Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Quest for Rubber Part 20

There were some huge reptiles, five and six yards long, some of them, which seemed to be half mouth, that the men promptly dubbed "dragons." There were snakes that got even longer, but we saw no large land mammals at all, or at least none bigger than a man.

There was a leech that was half the length of a man's arm, and after I burned one off the leg of a screaming squire, we both had nightmares about it for a week.

There were insects about in annoyingly prodigious numbers. Some of them were beautiful, some were horrible, some were huge, and some were all three. But when it came to being bitten, it actually wasn't nearly as bad as it was in the summer north of the Arctic Circle.

I was sitting beneath a tree having lunch with Sir Tomaz, my senior lance leader, when a leaf, which had fallen from the tree onto his cheese, got up on six legs and calmly walked away!

He said, "You know, Sir Josip, we're not in Poland anymore."

There was always something new crawling out of a crack in the boards, or out from under a rotting log. Some of them were beautiful, but the manual said that the creatures with the brightest colors were usually those that didn't have to hide. Likely, there was something about them that was deadly. Es- pecially the snakes.

My riverboat, which I promptly named the Magnificent Maude, was small by the standards of those on the Vistula. It held a platoon of men in about the same comfort as the old Muddling Through had held an entire company. Thirty yards long and eight wide, it was only a single story tall, except where the bridge was built above the engine room. Cargo was kept below the main floor, and most of the boat was one huge screened-in room, to let the breezes in and keep the bugs out. There were lightweight wooden blinds that could be rolled down in inclement weather, but it wasn't armed or armored, in the traditional sense. The only weapons we had were our usual personal rifles, swords, and sidearms.

By our standards, this was an obviously nonthreatening vehicle. However, standards vary, and soon it was very obvious that it scared the natives silly.

The first eleven times we approached a native village, the people started screaming and shouting as soon as we came into view. Sometimes they shot arrows, or threw spears at us, or used a thing that was like a big peashooter (the child's toy, not the steam-powered weapon) that they used to shoot a sort of needle.

They must put some sort of poison on those needles, or at least they did on the one that hit Sir Tomaz on the inside of the elbow. When he screamed with pain, I told him to act like a man, that it was only a tiny needle.

He insisted that it was poisoned, so we stripped off his armor, and I treated the small wound just like it was a snakebite, lancing it open and sucking the blood and poisons out. It was fortunate that I listened to him, because even with such treatment, his arm swelled up to be as big as his leg, and the area around the pinp.r.i.c.k turned black. I think that without such treatment, he might have died.

But whether the villagers were aggressive or not, by the time we got there, the village would be completely empty. When we sat back and waited for them to return, they didn't. When we followed them into those incredibly tangled forests, either they shot at us some more, or we got completely lost, or, most often,both.

In the last two villages our program had been to take a few small things, foodstuffs, mostly, and leave in payment a small knife, and one of those machete swords that Lord Conrad was convinced would be so much in demand, hoping they would get the idea that we wanted to trade.

Maybe when we returned, in a few weeks, we would be more socially acceptable.

I resolved to try the twelfth village alone. We made a visual reconnaissance from over a mile away, and then I left the Maude out of sight around the bend so as not to frighten the villagers. I took a folding canvas boat in alone, but since the real Maude wouldn't want to marry an absolute fool, or a dead one, I wore my infantry armor, with the metal plates inside of clean, white coveralls. My cavalry armor had been left back in Poland.

I had a bag of steel tools, gla.s.s bead necklaces, salt tablets, dried fruit, and my recorder. I also carried a small camp chair, reasoning that a man looks less threatening sitting down than standing up.

When I came within sight of the village, I sat down and studied the place. It was subtly different from the other villages we had visited. The buildings were arranged differently, and the thatched roofs on the huts were much steeper.

The people were the big change, however. At the other villages, the people were a medium brown in color, like Gypsies, only a little darker. They all had dark eyes and straight black hair. The men did not grow beards, and neither s.e.x had much in the way of body hair.

They tended to be short and thin-boned, and as in every place else in the world that I had ever heard of, the women were shorter than the men. As Lord Conrad had promised, no one wore clothing, although they did wear decorations, and some of those covered a lot.

The men looked to be fairly fit, and the young girls were often very attractive, but almost without exception, as soon as the women had children, they all became extremely fat. I found myself wishing that some of them would wear clothes.

These new people were much different. The men, or perhaps I should just say the "males," were short and brown, and they tended to be chubby. They seemed to be mainly involved with gardening when they weren't taking care of the children.

