The Dark Design

"A Yank saying. Jack-Latin. Translation: Don't let the bastards grind you down. I can take any crap handed me-if it's worth doing it. Then it's my turn."

"You're a tough one."

"Too right. You have to be if you survive in a man's world. I thought perhaps things would be different here. They weren't, and aren't, but they will be,"

"We've all changed,'' he said slowly and somewhat sadly. "Not always for the better. If you'd told me in 1893 that I'd be listening to a woman, an upper-class woman, not a whore or a millhand, mind you, spewing filth and subversive ..."

"Instead of subservient, you mean," she said harshly.

"Allow me to finish. Subversive suffragette rot. And if you'd told me that it wouldn't particularly bother me, I'd have said you were a liar. But live and learn. Or, in our case, die and learn."

He paused and looked at her. The right side of her mouth jerked; her eyes narrowed.

"I could tell you to stick it,'' she said. "But I must get along with you. I will take only so much, however."

"You didn't understand all I said," he replied. "I said it doesn't bother me now. And I said, live and learn. I am not the David Schwartz of 1893. I hope you are not the Jill Gulbirra of ... when did you die?"

"In 1983."

They walked down the hill in silence, Jill carrying her grail on the end of her spear, which was on her shoulder. Schwartz stopped once to point out a stream that ran down from the hills. Its source was a cataract in the mountains. They came to a small lake between two hills. A man sat in a rowboat in the middle of the lake, a bamboo fishing pole in his hand, the float drifting toward a bush overhang­ing the bank. Jill thought he looked Japanese.

Schwartz said, "Your neighbor. His real name is Ohara, but he prefers to be called Piscator. He's crazy about Izaak Walton, whom he can quote verbatim. He says a man needs only one name in this world, and he's chosen Piscator. Latin for fisher. He's a fish freak, as you can see. Which is why he's in charge of the Parolando Riverdragon fishing. But today's his day off."

"That's interesting," she said. He was, she believed, leading up to something .unpleasant for her. The slight smile looked sadistic.

"He'll probably be the first mate of the airship," he said. "He was a Japanese naval officer and during the first part of World War I he was attached to the British Navy as an observer and trainee on dirigibles. Later, he was a trainee-observer on an Italian Navy airship which made bombing raids on Austrian bases. So, you see, he's had enough experience to rank him very high on the list."

"And he is a man." She smiled, though seething inside. "And though my experience is much much more than his, still, he's a man."

Schwartz backed away from her. "I'm sure Firebrass will ap­point officers according to their merits only."

She did not reply.

Schwartz waved at the man in the boat. He rose from his seat and, smiling, bowed. Then he sat down, but not before giving her a look that seemed to sweep over her like a metaphysical radar beam, locating her place in the world, identifying her psychic construc­tion.

Imagination, of course. But she thought that Schwartz was right when he said, "An extraordinary man, that Piscator."

The Japanese's black eyes seemed to burn holes in her back as she walked away.

10

Blackness outside. inside, a night writhing with snakes of pale lightning, twisty and fuzzy. Some time later, in a place where there was no time, a bright beam ahead shone as if from the lens of a movie projector. The light was a whisper in the air; in her mind, it was bellowing. The film was being shown on a cathode-ray oscillo­scope; it was a series of letters, broken words, signs, and symbols, all part of an undeciphered code. Perhaps: undecipherable.

Worse, it seemed to run backward, spun back into the reel(ity?). It was a documentary made for television, for the boobish (boobed?) viewer of the boob tube. Yet, backward was an excellent technique. Images flashed to suggest, to reverberate, to echo, to evoke, to flap intimation upon intimation with electronic quickness. Like flipping the pages of an illustrated book from back to begin­ning. But the text, where was the text? And what was she thinking of when she thought of images? There were no images. No plot. Yes, there was a plot, but it had to be put together from many pieces. Ah, many pieces. She almost had it, but it had slipped away.

Moaning, she awoke. She opened her eyes and listened to the rain beating upon the thatched roof.

Now she remembered the first part of the dream. It was a dream of a dream, or what she thought was a dream but was not sure. It was raining, and she had half-awakened or had seemed to do so. The hut was 20,000 kilometers from this one, but it was almost identical, and the world outside the hut, as seen by occasional flashes of lightning, would not have differed much. She had turned, and her hand had not felt the expected flesh.

She had sat up and looked around. A lightning streak, close enough to make her jump, showed that Jack was not in the hut.

She had got up and lit a fish-oil lamp. Not only was he not there, his cloths, weapons, and grail were gone.

She had run out into the stormy night to look for him.

She never found him. He was gone, and no one knew where or why.

The only one who might have been able to tell her had also sneaked out that same night. He, too, had left his hutmate without saying a word about his intentions. It was apparent to Jill that the two had run off together. Yet, as far as she knew, they had been only casual acquaintances.

Why had Jack left her, so silently and heartlessly?

What had she done?

Was it just that Jack had decided that he did not want to put up with a woman who wouldn't play second fiddle in their relation­ship? Also, the wanderlust had gotten him again? With both mo­tives pushing him, he had just up and went, to use one of his corny Americanisms?

Whatever was the truth, she was living with no man anymore, ever again. Jack was the best, and the last was the best, as it should be, but he had not been good enough.

She was on the rebound when she met Fatima, the little sloe-eyed Turk. Fatima, one of the hundreds of concubines of Mohammed IV (ruled Turkey from 1648-1687), had never gone to bed with him. She had, however, not suffered overmuch from lack of sexual satisfaction. There were plenty of fellow prisoners of the Seraglio who preferred their own sex as lovers, either through natural incli­nations or conditioning. She became a favorite of Kosem, Mohammed's grandmother, though there was nothing overtly homosexual in their relationship.

But Turban, Mohammed's mother, sought to get control of the government from Kosem, and eventually Kosem was caught by a party of Turban's assassins and strangled to death with the cords from her own bed curtain. It was Fatima's bad fortune to be attending Kosem when this happened and so she had to share her fate.

Jill took the sexy little Turk in as hutmate after Fatima had quarreled with her lover, a French ballet danseuse (died 1873). Jill was not in love with her, but she was sexually exciting and, after a while, she became fond of her. Fatima, however, was ignorant and, worse, unteachable. She was selfish and would remain so, was infantile and would remain so. Jill got tired of her after a year. Even so, she was grief-stricken when Fatima was raped and then beaten to death by three drunken Sikeli (born 1000 B.C.?). Her grief was intensified by the knowledge (or belief, since there was no proof) that Fatima was truly dead. Resurrection had apparently stopped. No more would a dead person rise the next day at dawn far, far from the scene of his or her demise.