Their Majesties' Bucketeers (11 page)

I’d had, at one time, an uncle who habitually referred to me as “my child.” I believe that he deserted from the Army and was shot. I hoped so, anyway.

“You were correct that I was at the Museum during your, um, demonstration. That
was
you, wasn’t it?” It was my hope that I was taking the line Mav would desire. I could not, for example, have pretended interest in this strange, repellent little lam’s religious prejudices. “My education has been scientific in character, and—”

“Highly unusual and enterprising for a surrie, my child. We could find many uses for such initiative in
our
work—certainly more so than in…what did you say it was?”

My mind whirled. What should I say? Then I realized that my bag—Sasa’s bag—was lying on the floor at my hands. “I’m a student of medicine, reading for it under my surfather and obtaining such practical experience as I am able. Naturally, my philosophical curiosity has extended to—”

“To the Fundamental Truth, at last! I rejoice with you, my child! You’ll not find our beliefs too very different from those of the established Church…” Did I detect a microscopic bitter flattening of the fur at these words? “In fact, if I may say so, our object is to serve as something of a conscience, attempting to stem the theological drift that has been occurring lately toward various materialistic heresies.”

“One of them being Ascensionism?”

He returned now to crinkling, this time more in sorrow than in anger. I am morally certain that he’d practiced this one in a mirror every day for years. “My child, this nonsense goes directly against the written word of Pah Himself, and the foundation of our belief is that the Book of Pah is literally true in every line and every verse. Else it would not be worthy of Him, would it, my child?”

I began wondering what he’d say if he knew that “his child” was contemplating taking out rher little gun and shooting off his sanctimonious nostrils if he called me by that name again. Patience, Mymy: “I’d find that easier to believe were there not hundreds of obvious internal contradictions in your Book of Pah.” This latter was a quote direct from my mentor in such matters, Mav.

Adem allowed himself a ripple of tolerant humor. “The logic of Pah is not the logic of lam. Such seeming contradictions may be nothing more than a test of our faith—just as Pah invented buried bones as a pitfall for the intellectually arrogant, those who place the Mind ahead of the Soul. The ossiferous collection’s far from complete, as surely you must know, and this, too, should be taken as a sign by those who consider themselves wise.”

“Perhaps,” I offered mildly, “the process of fossilization is so rare an event—something like the creation of diamonds, for example—that we may interpret the relative abundance of fossils as a sign that Professor Srafen is absolutely correct about the Ascent of Lamviin.”

The Reverend Mr. Adem was well practiced in the simulation of broad-minded joviality. He simply riposted: “My child, you’re far too young to be so certain about a world to which you’ve scarcely been introduced. Your judgment will mature in time, but you must be aware, even now, that Ascensionism, like
all
of so-called natural philosophy, is simply another religion—a pagan one, at that—supported by a faith in certain fundamental assumptions that are no more subject to demonstration than those of Trinism. Scientists themselves admit that Ascensionism is only a
theory
, even as they squabble endlessly concerning its validity.”

I was grateful that I’d spoken to Mav about this, and grateful also for my surfather’s insistence that I be permitted to attend the university. “Your pardon, Reverend, but you misunderstand at least
one
science, that of epistemology. I agree that the distinguishing characteristic of religion is faith—the blind, unquestioning belief in the unproven, the unprovable, and, if I may say so, the
dis
proven. Those assumptions of natural philosophy of which you speak are subject constantly to revision any moment there is tangible reason for so doing. Or simply, as with antilinear geometry, so that alternative assumptions may be tried and knowledge thereby increased.”

“My child—”

“Ascensionism is a theory, which, in the language of philosophy, means an orderly collection of physically demonstrable relationships. You speak of it as if it were an hypothesis, an idea yet to be proven good, which it emphatically is not. No serious philosopher any longer doubts it; it is only the details of its operation that they debate.”

“My child, you talk of science and foolishly criticize the illusory contradictions in the Book of Pah. Yet I know something of science, myself. Enough to appreciate that order—meaning life, particularly
lamviin
life—cannot have arisen spontaneously out of chaos; this violates your own precious Laws of Thermodynamics with which you ought to be familiar; such is possible only by the special intervention of Pah Himself.”