The women were larger than the males, or at least taller and better muscled. They carried bows and spears the way the males did in the other villages. While the males all had black hair, the women wore theirs bright red. It did not look to be a natural color, and I suspected it was a dye. Their nipples and private areas were also colored bright red.

And the women were white. Not flesh-colored, the way I am, but white. The color of a new sheet of paper. Not even Lord Conrad had ever talked about such a thing.

But one can sit and be amazed for only so long. It was time to attract some attention. I displayed my trade goods on the ground a few yards in front of me.

I got out my recorder, flipped up my visor, and started to play a simple shepherd's tune.

Something I hoped would be interesting, calming, and proof that I wasn't out to hurt anyone.

I did not get the desired reaction.

Some children noticed me first. They ran home screaming, not to get Daddy, but for Mommy to come. Or at least, it was Mommy who came. Six mommies. They reminded me of, well, I never learned if there was a polite name for them, but the kind of women who don't like men but want to be just like them. It occurred to me that these might be the warrior women that the river was named after. I wondered if "without a breast" might be another way of saying "not very feminine."

I continued playing the same tune, to give them time to get used to it, and I continued smiling resolutely.

They stopped a few dozen yards from me and discussed me among themselves. Then one of them calmly notched an arrow and shot me.

Now, my suit was proof against Mongol arrows with steel heads. This woman's weapon might have had a quarter of the pull of a good Mongol recurved bow, and the arrow point was only flame-hardened wood, from the look of it. I didn't even stop playing, and the arrow bounced off my breastplate. I smiled.

Within seconds they launched an additional two spears, eight arrows, and two of those peashooter needles. Most of them hit me, but only the needles stood a chance of doing any harm. They might possibly get through because they were narrower than the rings in the chain mail that covered the cracks in my armor. I took my chances and continued playing "The Lonely Shepherdess." An arrow and both needles stuck in my coveralls, and playing with one hand, still smiling, I plucked them out.

One of the women, the best looking of the bunch, if you like that sort, screamed and ran at me with a long, thin club held over her head. I stopped playing and stood up. She hit me on the head as hard as she could, but I was wearing one of the old-style, ring-around-the-collar war helmets, and while it was extremely loud, I barely felt her blow.

I was getting very irritated at these people's behavior, but orders are orders, and we were told to make nice to the natives. I gesticulated to the trade goods that she had trampled in getting to me. I stooped over, picked up a necklace, and offered it to her. I was doing a serious job of turning the other cheek, and that's right where she hit me next.

She spat on me! She knocked my hand and gift away, and spat right in my face! I was furious. I have never struck a woman in my life, and I don't ever intend to, but I do punish naughty children when it is obviously for their own good!

I grabbed her by the arm, sat down, and turned her over my knee! I pinned her left arm behind her back, immobilized her legs with my right leg, and swatted her bare b.u.t.tocks as hard as I could with my open hand until my right arm got tired.

During this time, there were a lot of rude sounds being made, and her friends tried to do various sorts of damage to my person. I simply ignored them, and the ladies didn't quite manage to knock me over. I then decided that this particular attempt at international trade was a wasted effort. I stood up, dumping the increasingly loud lady on the ground, picked up my recorder, and walked back to my canvas boat.

A half dozen or so more weapons. .h.i.t me in the back as I made my exit, but I didn't care. One arrow put a hole in my boat, but I ignored it, keeping with the image. As a consequence, I almost sank in my armor before I got back to the Maude.

Mostly, I was thinking about how wonderful it was that I had brought an entire barrel of Lord Conrad's Seven-Year-Old Aged Whiskey along for my own personal use. Well, I had let the platoon buy shares on it once we'd gotten here, but there was still plenty to be had for me!

As soon as I got back to the Maude, I drew myself a pitcher of whiskey, and sat down alone to drink it.

Somehow, when you are really mad, you just can't get drunk, no matter how much you drink. It just burns out of you before it can do you any good.

The last few weeks had cost me two of my best friends, and now I was separated from not only the woman that I loved, but from the rest of the old lance as well. Oh, my platoon was made up of some very fine men, but it just wasn't the same!

And after enduring two weeks of having people I was trying to help turn and run away from me, a most annoying perverted woman had spat in my face!

It was late, and except for a pair of sentries, both of whom were up on the bridge, everyone else was asleep. We were at anchor, a hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e. It was dark, except for a single, small kerosene anchor light. I was in my "cabin," a small screened-in porch at the front of the boat. My white armored coveralls were hanging in one a.s.sembled piece on the other side of the room, in the vague hope that they would dry out from the soaking they had gotten that afternoon. I was sitting naked in my chair, trying to cool off enough to sleep. Only I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even get drunk.

