“Gilgamesh?” Burton said.
“That’th vhat I thaid. Tham thaid he may or may not be the king of the Thumerian thity of Uruk who lived thometime in the firtht half of the third millenium B.C. It vathn’t very likely ve’d run into anybody who knew the real Gilgameth, though you never know.
“And then there’th the ancient Mayan, Ah Qaaq. He’th awful thtrong, that ith, for a thyort-nothed perthon, he ith.”
“Ah Qaaq,” Burton said. “That’d be Mayan for fire.”
“Yeth. But he ain’t no ball of fire. He’th more like a but-terball. Fat ath a pig. But he’th very thtrong, ath I thaid. And he can thyoot a bow further than anybody I ever thaw, ekthept mythelf, naturally. Even further than thome Old Thtone Ach-. erth that vath on the boat. He’th got a muthtache tattooed on hith lip that maketh him look like a vildman from Borneo.”
“Then Kimon and the other survivors don’t know about X and the agents?” Burton said.
“If they did, I vould have thaid tho.”
Nur el-Musafir said, “It’s possible that some of them may be agents, however.”
“I’d like to talk to all of the people you mentioned,” Burton said. He paused, then said, “If all of us who know about the Ethical are to go on the Bills, then others will have to step aside. They’ll have to give up their berth on the launch. Is there much chance of that?”
“Thyure,” the titanthrop said. He looked down his enormous nose at Burton, and he smiled. His teeth were huge dull-white blocks. “Thyure. There’th a chanthe. About ath much ath an ithecube in a bonfire.”
“Then,” Burton said, “we’ll have to seize the launch. Hijack it.”
“I thought tho,” Miller said. “Vhy ith it that from the beginning ve’ve had to do tho many unethical thingth to help the Ethical?”
40
THERE WERE ELEVEN IN THE GROUP. OF THESE, FIVE HAD BEEN recruited directly by the renegade Ethical. These were Richard Francis Burton, Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, Tai-Peng, Gilgamesh, and Ah Qaaq. At least, they claimed to have been visited by X. Burton, however, could be sure only of himself. One or more might be agents or even Ethicals.
Joe Miller had been told about X by Samuel Clemens. Alice knew about him from Burton. Aphra Behn hadn’t been informed until yesterday, but she wanted very much to accompany them on their expedition. De Marbot had heard from Clemens about the Stranger, and he had told Behn about him. Since the Frenchman and the Englishwoman had once been lovers and were again, the others agreed that she could come with them.
Ely Parker, the Seneca, also knew about X from Clemens, and he had wished to go with them. But he’d changed his mind.
“To hell with the Ethicals and the tower and all that,” he said to Burton. “I’m going to stay here and try to raise the Not For Hire. It’s sunk in only about forty feet of water. Once it’s up and repaired, I’ll take it down-River. I’m not really interested in dying just to prove something that can’t be proved. The Ethicals don’t want us sticking our noses in their business. I think that the breakdowns came about because we interfered. Piscator may have screwed things up in the tower. And Podebrad told Sam that the people he left behind in Nova Bo-hemujo may have been responsible for the failure of the right-bank line. He said that before he left on the blimp some of his officers wanted to dig deep around a grailstone and see if they could tap into it to get a continuous source of power. He warned them not to, and before he took off he got them to promise they wouldn’t monkey around with it. He said that what might have happened was that they broke their promise and somehow broke the circuit.
“If that happened, the area around it would’ve been blown up. There’d be a hole big enough to make a new lake on the right side of The River. The explosion could’ve wiped out Nova Bohemujo on that side. That’s where the mineral deposits were, and if what Podebrad said was true, then that’s the end of the mines and the New Bohemians.