Mike Resnick - Lucifer Jones 01- Adventures

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The Chronicles of Lucifer Jones

Volume I: 1922-1926

ADVENTURES

by Mike Resnick

Being a Stirring Chronicle of Intrigue, Romance, Danger, Hairbreadth Escapes, and

Thrilling Triumphs over Fierce Beasts and Fiercer Men in the Mysterious and Exotic

Dark Continent, as Recounted by the Daring, Resourceful, Handsome, and Modest

Christian Gentleman Who Experienced Them

This,

my very favorite book,

is dedicated to

CAROL

my very favorite person

Table of Contents

1. The White Goddess

2. Partners

3. The Vampire

4. Slave Trading

5. The Mummy

6. A Red-Letter Scheme

7. The Mutiny

8. An Affair of the Heart

9. The Lost Race

10. The Lord of the Jungle

11. The Best Little Tabernacle in Nairobi

12. The Elephants’ Graveyard

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Dutchman, who prefers to think of his slave-trading operation as an International

Employment Placement Service.

Erich Von Horst, a con man's con man.

Herbie Miller, ivory poacher and part-time vampire.

Long SchmidtandShort Schmidt , a pair of brothers from Pittsburgh who became gods

at the lost kingdom of the Malaloki.

Burley Rourke, a doctor specializing in diseases of the gullible.

Rosepetal Schultz, who differs from most ancient Egyptian queens in that she was

born twenty-three years ago in Brooklyn.

The Rodent, undersized killer of either sixteen or thirty-five men, who changed his

name from the Weasel for professional reasons.

Mr. Christian, officer aboard the good ship Dying Quail.

Bloomstoke, a tall, bronzed British nobleman who is living with a tribe of apes while

hiding from his creditors.

Neeyora, just your typical naked blonde white goddess, who tips the scales at four

hundred pounds, give or take an ounce.

Capturing Clyde Calhoun, who brings ’em back alive. Not intact, but alive.

Amen-hetep III, whose mummy carries a half-clad girl through the streets of Cairo

before checking in at Shepheard's Hotel.

Major Theodore Dobbins, a man with a taste for rich widows, who is also a

speculator in certain perishable commodities imported from far exotic China and

points east.

And our narrator, TheRight Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones : his religion is

a little something he and the Lord worked out between themselves one afternoon, his

tabernacle is the most prosperous brothel in British East Africa, and he has serious

disagreements with the authorities of fourteen different African nations over the finer

points of the law. On the other hand, he means well.

ADVENTURES

(1922-1926)

Chapter 1

THE WHITE GODDESS

I knew a real live vampire. It was in Africa about seventy years ago, and his name

was Herbie Miller. He didn't look much like a vampire, I suppose—walked around in

khaki pants that he cut off above the knees, and his hair wasn't slicked down or

nothing. I can't say he was real fond of crosses, but daylight didn't bother him none,

and he had no problems walking over running water, except that he couldn't swim and

narrow bridges scared the hell out of him.

I don't know why he should have been so interested in me, especially considering that

I was a man of the cloth back then, but he was. When he wasn't trying to nab me in

the neck, which was pretty difficult inasmuch as poor Herbie was barely five feet tall

with his boots on, he kept coming up with crazy schemes about how I should go to the

local hospital—not Schweitzer's, but one you've probably never heard of—and

borrow some blood, for which he promised to pay me in pounds or dollars or rupees

or whatever else he'd gotten off one of his more recent meals.

You know, I think about Herbie and some of the others I met, and I'd have to say that

even without the animals—and I never did see all that many of them anyway, except

for the time I was an ivory poacher—Africa was a pretty interesting place to be back

then. I had my flock and my tabernacle, and of course there was Herbie, who came

smack-dab between my little business excursions into opium and brothels, and there

were Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt, a pair of brothers who became gods, and there

was Capturin’ Clyde Calhoun and a batch of others.

Africa was full of colorful folk like that in the old days. They called themselves

adventurers and explorers and hunters and missionaries, but what they mostly were

were outcasts. They gathered in the civilized cities, most of them: Johannesburg,

Nairobi, Mombasa, Pretoria, places like that. Every now and then they'd go out into

the bush—only bad pulp writers ever called it the jungle—after everything from ivory

to lost gold mines to half-naked white priestesses. A lot of them found ivory, and a

few found gold, but the only man I ever knew who went into the bush and found

himself a white woman was an Irishman named Burley Rourke.