I heard a sound in the water that wasn't quite right. I was sure it wasn't one of those huge green lizards that lived in the river, that the men persisted in calling dragons. I didn't think that it was one of the big, savage-looking otters, either.

I slowly drew my sword from its place near my bed and waited. In a few minutes my patience was rewarded. I saw the outline of a hand come up onto the foredeck, followed smoothly by the rest of a solidly built female form. I swore under my breath and slowly laid my sword down on the deck. No son of my mother could deliberately kill a woman, not even when she was attacking me in the dark with some sort of knife in her hand.

I was sure now that she was the same one I had spanked. She stealthily pushed through the screen door into my room, but she must not have seen me sitting in the dark, since she began to stalk my white coveralls. When she had her back to me, I ripped the sheet off my bed and threw it over her in one smooth motion. I thought this would confuse her, since the native bedding didn't run to bedsheets. If she didn't know what a sheet was, she probably wouldn't know what to do about one. I followed the sheet by a half a second, and the sheet, the woman, and I rolled around the floor, grappling, groping, and making rude noises.

When the sentries got there, I was on her back, with her legs gripped between mine, and her arms and torso wrapped in my arms.

"Excuse me, sir, but was this a situation with which you wanted help?" Tomaz said.

I said that of course I wanted help! I was subduing an intruder! How could he possibly imagine that I wouldn't want help?

"Well, sir, when you see a naked man and a naked woman rolling around on the floor with a bedsheet, I have learned that it is only prudent to ask, before joining in."

Still struggling with the violent woman, I told him that I was not inviting him to join in on an orgy. I wanted him to get some rope and some more help, and to get her immobilized.

In the end, it took five of us to get her properly trussed up. I explained to them that she had entered without permission, at night, and with a weapon in her hand. This was not ordinarily considered to be a friendly act, and therefore we would keep her tied up until further notice. I told the second lance that they would have the rewarding task of teaching her to speak Pidgin, and to have the job done within the week.

They carried her away, and eventually I got to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

From the Journal of Josip Sobieski WRITTEN MARCH 9, 1251, CONCERNING FEBRUARY 26, 1250.

OVER THE next few days, four other men tried their luck at getting friendly with the natives, each with as little success as I'd had. They'd all used different approaches, but because of the universal aggressiveness of the natives, I'd insisted that they wear armor, and n.o.body objected.

To make matters worse, Fritz was doing just fine on the south side of the river. On the radio, he said that the natives were fascinated with steel tools and were making good progress at learning Pidgin. Neither Captain Odon nor Kiejstut could offer us any useful advice, either.

It was our captive who eventually solved the problem.

The first morning after her capture, someone found a set of manacles and leg irons in our supplies.

They were apparently put there in antic.i.p.ation of one of our people going crazy, as had happened once near the Arctic Circle, but they worked just fine on a supposedly sane native woman who merely wanted to kill me. They were safer, since she couldn't chew herself loose, and more humane, with no chance of cutting off her blood supply.

We soon discovered that her skin coloration was as artificial as that of her hair. She was actually covered from head to foot with white paint, which was now wearing off. Under it, her skin was the same color as all the rest of the native people, but considerably lighter. We speculated that the white paint stopped her from getting a suntan.

The first day, she resisted all attempts at teaching her Pidgin, until they decided they had to use the same methods one uses to train a dog. By giving her small bits of food, or even better, salt, along with lavish praise, whenever she did anything right, and a scolding when she did things wrong, they eventually got through to her. I would have forbidden the use of any actual abuse, of course, but no one ever suggested that they use it.

The second lance kept at least two men on her at all times, from dawn until quite late, and in a week they had her in a meaningful conversation.

She refused to tell us her name, since if we knew it, she said, we could work magic and witchcraft against her. We still needed to call her something, so after trying out the "Captive Princess," a particularly unsuitable name, we simply settled on calling her Jane.

She said that at first she and her people thought I was a ghost! It seems that the local ghosts are all big, bulky things that are pure white in color. She now agreed I was not a ghost, but she felt that it was a perfectly reasonable mistake.

When I pointed out that she, too, was colored white, Jane said that her people did that to scare their enemies, and anyway, she could not be confused with a ghost because her nipples were painted red.

Everyone knew that ghosts did not paint their nipples red, so she was safe from any mistake.

I said this was obviously true, since Christian ghosts did not paint their nipples red, either. In fact, I had never heard of a ghost painting anything any color at all. It was all I could think of to say about a subject so weird.

She was gratified to hear this.

