"Burton would know all about the Arthurian cycles and the earlier folk tales on which they were based. It would be just like him, if he assumed a disguise—and he was famous on earth for assuming many—to take the name of Gwalchgwynn.
He would know that it signified a seeker after the Holy Grail, but he wouldn't expect anyone else to."
"I'm not so dense that I can't see that you think I'm that Burton fellow. But I never heard of him, and I don't care to have you pursue this matter even if it amuses you so much. I am not amused."
He lifted the glass to his lips and drank.
"Nur told me when he was visited by the Ethical, the Ethical told him that one of the men he'd picked was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century explorer."
Burton was able to control himself enough to keep from spitting the drink out.
Slowly, he put the glass down on the bar.
"Nur?"
"You know him. Mr. Burton, the others are waiting in the stage-prop room. Just to show you how sure I am that you're Burton, I'll reveal something. Mix and London used to go under assumed names. But they recently decided to hell with ‘ it. Now, Mr. Burton, would you care to go with me there?" Burton considered. Could Frigate and his companions be agents? Were they waiting to seize and question him, turning the tables on him?
He looked around the crowded and noisy salon. When he saw Kazz, he said, "I'll go with you if you insist on this nonsense. But I'll take my good friend the Neanderthal with me. And we'll be armed."
When Burton entered the prop room ten minutes later, he was accompanied also by Alice and Loghu.
When Mix saw Loghu, his jaw dropped in astonishment. "You in on this, too?"
12
THEY HAD AGREED NEVER TO TALK ABOUT THE ETHICAL OR anything connected with him in their cabins. These might be bugged. Their next meeting was at a table where they played poker. Present were Burton, Alice, Frigate, Nur, Mix, and London. Loghu and Umslopogaas were on duty.
When Burton had heard Nur's and Mix's story of their visits from X, he' had been convinced that they were indeed recruits of the Ethical. Nevertheless, he had listened to what each had to say in detail before he had admitted his real identity. Then he had told his story, holding back nothing.
Now he was saying, "See you and raise you ten. No, I don't think we should plant eavesdropping devices in the cabins of any of the suspects. We might learn something valuable. But if they find one, then they'll know that X's agents, we could be called that, are on to them. It's too dangerous."
"I agree," the little Moor said. "Do the rest of you?"
Even Mix, who'd proposed planting the bugs, nodded. However, he said, "What about Podebrad? I run into him now and then, and all he does is say howdy to me and then pass on grinning like a parson who's just found out his girlfriend ain't pregnant. It galls me. I'd like to tear into the bastard."
"Me, too," London said. "He figures he's going to get away scot-free after making suckers of us."
"Attacking him would only get you thrown off the boat," Nur said. "Besides, he is tremendously strong. I believe that he would tear you apart while you were tearing into him."
"I can take him!" Mix and London said at the same time.
"You've bloody good reason for revenge," Burton said. "But it's out, for the time being anyway. Surely you can see that?"
"But why'd he say he was taking us along on the blimp and then desert us like we had B.O.?"
Nur ed-Din said, "I've thought about that. The only reasonable explanation is that he somehow suspected that we were X's men. That would be one more bit of evidence that he is an Ethical agent."
"I think he's just a goddamn sadist!" London said.
"No."
Burton said, "If he suspects you four, then you'll have to be on guard. The rest of us will, too. I didn't think of what Nur said or I'd not have suggested that we meet in the salon."
"It's too late to worry about that," Alice said. "Anyway, he isn't going to do anything, if he is an agent, until he gets to the headwaters. Any more than we are."
Burton won the pot with three jacks and two tens. Alice dealt. Burton thought that Nur must be concentrating on other matters than poker. The Moor won about half the time, and Burton suspected that he could rake in the chips even more often if he cared to. Somehow, the little man seemed to be able to tell what his opponents had in their hand just by looking at their faces.
"We might as well enjoy the ride," Frigate said.
Burton looked at him from lowered lids. The fellow had the same adulation for him that the other Frigate had or had pretended to have. Whenever he got the chance, he would ply Burton with questions, most of them about periods in his life which Burton's biographers had only been able to speculate about. But, also like the other, he would question attitudes and beliefs which Burton held dear. His attitude toward women and the colored races, for instance, and his belief in telepathy. Burton had too often had to explain that what he had believed on Earth did, not necessarily hold here. He had seen too much and experienced too much. He had changed in many respects. Now he thought it was a good1 time to delve into the matter of the pseudo-Frigate.
"There had to be a very good reason for the so-called coincidence."
"I've been pondering that, too," The American said. "Fortunately, I was an avid science-fiction reader and writer in that field. So I have a certain flexibility of imagination, which you'll need if you're going to bear with me, because I believe that the Frigate you've known by no coincidence at all is my brother James, dead at the ripe old age of one year!
"Now, consider the children who died on Earth. One reason, the best, is that if they were raised here, they would jam the planet. There wouldn't be enough living space here. In fact, the population of children deceased before five would be the largest segment of the entire population by far.
"So what would the Ethicals do with them? They'd resurrect them on another planet, perhaps one like this, perhaps not. Maybe it'd take two planets to hold them comfortably.
"Anyway, let's assume that this has happened. Unless," he lifted a finger, "unless for some reason they haven't been resurrected as yet. Maybe they're to be raised here after we're gone. Who knows?
"I don't. But I can speculate. Say that the infants were incarnated on another planet. It couldn't be done with the entire population at once because there would have to be adults to take care of them. And that would crowd a planet the size of Earth. So maybe they're incarnated at a certain rate, that is, so many infants within a certain time. These are raised to adulthood, and then they become the nurses, the teachers, the foster parents of more infants. And so on. Or maybe it's all done at once on more than one planet. I doubt that, though. The energy involved in planet reforming would be enormous. On the other hand, they may use planets which don't have to be re-formed."
"Keep dealing," London said. "If you don't people'll wonder what the hell we're talking about!"
"I can open," Mix said.
They were silent except for announcing their play for a minute. Then Frigate said, "If what I propose were true, well, let me put it this way. Ah ... I was the eldest child in my family. The oldest alive, that is. My older brother, James, died at one. I was born six months later. Now... ah... he would be resurrected. And when he grew up, he became an agent for the Ethicals.
"He was planted here on Resurrection Day. He was assigned to watch Burton. Why would he be assigned? Because the Ethicals knew that, somehow, Burton had awakened in that vast chamber of floating bodies before Resurrection Day, before he was supposed to awake. They must have figured it was no accident, that... uh... somebody awakened him on purpose. Well, we don't have to speculate on that. We know that's what the Council of Ethicals told Burton when they caught him. He was supposed to have his memory of that erased, but X arranged it so that he kept it.