The Magic Labyrinth by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

not be discreet to mention this to John.
    The monarch himself was their guide. He showed them almost everything from the lowest deck to the top, the boiler, main, hurricane, flight, and texas deck, an extension from the lower story of the two-story pilothouse. While they were in the pilothouse, Alice told the king that she was his descendant through his great-great-grandson, John of Gaunt.
    “Indeed,” he said. “Were you then a princess or a queen?”
    “Not even of the nobility,” she said. “Though I was of the gentry. My father was a relative of Baron Ravensworth. I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1852, when Victoria, another descendant of yours, was queen.”
    The king’s tawny eyebrows rose.
    “You are the first descendant of mine I’ve ever met. A very pretty one, too.”
    “Thank you, Sire.”
    Burton burned even more. Was John contemplating incest, however rarefied the consanguinity might be?
    John had apparently been considering taking all of them on as crewmembers, and Alice’s distant kinship decided him. After they had gone to the grand salon for a drink, he told them that they could, if they wished, travel the River with him. He told them in detail, first, what the general duties of the crew were and what the discipline consisted of, and then demanded they swear an oath of fealty to him.
    So far, John had not followed up on his intimations that Loghu go to bed with him, but he undoubtedly meant to. Burton asked if he could talk to the others privately for a minute. John graciously gave permission, and they went to a corner to talk.
    “I don’t mind,” Loghu said. “I might even like it. I’ve never been mounted by a king. Anyway, I have no man now and I haven’t since that bastard Frigate ran out on us. John isn’t a bad looker at all, even if he is shorter than I am.”
    On Earth, Alice would have been horrified. But she’d seen too much and changed too much; most of her Victorian attitudes had long dissipated.
    “As long as it’s voluntary,” she said, “then it’s not wrong.”
    “I’d do it if it were wrong,” Loghu said. “We have too much at stake for me to be squeamish.”
    “I don’t like it,” Burton said. He was relieved but didn’t want to admit it. “But if we miss this boat, we may not get a chance to get on the other. I’d say that boarding the Mark Twain would be as difficult as it would be for a politician to get into Heaven.
    “However, if he should mistreat you…”
    “Oh, I can take care of myself,” Loghu said. “If I can’t throw that runt clear across the cabin, I’ve lost my touch. As a last resort I can crack his nuts.”
    Alice hadn’t changed so much that she didn’t blush.
    “He might even make you his Number One mistress,” Kazz said. “Haw! That’d make you queen then! Hail, Queen Loghu!”
    “I’m more worried about his current mistress than I am about him,” Loghu said. “John wouldn’t stab me in the back, though he might try to take me in the rear, but his woman might put a knife in my spine.”
    “I still feel like a pimp,” Burton said.
    “Why should you? You don’t own me.”
    They returned to John and told him that they wished to take the oath.
    John ordered drinks for the occasion. After these, he had his executive officer, a huge late-twentieth-century Yank named Augustus Strubewell, make arrangements for the swearing-in that evening.
    Two days later, the Rex up-anchored and set out upRiver. Alice was attached as a nurse to the staff of one of the boat’s physicians, a Doctor Doyle. Loghu was to be trained as a pilot, after which she would be officially a pilot second-class, extra. The duties would require only that she substitute if one of the second-class pilots was unavailable. She would have plenty of spare time unless John kept her busy in his suite, which he did for some time to come. The woman she dispossessed seemed to be angry about it, but was only pretending. She’d been getting as tired of John as he of