I told her that our ghosts were not white, and that our coveralls were white because that was the natural color of cotton. I asked, if we painted them a different color, would she still think we looked like ghosts?

She said, of course not. If we were not white, we could not be ghosts.

We lacked a supply of clothing dye on board, but with her help, we found a tree with a dark brown sap that did a decent job of coloring our armored coveralls to a dark tan. We steamed back to the first village we had stopped at, and people came out to see what we had to offer.

Their reaction to our tools was remarkable. It took me a while to realize that, except for the bones and teeth of certain fish and animals, these people had nothing they could cut with. They not only lacked flint for toolmaking, they lacked any sort of stone at all. These were not a Stone Age people.

They hadn't gotten that far along!

I'd put a good edge on one of the machetes, and let the natives see me slicing up some shrubbery.

Bear in mind that these people had spent their lives living in the most tangled forest imaginable.

Every day of their lives had been spent crawling under plants, stepping over them, walking around them, and getting swatted in the face by them. And up until the moment they had a good knife, there hadn't been anything they could do about it.

One fellow in particular was fascinated, staring and grinning as I easily chopped the branches from a strange-looking bush. I grinned back at him and handed him the machete He took it and gave the bush a tentative chop. Leaves and branches fell to the ground. He screamed in triumph! He took off at a dead run, laughing and shouting, slashing away at the underbrush. We heard him making all manner of noises out in the forest for well over an hour before he finally came back, dripping with sweat and tree sap.

The look on his face was like that of a young man who had finally attained s.e.xual relief!

We explorers attained s.e.xual relief of a more substantial sort from the young ladies of the village.

It all started with the elders inviting us over for a drink, and I think there must have been something in that brew that encouraged s.e.xual license. Soon, I was handed a very attractive young woman who turned out to be the chief's favorite new wife. I was required to have s.e.x with her as a proof of my friendship with the chief!

The young women of the tribe were all very appreciative of the small gifts my men gave to them, and the elders of the tribe were seen to be actively encouraging their daughters to please us.

I would be most embarra.s.sed if my mother ever heard about the ma.s.s s.e.xual orgy that ensued.

While I had made no promises to Maude concerning my own chast ity, it had been my firm intention to stay s.e.xually true to her. This proved to be impossible in the induced madness that enveloped us.

Perhaps I am merely making excuses for my own conduct, but in later conversations with my men, I learned that the most subdued of them copulated with at least seven of the natives, and I have mental images of literally dozens of different young ladies under me. We could not possibly have been that virile without some sort of external stimulation!

That drink would make a very profitable product if sold in Europe, but I don't think the Church would approve of its sale!

All this fornication was accompanied by equally heavy drinking by everyone in the village. I thought that my own people drank too much, but we were but children compared to these native villagers. They continued on with the party long after we were comatose. At least, when I awoke in the night to relieve myself, the dancing and drinking were still going strong, with not an explorer in sight near the campfire.

It was the following afternoon before most of us departed that village.

We left a lance of men behind, confident that they would get along well with the natives.

That evening, we thanked Jane, the warrior woman, for her help. We gave her a knife, a machete, and an axe, along with some necklaces she liked, a sharpening stone, and a bag of salt tablets that all of the natives craved. We then offered to take her back to her home village.

Jane refused to go. It seems that by spanking her for spitting on me, I had permanently dishonored her somehow in the eyes of her tribe. She said that when she swam out to our boat and tried to kill me, she had done it because she had already been drummed out of her tribe. She had come expecting us to kill her.

It was rather like what they say a Musselman does when he can no longer stand the pain of being alive. He puts on his best clothes, prepares his best weapons, mounts his best horse, and charges into his enemies, trying to kill as many of them as possible before they kill him. The custom is called "Running Amok."

Further conversation with our former captive convinced us that if we simply ejected her from the boat, without friends to guard her back, she would soon die in the forest. She had been useful to us thus far, and while we all found her masculine mannerisms in combination with her feminine body to be offensive, after consultation with my knights, I decided to let her stay aboard.

Over the next few weeks, we established three more trading stations and survived three more orgies, which the locals insisted on. When we tried to back out, they became extremely insulted, and it was only with great difficulty that we repaired the breach.

A number of changes came over Jane. As her body paint began to wear away, she looked like she was dying of some horrible skin disease. She made no attempt at replacing it, and in a few weeks the color was gone. The dye in her hair was growing out more slowly, but whatever dye she had used to stain her nipples and privy members seemed to be permanent. When someone questioned her about it, the painful process she described seemed to be something like tattooing.

When I asked her about her body paint, she said that she no longer had the right to wear her tribe's colors.