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ELEVEN

Adam was living in a mansion that was much like the one I was using, except that it might have been bigger than mine. At least, he had seven servants to my six. He was propped up in bed, with his left leg and right arm in heavy plaster casts. Two attractive, well-dressed ladies attended him. They looked like they might be sisters, or possibly a mother and daughter.

Introductions were made. The ladies were Maria and Agnes Pelitier. I was about to ask about their relationship when Adam started talking to me in English.

"So you finally got your Errol Flynn outfit together. Only, it needs a sword, boss."

It was pleasant to hear someone speaking and to understand them without having to go through the mental struggle of translating it. Adam's Hamtramck accent was still there, but he had toned it way down. I had the feeling that he was no longer interested in playing the fool or the clown.

"I tried to get a rapier, but nobody here ever heard of one."

"At least you got the beard. 'Course here, everybody's got one. The guys, anyway. No razors."

"I noticed. Look, are they treating you okay?"

He put his good arm around the older of the two women, who smiled at the attention she received.

"Does it look like durance vile, boss?" Then he switched to Westronese and said, "Why don't you girls go someplace and talk nice to this other lady. Me and my friend got a lot of catching up to do."

His Westronese was far better than mine, but I swear that he was somehow able to speak it with that damned Hamtramck accent. The ladies left, leaving the maid behind in case we should want anything.

I sat down on a spindly, straight-backed chair and said, "Adam, just what in the hell happened?"

"What happened was that you are damn lucky to be alive. The real world is not like in the detective stories, you know. It takes a serious skull concussion to put a man out cold, and you was knocked out twice in one day. That's enough to kill most guys.

"You remember coming to help me bail? Well, you started down just after the ladder got carried away by all that junk that was floating around belowdecks. The water was sloshing back and forth a lot, and you managed to catch it right in the middle of a trough. You hit the lower deck when there was only about two feet of water down there to break your fall. You was out cold, but you was still breathing. I managed to get you propped up so your head stayed out of the water, but then I had to get back to the pumps, you know?

"Before I got there, we hit something big. The bow of the boat stayed up high, so I figured we was stuck on that island that couldn't be there. I got us both out the front hatch, since the back ones was both under water.

"There we was, propped way high up on some kind of a rocky beach. A lot of people was running towards us, and they looked friendly. I put you down and broke out that rope ladder to help them get aboard. About then, another big wave hit the boat in the rump, and I went straight off the end of the nose, like two stories down to the rocks and stuff down below. That's when I got busted up.

"Well, they took me and you into a cave, somebody's house by the look of it, and this old girl has six of them hold me down while they set my leg without any anesthetics! It hurt like hell, and to make it worse, they couldn't understand that in the boat, not a hundred feet away, there was a medical kit with morphine, Novocain, and all kinds of wonderful things in it! And when they got finished with my leg, they started it all up again, this time on my arm!

"When they was finally done, they left me alone for a bit, and I got a look out a window. They must of had three hundred people lined up, getting everything out of the boat and into some kind of warehouse. I felt better about that, since even if they was maybe robbing us, well, if it went to the bottom, it'd be gone forever, but as long as it was safe, we might get it back, some of it anyhow. I shouldn't have worried, though, since now that I can talk to them real good, they tell me that all of our stuff is safe and waiting for us. What's more, if we want to sell, they're real eager to buy."

I said, "I'm surprised that you were worrying about our property when our lives had just been saved."

"Hey, being broke in a strange country where you don't even speak the language is something to be scared about! You should of heard the stories my grandfather used to tell about how he got to America. Anyway, I had everything I owned on that boat. My coin collection, f'rinstance."

"I never knew that you collected coins."

"I never much told anybody about it, but, see, my grandfather went broke a second time during the Depression when his bank folded. Since then, us Kulczyinskis keep our savings in gold. That coin collection is mostly uncirculated Krugerrands. About forty-six pounds of them. That and I got a few hundred pounds of old-style silver quarters."

"Shit on a shingle! I was paying you too much!"

"Nah, I could of got paid the same money anywhere. But, see, some of that gold was dad's, and a lot of it I got back when gold was thirty-five bucks an ounce. Shoulda sold it all when it hit eight hundred, but that's life, and anyway, I woulda had to pay taxes on it."

"I'm glad your fortune is safe, Adam. But what happened after they patched you up?"

"Well, your back was still bleeding a bit here and there, and the older women was fixing you up, still without anesthetics, but at least you was still out cold.

"Then these three guys in long capes come up riding on horses, waving their arms and yelling at each other. Everybody that wasn't working bows real low to them, but the three guys ignore the crowd and keep on arguing among themselves. This goes on for the longest time, and everybody sort of got tired, or maybe embarrassed about bowing to somebody who didn't seem to notice them, so one by one they stood back up and tried to look busy.

"Eventually, the biggest one seemed to win whatever it was they were yelling about. With the other two horsemen finally sitting quiet, he starts talking to the crowd on the beach. This guy can talk so loud they could all hear him above the noise of the storm. He points around and starts giving orders, and everybody starts moving a lot faster. I was picked up by eight hefty guys and taken off in one direction, and two of them took you in another. After that, you probably know as much as me. I been treated real good by the two fine ladies that live here, and everybody lives rich and dresses rich while in fact they're all absolutely dirt poor!"

