THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

Burton didn't expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.

Nor would the agents who'd left Clemens' vessel before the battle be any more open.

However, getting descriptions of those who had gone northward during the past few weeks, he recognized those who'd fled the Rex. De Marbot, who was also questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who'd deserted the Not For Hire.

"We'll catch up with them soon," Burton said.

"If we're lucky," the Frenchman said. "We may pass them at night. Or they might get word of our coming and hide while we go by."

"In any event, we'll get there first."

Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the locals, he could find none of those he sought.

In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive physique and facial features of the Ethicals Than-abur and Loga. The man who called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky, hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton, these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn't know Sumerian or ancient Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan pronunciation and intonation.

That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered the tongues. Or it meant that both were i

Twenty-two days after he'd passed through the strait in an area where there weren't more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a tall ski

She spoke in Esperanto affected heavily by a backwoods Georgia accent. Her name was Blessed Croomes, and she wanted to go on the boat as far as it would go. Then she'd go on foot to the headwaters.

"That's where my mother Agatha Croomes went. I'm looking for her. I think she must have found the Lord and is now living at His right hand, waiting for me! Hallelujah!"

41

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO STOP HER FLOW OF TALK, BUT BURTON finally said, loudly and sternly, that she had to answer his questions.

"Okay," she said, "I'll listen to the wise. Are you wise?"

"Wise enough," he said, "and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you're not stupid. Let's start at the begi

Blessed told him that she was born a slave in Georgia in 1734 in the house of her master. Come early, caught her mother in the kitchen while she was helping prepare the evening meal. She'd been raised as a house slave and baptized into the faith of her father and mother. After her father had died, her mother had become a preacher. She was a very devout and very strong woman who scared her flock, though they also loved her. Her mother had died in 1783 and she in 1821. But both had been resurrected near the same grailstone.

"Of course, she wasn't an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old momma a young woman. That didn't make no difference to her, though. She was as holy and righteous and filled with the spirit as when she'd lived on Earth. Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she converted them, and then they got in trouble..."

"You're wandering again, Burton said. "That's enough of your background. Why do you want to go with me?"

"Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird."

"But why do you want to go to the end of The River?"

"I would have told you if you hadn't interrupted me, man. You see, my mother being here didn't shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of us, because we were si

"She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn't sure anyway that she knew what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that. It would've been like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway, it wasn't just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet man, and he wouldn't go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were. So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.

"But things went bad with me and my old man. He started chasing other women, and I got to thinking that maybe this was judgment on me for not obeying my momma. Maybe she was right, maybe Jesus was waiting for the truly faithful. Besides, I really missed my momma even if we do go around and around like wildcats sometimes. So I lived with another man for a while, but he wasn't any better than the first. Then, one night while I was praying, I saw a vision. It was Jesus Himself, sitting on His diamond and pearl throne with the angels singing back of Him, all in a blaze of glorious light. He told me to quit si

"So I went. And here I am. It's been many years, brother, and I've suffered like one of God's own martyrs. I've gotten bone-weary and flesh-sick, but here I am! Last night I prayed again, and I saw my mother, only for a second, and she told me to come with you. She said you weren't a good man but you weren't bad either. You were in between. But I would be the one to bring you to the light, save you, and we'd go together to Kingdom Come and sweet Jesus would wrap His arms around us and welcome us to the glory throne. Hallelujah!"

"Hallelujah, sister!" Burton said. He was always willing to throw himself into the form of a religion while laughing at its spirit.

"It's a long long trip yet, brother. My back hurts from paddling my canoe against the current, and I hear that it's foggy and cold most of the way from now on and not a living soul to be seen. It'll be very lonely there. That's why I'd like to go with you and your friends."

Burton thought, Why not?

"There's room for just one more," he said. "However, we don't take pacifists since we may have to fight. We don't want any deadweight."

"Don't you worry about me, brother. I can fight like an avenging angel of the Lord for you, if you're on the side of good."

She put her few possessions on the boat a few minutes later. Tom Turpin, the black piano player, was happy to see her at first. Then he found out she'd taken a vow of chastity.

"She's crazy, Captain," he told Burton. "Why'd you take her on? She's got that good-looking body and she'll drive me crazy her not letting me touch her."

"Perhaps she'll talk you into taking the vow, too," Burton said, and he laughed.

Turpin didn't think that was fu

When the boat pulled out after a four-day, not a two-day, leave as pla

"Yaas," Burton said softly. "And one of them was Judas."

He looked at Ah Qaaq, the ancient Mayan warrior, a pocket-sized Hercules gone to pot. He seldom offered to start a conversation, though he would talk fluently if he was cornered. Nor did he draw back if someone touched him. According to Joe Miller, X, when visiting Clemens, had not wanted to be touched, had, in fact, acted as if Clemens were some sort of leper. Clemens had thought that X, though soliciting the help of the Valleydwellers, felt that he was morally superior and that if one touched him he was somehow fouled.