Read Online The Celestial Blueprint and Others Stories by Philip José Farmer - Free Book Online

in front of the Palace of the Two Kings of The Sea and The Islands. All were disguised as Waterfolk. Before they’d left the castle, they had grafted webs between their fingers and toes—jujjt as Amphib-changelings who weren’t bom with them, did— and they wore the special Amphib Skins that Mapfarity had grown in his fleshforge. These were able to tune in on the Amphibs’ wavelengths, but they lacked their shock mechanism.
    Rastignac had to locate the Earthman, rescue him, and get him to the spaceship that lay anchored between two wharfs, its sharp nose pointing outwards. A wooden bridge had been built from one of the wharfs to a place halfway up its towering side.
    Rastignac could not make out any breaks in the smooth metal that would indicate a port, but reason told him there must be some sort of entrance to the ship at that point.
    A guard of twenty Amphibs repulsed any attempt on the crowd’s part to get on the bridge.
    Rastignac had contacted the harbor-master and made arrangements for workmen to unload his cargo of wine. His freehandedness with the gold eggs got him immediate service even on this general holiday. Once in the square, he and his men uncrated the wine but left the two heavy chests on the wagon which was hitched to a powerful little six-legged Jeep.
    They stacked the bottles of wine in a huge pile while the curious crowd in the square encircled them to watch. Rastignac then stood on a chest to survey the scene, so that he could best judge the time to start. There were perhaps seven or eight thousand of all three races there— the Ssassarors, the Amphibs, the Humans—with an unequal portioning of each.
    Rastignac, looking for just such a thing, noticed that every non-human Amphib had at least two Humans tagging at his heels.
    It would take two Humans to handle an Amphib or a Ssassaror. The Amphibs stood upon their seal-like hind flippers at least six and a half feet tall and weighed about three hundred pounds. The Giant Ssassarors, being fisheaters, had reached the same enormous height as Mapfarity. The Giants were in the minority, as the Amphibs had always preferred stealing Human babies from the Terrans. The Ssas-saror-changelings were marked for death also.
    Rastignac watched for signs of uneasiness or hostility between the three groups. Soon, he saw the signs. They were not plentiful, but they were enough to indicate an uneasy undercurrent. Three times, the guards had to intervene to break up quarrels. The Humans eyed the non-human quarrelers, but made no move to help their Amphib fellows against the Giants. Not only that, they took them aside afterwards and seemed to be reprimanding them. Evidently, the order was that everyone was to be on his behavior until the time to revolt.
    Rastignac glanced at the great tower-clock. “It’s an hour before the ceremonies begin,” he said to his men. “Let’s go.”
    XI
    Mapfabity, who had been loitering in the crowd some distance away, caught Archambaud’s signal and slowly, as befit a Giant whose feet hurt, limped towards them. He stopped, scrutinized the pile of bottles, then, in his lion’s-roar-at-the-bottom-of-a-well voice said, “Say, what’s in these bottles?” Rastignac shouted back, “A drink which the new Kings will enjoy very much.”
    “What’s that?” replied Mapfarity. “Sea-water?”
    The crowd laughed.
    “No, it’s not water,” Rastignac said, “as anybody but a lumbering Giant should know. It is a delicious drink that brings a rare ecstacy upon the drinker. I got the formula for it from an old witch who lives on the shores of far off Apfelabvidanahyew. He told me it had been in his family since the coming of Man to L’Bawpfey. He parted with the formula on condition I make it only for the Kings.”
    “Will only Their Majesties get to taste this exquisite drink?” bellowed Mapfarity.
    “That depends upon whether it pleases Their Majesties to give some to their subjects to celebrate the result of the