The Magnificent Showboats (2 page)

* The basic standard of value everywhere across Big Planet is iron, the least scarce of the metals. An iron groat, to the mass of about half a gram, represents the ordinary wage for a day of common toil.

On one occasion while the boat lay at anchor off the town Ratwick, a red-haired mime-girl twitted him for his discretion. “Poof!” she said, giving his trim blond goatee a tug. “Must we prowl the same old shores forever? Up, down, up, down, from Thamet to Wigtown to Badburg, and only a pause at Coble to iron* your money.”

* Colloquialism: the process of exchanging miscellaneous tokens, gems and commodities into iron.

Zamp laughed without rancor, and drained his goblet of wine; the two had just taken a meal in Zamp’s stern cabin. “And if by this means I dine on the best with a charming companion, why should I change?”

The girl, who called herself Lael-Rosza, gave a shrug and a little wry grimace. “Do you really want reasons?”

“Naturally! If reasons exist!”

“There are no reasons, except to see different faces and different scenery. But is it not a strange mystery that Apollon Zamp, the most zestful bravo of the showboats, plies the most cautious routes?”

“No strange mystery whatever! I am gallant and zestful because circumstances permit these qualities; otherwise I might be as dull as a Ratwick clam-digger. I will tell you my secret.” Zamp made a significant gesture and leaned forward. “I make no demands upon my good friend Destiny. I never put him to the test, and hence we stride happily in step together through life.”

“Perhaps your good friend Destiny is merely too modest and too polite to differ with you,” suggested Lael-Rosza. “Let us test his real opinion. Ahead of us is that dreary little group of hovels Badburg, where the folk pay their way in pickled fish. Notice my talisman: one side bears my birth-sign, the other depicts the nymph Korakis. I will toss up the talisman. If Korakis appears we sail on, past Badburg, up to Fudurth, or Euvis, or even Lanteen at Glassblower’s Point. If not: Badburg. Do you agree?”

Zamp shook his head. “Destiny admittedly has his little quirks; for instance he never troubles to control the twirl of a talisman.”

“Still, I will twirl.” Lael-Rosza spun the ivory disk into the air; it fell to the table, rolled across the waxed wood to lean on edge against the wine flask.

Zamp looked down in annoyance. “So then — what am I expected to understand from this?”

“You must ask someone else; I have no skill with omens.”

Zamp raised his eyebrows. “Omens?”

“You would know better than I: you who walk arm in arm, like a brother, with Destiny.”

“We walk together,” said Apollon Zamp, “but we do not necessarily confide in each other.”

The night was well-advanced. Lael-Rosza had slipped quietly back to her cubicle on the deck below, and Apollon Zamp, who had taken perhaps a draught or two more than necessary, sat back in his massive chair of carved pfalax wood. The night was warm; the casements were open; a breeze caused the flame in the lamps to flicker, and shadows danced around the walls. Zamp rose to his feet and surveyed the cabin: a chamber which any man might envy, with furniture of massive pfalax, a cabinet of glass flagons twinkling in the lamplight, a good bed with a green coverlet in the alcove. The tamarack knees supporting the overhead beams were carved in scrolls; the oak deck below his feet shone dark and glossy with wax, one great lamp hung above the table, another over the desk. At this late hour the various levels of Zamp’s mind lay open to each other. Images surged and spun; portents and meanings were everywhere, if only he were clever enough to grasp them. The casements reflected a distorted semblance of himself; Zamp peered close to see a recognizable person, one dear and familiar, yet somehow awful and strange and remote. The figure was squat, with bulging buttocks, garments hanging all askew. The fair curls flapped foppishly long; blue eyes looked vacuously past a long pale nose. Zamp straightened himself in indignation; the creature in the casement blinked and rippled and stared back with an indignant life of its own, as if it found Zamp’s appearance as revolting as Zamp found its own … Zamp turned away. If these were presages or messages, or insights, he wanted no more of them.

He stepped out into the night and climbed to the quarterdeck. The dark stream slid past without haste, aware that its course was inexorable. From Ratwick a few late lamps glimmered yellow on the water.

