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foolishness at the far side of the cube, and wisdom towards the viewer. The nature of wisdom is much
debated among our educators, since it above all else is what we humans strive for in the mundane world.
"Suffice it to say that each of these three is independent of the others. People exist with every possible
combination of these attributes. There are no blank places in the cube. It is quite possible, for example, to
be wise while also being stupid and ignorant. The traditional old peasant was often like that. The teachers
of higher education are sometimes intelligent and learned while still being foolish."
"Remarkable," I said.
The whole situation had gotten about as unromantic as it could get, and I found myself thinking that
maybe she was right, maybe I was rushing things. And maybe I was getting myself involved with a rather
cold fish. Only there had been nothing frigid about her the night before!
I think that I must have dozed off for a bit, because when I woke up again, I was alone. When I got to
the balcony that we used for breakfast, the maid told me that Adam and his ladies had already eaten. He
and his bearers were at the boat, and Maria and Agnes were out looking for an apartment closer to the
warehouse than their home was.
Roxanna didn't show up, and I ate alone.
TWENTY-TWO
Arriving at the warehouse where our ship was stored, I found Adam directing his workers in further
disassembling the ship. They were laboriously chipping out the plastic that had been poured around the
ship's batteries, down next to the keel. Adam felt that if we were going to give the warlock the solar cells,
we'd better give him most of the batteries as well.
"What with these casts still on, I can't get in there to see what they're doing. I've told them the difference
between what a battery looks like and the stuff we encapsulated them in, but they've never seen a battery
before. Maybe you'd better get in there and give it a look."
"Right," I said. "We don't need battery acid all over the place, or wrecked batteries, either."
I climbed up into the hull, which was still on its side, and checked out what the men were doing. It was
slow going, but they had gotten down to the batteries in two places, and were carefully working around
them. I got back out.
"Looks fine to me. You figure on giving the warlock all of them?"
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"All but two, and we'll need the starter battery for the engine. That's all we really need to run her, and the
electronics. Without the solar cells and the genset, we'll have to fire up the engine every other day, but
what the heck. I figure that we'll only be shuttling between here and South America, and that's less than a
few thousand miles."
"Makes sense. What about the prop-shaft generator? Won't that help?"
"I was thinking that by hooking that generator up to some wooden blades that could be made locally, we
could rig up a windmill and put it on top of the mountain here. With enough wind, it could probably make
more juice than the solar cell array."
"Why not? We can replace it all in Lima, anyway," I said.
"Right. Now then, there's one little job that you're going to have to handle alone, since I'm wracked up
and I'd rather that nobody else knew about it."
"What's that?"
"The arsenal. It's encapsulated just forward of the batteries."
I stopped and stared at him for a bit. "You never told me we had an arsenal on board. Why do you have
it, and why didn't you tell me about it? Just what do you have in there that had to be kept so secret?"
"It's not all that much, and there's nothing illegal in there, but you got to be careful with guns. On the one
hand, if you need them, youreally need them, and then they're worth a lot more than gold to you. I mean,
what if some drug runners had decided thatThe Brick Royal was just the thing they needed to make a
little midnight run into Miami Beach? On the other hand, more Americans are shot each year by their
friends than by their enemies, so until needed, it's better if your friends don't know they're there. Also,
some of the girls we started out with would have freaked out at the thought of having guns around. Then
there was you. In case you've forgotten, for about a year there you were slopping around in the worst
case of depression that I ever saw a man live through and survive. You're better now, so I don't mind
telling you about the weapons, but back then you were awfully suicidal. Enough said?"
"If I'd wanted to kill myself, I could have jumped overboard any night."
"I know, and if I coulda hid the ocean, I woulda done it. The guns I could just not talk about."
"All right, and I suppose I owe you my thanks. But for now, just what exactly do you have buried over
the keel up by the stem?"
"Two of everything I thought we might need. There are some Remington autoloading 30-06s with
Leopold scopes, for hitting something hard when you don't want to get near it. Some Remington
12-gauge autoloading shotguns, for blowing it away if it's up close. Some Remington Nylon 66 .22
caliber plinking guns, with scopes, for target practice and small game. Some Browning 9mm Hi Power
automatic pistols, purely for self-defense. Some Ruger .22 caliber plinking pistols, for just screwing
around with, and some Street Sweepers, for when we're not screwing around. All the guns are made out
of stainless steel and plastic, so corrosion won't ever be a problem. There's two thousand rounds of each
kind of ammo, except for the .22 long rifle. We got twenty thousand rounds of that, plus cleaning
equipment, spare clips, belts, holsters, some knives, and other accessories. It's a good little arsenal."
"Wow. What's a Street Sweeper?"
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"It's a 12-gauge autoloading shotgun with a twenty-five-round drum magazine. It has a collapsible stock
and a shoulder sling like what you use with a submachine gun. It has a minimal legal length barrel, and a
flashlight that mounts on top where you'd think a scope would go. Where the spot shows is where your
shot pattern hits. I thought they would be nice to have if we ever had to stand guard duty."
"What? No Uzis, assault rifles, or grenade launchers?" I said facetiously.
"The Uzi is a very overrated weapon. It's as big as a real gun but it only fires puny pistol ammo. As to
assault rifles, I think that the army went over to those .223 caliber M-16s because militarily, you're better
off wounding an enemy than killing him. After all, you wound a man and they have to dedicate three
medics to haul him away and take care of him. It's that or getting a hell of a morale problem when they
start abandoning their own injured. Wounding an enemy takes four of them out of the fight, but if you kill
him, he's just one more dead martyr. But I don't ever plan on fighting an army, and if I ever have to shoot
somebody, I want him dead! Grenades? They're illegal and way too dangerous. If we had explosives
aboard, somebody would likely drop one, and blow a hole in the bottom of the boat and us, too."
"Thank God for small favors."
"You shouldn't say things like that unless you mean it. Anyway, we are among a bunch of very peaceable
people here, and I think the guns would make a bad impression. I'd hate to have to throw them away, so
I figure to just hide them somewhere."
"Why not just leave them where they are?"
"Because it's three hundred more pounds that could be cargo, each way, every trip."
"Whatever you say. I think that it was stupid to have them in the first place. Anybody we'd have to
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