I met him just a few days after I got off the boat, young and hopeful and sporting my

first beard. Due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings during an informal game

of chance, I had been invited to inspect the premises of the Johannesburg gaol, which,

while tastefully appointed, was nevertheless not the temporary residence I would have

picked had the choice been mine.

Rourke was lying on a cot in the adjacent cell. He was a tall, cadaverous man, with

bushy black eyebrows and an enormous dimple on his chin. He had the longest,

whitest, most delicate fingers I had ever seen on a man, and since even his fingernails

were clean, I asked him if he, like myself, was being incarcerated due to a certain

flexibility toward the hard and fast rules of the game. He allowed that this was indeed

the case, and I asked him if his trade was cards or dice.

“Neither,” he said. “I'm a doctor, specializing in diseases of the gullible.”

That's when I knew we were going to hit it off just fine.

“How about yourself?” said Rourke. “You look like some kind of preacher man, all

done up in black like you are.”

“Indeed I am, Brother Rourke,” I said with some modesty. “I don't know how a

respectable man like me got involved with all them sinful characters in the first place.

I suppose I was just following the good Lord's mandate to consider every man my

brother. ‘Course, I never have gotten around to viewing all the women exactly as

sisters.”

“And what religion do you preach?” asked Rourke.

“One me and the Lord worked out betwixt ourselves one afternoon,” I said.

Actually, the way I see it, my calling was determined the day I was born. We had a

little farm outside Moline, Illinois, and once I was alive and secure, my mother sent

my father to the county courthouse to register my name, which was to be Lucas Jones

or Lucius Jones, I'm still not sure which. But my father was a man who loved his

liquor, and by the time he got there he came up with as close an approximation as he

was capable at the time.

Which is how I got to be Lucifer Jones.

Anyway, they say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and I guess

toting the name Lucifer around made me painfully aware of who I was named after. I

just naturally kind of gravitated toward the church, especially after I saw the size of

our poorbox, and pretty soon me and God formed sort of a two-man company, and I

went out and did His business. And a pretty good business it was, until the day a

couple of Federal men came around. Up until then I had always thought that paying

income taxes was voluntary, like going into the army and such. Well, I'd have stayed

and fought them, but the Lord says that vengeance is His, so I took off down the

Mississippi one night and hopped the first ship out of New Orleans.

“Well, now,” said Rourke when I'd told him the story, adding only a minimum

number of poetic flourishes, “I do believe we're going to be friends, Saint Luke. You

don't mind if I call you that, do you?”

“It's got a nice, down-to-earth sound to it, Brother Rourke,” I allowed. “In fact, now

that I roll it around on my tongue, I like it more and more. I think, with your kind

permission, that I'll be having these godless black heathen build me the Tabernacle of

Saint Luke. Once I leave my present vile surroundings, that is.”

“Oh,” said Rourke, furrowing up his forehead and tugging at his mustache. “That's

too bad. But, of course, if a man's got the call...”

“It's a kind of weak call at this moment,” I said quickly, wondering what he had in

mind. “Nothing that couldn't be fought off for a couple of months if I was to dig in

tooth and nail.” I gritted my teeth, prepared to make the effort, and he must of

mistook it for a grin, because he grinned right back at me.

He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and unfolded a huge sheet of paper. Then he dusted it

off a bit and passed it through the bars to me.

“Ever see one of these?” he asked.

I took a quick look and handed it back.

“If it's a map to King Solomon's mines, I've seen about twenty. If it's to the elephants’

burial ground, they're kind of rare. I don't imagine I've seen much more than half a

dozen in the week I've been here.”

He chuckled. “Actually, it's a map to the lost gold mine of the Zulus. Only one I've

seen.”

“Must have been lost a good long time,” I opined. “I don't recall ever seeing a Zulu

wearing anything but leopard-claw necklaces.”

“Well, what do you think?” asked Rourke.

“About the gold mine?” I asked.

“About the map.”

He was still grinning at me, and all of a sudden a great big Heavenly revelation smote

me right between the eyes, and out of courtesy I returned his smile.

“How many do you think we could make?” I asked.

“Well, we'd have to hunt up some real old paper, and figure out what kind of charcoal

the natives draw with. Need about three bob for materials, I should think.”

“You supplied the map, Brother Rourke,” I said. “I'll supply the capital. I've got a

dozen copies of the Good Book stashed in my hotel room. It shouldn't be too hard to

sell them. There's plenty of widows in town who can find solace in the words of Our

Lord and His prophets.”

