When I left off this narrative, I had disembarked from the port in Ancient Alexandria in an English yacht bound from Paris to the Polynesian Islands. As the ship was from the early 20th Century, we were able to make use of the Suez Canal rather than be forced to circumnavigate the whole of Africa. Mind you, that’s a lovely trip in itself and I’ve nothing against it, but at that time it was rather a longer trip than I had a mind to take, so I was grateful for the shortcut.
The principals of the expedition (an Anglican minister, an atheist, and the yacht’s owner, a retired author) were pleased to have me aboard, as they were overly familiar with their own conversation and unable to draw much more than technical and practical observations from their hired crew. Looking back on it now, it does not seem all that fanciful to think that the coffee we consumed during our philosophical explorations matched the expanse of seawater along which our vessel plowed.
We spoke of many things: the line marking the border between civilized and savage (I maintain that it is thinner than is generally believed, so thin as to be nearly ephemeral); the relative merits of religion (here I found a sympathetic ear only in the yacht’s owner); and the value of spending a third of a book introducing the reader to the characters and allowing said reader to become familiar, almost friends, with said characters (a wonderful convention in certain books, out of place in others–an adventure novel needs such connection, whereas a spy thriller requires a faster narrative to keep one’s blood up).
At another stop for supplies in the port at Sydney, Australia, I was approached by a runner. The most expensive of my afternoon delights had temporarily taken up residence at a local hotel and requested my presence if I was not otherwise engaged.
The young lady in question is a demon wrangler of no little repute. As the fact that she is not so much possessed by a succubus as in a symbiotic relationship with one, is only one of the many things to recommend her company, (a gentleman never discusses figures, so I shall leave some of the other things to my reader’s imagination) I took my leave of the English adventurers and proceeded to the lady’s hotel.
There I was treated not only to more intellectual repast of a most solid nature–I know of only one other person who could possibly make fingernail polish a topic for spiritual awakening–but also to a fine spread of more physical comestibles, not least of which was a wonderful slice of cheesecake.
It was during the coffee when a maid approached with the telephone and I was privileged to witness a truly impressive screaming match between my companion and her drug dealer. I should tell you, though I really shouldn’t have to tell you, that even if you are Pablo Escobar, you are making a terrible mistake when you try to lean on a woman who makes a habit of plucking the strings of String Theory like those of a harp.
Some time later, the drugs that she was actually on kicked in when a race riot passed by in the streets below. Knowing my love of adventure, she clutched me by my lapels, spun me ’round and hurled me bodily through the bay window.
I didn’t have much time to analyze the sensation of landing before I had to jump up to avoid being trampled. I unleashed my roscoe and let him make a few poignant observations on my behalf. I try to avoid entering discussions with tidal waves, myself, so sometimes a representative is in order.
With a path clear, I took it, and it led me out of the city into a long-abandoned diamond mine. Spent the next week in it, with the close air reaching around my ribs from the inside to give my vitals an unfriendly squeeze with every breath. Let me tell you, it gets dark in an abandoned diamond mine, but at this point in my life even the memory of light is enough to read by. And it is at times like these that my training long long ago in the temples comes in very handy: Lung control, intestinal control, quantum control, self-control, reality control.
It paid off dividends in spades, too.
With filthy hands I reached into the darkness and pulled loose some glittery goodness that had been left behind when the mines closed. One of them was a specimen that could have funded three expeditions like the one I’d left in Sydney. And I know just what to do with it, too.
From that point, it wasn’t much further to claw my way up out of the ground and onto the surface of a small island.
Not sure where it was, even now, but the meat and potatoes were warm and greasy, and the beer was all you could ever want from a beverage.
They grow ’em big in this part of the timestream. One man I saw was as tall when kneeling as his fellow was standing, another man was as wide as two men attached at the hip, and a third was so thin that were he merely to turn sideways, you would have no idea he was there.
And the violence that these fine folk inflicted on one another in the village square was wonderfully entertaining. Truly, a fine cap to an adventure, however minor.
The moral of the story being, there’s an opportunity lurking behind every oxygen molecule, just waiting for you to collapse its wave-form by looking at it.
You just have to move into a position where you can do that.