SINDBAD, THE THIRTEENTH VOYAGE

R. A. Lafferty

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Harun Has Been Born Again

There is further mystery about Bassorah which is called a port, even the port of Baghdad, in the Nights and other folklore. But Bassorah could never have been a port, could hardly have been a town. It was no more than a great rock slab set deep in the river mud and scarred by old fires. It’s as though it were used as a launching pad for space fleets before such things were ever dreamed of. It is said that one of the missing Nights told about Sindbads of Space trading from other worlds with a great Caliph of our world when the skies were more open than they are now.

Legends of the Persian Gulf. Moisha El-Gazma.

This is the Master Narration of the Happenings. It is my own narration and it contains in itself all the narrations of lesser persons.

My main mission was technically a failure in that I let the Ultimate Evil escape from its prison on Gaea-Earth and spread to all of Gaea and to all the other inhabited planets. But I was able to strike an accord with that Ultimate Evil because of my having a foot in each of the worlds. And now we have Order and Peace, though both of them are perpetually bouncing on a sea of uneasiness.

I am the Caliph Mamun the Great who ascended to the Caliphate, following the deaths of my father the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid and my brother the Caliph Al-Amin, in the Moslem year 191 of the Hegira, in the Christian Year of Restored Salvation 813, in the year 1565 from the Founding of Rome, and in the Jewish year 4574 from the Formation of Adam.

Of my reign let it only be written (carved in marble would be better), “He put the world in perfect order.” Having done so, I have now retired to my crystal and vitrum cell (except for one hour out of every twenty-four hour day to perform my marital duties) to write this narration and also to write the maxims for the ongoing guidance of the world.

This is the Master Narration of the Happenings. It is my own narration and it contains in itself all the narrations of lesser persons.

My main mission was technically a failure in that I let the Ultimate Evil escape from its prison on Gaea-Earth and spread to all of Gaea and to all the other inhabited planets. But I was able to … etc.

I am Scheherazade Carrillo y Krynski. I am an authority on the Arabian Middle Ages. And I am quite well known for my collection of Arabian bottles from that period. Thomas Slender of the Smithsonian says that it would have been impossible for me to have collected such a remarkable bunch of bottles without going back in time to get them. He was joking, but I suppose he was correct. Some of the things in the bottles are living creatures. They are referred to in museum catalogs as my ‘animations’, but I did not animate them. Of one of them, which I keep with me always, I am especially fond. And as for all other things, I have the universe by the tail, and it’s all a downhill drag for as far as I can see. I like it.

This is the Master Narration of the Happenings. It is my own narration and it contains in itself all the narrations of lesser persons.

My main mission was technically a failure in that I let the Ultimate Evil escape from its prison on Gaea-Earth and spread to all of Gaea and to all the other inhabited planets. But I was able to … etc.

I am Master Mariner Essindibad Copperbottom, Citizen of Kentauron Mikron and Farer of many skies and seas, known on Gaea-Earth as Sindbad the Sailor.

There are fakes and impostures, but I am the real Sindbad the Sailor. As proof of this, I once had real Sea-Weed growing at the private part of my body. No other Sindbad-claimant could make that statement originally, but then later the situation became a little bit cloudy. Like Samson, a hero on earlier-day Gaea-Earth, I was seduced by a strange woman and shorn (worse than that, extirpated) of my growing glory. But unlike the case of Samson, my loss was implanted in another. Well, for all that, I remained the real and only Sindbad and he remained only a pretender. I set the record straight as often as I can.

As you will see by the narration, all things fall right for me finally. This is the Thirteenth and Final Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, and all of my voyages have fairly happy endings. I even have a mutated variety of the original Sea-Weed growing on me again now. Having, as a resolution of my Thirteenth Voyage, put the World Gaea-Earth and several other worlds in perfect order, I will voyage no more. I will be content to sit in the sun, now that I am home on Kentauron Mikron World again, and devote myself to my collection of Ships in Bottles.

This is the Master Narration of the Happenings. It is my own narration and it contains in itself all the narrations of lesser persons.

My main mission was technically a failure in that I let the Ultimate Evil escape from its prison on Gaea-Earth and spread to all of Gaea and to all the other inhabited planets. But I was able to … etc.

I am John Scarlatti Thunderson of North Chicago. My espionage name is Ali ben Raad. I am the real Sindbad the Sailor, and I became the real Sindbad the hard way. Essindibad Copperbottom was the real Sindbad by birth and inheritance, and I had to replace him by consummate trickery.

I am a simple kid, and now I have become the Number One Spy in the entire universe. I was into Ark Shells early and I was one of the three first viewers of the Fresh-Water Ark Shell Show. I discovered a system of Open-Ended Analytics, and by using it I built the Almost-Anything Space-and-Time Ship. I lived a full life in about four days, and now I am back in Chicago to enjoy my triumph and perhaps to finish high school.

