Exploits by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online Page A

get right back into the rickshaw-racing business, but I decided to head off to Peking, which was the capital city of China and figured to have not only the most sinners in need of saving but the most opportunities to raise funds for my tabernacle.
    Well, let me tell you something: it ain't no short hop from Macau to Peking. It took me six months to get there, during which time I picked up a smattering of the language, fell in love fourteen or fifteen times, and only got a personal tour of one calaboose. That was in a little town called Poshan, where the apple of my eye turned out to be the fruit of the local warlord's loins, but even that worked out for the good, because I lost a quick ten pounds on the prison grub and was more handsome than ever by the time I got the jailkeeper interested in a little game of chance involving the number twenty-one, and won my freedom.
    By the time I finally got within hailing distance of Peking I wasn't looking my very best, not having changed clothes for the better part of half a year, and despite taking a plunge into any river I passed by I wasn't on the verge of turning into any nosegay neither, so I started scouting around the countryside for some of the Christian missions I'd heard had been built in these parts. It didn't take too long to find one, where I stopped in for a meal and a little discussion of the Good Book—I'm kind of weak on the Sermon on the Mount, but I'll match my knowledge of the why and how of all the begattings with the best of ’em—and on the way out I borrowed a new set of missionary clothes that I found drying on a clothesline, since I knew these fellers wouldn't begrudge them to a fellow Christian, and besides, I figured an act of inadvertent charity would put them in real tight with the Lord, Who appreciates such things if not done to excess.
    I was still some fifty miles out of Peking when I managed to land a ride in the back of a truck that was hauling bales of hay into the city. It was getting on toward winter, and I didn't have no overcoat, so I just kind of burrowed into the hay and decided to catch a quick thirty or forty winks.
    I was awakened by a tall, thin Englishman jabbing me with his cane.
    “You!” he said. “Get out of there, and be quick about it!”
    I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and saw that he was pointing a revolver at my middle, which got my attention right fast.
    “What were you doing in there?” he demanded, and as I climbed out I saw that he had the driver out of the cab, too.
    “Mostly, I was being woke up by an Englishman with a gun,” I said. “If this is a holdup, brother, I got to inform you that I'm a man of the cloth who's taken a temporary vow of poverty. I ain't got nothing to my name but the clothes on my back and my copy of the Good Book.”
    He turned to the driver and jabbered something in Chinese so quick that I couldn't follow what he was saying. The driver, who looked scared to death, nodded his head and grunted.
    “All right,” said the Englishman. “You can go.”
    “Go where ?” I said. “I don't even know where I am.”
    The driver said something else, and this time it was the Englishman who nodded and grunted, and a minute later the driver hopped back into the cab and took off.
    “ Now how am I gonna get into the city?” I said.
    “I'll drive you,” said the Englishman. “Where are you going?”
    “Peking.”
    “I mean, where in Peking?”
    “I ain't figured that out yet,” I said. “Just getting here was effort enough.”
    He peered at me intently. “You've never been here before?”
    “As God is my witness.”
    He kept on staring at me. “And you're really a man of the cloth?”
    I held up two fingers and pressed them together. “Me and God are just like that ,” I assured him.
    “Excellent!” He walked me over to his jeep, which we both got into. “What's your name?” he asked, as we headed off toward Peking.
    “The Honorable Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones, at your service.