I let Adam handle it while I set about getting our cargo together. The most exciting product the Westronese had was their high-strength fiber, Super-Hemp, we’d decided to call it. I’d hoped to be able to buy a few tons of the stuff, but no such luck. The clothing, fishnets, and other fabrics made from Super-Hemp were so indestructible that very little replacement was required. This meant that very little hemp needed to be grown, and so very little of it was on the market. Even less than usual, since a lot of it had been bought up to make Adam’s drift net.
I ended up touring every market square on the Islands, offering twice the going price, and still coming home with only a few hundred pounds of the stuff. Then I went out buying finished thread, finished cloth, and was eventually reduced to buying used clothing before I had enough to fill the smallest forward hold in The Brick Royal.
I got home one day to find that a delivery had been made to me there rather than to the warehouse, probably by mistake. The chief gardener, Master Maimonides ibn Tibbon, had come through on his promise of samples of all the other products that we’d agreed might have some commercial value in the outside world.
There were three crates of the stuff, each product in its own numbered envelope or cloth bag. Four handwritten books came with them, describing each product in English, telling how it was used, and what the approximate costs of production were. Judging from the different handwritings involved, at least twenty different experts had been involved in preparing the notes on the various sorts of vegetable products. It was a remarkable effort, and showed that they were giving us all the support they could. Somebody out there didn’t like us, and it was good to know that we had some friends as well.
In return, we gave Maimonides some one thousand nine hundred pounds of various kinds of plant seeds, mostly peas and beans, everything we had that was growable from Adam’s emergency food supplies. Each side went away convinced that they had come out far ahead of the other side. To put it another way, a good deal was had by all.
THIRTY-TWO
One of the duke’s couriers came by and delivered a formal proclamation concerning the upcoming court case of those people who had attacked us. Since neither Adam nor I had as yet any command of written Westronese, we had Roxanna read it to the group.
It seems that for some unexplained reason, there wasn’t going to be any trial. It seems that those men who had been killed while attacking us were now dead, and thus were outside the duke’s jurisdiction. Those of our opponents who had survived were sufficiently maimed and crippled that additional punishment was deemed unnecessary. Indeed, they had already been punished far worse than the law would normally allow. No mention was made of the six attackers who were not seriously injured.
The crimes that Adam and I had committed, carrying and using a concealed weapon, and the failure to give aid to the wounded, would be fined at the rate of two pounds of silver each, but since we had already gifted the crown by this amount, the debt would be considered paid.
“It looks like a standard coverup job,” I said. “Everything is left just where it stands, and the courts put their stamp on it.”
“Yeah. That business of fining us an amount equal to the amount we’d already given says something, though,” Adam said.
“Like what?”
“The duke is letting us off, but he’s saying that he doesn’t owe us any more favors.”
“Wonderful. A score of hoodlums tries to kill us, and we’re supposed to be grateful for being let off. Not that the same sort of horseshit hasn’t happened often enough in the States. Anyway, we gave the duke a lot more than just the four pounds of silver,” I said. “He got a couple of pounds of gold, and three or four big boxes of other things.”
“Around here, silver is money. The gold and the rest of that stuff isn’t. People think differently about social gifts as opposed to money. Gifts are friendly. Money is serious.”
Roxanna had followed our conversation in English fairly well. She was picking up my language far faster than I had learned Westronese. In a mixture of broken English expanded with Westronese where necessary, she explained her views on the subject, which were that the duke was a fine man, and that by eliminating the trial, and thus not wasting our valuable time, he was doing us a great favor.
The Pelitier sisters agreed with her completely, saying that we should be thankful to the duke for the courtesies shown us.
Roxanna was a fine and intelligent person in many ways, and Adam’s ladies were stamped from the same cookie cutter, but they all were incredibly naive. They’d never heard of power politics, or of the innate sneakiness of governments in general. The duke might be a fine man personally, but as soon as he acted as a head of state, he naturally became a conniving bastard. It had to be that way, if he was going to continue being the man in charge. Wimps don’t last long in this world, unless they are content to live near the bottom of the pecking order.
“Eliminating the trial does something definite for the local powers-that-be,” I said. “Officially, it renders mute the question of just who attacked us, and far more importantly, why they did it. I mean, just what is their bitch against us? Is it open to discussion? Or negotiation? Do we have something that they want? I’m not talking about the individuals involved, since I don’t much care who they are. We gave them a licking that they won’t forget, and they’re not likely to try the same thing again. What I would like to know for sure is just what organization wanted us to be damaged or dead. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s some of the archbishop’s boys, but I’d like to really know.”
“There’s no possible way that the archbishop could be behind it, Treet. You’ve never met the man,” Adam said. “But, yeah, I would truly like to know who it is that has it in for us. More importantly, are whoever they are still out to get us, and what are they going to try next time? I’m beginning to wish that we hadn’t donated my arsenal to the duke for his royal safekeeping. I wish we had those guns still hidden in the bottom of the boat.”
“I’m starting to feel the same way. The problem is that if you’re right about the need for protection, we won’t get the guns back no matter what we do. And if you’re wrong, and we don’t need the damned things, we can probably have them returned to us anytime.”
The women were shocked at our words and thoughts, that we could say that someone as noble as the duke would actually try to protect some criminal element within his realm, or that any of the great organizations of their islands could conceivably stoop to violence to attain their ends.
Adam and I looked at them, looked at each other, and shook our heads. There was nothing that we could say. We’d known all along that we’d come from a totally different world than they did.
We loved these island women, but we were both beginning to develop a lot more respect for the sort of American woman who can stand up to adversity, and who can think things out for herself!
* * *
We tried to find those attackers who had survived the encounter, just to talk to them, but no luck. The medical people said that they never kept such records, and had forgotten who they had worked on.
When we applied to the keeper of the royal arsenal for the return of our weapons, we were told that citizens were not permitted to have offensive weapons in their possession. When we objected that we weren’t citizens, we were told that foreigners weren’t allowed them, either.
The duke and his noble subordinates couldn’t quite find the time to see us. The press of important business, we were told.
There was a local baron who functioned like a neighborhood cop. We went to see him and explained our problem. He said that he was sure that there could be no possible repeat of the fighting incident, since violence was so rare on the islands. In any event, the duke had taken the matter into his own hands, and thus it was no longer the concern of the baron.
The islands had nothing like a press corps. There were no muckraking reporters who knew how to dig into a story and get the facts out. All they had were some bulletin boards. We put up a series of posters, eventually offering very considerable awards for information, but we got no takers.