“The mixing bowl of Time,” Frigate called the distribution of humanity. “The greatest anthropological and social experiment ever.” His statements were not too far-fetched. It did look as if the various peoples had been mixed up so that they might learn something from each other. In some cases, the alien groups had managed to create various social lubricants and lived in relative amity. In other cases, there was a slaughter of one side by the other, or a mutual near-extermination, or slavery, of the defeated.
For some time, after the resurrection, anarchy had been the usual rule. People had “milled around” and formed little groups for defense in very small areas. Then the natural leaders and power seekers had come to the front, and the natural followers had lined up behind the leaders of their choice – or the leaders” choice, in many cases.
One of the several political systems that had resulted was that of “grail slavery.” A dominant group in an area held the weaker prisoners. They gave the slave enough to eat because the grail of a dead slave became useless. But they took the cigarettes, the cigars, the marihuana, the dreamgum, the liquor, and the tastier food.
At least thirty times, The Hadji had started to put into a grailstone and had come close to being seized by grail slavers. But Burton and the others were on the alert for signs of slave states. Neighboring states often warned them. Twenty times, boats had put out to intercept them instead of trying to lure them ashore, and the Hadji had narrowly escaped being run down or boarded. Five times, Burton had been forced to turn back and sail downstream. His catamaran had always outrun the pursuers, who were reluctant to chase him outside their borders. Then the Hadji had sneaked back at night and sailed past the slavers.
A number of times, The Hadji had been unable to put into shore because the slave states occupied both banks for very long stretches. Then the crew went on half-rations, or, if they were lucky, caught enough fish to fill their bellies.
The proto-Hamite-Semites of this area had been friendly enough after they were assured that the crew of The Hadji had no evil intentions. An eighteenth-century Muscovite had warned them that there were slave states on the other side of the channel. He did not know too much about them because of the precipitous mountains. A few boats had sailed through the channel and almost none had returned. Those that did brought news of evil men on the other side.
So the Hadji was loaded with bamboo shoots, dried fish, and supplies saved over a period of two weeks from the grails.
There was still about half an hour before the strait would be entered. Burton kept half his mind on his sailing and half on the crew. They were sprawled on the foredeck, taking in the sun or else sitting with their backs against the roofed coaming which they called the “fo’c’sle”
John de Greystock was affixing the thin carved bones of a hornfish to the butt of an arrow. The bones served quite well as feathers in a world where birds did not exist. Greystock, or Lord Greystoke, as Frigate insisted on calling him for some private self-amusing reason, was a good man in a fight or when hard work was needed. He was an interesting, if almost unbelievably vulgar, talker, full of anecdotes of the campaigns in Gascony and on the border, of his conquests of women, of gossip about Edward Longshanks, and of course, of information about his times. But he was also very hard-headed and narrow-minded in many things – from the viewpoint of a later age and not overly clean. He claimed to have been very devout in Earthlife, and he probably told the truth, otherwise, he would not have been honored by being attached to the retinue of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. But, now that his faith had been discredited, he hated priests. And he was apt to drive any he met into a fury with his scorn, hoping that they would attack him. Some did, and he came close to killing them. Burton had cautiously reprimanded him for this (you did not speak harshly to de Greystock unless you wished to fight to the death with him), pointing out that when they were guests in a strange land, and immensely outnumbered by their hosts, they should act as guests. De Greystock admitted that Burton was right, but he could not keep from baiting every priest he met. Fortunately, they were not often in areas where there were Christian priests. Moreover, there were very few of these who admitted that they had been such.