Oh, dear, what had I started here? “It seems to me, Reverend, that if I were Pah, I’d place some value upon
not
granting dispensations. A deity ought to have enough integrity to observe the very laws which He Himself has ordained. Has it never occurred to you—it has, I believe, to the Church—that Ascensionism is an ideal means to this end? Perhaps Pah—”

“You’re forgetting thermodynamics again, my child. The inevitable direction is from order to chaos. If you were to find an elegant watch and chain upon the sand, would it be more reasonable to assume—and here we stumble upon
another
of your scientific ‘laws,’ that of the Simplest Explanation—that it appeared there spontaneously, having arisen out of random combinations and permutations of atoms, or that some Great Watchmaker—”

“
Made
it appear there, equally spontaneously? Good Reverend, your explanation fails by far to be the simplest, and the process of Ascension is not remotely random—such mutations as occur are harshly culled and edited by the exigencies of
survival
, a set of very narrow parameters, indeed. Your ‘watch’ began existence as the tiniest, least-complicated jewel or shaft imaginable. Millions of years were required for each subtle change, each minuscule addition, until the shaft became a gear and gears combined to form a movement—each alteration tested by the cruel world. Why, I sometimes believe that the failure to understand and accept the
fact
of Ascensionism arises—spontaneously, if you will—from nothing more than failure (or fear) to comprehend the enormous gulf of time that separates us from our beginnings.”

The Reverend wasn’t yet ready to concede: “This ‘mutation’—if it exists at all—is far too rare an event to account for our existence. One speaks glibly about so much time, and yet, if we are to believe your fossils, lam himself arose from baser stock in a matter of perhaps a few tens of thousands of years—far too brief for Ascension to have had anything to do with it!”

At this point I began realizing that I had wandered far from Mav’s intentions. But what, for pity’s sake, could I do? “Reverend, please forgive me an extremely personal question, but when was the last time that some individual hair upon your pelt decided to grow twice as long and quickly as any other? I wager that you’ll find just such a ‘sport’ or mutation even now if you were to look closely. So much for their rarity. I admit that geological evidence confirms your view that we are a very recent species, however, my friend Mav informs me that Professor Srafen was about to publish a monograph to the effect that, once language began to develop, lamkind controlled its
own
Ascension, adding even
more
parameters than those that nature had—”

“
My child!
This is blasphemy far damper than any with which that foul demon heretic corrupted our society when rhe was alive! Unspeakable evil—yet you have spoken it! Is it possible that you are possessed by that malignant spirit? You were present at rher blessed destruction, my poor child, and—”

“Reverend Adem, you will forgive my mentioning the fact that I am
no
child of yours or anybody else, but an adult, fully capable of uttering my
own
blasphemies.” With resignation, I reached into my bag and found the billfold with my Bucketeer’s insignia, which I displayed to the Reverend. “I am here upon Their Majesties’ business, sir, and I have some final questions to ask—perhaps not quite as stimulating as our discussion so far, but considerably more germane.”

His fur drooped suddenly, although I believe that I detected an undercurrent of cunning stirring in its depths. “My…rather, Missur Mymysiir, that was a cruel and unprincipled deception you practiced upon me. I’ve a good mind to write a letter to the—”

“Your opinions are attuned with those of my superior, who has, nonetheless, decided that such deception is outweighed by matters such as murder. If nothing else, I’ve learned how thoroughly you despised Professor Srafen. Can you now tell me why I should believe you did not feel justified in having rher killed?”

“Young lurrie, you presume too much! Remember to whom you are speaking.”

“Quite right: to the leader of a technically illegal sect of religious deviationists.”

“It is the
established Church
that deviates in its
increasing tolerance
of this and other
heresies
! Do they not comprehend the
consequences
? Why, should this
fantasy
become generally accepted, it will surely form the basis for a new and
savage
ethic: bloody jaw-and-claw survival above all! Already there is talk of Societal Ascensionism, which will—”

“Your pardon, Reverend, but you have not answered my question.”

“The general tendency is toward chaos! Only the blessed mercy of Pah—”

“Reverend?”

“Lamviin is unique in so many aspects; he could
never
have risen from—Do you realize that if survival of the fittest were true,
there would only be one species on Sodde Lydfe? Hahahahahahahaha!
”

“Reverend Adem! Control yourself!”