Zamp looked about the vessel with automatic vigilance. All seemed in order. He went to lean on the taff-rail. In the light from the stern lantern he noted on the bulge of the rudder a small squat bulwig, the lamplight reflecting stars in its three eyes. Zamp and the bulwig stared at each other. Zamp willed the creature to jump into the water. It hunched itself down more obdurately than ever. Zamp projected the full force of his personality. “Go!” he muttered. “Depart the rudder, mud-scut! Back to the slime!”

The bulwig’s gaze seemed to become more intense, and it occurred to Zamp that the bulwig in its turn might be willing Zamp back from the rail. “Bah,” muttered Zamp. “What nonsense! I am turning away only because I have business elsewhere!”

On his way below he paused to consider Ratwick once more. Today he had presented a farce
, The Drunken Fishmonger and the Talking Eel
, together with a ‘Ballet of the Flowers’, featuring his eight mime-girls in flounced robes; a wrestling match between the ship’s professional and the local champion; and a finale which included the eight girls, the orchestra, two jugglers, three sword dancers, six grotesques. The program had been carefully adapted to the prejudices of the town, which like most communities of Big Planet considered itself the single oasis of sanity upon all the vast surface of the planet. He had played to three hundred and twelve men, women and children; he had collected in payment over four thousand ounces of driftwood resin, convertible at Coble — so Zamp had determined from his Transactional Bulletin — into ninety-five groats of iron. A fair day’s take, neither good nor bad. Tomorrow he had planned to hoist anchor and drift back down-river, and why not? What was up-river save a few dingy little villages too poor even to tempt the robber nomads from Tinsitala Steppe? Lanteen at Glassblower’s Point was prosperous enough, and his own few visits had yielded adequate returns. He was growing no younger … Odd! What had propelled that totally irrelevant idea into his mind? He turned one last thoughtful look around the river, then descended to his cabin and went to bed.

Zamp awoke to find the light of Phaedra slanting across the oak planks of the cabin floor. Water chuckled under the stern as wind from the south worked up a chop against the current, and with the anchor rope slack the vessel moved restlessly from side to side. Zamp stretched and groaned, climbed from bed, pulled the bell-cord for his breakfast, and arrayed himself in his morning robe.

Chaunt the steward laid the great pfalax table with a white cloth, poured a bowl of tea, arranged a basket of fruit to hand, then served a ragout of reed-birds in a crusty shell.

Zamp ate a leisurely and pensive breakfast, then called for Bonko the boatswain, a burly big-bellied man with long arms and short legs, a bony head bald except for bristling black eyebrows and a small mustache under his splayed lump of a nose. Bonko’s demeanor, which was courteous and accommodating, belied his appearance. In addition to his navigational offices, he served as ship’s wrestler and executioner in those dramas which specified such a role.

“How goes the day?” asked Zamp.

“The south wind is brisk and dead in our teeth. We’ll make no progress down-river unless we use the animals, which means the tow-path.”

Zamp gave his head a shake of displeasure. “The tow-path south of Ratwick is a quagmire. Has Quaner finished with the drive axle?”

“No, sir, it’s still out for glazing and he feels that the gland must be repacked.”

Last night the talisman, rolling across the table, had come to rest on its edge! “Very well,” said Zamp. “Up all sails! If we can’t go south, we’ll lay hold of this fine wind for the north. We haven’t played Euvis or Fudurth or Port Fitz for years.”

“I seem to recall some small trouble at Port Fitz,” said Bonko cautiously, “in connection with a lady wearing antlers.”

Zamp grunted. “The customs of these wretched folk are far too unyielding. Still, I don’t care to desecrate another of their totems. Euvis may be as far north as we care to venture. Up all sails; raise the anchor.”

Bonko went forward to order out the deck gang. A few minutes later Zamp heard the creak of blocks and a clicking of the capstan, and the great vessel came alive to the pressure of the wind.