“Fine,” he said. “I figure we ought to be able to make up about fifty.”

“That's a lot of maps,” I said. “We wouldn't want to flood the market.”

He looked shocked. “That would be immoral. I'm surprised that such a thought would

even cross your mind, Saint Luke. Personally, just for propriety's sake, I don't think

we should sell more than five an hour.”

“At least, not until we get to Pretoria,” I agreed.

We consummated our partnership with a solemn handshake.

* * * *

Burley and I got turned out about a week later, and within another week we had made

and sold almost two hundred maps, accumulating a substantial little nest egg along

the way.

Of course, the bush was getting a little crowded by then, what with a couple hundred

of hopeful investors looking for that lost gold mine, so we swung north to

Bechuanaland, where we stopped at an occasional outpost and dispensed maps,

medical care, and salvation with equal vigor. I began taking contributions to the

Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and Rourke made a little extra pin money by curing two

settlers who didn't have heart attacks and another who hadn't broken his leg. When he

came to a trader who reallydid have blackwater fever, he decided that it was time for

us to get moving again.

Now, there are a lot of ways for a newly-arrived American and a newly-arrived

Irishman to travel through Africa, but foot-slogging ain't one of them. When we

weren't pulling scorpions out of our clothes and ticks off our skins, we spent most of

our time starving and getting rained on. For what was supposed to be a hot, arid

country, I never did see so much rain in all my life. It ruined what was left of the

maps, but since we had sold about three hundred by that time, it didn't seem like such

a great loss.

Besides, we soon figured out that Zulu gold mines weren't real high on our itinerary,

whereas a map to the nearest city would have been a right welcome blessing.

I remember that one night just before our food was due to run out I fell asleep next to

an old termite mound. I was still dreaming about an exceptionally nubile daughter of

King Solomon, or perhaps it was King David, when Burley kicked me in the ribs. I

took the Lord's name in vain a couple of times and tried to go back to sleep, but then

he kicked me again.

“Get on your feet, Saint Luke,” he said. “We've got company.”

I jumped up right quick at that, and peered off in the direction he was looking. There

were about twenty half-naked black savages off in the distance, all of them carrying

spears and shields.

“Do you reckon they're cannibals, Brother Rourke?” I asked, holding up a hand to

shade my eyes from the morning sun.

“Too far away,” said Rourke. “I can't see their teeth.”

“What have their teeth got to do with it?”

“I read somewhere that all cannibals file their teeth,” he said.

I remembered some gossip I had heard about old Doc Peterson back in Moline before

they locked him away, and I knewhe sure didn't filehis teeth, so I kind of discounted

that theory. But they were getting closer now, and most of them looked pretty full, so

I figured that it wasn't worth worrying about for the time being.

“What do you think we ought to do?” asked Rourke. “Heal ’em or convert ’em?”

“They don't look like they need much of either,” I said, as they approached to within a

hundred yards. “I don't suppose you know Zulu or Tswana?”

He shook his head. “They don't speak much of either back in Dublin. How about

beads? I'm told they go crazy for beads.”

“Sounds reasonable, Brother Rourke,” I said. “I didn't know you had any.”

“Me? Of course not. Don't you have any rosary beads in your pockets?”

“Wrong religion,” I replied.

The savages were about forty yards away now, and muttering amongst themselves.

They had slowed down a bit, but were still approaching.

“They look like they mean business,” said Rourke. “Suppose we ought to make a run

for it?”

“To where?” I asked. “We don't even know where we are.”

“The way I figure it,” said Rourke, “Cairo's north and the Cape's south. Take your

choice.”

But by then they had split up, and a moment later we were surrounded. Pulling the

Good Book from my pocket, I cleared my throat, raised my hands above my head,

and took a step forward.

"Brethren!"I shouted, and they all jumped back a couple of steps. “In the Book of

Herod, Chapter 8, Verse 3, the Lord God said unto Moses: Thou shall not eat thy

neighbor!”

The leader of the heathens stopped dead in his tracks and blinked his eyes very

rapidly.

“You're getting to them,” said Rourke out of the side of his mouth. “Say something

else. Maybe a little hellfire and damnation.”