He breathed heavily for many moments and at last his fur began to settle from the spiky, tangled mess it bad become. For a while he looked around in weary confusion, as if wondering how be came to be in this place. Then: “Your forgiveness, my child; I have been guilty of intemperance. Excessive zeal, even in the service of Pah, does little to further His ends. I believe that I should like to rest now, if you’ll excuse me. No, don’t get up—take these pamphlets if you will. They explain our position in more moderate terms than I have used.”

I could not think quite what to reply to this performance—it was certainly a novel way to terminate an argument (or avoid answering questions)—but accepted the little booklets from him as he made to leave the room. He staggered a little, reminding me of Niitood.

At the door, he paused. “Whatever else you think about us, my child, remember that all we desire, in the end, is that, in Foddu’s schools and in her children’s schoolbooks, alongside this accursed heresy, there be a lecture or a chapter on the truth that Pah instantaneously and miraculously created the world.”

The door shut softly behind him, and not many seconds later, I heard the instantaneous and miraculous whirring of a juicing box. I wondered, as I collected my bag and quitted the Shrine of Fundamental Truth, how Reverend Mr. Adem would react if science demanded, in return, a sermon from his pulpit on Ascensionism and a new chapter by Srafen in the Book of Pah.

IX: Voyage of the Dessmontevo

“Thus
I fear,” I told Mav on the following day in Lovely Sands, “that I did not obtain the information you desired—unless it’s possible that Adem’s slipped far enough around the dune to have ordered murder done.”

“A distinct likelihood, from the sound of it,” said Vyssu.

The detective sat with us upon the edge of Vyssu’s sand carpet, munched a smoked shrimp, and thought. “My dears, from what I have observed so far from Srafen’s killing, it speaks rather more articulately of cunning, perhaps even of genius, than of madness—and before either of you repeats the old canard, I was never one who reckoned that brilliance and insanity are anything alike.”

Vyssu and I exchanged guilty glances, both of us having been caught in precisely the mental act Mav described.

Several lam-heights from our picnic, Mav’s trine of watun, ordinarily quartered upon his mother’s Upper (Most) Hedgerow estate, were idly clawing up clumps of lichensand and depositing them in their mouths, evidently enjoying a picnic of their own. Mav had insisted upon removing the circular tyrelike affairs from their carapaces. “Saddles,” I believe, was the word he employed. In normal use, these prevented the lamviin rider from a potentially injurious proximity to the animals’ strictly herbivorous but nonetheless formidable jaws, and (at least theoretically) gave one a comfortable place to perch. As I was to discover, some hours later, theory and practice suffer no little divergence when it comes to riding watuback; the unconventional postures required by the sport leave every joint in every limb screaming in agony.

Be that as it may, it was singularly bracing, at the time, to travel along atop the beast instead of behind and it was thought-provoking—I suppose that is the best expression—once the rider’s straps were snugged up, to be able to employ all three sets of hands at once for something besides perambulation. How a mere two-thirds of a brain can direct three eyes and nine arms without braiding them together in a tangle dissoluble only by radical surgery is something that natural philosophy will have to look into someday.

An equally challenging question, this time for historians, is why no so-called civilized nation has ever thought of riding directly upon watun. Naturally, the practice is now widely known, if not universally exercised, thanks to the many newsscrolls, magazines, and cheap sensational novels about the colonies—we had, in fact, collected a gratifying minimum of fuzzy-pelted stares as we made our way through the northern margin of the city—yet it is peculiar in this age of electricity and steam that we owe a brilliant innovation to the savages of Einnyo.

Which musings brought me back to the present and to our conversation.

Mav was cranking up a juicing box, which Vyssu had brought with her. “Perhaps you’d both like to hear how I spent yesterday,” he offered as he paused in his winding to select a slice of pickled taproot. “I began, of course, with Niitood’s flat, which looked quite as though a desert whirlwind had passed through it in the night, smashing everything, including the new camera of which he had only just taken delivery, and scattering photographs, negatives, and foul picture-making fluids from kitchen to hannbox.”

“Poor Niitood,” Vyssu said. “Where was he at the time this tragedy took place?”

“Permit me to venture a guess,” said I. “Imbibing at the Hose & Springbow? This clearly demonstrates the sort of misfortune that juicing invariably—”

“Close, but no inhaling tube,” Mav interrupted. “He was at the Globe & Anchor, a little place of the sort you’d expect from its name, down in Brassie. And specifically at my request, he had been interviewing some of his acquaintances among the Navy.”

