When I went to talk to some of Adam’s litter bearers, they did a bit of a double take, as though I had just somehow materialized right in front of them. Then they talked to me formally, as one would to a superior in a work situation, rather than as a fellow party goer.
The performers were an exception to this strange dichotomy, apparently being members of both planes of existence. But then, I suppose that show business people are on a different plane everywhere. Anyway, I was introducing this supple and still-naked young thing to the mysteries of a rum and Coke, with a twist of lemon peel, a local product, when Roxanna came up. In the States, this might have caused an embarrassing moment, but here there was none of that sort of thing. And Roxanna fell in love with Cuba Libres, too.
Anyway, after months of stress, strain, anxiety, injury, shipwreck, depression and confusion, a good party was definitely in order, and indeed was had by all.
I woke up on the floor with the morning sun in my eyes, with my head propped up on the small of a sleeping dancer’s bare back and Roxanna curled up at my side, her head on my shoulder.
It’s actually not such a bad life after all.
EIGHTEEN
The Reverend Cardinal Deacon James of Ys approached the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, D.D., Archbishop of the Western Isles. He knelt, kissed The Ring, and looked up, awaiting instructions.
“Ah, James. You may stand. I have need of your thoughts. Tell me, what do you think of of the new strangers?”
“Well, Your Excellency, in the short term, they are a public nuisance. Almost everyone on the islands has been infected by their influenza. Thus far no one has been killed, but I call your attention to the many thousands who died during plagues brought to us by just such outsiders cast up on our shores in the past.”
“Yes, yes, but in the long run?”
“In the long run, they are far more dangerous. In the past, it was a simple matter to keep rescued outsiders from bringing the entire outside world down upon us. We needed only to keep them away from the boats. If one still escaped despite our precautions, and somehow managed to make it home alive, he would never be believed because any ship sent in search of us would find nothing but open sea. But now, it is my understanding that the new ship contains communication devices far in advance of what the Warlock possesses, devices that could call the outsiders directly to us, no matter where we moved. Droves of outsiders with their diseases, their weapons, and their ungodly ways.”
“Yes, James, and I think that last point is what bothers me the most. They tell me that not one outsider in fifty considers himself to be a Christian, and even among those few, well, have you ever listened on the Warlock’s devices to what passes for a sermon out there?”
“Yes, Your Excellency. I learned the English language just so that I could understand them. For my pains, all I heard was a so-called `preacher’ who was screeching about God in the most atrocious manner possible. Yet this person repeatedly claimed to be a Christian! I fear for the souls of our people if such foreign influences were let abroad on our islands.”
“Indeed. And those so-called `spiritual’ infamies are but a part of their bad influences. Many of our people have fallen to the sins of drunkenness when overindulging in the beer and wines made on our islands. Now, rumor has it that the two outsiders have brought in no less than eighteen new forms of drink to tempt our people. What other abominations can yet be in store for us?”
“What, indeed, Your Excellency? In truth, I fear for our little island!”
“As do I, my son. Come, let us pray . . .”
* * *
* * *
Shortly thereafter, the dancer got up, bid us a polite and somewhat formal good-bye, and left, still completely naked. Roxanna kissed me lightly on the cheek, went to her bedroom, and wasn’t seen until evening.
I started to sober up.
This condition was soon combined with the grandmother of all hangovers. It was past noon before Adam and I got back to the warehouse where The Brick Royal was stored. The main reason why we went there at all that day was because we hadn’t thought to bring the medical kit with us the day before.
After a long search through our scattered property, I found it at last, and the Alka-Seltzers. Felicia already had two plastic glasses of water ready and, bleary-eyed, Adam and I toasted our survival of the previous night.
Then I sent the maid home with blue packages for Roxanna, Maria, Agnes, and, almost an afterthought, for Felicia herself, since her eyeballs looked as bad as Adam’s. Or my own, I suppose, though the technology hereabouts didn’t run to mirrors, and I hadn’t been up to shaving that morning.
“Vitamins!” I said, enunciating carefully. “The only way that I could possibly feel this bad is that I must be suffering from a severe vitamin depletion. They must not put enough vitamins in the food here. You stored lots of vitamins, didn’t you?”
“Megadoses. I bought cases of the stuff when I was thinking that maybe we might actually have to spend a few years wrecked on some desert isle doing in the tons of dried beans I’d just bought. But are you so sure that you’re suffering from a deficiency disease? Couldn’t it have something to do with those thirty-six rums and Cokes, on top of all that wine and beer and scotch and gin and stuff? I mean, you were drinking and keeping up with four ladies, each one individually.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly and quietly, carefully enunciating each word so as not to be accused of inebriation. “But a hangover has definite physiological causes, like dehydration, and salt depletion, because you pissed it all away, and a depletion of the soluble vitamins, like B, C, and the rest, for the same inalienable reason. Had my vitamin and mineral levels been up there where they belong, I wouldn’t be feeling nearly this bad.”
I found what I had been scrounging for, and mouthed down some One-A-Days, a couple of B-50s, a gram of number C, and then some vitamin E, because it was there.
“You want some, Adam?”
“They couldn’t make me feel any worse,” he said, chewing up a random handful.
“We ought to give some Alka-Seltzer to your bearers,” I said.
“What for? I didn’t invite them to the party. Did you invite them to the party? So why should we be beholden to a bunch of party crashers?”
“Don’t be that way. They’re in pain, and the thing about pain is that it hurts a lot. Anyway, if they all quit you, you’ll be stranded here, because I’m not going to carry you anywhere today. Furthermore, they were invited. When I invited you, the invite covered them. Local custom. Roxanna said so. So be nice to the boys.”
“If I gotta.”
He waved them over, handed out some of our dwindling supply of tablets, and told them how to take them.
“Maybe there is something to these people having some vitamin deficiencies. Let’s get the girls on vitamin supplements and ask them in a few weeks if they really feel better.”
I said, “Good idea.”
About then, two gaudily dressed individuals came up to us, bowed, and presented us each with an oversized envelope. Adam had the presence of mind to open his first.
“Well. It seems that I have been formally invited to lunch tomorrow with `His Excellency, the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, Archbishop of the Western Isles.’ ”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Me, too. Only I get to meet the warlock, just after lunch. I wonder what you wear to a formal meeting with a warlock?”
“I don’t think it much matters as long as you bring the proper gifts with you. Some bat wings would be nice, or maybe a roc’s egg, and don’t forget a negative pound or two of phlogiston.”
“I’ve already sent him a positive pound of gold, and after that, he’s just going to have to suffer or live with it,” I said.
Not much got accomplished that afternoon, and, since it was still a two-hour walk back to his place, I invited Adam back to Roxanna’s place again.
“Yeah, thanks, but you know, we can’t keep doing this forever. I mean, if it was just you and me, there wouldn’t be any problem, but women got these nesting instincts. Roxanna and my girls act real friendly and all, but if we force them together too much, they’ll start infringing on each other’s territoriality. I think I got to buy or rent someplace near this warehouse to live in.”