“And the children of Israel were wicked,” I intoned. “And you knowwhy they were

wicked? Because they ate two wayfarers who had mistakenly wandered into their

city. For does not Jesus say that to err is human, but to forgive divine? And the

children of Israel, who were dressed a far sight better than you, you Godless savages,

were cast out into the desert to wander for forty years! Do you want that to happen to

you, you ignorant barbarians?”

“Oh, you got ’em on the run, Saint Luke!” said Rourke. “You really got ’em going!”

Well, they got going, all right, but in the wrong direction, and a few seconds later the

leader was standing so close to me that l could just about smell his breath.

“Make him smile,” said Rourke. “I still want to get a look at his teeth.”

The savage responded with an enormous grin. “Like so?” he asked in a deep gravelly

voice. Then, frowning, he extended a forefinger and poked me right in the short ribs.

“You come!” He jabbed Rourke with the butt of his spear. “You too!”

We acceded to his wishes, not caring to dwell upon the alternatives for any

considerable length of time. They didn't treat us unkindly, but then no competent

butcher likes to bruise the meat, so I can't say that we were real quick to develop a

mutual trust with our black companions. We walked the better part of a day, stopping

every now and then for water and privy calls, and when night came we built a big fire

and huddled around it, more from cold than from fear of man-eating beasts, of which

there weren't none, except maybe for our present company.

Finally the leader walked over to us and sat himself down, cross-legged. He pointed

to himself and said, “Kitunga.”

“Rourke,” said Burley, tapping himself on the chest. “And this here's Saint Luke.”

Kitunga solemnly extended his hand, kind of upside down, and shook each of ours.

“Does this mean you're not going to eat us?” asked Rourke.

“Eat you?” said Kitunga, and laughed. “No. No. Not eat.”

“Then what do you want from us?” said Rourke.

"Chumbi-chumbi,"said Kitunga.

“Sounds like some kind of ritual,” said Rourke. “What the devil does it mean?”

Kitunga flashed every tooth in his head. “Make babies,” he said. He shook our hands

again, spat in the fire, and began walking away.

“Hold on a minute!” I said, jumping up. “What do you mean, make babies?”

“Make babies,” said Kitunga solemnly. With the forefinger of one hand and the fist of

the other, he gave us a graphic and vigorous analogy.

“You mean you want us to make babies with some naked black barbarians?” I

demanded.

“Not black,” said Kitunga. “Like you.”

“You mean a white woman?” asked Rourke.

“Yes, yes,” said Kitunga. “White woman.”

As you can imagine, we immediately fell to discussing this development between

ourselves while Kitunga ambled off to sleep with his men. Back in those days there

were lots of tales making the rounds about white women who were priestesses or

goddesses of heathen black tribes, but while they sounded good over a lonely

campfire or in the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, they were about as likely to be true as our

lost Zulu gold mine.

“The way I see it, Brother Rourke,” I said after considerable thought, “is that these

here savages have killed some hunting party except for a white woman, whom they've

doubtless got chained to a post in their village, and whom they probably ravish by the

hour.”

“I don't know that I'm real pleased about this turn of events, Saint Luke,” said Rourke.

“Oh, I'll admit that it beats being eaten, but I suppose she's going to want us to rescue

her.”

Itwas a kind of gloomy thought at that, and I said as much. “Still,” I added, “it's the

Christian thing to do.”

“Maybe you could tell her to turn the other cheek, a fascinating thought in itself,” said

Rourke.

“Well, I suppose we'd at least better make sure shewants to be rescued before we go

about upsetting Kitunga,” I suggested.

“Right,” agreed Rourke. “A person can get used to anything in time. Maybe she's

gotten to where she likes being ravished.”

“A telling point,” I agreed.

We fell silent for a while, and then an interesting notion hit me.

“Brother Rourke,” I said, “I think we've been looking at this situation all wrong.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Why should a bunch of healthy young bucks want our help ravishing a prisoner?”

“I hadn't quite gotten around to considering that,” he admitted. “Now that you

mention it, it doesn't really make a lot of sense, does it?”

“It sure as hell don't.”

“Scientific curiosity, maybe?” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “I been mulling on it for a couple of minutes now, and it seems to me

that if they was choosing partners for this white woman, they'd just naturally choose

themselves.”

“Makes sense,” said Rourke, nodding his head thoughtfully.

“Well, then, it stands to reason that if bringing us back with them ain'ttheir idea, it

must behers .”

“Sensible,” muttered Rourke. “Sensible.”

“And if she's giving orders to a batch of spear-toting heathen like Kitunga and his

buddies, she must be a pretty powerful little lady.”

