As they went north, The Valley became broader. Apparently the Ethicals had made it wider so that it might receive more of the weak sunlight. The temperature was tolerable during the day, which was longer than those in the regions behind them, reaching as high as sixty-two Fahrenheit. But it would get ever colder the farther north they went. The fogs lasted longer, too.
Goring had been right about the scarcity of people. There were only approximately a hundred per square mile. This number was being cut down daily, as the many boats going down-River showed.
Joe Miller, standing in the bow, looked longingly at the titanthrops they passed. When the launch landed for recharging, he went ashore to talk to any he could find. The conversations were in Esperanto, since none knew his native tongue.
“Jutht ath veil,” Joe said. “I’ve forgotten motht of it anyvay. Jethuth H. Chritht! Ain’t I ever going to find my parentth and my friends, my own tribethpeople?”
Fortunately, the titanthrops were amiable. They were by now far outnumbered by the “pygmies,” and most of them had been converted to the Chancer faith. Burton and Joe tried to recruit some, but failed. The giants wanted nothing to do with the beings in the tower.
“They all dread the far north,” Burton said. “You must have shared their fear. Why did you go with the Egyptians?”
Joe swelled his gorillalike chest. “I’m braver than thothe otherth. Thmarter, too. Though, to tell the truth, I came near thyitting down my leg vhen I thaw the tower. But any man vould. You jutht vait until you thee it.”
The tenth day, they stopped for a shore leave of several days. The locals were a few titanthrops with a majority of Scandinavians, ancient, medieval, and modern. Among them were, however, people from any different times and places. The men who had no cabinmates immediately started looking for overnight stands. Burton walked around inquiring if anybody had seen the men and women who’d been forced to abandon the launch from the Rex. There were plenty, and all said that these had gone up-River in boats, all of them stolen.
“Have any others come along/who’ve said they were on the Not For Hire?” Burton said. “That’s the giant metal riverboat like the Rex, propelled by paddlewheels and driven by electric motors.”
“No, I’ve not seen or heard of anybody like that.”
Burton didn’t expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.
Nor would the agents who’d left Clemens’ vessel before the battle be any more open.
However, getting descriptions of those who had gone northward during the past few weeks, he recognized those who’d fled the Rex. De Marbot, who was also questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who’d deserted the Not For Hire.
“We’ll catch up with them soon,” Burton said.
“If we’re lucky,” the Frenchman said. “We may pass them at night. Or they might get word of our coming and hide while we go by.”
“In any event, we’ll get there first.”
Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the locals, he could find none of those he sought.
In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive physique and facial features of the Ethicals Than-abur and Loga. The man who called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky, hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton, these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn’t know Sumerian or ancient Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan pronunciation and intonation.
That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered the tongues. Or it meant that both were innocent and what they claimed to be.
Twenty-two days after he’d passed through the strait in an area where there weren’t more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a tall skinny woman with big eyes and a big mouth. Her white teeth shone in the black African face.
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