Zamp went up to the quarterdeck and watched Ratwick fall astern. At this point the Vissel River flowed wide and free, with the western shore an all but invisible smudge. In the sunlight and wind Zamp’s qualms and eerie introspections of the night before evaporated; the occasion seemed as remote as a dream. The single and only verity was NOW, with wind blowing the reek of water and mud, wet reeds, dingle and blackwillow into his face, and the sunlight dancing upon the water. The yards had been braced; the mainsail and foresail billowed and strained, and Bonko was setting out the sky-master. The ship surged majestically through the water. A delightful privilege to be alive, thought Zamp — especially in the guise and substance of himself, the noblest and best of the Vissel impresarios! Garth Ashgale? Of no more consequence than yonder gape-mouthed fisherman huddling in his scow as
Miraldra’s Enchantment
surged past. Zamp raised his arm in an expansive salute. Who knows? Next time past the fisherman would remember the magnificent ship with its gallant captain and bring himself and his bit of iron aboard for a performance. The fisherman gave no answering signal and merely stared back numbly. Zamp lowered his arm. Such a lumpkin would be just as likely to blunder aboard
Fironzelle’s Golden Conceit
should that barge-load of sham drift past. Ashgale had sailed forth in his gaudy palace two weeks before Zamp’s own departure from Coble, and they had passed nowhere along the river. Ah well, Ashgale could come and go as he wished; his acts meant nothing and Zamp went forward to make an inspection of the boat.

Zamp’s gait was most distinctive. His torso was sturdy, although good living had blurred the taut outline of his middle regions. His legs were long; he walked with a loping bent-kneed stride, shoulders hunched, head somewhat forward, with blue eyes gleaming, fair hair flouncing and aristocratic nose turned first to this side, then that.

On the midship platform the acrobats and jugglers were at practice, with the animal-trainers and insect-masters under screened awnings to port and starboard. On the foredeck the mime troupe rehearsed their routines, quarreling for space with the grotesques who attempted a new contortion. On the stage itself the Dildeks, who simulated combat with knives, bolos, claws and snapples, ran back and forth across chalked patterns.

Zamp climbed the shrouds to the crow’s-nest, but observed no cushions, bottles, musical instruments or under-garments, all of which he had discovered at one time or another. The eye at the end line of the triatic stay joining foremast and mainmast showed evidence of chafe. This was the high-wire upon which his funambulists performed their feats. If it broke during a performance, Zamp’s professional reputation would suffer; he would have a word with Bonko at once.

From this lofty perch the boat presented a scene of cheerful activity; everyone seemed in good spirits. Zamp knew better.
Miraldra’s Enchantment
carried its full quota of dyspeptic grumblers. Some told of idyllic conditions aboard rival boats; others, slaves to avarice, incessantly demanded iron and more iron. Up here in the crow’s-nest, Zamp could ignore all that was paltry and take pleasure in the view, which extended forever across the vast Big Planet horizons. That far smudge was a line of mountains; that fainter air-colored mark beyond was another, higher, range; and still beyond, at the uncertain limits of perception, a silken line of pale blue ink on gray paper represented still another mountain range of unknown proportions. A glint in the west might be a sea and that trace of smoky lavender along the far shore perhaps indicated a desert. Southward the brimming river dwindled to a twinkling thread of silver; to the north a sugarloaf bluff of red chert concealed the course of the river across the Tinsitala Steppe, onward and onward: where? Past Badburg and Fudurth, and Glassblower’s Point; past the Meagh Mountains and Dead Horse Swamp and Garken; across Slyland, through the Mandaman Gates into Bottomless Lake and the legendary kingdom of Soyvanesse, whose people lived in mansions and dined off iron plates and allowed no strangers to enter, in order to protect their wealth and the suavity of their lives. The
River Index
showed these places, but who knows? The chart might be factitious. Zamp knew of folk who had journeyed north as far as Garken, but the lands beyond were no more real than the marks on the chart. Zamp nodded his head sagely. So much for the worlds of fancy! Reality lay here, along the Vissel, from Coble to Ratwick, or perhaps Euvis; here was real iron, and a pinch of black in the hand was worth more than clangorous disks and noble bowls of the imagination.