“Holy shit!” exclaimed Rourke suddenly. “An oversexed white priestess!” He stared

up at the clouds, which were covering up the stars as usual, and got a faraway look on

his face. “Golden hair down to her waist,” he said, “and breasts like white

cantaloupes. Maybe a bracelet or an armband or two...”

Well, I couldn't see that the picture he was painting was all that much more enticing

than a naked white woman staked out spread-eagled on the ground, but I could tell

that Rourke didn't want to be bothered none, so I fell to thinking about what kind of

tabernacle me and this white priestess could build right here in the bush before we got

around to trading ivory and other such trinkets with civilized folks. I didn't know how

big her tribe was, but if Kitunga's group was just a foraging party, I figured we'd have

an awful lot of manpower able to respond to a terse command or two. As for Burley, I

decided that he wasn't such an all-fired bad fellow, and I'd probably let him stick

around as a resident witch doctor, so long as he didn't impose on our hospitality too

often, like coming over to dinner of a Sunday or asking us to steal a white woman for

him too.

Ten minutes later Rourke was still drawing verbal pictures in the damp night air. By

now he'd got her hair down to her ankles, and her breasts were the size of honeydew

melons. Seems to me that he'd done away with her armbands, too. He just kept

whispering to nobody in particular all night, and by morning he was busy working out

the color of her eyes and how narrow her waist was.

Once the sun came up it got warm enough to start traveling again—no matter how hot

the days are in Africa, the nights are enough to convince you that you've wandered

into Eskimo country by mistake—and Kitunga gave us each a none-too-gentle nudge

with the butt of his spear. We began walking, mostly over open veldtland, but

occasionally going through sky-high grasses on old elephant and rhino trails, and I

fell to questioning him about the white woman.

It didn't help much, since Kitunga had just about run through his entire English

vocabulary the day before. I couldn't tell how his tribe had come by this woman, or

what she looked like, or if she had been there so long she'd forgotten how to speak in

a civilized language, or even why she felt the need to make babies. One thing he did

let drop that she was a medicine woman, which was probably as close to being a high

priestess as a person could get among these heathen, so Rourke was right on that

point at least. I figured it was all to the good, since once she and I started taking field

trips to Nairobi and places like that, the tribe would need a good medicine man, and

even if Rourke couldn't cure a dysentery germ, he could probably talk it to death.

We walked for two more days. I tried to figure out where we were, but one tree looks

pretty much like another, and it was raining so much I never did get a fix on the

Southern Cross or any of the constellations, so finally I gave up on it and just

followed along. When we bedded down that second night Kitunga gave us to

understand, more through gestures than words, that we would reach his village the

next morning.

“And that's where we'll meet your witchwoman?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” he said.

“And then we both move in with her?”

“Just one,” said Kitunga.

“Just one?” said Rourke, looking a little upset. “What happens to the other?”

Kitunga shrugged and walked away.

“Looks like the winner gets to eat the loser, Brother Rourke,” I said at last.

“I'd never eat you, no matter what,” said Rourke devoutly.

I fully agreed with that remark, and me and the Lord fell to discussing the matter

between ourselves, trying to figure out how best not to present Rourke with any such

opportunity.

On the surface of it, there was no problem that I could see, what with me being a

handsome and vigorous young stallion, possessed as I was with the eye of a hawk, the

heart of a lion, and the gentle hand of a lady. But women are peculiar creatures in

matters of taste, and a woman who would send a small battalion of naked warriors out

in search of a bed partner was likely to be a little more peculiar than most.

So, having dwelled on the matter for some time, I waited until Rourke was asleep and

borrowed a sharp hunting knife from Kitunga. Then I walked to a nearby river, cut off

my beard and shaved as close as I could, and washed out all my clothes. On the way

back I passed a pile of elephant dung which had been sitting there for some days,

picked some up, and carefully smeared it over Rourke's shirt and pants as he slept. I

couldn't be sure he'd accept it in the sporting manner in which it was done, so I

wandered over to where Kitunga's boys were sleeping and piled in with them. One of

them spent half the night grabbing at my ass and giggling, but I awoke whole and in

one piece.

Matter of fact, what woke me up was Rourke, screaming at the top of his lungs. He'd

flung off all his clothes except for his boots, and was jumping up and down in a right

impressive fit of rage. His eyes fell on me, and he pointed an accusing finger in my

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