The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online

or been turned, off its course to avoid striking the island in its center part. Unfortunately, it was going to the left instead of to the right.
    “Heave!” Burton shouted.
    He wondered where the tower was located. Was it on the very prow of the raft or was it set back? If the latter was the situation, then there would be a large part of the raft forward of the tower. That meant that somewhere under the fog the forward part of the raft was very near the boat.
    In any case, the raft was not going to miss the island. He did not care about that if it did not strike the boat.
    A man on the tower was screaming orders in an unknown language down into the mists.
    The prow of the
Hadji II
was now past the spire. But here the strong current at the corner had pressed the boat against the rocky wall, and their poles were slipping on the rock, which was smoother than that just passed.
    “Push, you sons of bitches, push!” Burton thundered.
    There was a roar, an abrupt lifting of the deck, a tilting inward toward the rock. Burton was dashed against a bright hardness that made him go soft and black inside. Dimly, he was aware that he had fallen back onto the deck, was lying on his back, was trying to get up in the dark grayness. Screams arose from around him. These and the snapping of smashed timbers and a final explosion, the impact of the forward part of the raft against the rock, were the last things he heard.

Fog blinded Jill Gulbirra.
    By keeping close to the right bank of The River, she could barely discern the grailstones. They looked ominous, like giant toadstools in a dismal wasteland.
    The next one should be the end of her odyssey. She had been counting them as she passed them, counting all night.
    Now, a phantom in a ghost canoe, she paddled on. The wind was dead, but she revived it a little, or made it a pseudowind, by her own motion, driving against the current. The heavy wet air rubbed against her face like ectoplasmic curtains.
    Now she saw a fire by the stone which had to be her destination. It had been a small spark. Now it was bigger, glowing palely, a ghost of a fire. From near it the voices of men. Disembodied voices.
    She herself, she thought, must look like the spirit of a nun. White cloths held together by concealed magnetic tabs swathed her body. One cloth formed a hood so that anyone near enough in the fog would see her face as a darker blank in the dark grayness.
    Her few belongings crouched on the floor of the canoe. In this wet, dim woolliness, they were two small beasts, white and gray. Near her was a tall gray metal cylinder, her “tucker box.” Beyond it was a bundle, cloths containing various items. A bamboo flute. A ring of oak set with polished jadeite stone, her lover’s gift, a lover departed but dead in only one sense—as far as she knew. A bag of dragonfish leather, crammed with artifacts and memories. Tied to the bundle, but invisible in this darkness, was a leather case holding a yew bow and a quiver of arrows.
    Under her seat lay a spear, a bamboo shaft tipped with a hornfish horn. By it lay two heavy oak war-boomerangs and a bag containing two leather slings and forty stones.
    As the fire brightened, the voices became louder. Who were they? Guards? Drunken revellers? Slavers hoping to catch just such as she? Early worms out to catch a bird?
    She smiled grimly. If they wanted violence, they would get it.
    However, they sounded more like drunks. If what she had been told downRiver was true, she was in peaceful territory. Neither Parolando nor its neighboring states practiced grail slavery. She could have sailed the canoe boldly in daylight, according to her information. She would be welcomed and free, free to come or to go. Moreover, it was true that they,
Parolandoj,
were building a giant airship.
    But distrust was her native element, though she could not be blamed for that. Consider her terrible experiences. So, she would scout around in the dark. It would require more work and