I believe that I lead a happier life than does Essindibad Copperbottom. I have for wife Azraq-Qamar or the Blue Moon, and Essindibad Copperbottom has only Grand-Dame Tumblehome. The Grand-Dame is good enough, I suppose, but she is at least twenty-five years old already; and in other ways she is not quite in the class with Blue Moon either.

I devote myself largely to my collection of Ark Shells now in my latter years. I am seventeen today, and of course my high years are behind me. But I do have my memories.

– a continuation of the Master Narration of Master Mariner Essindibad Copperbottom –

Ransack all time and space and you would never find a more pleasant day than this one. My world Kentauron Mikron was known for its pleasant days and nights, but absolute perfection was rather rare even on that ‘World-of-the-Amenities.’ The songbirds of Kentauron, the singing people of Kentauron, even the music making fish of Kentauron, they could all justify themselves even to ears of stone. This was ‘Melody World’ itself, and today the world surpassed itself without even trying. To be able to call the most wonderful place in all the universe ‘Home’ was to be born lucky.

But one member of my circle and then another said “We could lose all of this.” And then a shudder ran through my whole circle.

The winey air of Kentauron was in fact bottled and exported. Kentaurians traveling to other worlds would see the air from home advertised. They’d buy a bottle; they’d uncork it. And they’d cry when they remembered Kentauron and its wonders. But today the air of Kentauron was extraordinary compared to that of mere run-of-the-sky planets. Landscape painters would come to Kentauron from other planets to try to catch its wonders. And often they’d break their brushes and eat their pigments out of sheer envy of the place and frustration at the uncapturability of its reality in any medium. But on one day in a thousand the landscape exceeded that of all the other wonderful days to an extraordinary extent; and this was one day in a thousand.

A profitable export from Kentauron was anti-depressant drugs. Break off any frond, pick up any leaf or bud, bruise it, crush it, package it somehow, ship it to Camiroi or Gaea or Dahae or Astrobe, and it will cure the most depressed person there for up to five years. But it will not cause one to hallucinate or to see things that are not there. They were all non-narcotic joy drugs. But today the anti-depressant elixir surpassed itself. The very stones of Kentauron Mikron reeked with joy.

For intelligence-enhancing and memory enhancing qualities one had but to select something, anything, from the pharmacopoeia of Kentauron World; and whatever one selected would be effective, and today. Ah today! There had never been such a day for intelligence and memory run wild.

There are persons who believe that virtue itself is part of the chemical affair; and invariably there are persons who have come by that belief of such a day as this (they come only about once every seven years) on Kentauron. Even the most stumble-footed and stumble-minded will walk in grace on such a world on such a day.

In the middle of this day, one of the high and beautiful people of Kentauron Mikron spoke a simple statement to six of his close friends, and by it he multiplied the already overflowing delight.

“I have solid word that Harun has been born again,” Master-Caliph Charnel spoke in his voice that was like tuney gongs. One could go a long time on some worlds without hearing a sentence like that. “Yes, the very thought of it lights you up, does it not? It has been rumored before, but this time I believe it. He will illuminate the lives of all of us again if we can find him and somehow bring him here. There was always something wrong with Harun being dead. Ah, we seven here will all die, I suppose, and our mourners will murmur ‘All flesh is like grass (like French-Lilac-scented grass on Kentauron Mikron), and it will pass away’; and it will seem like a sad but normal thing to them. But it was never a normal thing for Harun to be dead. If he is living again (and I believe that he is) then the whole universe is the brighter for it. I myself can feel its added brightness and delight. His light has been lit again.”

“Then why do I feel such premonitions of disaster?” asked Grand-Dame Of-the-Seven-Musics Tumblehome.

“Because you’re wired up backwards, Grand Dame,” Moses Epistemon said in his wood-winds voice (he was one of the outstanding singing people of Kentauron). “I suppose I’m wired up backwards too, for I also feel premonitions of disaster. Fortunately I am able to put those premonitions far from me. If Harun is born again, then magic is back in the worlds. Even the laws of physics are different when magic is back in the worlds.”

There is a color on Kentauron Mikron that is not to be found on any of the other worlds, and now everything in our vicinity was outlined in that unique color. There is on Kentauron an airy good-humor nectar that is beyond all anti-depressant ebullitions. It is compounded of the essence of wit-weed and of the state-of-grace bush, two plants that grow only on Kentauron, two plants to which many legends attach. Some of these legends are a little bit far-fetched. We seven breathed in this good-humor nectar every day of our lives, but the news that Harun had been born again doubled the good humor in us. We seven persons of the splendid humors were:

Master-Caliph Redcrown Charnel. (He had said “We could lose all of this.”)