You will appreciate (Mav explained) that I was hesitant about confronting Navylamn directly, at least to begin with. The story of my misspent youth still circulates among them now and then, and, although I seem to have my partisans, there are those who look askance upon a very junior officer committing mutiny, even in the noblest of causes.

The purpose of Niitood’s mission was to brace certain of those individuals who had attended Srafen’s lecture on the fatal night, a task he undertook with an ardor that is a credit to him—unless Mymy interrupts to explain that all of them were long retired, contemporaries of the Professor, and given to frequenting such places as the Globe & Anchor, where electricity flows quite as readily as it does in Tamet’s place of business.

Now Niitood’s burglary, or vandalism, or whatever it may have been—and I would be foolish indeed to dismiss the virtual certainty that it was vitally connected with this case in some as yet unexplained manner—disrupted the schedule I’d intended. However, as Vyssu will recall, he and I spent several hours in conversation the next morning. I asked him to determine for me which of the officers I might address with lamly directness, and which it would be necessary to impress with my present authority—in contravention to my youthful indiscretions.

Thus, after telephoning Mymy, interviewing Niitood to obtain, as it were, my social bearings, and examining his apartments on the way, I hired a cab that took me to the Navy yards. My insignia were sufficient to gain me grudging entrance (after a brief exchange of formalities with the Navy Bucketeers) and a young rating was detached to escort me to the dockside berth of the T.M.S.
Dobotpo
.

Standing at such a place along the harbor gives one a certain perspective. Such elderly vessels as the one I was about to board rested fender to fender with their sleek modern steam-propelled daughters. There are those who maintain that, in the days of sail, the sealamn were of a different mettle. I cannot testify to that, but there is romance in the ancient, tall-masted ships, their sails rotating lazily in the breeze like the wings of some colossal bird, awaiting only the hand of an engineer who will engage the gears, permitting the screw to turn the ship out of the gulf of Dybod and into the world of danger and adventure.

Dobotpo
was such a vessel, double-masted (though with her long, narrow sails furled at this moment and her radial spars naked in the sun), a trimaran of an old and distinguished class. Her guns, of course, were capped, and no one save a crew of scrubbers and broomers remained aboard.

I climbed the gangway and crossed to her high-railed central hull, pausing for a moment between a pair of masts taller even now than the loftiest building in Mathas. The channel was a clear, smooth strip of green where engineering barges had cut a swath and, even considering the vile substance that it was, somehow beautiful and evocative of a thousand exciting far-off places. In the remainder of the harbor and out into the gulf, the ever-present seagrass stood a lam-height above the surface, turning the horizon and all the ocean between it and myself scarlet. This thick growth had once plagued both Navy and commerce, slowing passage and occasionally tangling the most thoughtfully designed propellers. Too, it concealed within its reedy folds the many large and dangerous beasts that the old, less-swift vessels had no means of avoiding.

Perhaps that, alone, is why I had chosen the Air Navy. Sheer cowardice—or at least the chance of a quick, clean death in the sky.

Now, of course, our Navy finds the ubiquitous weed a blessing, and in more than one way. Our coal-fired vessels travel far too rapidly to be bothered by mere sea-monsters, and the scythes upon their downswept bows, the drying racks above, assure a goodly supply of fuel should the coal run low. So swift is their passage that freshly cut vegetation is tinder-dry in a matter of hours.

Since the invention of the air screw, those great caged fans that sit atop the sterns of modern warships and freighters, no one need fear propeller-clogging weeds, yet the profiles of our modern vessels are so low that, providing the fuel is running dry enough to minimize the smoke, a warship may lie in the deep-sea grasses many lam-heights tall, hidden from enemy observation and gunfire until the last strategic moment.

You know, I saw the T.M.S.
Homdou
herself steam by while I was there, a mighty battleship larger than North Hedgerow Station, with three magnificent and powerful propellers, one upon the stem of each iron hull, and cannon big as railroad engines. Did I say the sailing ships had romance? None to match the march of progress! But I digress.

