Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage by R. A. Lafferty

Author:R. A. Lafferty [Lafferty, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473213623
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2016-01-28T21:00:00+00:00

The Direst Voyage Ever Ship Did Sail

“Something is wrong with our ship, my love,” said my wife the Grand Dame of the Seven Musics as we became an ocean-surface craft off-shore in the Arabian Ocean. “Something is wrong with the ship, and I can't quite identify it.”

“What could possibly go wrong with the best ship that ever lived?” I asked her. “The ship is on waiting-drift, on ‘invisible-anchor’ as we say, and it is on number two alert while we consult with our Magician-Navigator. At this moment our ship is supposed to be doing nothing at all. How can a ship be doing nothing-at-all wrongly?”

“I still say there is something wrong with the ship,” she insisted stubbornly. “Ah, that was a sulk. It's sulking. But there is still something very wrong with this ship. Believe me. I am always sure in mind and hand and foot.” And then my wife stumbled on the perfectly level deck and fell flat on her face.

“Perhaps something is wrong with your wife, Master Copperbottom,” our ship purred in that manner that some passengers have found slightly offensive. But I always say that total competence (a characteristic of our ship) has the right to be slightly offensive.

Our Magician-Navigator came on board. No, our Magician-Navigator appeared on board in that tricky way that they have. He was slightly translucent at his first appearance, but he had been completely invisible before. They use such tricks to try to impress their clients.

“Is there doubt here, is there doubt here?” this navigator asked in the way they have. “Doubt is the foremost obstacle to good navigation. I detect a modicum of doubt on this ship, and it is centered in your wife, Master Copperbottom. Would you be so good as to get rid of your wife?”

“Permanently or temporarily, Magician?”

“Permanently would be the more permanent solution. But I'll take what I can get.”

“No. I'll not get rid of her at all. Never. I like her.”

“Then I can only guarantee a little bit above ninety-nine percent accuracy while the doubt and the wife hang like clouds in this wardroom. But I will do what I can do.”

The Magician-Navigator materialized a great globe or crystal ball on the wardroom table. Yes, it was almost the conventional crystal ball full of colors and ever-changing clouds. And it was also a miniature-in-depth of Gaea-Earth in total detail (every atom and molecule reproduced in miniature) and it was capable of reproductions in other time contexts. It showed selected scenes and situations as they were yesterday, as they would be tomorrow, and as they were right now.

Our ship had whispered the information about the amazing globe and the amazing Magician to me (the electronic, inside-the-head whispering of our ship was itself amazing), and our ship threw in the opinion: “This guy is good, and this guy's globe is good!”

“I can focus on anything you wish,” the Magician-Navigator told me. “I can let you see anything anywhere, whether it is ordinarily visible or not. I can even let you see thoughts, but they will be in bodied and symbolic form.

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