CONRADS QUEST FOR RUBBER - Leo Frankowski

"I will buy the next round, in honor of your very creative fantasy," Sir Odon said. "But what you are saying cannot possibly be true. Even if you are not lying, you must be exaggerating shamelessly, but it is such a pleasant lie that I think we would all like to wallow in it for the rest of the night, at least."

I said he could believe whatever he chose, it made no difference, since we would probably be briefed on it in the morning.

Father John wanted to know about the people to be found on this river, and I said that they were primitive along the river, but there was a rich civilization at its headwaters, in the mountains. And none of them had ever heard of Christ.

You could see the good father's eyes glow.

As the evening went on, my friends decided that they almost believed me about the mission, but on calm reflection they insisted that for the most beautiful woman in the world to be in love with a person abjectly lacking in any social skills, and with such a deplorable level of personal hygiene, was simply absurd.

They said that I had obviously fallen off Margarete and landed on my head, since I was patently delusional. I sat there and acted smug.

The high point of the evening came when Maude walked into the inn, wearing her usual outfit and easily outshining all of the waitresses and dancers there. She sat down next to me, put her arm around my waist and her head against my shoulder.

She said, "I missed you. Let's go to bed."

Fritz muttered, as if to himself, "She doesn't like clothes because nothing looks good on her. Unbelievably good, for a fact."

My other friends couldn't speak, since all of their mouths were locked open.

I told Maude that I would like that, but first she must meet my friends. I introduced them to her, but she had already heard much about each of them, and they were still too stunned by her beauty to say very much, so I was soon able to break away from them and take Maude back to my room in the barracks.

Having her there was perhaps discouraged by certain army regulations, but they were not well-enforced regulations if you didn't bother anybody.

I asked her how she had gotten to the school from Okoitz. "Iran."

A distance of eighteen miles, and she ran the whole way. It made sense, somehow.

Chapter Twenty-Five

From the Journal of Josip Sobieski

WRITTEN MARCH 6, 1251, CONCERNING JANUARY 19, 1250

I FIND myself laid up in the base hospital with an unimportant infection in a small scratch on my foot, and again, with nothing better to do, I have resolved to bring my personal history up to date.

I stood at the rail of the Atlantic Challenger, hoping for a sight of one of the flying fishes that Lord Conrad had written about. After weeks at sea, my love for it was still growing. Its awesome size, its constantly changing colors, its infinite peace. Together they made it for me one of the greatest works of God.

We had been at sea for four weeks, and out of radio contact for the last fifteen days. The new radios were an improvement, but were far from perfect. I could no longer send messages to my love.

I missed Maude, more than everything else.

Through the months of preparation for this voyage, she and I had been together every possible moment. I spent my weekends at Okoitz with her, and she arranged to have every Wednesday and Thursday off to spend at the school. In this manner, we had six nights a week together.

Transportation was provided by the Big People, who seemed to take a special pleasure in watching our love affair. Once Maude got Lord Conrad to teach her a few words in English, we often rode Silver back and forth, since that lady ordinarily didn't get enough exercise.

There was no longer even the slightest doubt in either of us that ours was a love that would last forever. She promised that she would wait for me to return, and that when I did, we would be married.

At Okoitz, where she was still guarding Lord Conrad, she spent her time in constant reading, to learn everything she could about this strange new world she had been sent into. She took formal religious instruction, and was baptized a Christian, which removed any possible impediment to our marriage.

She even submitted to wearing clothing in public, to forestall any criticism. It was very light clothing, loose, and made of the softest Bulgarian cotton, but it was clothing for all of that.

I was sorely tempted to transfer to some other branch of the army so I would not have to leave her. Maude thought seriously of leaving Lord Conrad's employment and stowing away on the ship, but in the end calmer, more practical thoughts had prevailed.

I wanted to set up a proper household for her, and I thought it likely that if this voyage proved to be as successful as the last, my promotion to captain was assured. Thirty-two pence a day, plus her salary, if she wanted to remain working, plus whatever royalties I got for my share of the mine, when added to my savings would let us live a very comfortable life.

Standing with me on the docks, just before I left, she had a confession to make. Unbeknownst to everyone, Maude had had four children.

