Leo Frankowski - CONRAD'S QUEST FOR RUBBER

Within seconds they launched an additional two spears, eight arrows, and two of those peashooter needles. Most of them hit me, but only the needles stood a chance of doing any harm. They might possibly get through because they were narrower than the rings in the chain mail that covered the cracks in my armor. I took my chances and continued playing "The Lonely Shepherdess." An arrow and both needles stuck in my coveralls, and playing with one hand, still smiling, I plucked them out.

One of the women, the best looking of the bunch, if you like that sort, screamed and ran at me with a long, thin club held over her head. I stopped playing and stood up. She hit me on the head as hard as she could, but I was wearing one of the old-style, ring-around-the-collar war helmets, and while it was extremely loud, I barely felt her blow.

I was getting very irritated at these people's behavior, but orders are orders, and we were told to make nice to the natives. I gesticulated to the trade goods that she had trampled in getting to me. I stooped over, picked up a necklace, and offered it to her. I was doing a serious job of turning the other cheek, and that's right where she hit me next.

She spat on me! She knocked my hand and gift away, and spat right in my face! I was furious. I have never struck a woman in my life, and I don't ever intend to, but I do punish naughty children when it is obviously for their own good!

I grabbed her by the arm, sat down, and turned her over my knee! I pinned her left arm behind her back, immobilized her legs with my right leg, and swatted her bare buttocks as hard as I could with my open hand until my right arm got tired.

During this time, there were a lot of rude sounds being made, and her friends tried to do various sorts of damage to my person. I simply ignored them, and the ladies didn't quite manage to knock me over. I then decided that this particular attempt at international trade was a wasted effort. I stood up, dumping the increasingly loud lady on the ground, picked up my recorder, and walked back to my canvas boat.

A half dozen or so more weapons hit me in the back as I made my exit, but I didn't care. One arrow put a hole in my boat, but I ignored it, keeping with the image. As a consequence, I almost sank in my armor before I got back to the Maude.

Mostly, I was thinking about how wonderful it was that I had brought an entire barrel of Lord Conrad's Seven-Year-Old Aged Whiskey along for my own personal use. Well, I had let the platoon buy shares on it once we'd gotten here, but there was still plenty to be had for me!

As soon as I got back to the Maude, I drew myself a pitcher of whiskey, and sat down alone to drink it.

Somehow, when you are really mad, you just can't get drunk, no matter how much you drink. It just burns out of you before it can do you any good.

The last few weeks had cost me two of my best friends, and now I was separated from not only the woman that I loved, but from the rest of the old lance as well. Oh, my platoon was made up of some very fine men, but it just wasn't the same!

And after enduring two weeks of having people I was trying to help turn and run away from me, a most annoying perverted woman had spat in my face!

It was late, and except for a pair of sentries, both of whom were up on the bridge, everyone else was asleep. We were at anchor, a hundred yards from the shore. It was dark, except for a single, small kerosene anchor light. I was in my "cabin," a small screened-in porch at the front of the boat. My white armored coveralls were hanging in one assembled piece on the other side of the room, in the vague hope that they would dry out from the soaking they had gotten that afternoon. I was sitting naked in my chair, trying to cool off enough to sleep. Only I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even get drunk.

I heard a sound in the water that wasn't quite right. I was sure it wasn't one of those huge green lizards that lived in the river, that the men persisted in calling dragons. I didn't think that it was one of the big, savage-looking otters, either.

I slowly drew my sword from its place near my bed and waited. In a few minutes my patience was rewarded. I saw the outline of a hand come up onto the foredeck, followed smoothly by the rest of a solidly built female form. I swore under my breath and slowly laid my sword down on the deck. No son of my mother could deliberately kill a woman, not even when she was attacking me in the dark with some sort of knife in her hand.

I was sure now that she was the same one I had spanked. She stealthily pushed through the screen door into my room, but she must not have seen me sitting in the dark, since she began to stalk my white coveralls. When she had her back to me, I ripped the sheet off my bed and threw it over her in one smooth motion. I thought this would confuse her, since the native bedding didn't run to bedsheets. If she didn't know what a sheet was, she probably wouldn't know what to do about one. I followed the sheet by a half a second, and the sheet, the woman, and I rolled around the floor, grappling, groping, and making rude noises.

When the sentries got there, I was on her back, with her legs gripped between mine, and her arms and torso wrapped in my arms.

"Excuse me, sir, but was this a situation with which you wanted help?" Tomaz said.

I said that of course I wanted help! I was subduing an intruder! How could he possibly imagine that I wouldn't want help?

"Well, sir, when you see a naked man and a naked woman rolling around on the floor with a bedsheet, I have learned that it is only prudent to ask, before joining in."

