The Dark Design

The island-spire nearest the strait had a few floating docks. They would have been more convenient if they had been on the down-current side, but they were not, so the boat was taken alongside one. It was secured by lines to the posts and against the bumpers, bags of tough skins of alligator-fish filled with grass. The island's inhabi­tants approached them cautiously. Burton quickly assured them of his peaceful intentions, and he politely asked if his crew could use the grailstone.

There were only twenty islanders-short, dark people whose native language was unknown to Burton. They spoke a degraded form of Esperanto, however, so there was little language barrier.

The grailstone was a massive mushroom-shaped structure of grey red-flecked granite. The surface of its top was as high as Burton's chest and bore seven hundred round indentations in concentric circles.

Shortly before sunset, each person put in one of the shallow holes a tall cylinder of grey metal. English-speakers called it a grail, a pandora (or its shortened form, dora), a tucker box, lunch pail, glory bucket, and so on. The most popular name was that given it by the missionaries of the Church of the Second Chance. This was the Esperanto pandora. Though the grey metal was as thin as a sheet of newspaper except for the base, it was unbendable, unbreakable, and indestructible.

The owners of the grails retreated about fifty paces and waited. Presently, intense blue flames roared upward from the top of the stone to 20 feet or a little over 6 meters. Simultaneously, every one of the stones lining the banks of the lake spat fire and shouted thunder.

A minute later, several of the little dark people climbed onto the stone and handed down the grails. The party sat down under a bamboo roof by a fire of bamboo and driftwood and opened the lids of the cylinders. Inside were racks holding cups and deep dishes, all filled with liquor, food, crystals of instant coffee or tea, cigarettes and cigars.

Burton's grail contained both Slovene and Italian food. He had been first resurrected in an area consisting mainly of people who had died in the Trieste area, and the grails of these usually gave the type of food they had been accustomed to eat on Earth. About every ten days, however, the grails served something entirely different. Sometimes it was English, French, Chinese, Russian, Persian, or any of a hundred national foods. Occasionally it offered dishes which were disgusting, such as kangaroo meat, burned on the surface and raw underneath, or living grubworms. Burton had gotten this Australian aborigine meal twice.

Tonight the liquor cup contained beer. He hated beer, so he traded it for Frigate's wine.

The islanders' grails contained food much of which reminded Burton of Mexican cuisine. However, the tacos and tortillas were packed with venison, not beef.

While they ate and talked, Burton questioned the locals. From their descriptions, he surmised that they were pre-Columbian In­dians who had lived in a wide valley in the Southwest desert. They had been composed of two different tribes speaking related but mutually unintelligible languages. Despite this, the two groups had lived peacefully side by side and had formed a single culture, each of the groups differing only in a few traits.

He decided that they were the people whom the Pima Indians of his time had called the Hohokam, The Ancient Ones. These had flourished in the area which the white settlers would call the Valley of the Sun. It was mere that the village of Phoenix of the Arizona Territory had been founded, a village which, according to what he had been told, had become a city of over a million population in the late twentieth century.

These people called themselves the Ganopo. In their Terrestrial time they had dug long irrigation ditches with flint and wooden tools and turned the desert into a garden. But they had suddenly disap­peared, leaving the American archaeologists to explain why. Vari­ous theories had been advanced to account for this. The most widely accepted was that belligerent invaders from the north had wiped them out, though mere was no evidence for that.

Burton's hopes that he could solve this mystery were quickly dissipated. These people had lived and died before their society came to an end.

They all sat up late that night, smoking and drinking the alcohol made from the lichen which coated their rock spire. They told stories, mostly obscene and absurd, and rolled on the ground with laughter. Burton, when he told Arabic tales, found it necessary not to use unfamiliar references or to explain them if they were simple enough to be understood. But they had no trouble grasping the stories of Aladdin and his magic lamp or of how Abu Hasan broke wind.

The latter had been a great favorite with the Bedouins. Burton had often sat around a fire of dried camel dung and sent his listeners into shrieks of laughter though they had heard it a thousand times.

Abu Hasan was a Bedouin who had left his nomadic life to become a merchant of the city of Kaukaban in Yemen. He became very rich, and after his wife died he was urged by his friends to marry again. After some resistance, he gave in and arranged a marriage to a beautiful young woman. There was much feasting of rices of several colors and sherbets of as many more, kids stuffed with walnuts and almonds and a camel colt roasted whole.

Finally, the bridegroom was summoned to the chamber where his bride, clad in many rich robes, waited. He rose slowly and with dignity from his divan but, alas! He was full of meat and drink, and as he walked toward the bridal chamber, lo and behold! he let fly a fart, great and terrible.

On hearing this, the guests turned to each other and talked loudly, pretending not to have noticed this social sin. But Abu Hasan was greatly humiliated, and so, pretending a call of nature, he went down to the horsecourt, saddled a horse, and rode away, abandon­ing his fortune, his house, his friends, and his bride.

He then took ship to India, where he became the captain of a king's bodyguard. After ten years be was seized with a homesick­ness so terrible that he was about to die of it, and so he set out for home disguised as a poor fakir. After a long and dangerous journey, he drew near to his city, and he looked from the hills upon its walls and towers with eyes flowing with tears. However, he did not dare venture into the city until he knew that he and his disgrace had been forgotten. So he wandered around the outskirts for seven days and seven nights, eavesdropping upon the conversations in street and marketplace.

At the end of that time he chanced to be sitting at the door of a hut, thinking that perhaps he could now venture into the city as himself. And then he heard a young girl say, "O my mother, tell me the day I was born, for one of my companions needs to know that so she can read my future."

And the mother replied, "You were born, O daughter, on the very night when Abu Hasan farted."

The listener no sooner, heard these words than he rose from the bench and fled, saying to himself, "Truly your fart has become a date, which shall last forever."

And he did not quit traveling and voyaging until he returned to India and there lived in self-exile until he died, and the mercy of God be upon him.

This story was a great success, but before he told it Burton had to preface his story with the explanation that the Bedouins of that time considered farting in company a disgrace. In fact, it was necessary that everyone within earshot pretend that it had not happened, since the disgraced one would kill anyone who called attention to it.

Burton, sitting cross-legged before the fire, noted that even Alice seemed to enjoy the story. She was a middle-Victorian, raised in a deeply religious Anglican family, her father a bishop and the brother of a baron, descended from John of Gaunt, King John's son, her mother the granddaughter of an earl. But the impact of River-world life and a long intimate association with Burton had dissolved many of her inhibitions.