It seems that children of her species are born very small, no bigger than mice, which explained why no one had noticed her pregnancy. They require no more care than a safe place to live and a supply of food, any food that a human could eat.

She was paying the widow of a yeoman farmer, who lived in the woods not far from Okoitz, to care for them and keep them hidden.

This was the first truly independent action I had ever seen her make, and naturally I was curious about it. She said she felt a responsibility to Lord Conrad, and that by herself, she could not give him the security he deserved and still have any life of her own. Her four daughters, in time, could see to it that he was guarded around the clock, and still have plenty of free time for themselves.

Also, with the four of them on duty, Maude would feel free to go anywhere with me.

When I asked if this had been done with Lord Conrad's permission, she said no. But he never had anything to say about whether any human woman should have children or not, and she was as free as they were, wasn't she?

I had to agree with her, but secretly I was glad I hadn't been asked about it before the deed was done.

When I returned, in a year or so, it would be not only to a wife, but to a family, of sorts, as well.

As I pondered all of this, Knight Banner Taurus came over from the fishing net crane. He didn't have to do the sampling personally. Like me, he now had a forty-two-man platoon working under him, most of them belted knights. I think he was doing it himself simply because he was bored with our shipboard inactivity.

"Another empty net. These equatorial oceans are not as rich as our northern seas."

I said that our sampling was still far too small for us to draw any solid conclusions.

"True, and anyway, I was getting sick of the cook's abortive attempts at trying to make five new kinds of fish a day edible. I wonder if we'll ever find out if it's a matter of bad fish or bad cooking. Can you believe that lately I have been developing a craving for some fresh venison, you know, from those northern deer?"

I said I could not believe it, but that I had heard there was some trade starting in what they were calling reindeer meat, preserved by the new canning process.

"Reindeer. That must be because they put reins on the animal when they use it to pull their sleds. Reasonable. Say, how well do you know Baron Tados? This is the third time he has captained the ship we were on, and I still don't know anything about him."

I said that the first time was at the Battle for the Vistula, when we were just out of grunt school. The last thing we'd wanted was an interview with a baron! On the Baltic, we only saw him a few times, and the one time we'd met socially, everybody was too polite to actually talk. And on this trip, he had thus far stayed on the bridge, where our presence wasn't welcome. So I was as ignorant as Taurus was. I asked why he wanted to know about the man.

"I don't know. Maybe it's just my imagination, but some tension is building, something seems strange. Have you heard that the North Star is almost under the horizon? We'll be turning west in a few hours."

I said we were almost on the equator, and that I had expected it would be hotter. A summer afternoon in Poland would often get as warm as it was on the ship.

"I think the water cools us. Before long, we will arrive at the land of Brazyl, if all goes well and Lord Conrad is right. Still, I have a very bad feeling that something is going to go very wrong."

I said that his grace was rarely mistaken. We might be on the river within the week. I reminded him that no Christian in all of recorded history had ever traveled this far before! A certain amount of anxiety was only normal. I told Taurus that maybe it was just the anticipation that was upsetting him.

I was wrong.

Captain Odon was red in the face and gesticulating vigorously at the ship's captain, Baron Tados, who was groping for a weapon, and had not drawn one only because he couldn't seem to decide between his sword, his pistol, or the huge Mongol bow hanging on the wall. The baron's face was white, and I was unsure which color was the worse danger signal.

Both of their jaws were moving up and down, their lips were moving, and their faces were going through the most remarkable contortions, but they were up on the bridge, and what with the noise and the wind of our travel, those of us below on the main deck could not hear a word of what was being shouted.

Suddenly, Captain Odon raised both fists into the air, turned around, and stormed down the staircase toward the two dozen or so officers who were watching them. The baron hesitated for a moment or two, then charged after the explorer.

"It seems that our sublime leaders have concluded their learned consultations," Zbigniew said. "Perhaps at last we shall be enlightened as to their cause for concern."

I said that his florid language suggested he had been reading too many diplomatic papers in the News Magazine, and stressed the prudence of being prepared to disarm them both, if necessary.

"Stop running away, you insubordinate bastard! I gave you an order!" the baron said, grabbing our captain's arm.

