The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

“I am not offended,” Burton said. “However, for you to under­stand me, you would have to listen to the story of my life, here and on Earth. And even then you might not understand. How could you when I don’t understand it myself?”

Burton fell silent then, thinking of another chief of a primitive tribe who had told him much the same thing. This was in 1863 when Burton, as Her Majesty’s consul for the west African island of Fernando Po and the Bight of Biafra, visited Gelele, king of Dahomey. Burton’s mission was to talk the king into stopping the bloody annual human sacrifices and the slave trade. His mission had failed, but he had collected enough data to write two volumes.

The drunken, bloody-minded, lecherous king had acted high­handedly with him, whereas when Burton had visited Benin its king had crucified a man in his honor. Still, they had gotten along rather well, considering the circumstances. In fact, on a previous visit, Burton had been made an honorary captain of the king’s Amazon guard.

Gelele had said that Burton was a good man but too angry.

Primitive people were good at reading character. They had had to be to survive.

Monat, the Arcturan, sensing that Burton’s withdrawal was low­ering the high spirits of the occasion, began to tell stories of his native planet. Monat had somewhat awed the islanders at first because of his obviously nonhuman origin. However, he had no trouble in warning them, since he knew exactly how to make a human being feel at ease. He should have; he had had to do this every day of his life on The Riverworld.

After a while, Burton arose and said that his crew should be getting to bed. He thanked the Ganopo for their hospitality but said that he had changed his mind about staying there for several days. His original intention to rest there while he studied them was gone.

“We would like very much for you to stay here,” the chief said. “For a few days or for many years. Whichever you prefer.”

“I thank you for that,” Burton said. He quoted the words of a character from The Thousand and One Nights. “Allah afflicted me with a love of travel.”

He then quoted himself, “Travelers like poets are mostly an angry race.”

That at least made him laugh, and he went to the boat feeling less gloomy. Before going to bed, he set the watches. Frigate protested that a guard wasn’t needed in this isolated place where the few inhabitants seemed to be honest. He was overruled, which was no surprise to him. He knew that Burton thought that acquisitiveness was the mainspring of human action.

6

Burton was thinking of this and other events of last night, including the dreams. He stood for a while, smoking a cigar, while Frigate stood by him. The assemblage of closely packed stars and wide-spreading gas sheets paled as they silently watched. Dawn would be coming within a half-hour. Its light would wash out most of the celestial objects, would spread out for some time before the sun finally cleared the northern mountain wall.

They could see the fog, like a woolly blanket, covering The River and the plains on both banks. It lapped against the tree-covered hills, on the sides of which were a few lights. Beyond the hills of the valley were the mountains, inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees for the first thousand feet or 305 meters or so, then ascending straight up, smooth as a mirror, for 10,000 feet or about 3048 meters.

During his first years here, Burton had estimated the mountains to be about 20,000 feet or 6096 meters high. He was not the only one to make that error when only the eye was available for calculation. After he had been able to construct rather crude surveying instru­ments, however, he had determined that the mountain walls were, generally, twice as low as he had thought. Their blue-grey or black rock created an illusion. Perhaps this was because the valley was so narrow, and the walls made the dwellers feel even more pygmyish.

This was a world of illusions, physical, metaphysical, and psy­chological. As on Earth, so here.