Great War, he had seemed to exist for nothing but flying and air-fighting. As far as was then known, he had nothing to do with women as lovers. His only confidante was his sister, Yvonne. He was a master of aerobatics but seldom used this talent in the air. He roared into battle using “the thrust direct,” as the French fencers called it. He was as wild and uncautious as his English counterpart, the great Albert Ball. Like him, he loved to fly alone and, when he encountered a group of the enemy, no matter how large it was, he attacked.

It was seldom that he did not return with his Nieuport or Spad full of bullet holes.

This was not the way to live a long life in a war in which the average life of a pilot was three weeks. Yet he managed fifty-three victories before he himself fell.

One of his comrades wrote that when Guynemer got into the cockpit to take off, “The look on his face was appalling. The glances of his eyes were like blows.”

Yet this was the man who had been rejected by the French ground services as being unfit for duty. He was frail and easily caught cold, coughed much, and was unable to relax in the boisterous conviviality of his mates after the day’s fighting was done. He looked like a consumptive and probably was.

But the French loved him, and on that black day of April 11, 1917, when he died, the whole nation went into mourning. For a generation afterwards, the French schoolchildren were taught the legend that he had flown so high that the angels would not let him come back to Earth.

The truth, as known in those days, was that he had been alone as usual, and, somehow, a much lesser flier, a Lieutenant Wissemann, had shot him down. The plane had crashed into mud which was being churned by the shells of a great artillery duel. Before the thousands of explosions were done, Guynemer and his machine were blown to bits, mixed with mire, and completely disintegrated. Flesh and bone and metal became, not dust, but mud.

On the Riverworld, Georges had himself cleared up the mystery. While darting in and out of the clouds, hoping to surprise a Boche, or a dozen Boches—it made no difference to him—he had started to cough. The rackings got worse, and, suddenly, blood poured out of his mouth, running down his leather fur-lined
combinaison.
His fears that he had tuberculosis were now justified. But he could do nothing about it.

Even as his vitality drained away and his eyesight faded, he saw a German fighter plane approaching. Though dying, or believing that he was dying, he turned toward the enemy. His machine guns chattered, but his deadly marksmanship had deserted him. The German zoomed upwards, and Guynemer turned Old Charlie tightly to follow him. For a moment, he lost him. Then bullets pierced his windshield from behind. And then…unconsciousness.

He awoke naked upon the Riverbank.

Now he did not suffer from the white plague, and his flesh had filled out a little. But his intensity was still with him, though not as much as in 1917. He shared a cabin with a woman who now sat crying in it.

William George Barker, a Canadian, was a natural flier who had performed the amazing feat of soloing after only one hour of instruction.

On October 27, 1918, as major of the No. 201 Squadron of the RAF, he was flying alone in the new Sopwith Snipe. At twenty thousand feet over the Marmal Forest, he shot down a two-seater observation plane. One of its crew saved himself by parachuting. Barker was interested and perhaps a little angered when he saw this. Parachutes were forbidden to the Allied fliers.

Suddenly, a Fokker appeared, and a bullet entered his right thigh. His Snipe went into a spin, but he pulled it out, only to find himself surrounded by fifteen Fokkers. Two of these he hammered with bullets and drove away. Another, hit within a range of ten yards, flamed out. But Barker was wounded again, this time in the left leg.

He lost consciousness, regaining it just in time to bring his plane out of another spin. From twelve to fifteen Fokkers were around him. At less than five yards, he shot the tail off of one, only to have his left elbow shattered by a bullet from a Spandau machine gun.

Once more, he fainted, came to his senses, and found himself in the midst of about twelve Germans. Smoke was pouring from the Snipe. Believing that he was on fire and so doomed, he determined to ram one of the Boches. Just as the two planes were about to collide, he changed his mind. Firing, he sent the other craft up in flames.

Diving away, he reached the British lines, crashing near an observation balloon but alive.

This was Barker’s last flight, reckoned by all authorities as the greatest one-man aerial battle of WWI against overwhelming odds. Barker was in a coma for two weeks, and when he awoke the war was over. He was given the Victoria Cross for this exploit, but for a long time he had to use canes to walk and an arm-sling. Despite his crippling pain, he returned to flying, and helped organize the Royal Canadian Air Force. In partnership with the great ace William Bishop, he established the first large Canadian airline.

He died in 1930, while making a test flight of a new plane which crashed for no determinable reason. His official score was fifty enemy aircraft, though other records tallied it as fifty-three.

Guynemer also claimed fifty-three.

Clemens shook the hands of the two men.

“I’m against dueling, as you well know,” he said. “I ridiculed the notion in my books, and I’ve talked to you many times of how I loathed the old Southern wickedness of settling disputes by killing. Though I suppose that anybody that’s foolish enough to believe in that kind of arbitration ought to be killed.

“Now, I wouldn’t have objected to this aerial duel at all if I knew that you’d be dead today and alive the next, as in the old days. But this is for real. I did have reservations, as Sitting Bull said to Custer, but you two seemed so eager, like war horses hearing a trumpet call, that I saw no reason to turn down John’s offer.

“Still, I wonder what’s behind this. Bad John may be planning something treacherous. I gave my consent because I talked to one of his officers, men I knew or knew of, and they’re honest honorable men. Though what men like William Goffe and Peder Tordenskjöld are doing on that boat, serving under that evil man, I can’t imagine. He must have changed his ways, though I refuse to believe that he has changed the inner man.

“In any event, they assured me that everything was on the up and up. Their two men plan to leave the boat at the same time you do. Their planes will carry only machine guns, no rockets.”

Barker said, “We’ve gone over all this, Sam. We think you’re—we’re—in the right. After all, John did steal your boat and he tried to kill you. And we know he’s an evil man. Besides…”

“Besides, you two can’t resist the chance to get into action again,” Sam said. “You’re suffering from nostalgia. You’ve forgotten how brutal and bloody those times were, haven’t you?”

Guynemer said impatiently, “If they were not evil, they would not be on the
Rex.
Besides, we would be cowards if we did not accept their challenge.”

Barker said, “We have to warm up the motors.”

Sam Clemens said, “Well, I shouldn’t even be talking like this. So long, boys. And good luck. May the best men win, and I’m sure you’ll be the best!”

He shook hands again and walked to one side. This was both brave and foolish, he thought, but he had given his consent. The last-minute resumming up of the situation was due to his nervous ness. He shouldn’t have said anything. But, to tell the truth, he was looking forward to this. It was like the jousts of the knights of old. He hated those knights, since, historically, they were oppressors and bleeders of the peasants and the lower classes and rather murderous to their own class. A filthy bloody-minded bunch in reality. However, there was the reality, and there was the myth. Myth always put blinders on men, and perhaps there was something good to be said for myth. The ideal was the light; the real, the shadow. Here were two exceptionally capable and courageous men, going to fight to the death in a prearranged duel. For what reason? Neither had to prove himself; they had done that long ago when the proving meant something.