Master-Magus Moses Epistemon. (He had echoed “We could lose all of this.”)

Grand-Dame Of-the-Seven-Musics Goodlife Tumblehome. (“I would have changed my name ‘Tumblehome’ to any name except ‘Copperbottom’,” she said, “but I’ll not change it to that.”)

Master-Politicus Rory Quicksilver.

Grand-Damsel Of-the-Commonwealth Drusilla Happyghost.

Master-Metropolitan Peter Sheldrake.

Master-Mariner Essindibad Copperbottom.

The seventh of these persons is myself, and the delight of Kentauron Mikron has not been in vain in me.

“Why are you sure that Harun is born again?” Grand-Damsel Happyghost asked the Master-Caliph Redcrown. Anyone could see that she was quite fond of him the way she fondled him with her voice. She was, in fact, the wife of his bosom.

“As Harun lay dying here on Kentauron Mikron, all untimely still in his golden youth, he whispered a word to me that he would use if he were born again. Only he and myself knew the word, and know that word has appeared to verify a message from him. It is the meaningless but numerologically magic word ‘Baghdad’. It has since become the name of one of those mirage cities, one of those cloud cities, that travelers sometimes report seeing, one of those cities whose geography is a little uncertain, one of those builded-in-a-single-night cities. I have learned today that its meaning in Old Kentauron is ‘The Last City Built By Magic’, but neither Harun nor myself knew Old Kentauron. But that was the word we agreed on. No other new born child on any of the worlds could possibly have spoken that word clearly in the first moment of his life. Oh, it’s Harun born again all right! Who will go and find him and bring him here?”

“Myself, the Master-Mariner.” I said. “Who else? How did the message come, Redcrown? Can we see it?”

“No, but you can see the envelope it came in. It’s that mute green bird in that cage yonder, my new bird. It came in yesterday with a shipment of talking birds from the planet Gaea-Earth. ‘Take me to the Master-Caliph Redcrown Charnel and sell me to him,’ the bird told the bird merchant he was consigned to. ‘Tell the Caliph I have a message for him and that after I speak it I will be mute forever. But the message will be worth my price.’ The bird merchant brought the bird here and I bought him. ‘Now, what is the message, Expensive Bird?’ I asked him. ‘The message is that one Harun says to tell it that that he is born again on the Planet Gaea, and that the signature word is “Baghdad”. And now I will be mute forevermore and there is nothing you can tempt me with to make me speak further. But if you want to try it, I prefer to be tempted with the white pectoral meat of the Kentauron Emperor Squid.’”

The bird nodded that this was indeed the case, and I myself almost rushed upon it to take a chunk of the white squid meat upon which it was dining. But then the Kentauron apes who were waiting table brought white pectoral meat of the Kentauron Emperor Squid to all of us. People ate well at the afternoon parties of Master-Caliph Charnel.

“Caliph, do you know why Harun gave you the identifying word and first informed you of his rebirth?” Master-Politicus Rory Quicksilver asked.

“After all, I was Harun’s father.”

“Oh yes, I’d forgotten. Through the aeons the fathers of Harun are pretty much forgotten. It’s odd that they should be, for they are usually Caliphs or Kings or something such, outstanding men.”

“Yes, like myself,” the Caliph grinned. “Master-Mariner Essindibad, can you find Harun and bring him here?”

“There is no use my being the Master-Mariner of Kentauron if I don’t have a live chance at it,” I said. “I know the world he is on. That’s a starting place. I know that so golden a boy as Harun cannot remain hidden, unless he wishes it. I know that he has some fondness for Kentauron Mikron or he would not have sent the message. I’ll go at once, of course, and I’ll take a few of the simples and samples of Kentauron with me. They’ll sustain me. And now I leave the happiest group in the universe behind me, but it would be even happier if Harun were here with us. May we all be reunited here someday.”

“There have been quite a few doubts about Harun growing up while he was dead,” my wife the Grand-Dame Tumblehome voiced her own doubt.

“Yes, but there were no doubts about him while he was alive here,” Caliph Charnel said. “And I do not believe there will be any doubts about him, now that he is born again. Doubts about him simply cannot survive his presence. Will you go alone, Essindibad?”

“Will I go alone, Grand-Dame Tumblehome?” I asked her.

“No. I’ll go with you,” she said. “As your wife I could do no less. And I have never been to Gaea. Besides, Essindibad, I believe I’m a better locator of transcendent persons than you are.”

Grand-Dame Tumblehome and I left within the hour. And we seven, as it would happen, would never all be together again.

After ninety Kentauron days, we came down on Gaea-World at Bassorah Stone.