"How do you figure that?" I asked. "I mean, their technology is pretty much nonexistent, but everybody lives well enough. People back home would drool over these mansions they've got. From what Roxanna tells me, even the poorest people here have at least twenty or thirty thousand square feet to live in."

"That's because they've been digging these holes for at least two thousand years, boss. What's more, they got to keep on digging them, since the rock here is all volcanic, good fertilizer. Rock, animal dung, and human shit are about the only fertilizers they got. Plus, of course, a certain amount of soil is always being washed away, and it has to be replaced."

"Call it inherited wealth, if you want to. It's still wealth."

"Boss, they got volcanic featherrock, they got a little clay, and that's all the minerals they got. Any wood they got was raised like in a nursery. They got no coal, no oil, and no ores of any kind. What's worse, they got no trade to anyplace else to make up for what they ain't got here. I call that poor."

"I guess I've been asking the wrong questions. So their lack of technology is due to their lack of materials to use it on."

"Yeah. Only don't sneeze at all of their technology, boss. In some ways, they're way ahead of us. Have you taken a good look at the clothes they wear?"

"Well, it's beautifully embroidered, but I'd hardly call that high tech."

"You would if you realized that half the clothes here are more than a hundred years old! These people got the growing, the processing, and weaving of plant fibers down pat. They do it way better that we do back in America. Their stuff lasts almost forever. That's why they can afford to spend so much time on the embroidery. Anything they make, they'll give to their grandkids someday!"

"Incredible."

"Believe it anyway. Maybe they know about technology and maybe they don't. It wouldn't make any difference here, 'cause except for plants, there's nothing here to make a machine with."

"It could be you're right. Perhaps they really are poor. Adam, they made me promise to not tire you out, but there's one thing that has really been bugging me. Have you noticed the way the sun seems to rise and set anyplace it feels like?"

"Forty days and you ain't got that figured out yet, boss? You must have been hit harder on the head than I thought. You're asking seriously, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm serious, damn it!"

"You'll be embarrassed you didn't figure it out yourself. This ain't an island, no matter what they call it. Islands stay in one spot. This place floats!"

"We're on a stone boat?"

"More like a stone raft. The other place you get featherrock is in Hawaii. It comes out of this volcano they got there. Sometimes it runs all the way to the ocean, and when it does, the rock just floats away. The specific gravity is way below one. It's so light it floats."

"Huh. That's going to take some thinking. But like I said, I promised not to tire you out."

"I'm not tired, and our ladies are the sort who'll throw you politely out on your ass when they think I've had enough. But before they do, there's something I got to ask you about."

"So ask. Since when did you need to ask permission to ask about anything, Adam?"

"Okay. You remember all those times you asked me to be your partner instead of an employee?"

"Sure, although we're both glad now that you never took me up on it. If you had, you would have gone bankrupt the same time that I did, and then where would your gold and silver coin collection be now? Or The Brick Royal, for that matter?"

"Yeah, well, I want to take you up on it now. We go partners, Even Steven, sixty-sixty on everything but the ladies. The boat, the gold, the whole shot."

"Adam, that's crazy. The boat is a wreck, and its salvage value probably won't cover the costs of our medical bills, and whatever they'll charge us for pulling the stuff out and storing it. You'd be taking the short end of the stick."

"No, I wouldn't. There's a lot of metal on that boat, and any kind of metal is worth a fortune here. But that's not why I want the partnership. The real reason is, well, social."

"Social? I don't follow you."

"Look. In America, I could take your paycheck and still meet you after work for a beer. Things don't work like that here. On the Western Isles, the word for employee is the same as the word for servant. And being a servant here is like being a third-class person. Once I'm out of these casts, the fine ladies who have been taking care of me won't have nothing to do with me if I'm only a servant. It'll be like I'm tainted. If they knew, they'd even be embarrassed about having taken care of me."

"Oh. I can see your problem. But why worry? The fact is that you have not been my employee since the company went belly up."

"Boss, the way they look at it, if I'd ever been a servant, the best I could be afterwards would be something like a freed slave. Once I got the lay of the land, I told them that we was partners, and now I need you to back me up on that."

"I see. Well, don't worry. As of this moment, I hereby decree us to be the sole members of an undissolvable partnership, retroactive back to the beginning of time. Good enough?"

"Great, boss. I knew I could count on you."

"And I'll count on you to give me twenty-three pounds of gold for your enlargement to the ranks of free and noble men."

"The gold, you've got, and your share of the silver might be worth even more here, since they use silver for money, but gold only for jewelry. A tiny silver coin, smaller than a dime and as thin as paper is worth . . . well, it's worth a lot. Another thing. They take that `noble' stuff pretty serious around here. You really think we should try and fake it that way?"

"Maybe we'd better not. It would be too easy to slip up somewhere, and that could mean big trouble. If we need the status later, we can always claim to be members of the Knights of Columbus, or something."

"Which I happen to be, but which you ain't qualified for. Oh, yeah. They take religion real serious around here, too. Keep that Atheism shit of yours under your hat, too."

"Now, do I rag you about your religion? Out loud, I mean, and in public. And is that any way to speak to your new partner?" I laughed as the ladies came back.

 

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Framed