As I say, I made my way to the central hull of the venerable
Dobotpo
and thence belowdecks to the sickbay, where I understood one Commander Zedmon Dakods
Hedgyt
dwelt in preference to Bachelor Officers’ Quarters ashore. It was this Hedgyt, according to Niitood, who was particularly responsible for the Navy delegation at Srafen’s lecture, for he was an old, old friend of rhers (in fact, if you will look, the first edition of
The Ascent of Lamviin
is dedicated to him) from his midshiplam-cauterist days aboard the fabled T.M.S.
Dessmontevo
.

Dessmontevo
, you’ll recall, was a light cruiser not unlike this
Dobotpo
ship; today, schoolchildren recognize her name from yet another volume of Srafen’s writings, for it was aboard her that rhe made those first discoveries that led to the Theory of Ascension.

I tried not to let the tubby little
Dobotpo
distort my judgment, for her sister ship and the Professor were both young together, fast and sleek by standards of the day, and well-capable of winning a world (or at least that part of it not won already) for the Empire.

Commander Hedgyt I discovered sitting in a sort of cubicular office of the sickbay operating theater. “Good day, sir, I am Agot Edmoot
Mav
, of Their Majesties’ Bucketeers.”

The fellow gave a little start, and I realized at once I had awakened him from hann—or something like it, for an obviously well-used juicing box lay near one of his elbows.

“Bucketeers? Oh, yes, about my poor old Srafen, is it? I answered all those questions on the night rhe…it
happened
.”

“I realize and appreciate that, sir,” said I, “but I have been placed in charge of bringing Srafen’s murderer to justice, and for that I need more information than was obtained then.”

The old fellow seemed at first to have some difficulty following me, but as our interview progressed, his senses made their presence steadily more manifest. I realized, when he began to tell me about himself and Srafen, how deeply stricken he was with all that had transpired.

“I was with rher, you know, aboard the old
Dessmontevo
—ah, we were wild lammies then, the living terror of TM’s own Navy! Whenever we hit port, be the locals gray or red, or yellow like ourselves, first thing we’d do is find ourselves a willing shemale—professional or enthusiastic amateur—an’ hit th’ sand!” There followed many bawdy, yet somehow innocent and touching, reminiscences of their service together, interspersed with violent adventures and the scientific history with which we are all familiar.

“Ah, but
that
educational experience in the Kood Islands never made it into any of old Srafen’s picture books, th’ sanctimonious surry—
no
, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean it at all, for rhe was never afterward ashamed about those halcyon days, nor ever failed to hash ’em over with me when I was in port.”

I asked, “So you saw Srafen now and then?”

He blinked and rippled affirmation. “Not that I had all that much time once I became a full-pelted ship’s cauterist, mind you. Too many endless voyages, too many bloody wars—and undeclared unpleasantnesses, some of which the citizenry know but little of. Showin’ th’ flag.” He mentioned several recent visits, even a minor operation he’d quietly performed upon the philosopher so as to avoid worrying rher family and friends.

“And afterward, when I was slowing down, it was Srafen…old Srafen…” He patted the juicing box beside him. “Srafen was just getting wound up, in a manner of speaking. World famous rhe is now—and yes, I use the present tense, because rher work has guaranteed rher a sort of immortality. I’m glad of that, although I’ll miss rher sorely.”

“You were both student ship’s cauterists together, I understand?”

“Midshiplammies—indeed we were, indeed we were. Comrades in arms—and often in th’ box, as well. And what slim time I’d left to spend aboning upon medicine (for I was just that bit slower than rhe was, you understand, but who in salty dampness
wasn’t
in those days—or in these?) rhe was out at every stopover, collecting rher goddamp specimens. I myself helped preserve an’ catalog ’em. Great Pah in heaven, if I’d only been able to see what
rhe
saw,
I’d
be the famous philosopher now, instead of a tired old carapace-cutter. But I don’t mind, really, not at all. Rhe deserved everything rhe got, and I still have a chance or two in my inventions.”

“Your inventions?” Everybody fancies himself an inventor these days, but my interest was sincere, for, as I think I said, I do delight in progress.

“Indeed.” He rose stiffly, shook his limbs out, and walked with steadily decreasing difficulty toward a little storage room between two massive rafters overhead and the after bulkhead of the sickbay. Inside was a veritable jungle of wires and mechanical parts. “This is my Improved Revolving Cannon—not much originality in it, but an idea that I believe is basically sound.”