“Rowena?” Hakim had the gift of patience.
“Gossip drifted up-River that she’d married H. Rider Haggard, but Allah knows how many kingdoms away from me that was; somewhere the far side of Emperor Alexius. I got killed for Bilkis, don’t you know. I walked into a spear because my new eyes were too good.”
Since he had Hakim’s attention, Plum took wind. “The real me used to be blind as a bat. I’d take my glasses off before going to sleep. I needed to get blurry, or it didn’t
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go. All that time with Bilkis and her sanhedron of aunts, I had insomnia like nobody’s business. I was groggy on my toes when Prince Fernando launched his armada. ‘Invasion!’ the locals hued and cried. ‘Invasion? What? Where?’ I yawned, fumbling for my bludgeon—”
Hakim’s black eyes beaded steadily on despite this diversion. “But perhaps you know about Lenin,” he interrupted. “And the Bolshevik movement? Had they achieved true communism by your time on Earth?”
Surely this wrench in topics meant something profound, Plum thought to himself. “Lenin died—spare me the math—but fifty years before me. Russia kept going and picking up satellites. They bought my books, don’t you know. Bought ’em like billy-o. I had the deuce of a time doing anything with their rubles, but my characters were all idiot English capitalists, and they liked that.”
“You wrote books.”
“Fiction. Music hall stuff. Funny.”
The man Hakim filed this away. “Fifty years. And Lenin’s cause was prospering?” An eagle had the same way of plucking here, plucking there, and pausing between times to contemplate its dead fish. Hakim had an eagle’s craggy face, and all the time in the world.
“The Reds? In a glum sort of way, rising on the stepping-stones of dead multitudes to higher things. Politics wasn’t my game. When it’s summer, one doesn’t dwell on the torments of winter, and I’m a summer person.”
Hakim nodded at the metaphor. He spoke in ponderous sympathy. “All these people in black robes: winter people. Religion does that. They migrate up-River and down, dozens a week, because they’ve heard mat their Hakim is back from occultation. I have to conquer new grailstones
to feed them all, and so my neighbors hate me. Perhaps they’re right. Messiahs are evil, no?”
Plum shrugged. In his hours here, he’d gotten the impression that Mr. al-Hakim bi’Amr Allah was a god in the flesh to the Druze who dominated this bit of river-bank. He was a latter-day Mohammed. Tact required that he show some reluctance to damn the man to his face.
He cogitated—what should he say? As he ransacked his wits, Hakim went inscrutable. “Your cabin. The last one in the corner. We’ll walk there.”
They did. It had a bed, a small table, a door, and a window. During his internment in World War Two, Plum had endured worse than this. Much worse. Given the dearth of structure around Riverworld, this bamboo box was a suite at the Ritz.
The godlike and possibly evil Hakim made a gesture— this is yours—and left. Plum stepped inside, put his tiffin-grail on the table, and tested his frame-and-mattress. Ropes took the place of bedsprings, but it was comfortable.
Privacy!
Plum’s face fell. This was as good as it got, but Riverworld was still hell. No paper, no ink, no printing presses. How could he function? The one thing he did well was no longer an option. Except for that, he was a fool. His role as “historical consultant” was pure folly. No one forced to be there had paid less attention to the twentieth century.
Then there was Hakim. When Plum talked, the vagaries of his mind took play. Hakim was equally inconsistent, but here was the terrifying difference: He had depths behind him. In switching topics, he followed a cunning mental algorithm that left his victim plundered.
Literarily speaking, Plum had always found it a bad
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idea to get into the psychology of his villains. It ruined them. Now that he was in the story instead of writing it, his feelings were different. Plum regretted that he could guess nothing of his master’s inner compulsions. He was Hakim’s poor mule, goaded by carrot and stick, but why?
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