"Insubordinate, hell! I am your co-komander on this mission! And I tell you that you are a bloody madman! We are in the middle of the ocean! We have not sighted land for weeks! An idiot child could tell that we are not on a fornicating river! Use your eyes, you senile old fool!" Captain Odon said, shaking loose his arm.

"And I tell you that I have my written orders, you mutinous bastard! Fuel consumption has been much higher than expected, and if we have headwinds, in addition to the contrary currents that you know damn well we can expect, this ship will have a hard time getting back to Gdansk!" the baron said.

"You still have more than half of your fuel left, and if there is any question of it running out, when we find land, we can cut you enough cordwood to get you to China! But right now we are on the ocean! We are not on a river! And trying to assemble the riverboats down in those waves is suicide for any man who goes down there, and murder for you to order them to do it!"

"Lord Conrad's notes clearly say that the Amazon River is so wide that in some places you cannot see the banks from the middle! And you tasted the last bucket of water we brought up from the side! There wasn't one bit of salt in it! It was river water! We are on a river, you bloody idiot!"

"I don't give a damn if it tastes like pure white lightning! The Baltic Sea is damn low on salt, and nobody saw you putting a riverboat on it! Those waves down there are two yards high, and any attempt to assemble a riverboat over the side will result in disaster! And even if we were on a river, it makes no sense to take a fragile, short-ranged riverboat who knows how damned far to land when you still have miles of water below your ship's keel! If this is a river, it is too big for the boats we brought, and the only thing to do is take the ship up it until it gets shallow enough and narrow enough to justify putting a small riverboat on it!" Captain Odon shouted.

"This ship is needed elsewhere, and we have a schedule to keep! Now get your cowardly ass in gear and do your job!"

"That's an illegal order and you damn well know it! Schedules? Now the filthy truth finally comes out! You are willing to kill a whole company of men just so you can make your paperwork look neat! My men are not going to get butchered just to satisfy your stupid brand of pigheadedness!"

"Captain, if you won't follow orders, then your men will! Get on with your job, because if you don't, this ship is turning back!" the baron said.

"You will do no such thing. You will not kill my men, and you will not abort this mission. It is too important to Lord Conrad for us to turn back now, when there isn't any good reason for it. The reason why you will not do anything stupid is that I have three times as many men as you do, and my men are much better armed! Now just continue steaming in the direction that we're going, and we'll find land eventually!"

And with that Captain Odon turned around and marched back to his cabin. The baron stood there, breathing hard, and then suddenly realized that there were two dozen men staring at him. He opened his mouth to shout something, and then thought better of it. He turned and strutted briskly back to his own cabin.

"With any luck, they'll both get drunk alone in their cabins, and the rest of us can do something sensible and save the mission," First Officer Seweryn Goszczynski said.

"That is a noble thought," Zbigniew said. "Does anybody have any idea what set them off?"

"It was a matter of the baron making a poorly thought-out suggestion — certainly, it wasn't an order at first — and your captain rather abruptly calling it stupid. You must understand that the baron has been around boats and ships for forty years now, and he was not pleased that a man less than half his age was made co-komander on this mission," a ship's radio operator said.

I said that the whole idea of having co-komanders was stupid, but since we were stuck with it, we junior officers ought to come up with a plan as to what to do if our superiors got into this same argument again, especially if they started giving the men strange and contradictory orders.

The first officer said, "If that happens, we must be prepared to disobey all illegal orders, which would mean turning this ship back for home, aborting the mission, and enduring our own courts-martial. Those of us that weren't hung would have our careers irretrievably damaged. If we didn't disobey them, and anybody got killed, as your captain is convinced would happen, we'd be up on charges anyway, for conveying an illegal order. We are all in an absolutely no-win situation, and that is probably what will save us. Both of our superiors have been acting like bloody idiots, but neither one of them is a stupid bloody idiot. They know what would happen as well. as we do, and they both know that their best chance of getting out of this unscathed is to pretend that it didn't happen. I doubt if either of them will stick his head out of his cabin until we are ready to part company. For the time being, we will follow my standing orders and continue to sail west, until such time as we can find a sane place in which to assemble your riverboats."