“I hear there’s a piano on your boat,” he said, grinning. “I’d sure like to get my hands on them ivories.”
“There are ten pianos,” de Marbot said. “Here. Take this.” •
He handed Turpin a wand of wood six inches long and incised with the initials: M.T.
“When you get to the table, give this to the captain.”
Sam would be happy. He loved ragtime, and he once had said that he couldn’t get enough players of popular music on his boat. Moreover, Turpin looked big and capable. He had to be to have bossed the rough black red-light district.
The man behind him was a wild-looking Chinese named Tai-Peng. He was about five feet ten inches tall and had large glowing green eyes and a demonic face. His black hair hung to his waist, and three irontree blooms were stuck in its crown. He claimed in a loud shrill voice to have been a great swordsman, lover, and poet in his time, which was that of the T’ang dynasty in the eighth century A.D.
“I was one of the Six Idlers of the Bamboo Stream and also of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup. I can compose poetry on the spot in my native Turkish, in Chinese, in Korean, in English, in French, and in Esperanto. When it comes to sword-play, I am as quick as a hummingbird and as deadly as a viper.”
De Marbot laughed and said he didn’t choose the recruits. But he gave the Chinese a wand and moved on to the man behind Tai-Peng.
This was a short man, though still taller than de Marbot, dark-skinned, black-eyed, fat, and with a bulging Buddha’s belly. His eyelids were slightly epicanthic, and his nose was aquiline. His clefted chin was massive. He, he said, was Ah Qaaq, and he came from the eastern coast of a land which de Marbot would call Mexico. His people had called the area in which they lived the Land of Rain. He didn’t know exactly when he lived according to the Christian calendar, but from his talks with a scholarly man it must have been around 100 B.C. His native tongue was Mayan; he was a citizen of the people that later cultures had called Olmec.
“Ah, yes,” de Marbot said. “I have heard talk of the Olmecs. We have some very learned men at the captain’s table.”
De Marbot understood that the “Olmecs” had founded the first civilization in Mesoamerica and that all others in pre-Columbian times had derived from it, the later Mayas, the Toltecs, the Aztecs, what have you. The man, if he was an ancient Mayan, did not have the artificially flattened head and the squint-eyes so favored by that people. But on reflection de Marbot realized that these, of course, would have been rectified by the Ethicals.
“You’re that rarity, a fat man,” de Marbot said. “We of the Not For Hire lead an extremely active life, no room for indolents and overeaters, and we also require that the candidate have something special to qualify him.”
Ah Qaaq said in a high voice, though not as high as the Chinese’s, “The fat cat may look soft, but it is very strong and very quick. Let me show you.”
He took the handle of his flint-headed axe, a piece of oak eighteen inches long and two inches thick, and he snapped it as if it were a sugarstick. Then he picked up the head and let the Frenchman heft it.
“About ten pounds, that one, I’d say,” de Marbot said.
“Watch!”
Ah Qaaq took the axehead and hurled it as if it were a baseball. Eyes wide, de Marbot watched it soar high and far before it struck the grass.
“Mon Dieu! No one but the mighty Joe Miller could throw that as far! I congratulate you, sinjoro. Here. Take this.”
“I am also an excellent archer and axeman,” Ah Qaaq said quietly. “You won’t regret taking me aboard.”
The man behind the Olmec was exactly his height and had a squat Herculean physique. He even looked like Ah Qaaq with his eaglish nose and rounded clefted chin. But he had no fat, and though he was almost as dark, he was no Amerindian. His name, he said, was Gilgamesh.