Still struggling with the violent woman, I told him that I was not inviting him to join in on an orgy. I wanted him to get some rope and some more help, and to get her immobilized.

In the end, it took five of us to get her properly trussed up. I explained to them that she had entered without permission, at night, and with a weapon in her hand. This was not ordinarily considered to be a friendly act, and therefore we would keep her tied up until further notice. I told the second lance that they would have the rewarding task of teaching her to speak Pidgin, and to have the job done within the week.

They carried her away, and eventually I got to sleep.

From the Journal of Josip Sobieski

WRITTEN MARCH 9, 1251, CONCERNING FEBRUARY 26, 1250

OVER THE next few days, four other men tried their luck at getting friendly with the natives, each with as little success as I'd had. They'd all used different approaches, but because of the universal aggressiveness of the natives, I'd insisted that they wear armor, and nobody objected.

To make matters worse, Fritz was doing just fine on the south side of the river. On the radio, he said that the natives were fascinated with steel tools and were making good progress at learning Pidgin. Neither Captain Odon nor Kiejstut could offer us any useful advice, either.

It was our captive who eventually solved the problem.

The first morning after her capture, someone found a set of manacles and leg irons in our supplies. They were apparently put there in anticipation of one of our people going crazy, as had happened once near the Arctic Circle, but they worked just fine on a supposedly sane native woman who merely wanted to kill me. They were safer, since she couldn't chew herself loose, and more humane, with no chance of cutting off her blood supply.

We soon discovered that her skin coloration was as artificial as that of her hair. She was actually covered from head to foot with white paint, which was now wearing off. Under it, her skin was the same color as all the rest of the native people, but considerably lighter. We speculated that the white paint stopped her from getting a suntan.

The first day, she resisted all attempts at teaching her Pidgin, until they decided they had to use the same methods one uses to train a dog. By giving her small bits of food, or even better, salt, along with lavish praise, whenever she did anything right, and a scolding when she did things wrong, they eventually got through to her. I would have forbidden the use of any actual abuse, of course, but no one ever suggested that they use it.

The second lance kept at least two men on her at all times, from dawn until quite late, and in a week they had her in a meaningful conversation.

She refused to tell us her name, since if we knew it, she said, we could work magic and witchcraft against her. We still needed to call her something, so after trying out the "Captive Princess," a particularly unsuitable name, we simply settled on calling her Jane.

She said that at first she and her people thought I was a ghost! It seems that the local ghosts are all big, bulky things that are pure white in color. She now agreed I was not a ghost, but she felt that it was a perfectly reasonable mistake.

When I pointed out that she, too, was colored white, Jane said that her people did that to scare their enemies, and anyway, she could not be confused with a ghost because her nipples were painted red. Everyone knew that ghosts did not paint their nipples red, so she was safe from any mistake.

I said this was obviously true, since Christian ghosts did not paint their nipples red, either. In fact, I had never heard of a ghost painting anything any color at all. It was all I could think of to say about a subject so weird.

She was gratified to hear this.

I told her that our ghosts were not white, and that our coveralls were white because that was the natural color of cotton. I asked, if we painted them a different color, would she still think we looked like ghosts?

She said, of course not. If we were not white, we could not be ghosts.

We lacked a supply of clothing dye on board, but with her help, we found a tree with a dark brown sap that did a decent job of coloring our armored coveralls to a dark tan. We steamed back to the first village we had stopped at, and people came out to see what we had to offer.

Their reaction to our tools was remarkable. It took me a while to realize that, except for the bones and teeth of certain fish and animals, these people had nothing they could cut with. They not only lacked flint for toolmaking, they lacked any sort of stone at all. These were not a Stone Age people. They hadn't gotten that far along!

I'd put a good edge on one of the machetes, and let the natives see me slicing up some shrubbery.

Bear in mind that these people had spent their lives living in the most tangled forest imaginable. Every day of their lives had been spent crawling under plants, stepping over them, walking around them, and getting swatted in the face by them. And up until the moment they had a good knife, there hadn't been anything they could do about it.

One fellow in particular was fascinated, staring and grinning as I easily chopped the branches from a strange-looking bush. I grinned back at him and handed him the machete

He took it and gave the bush a tentative chop. Leaves and branches fell to the ground. He screamed in triumph! He took off at a dead run, laughing and shouting, slashing away at the underbrush. We heard him making all manner of noises out in the forest for well over an hour before he finally came back, dripping with sweat and tree sap.

The look on his face was like that of a young man who had finally attained sexual relief!

We explorers attained sexual relief of a more substantial sort from the young ladies of the village.

It all started with the elders inviting us over for a drink, and I think there must have been something in that brew that encouraged sexual license. Soon, I was handed a very attractive young woman who turned out to be the chief's favorite new wife. I was required to have sex with her as a proof of my friendship with the chief!