Red Prophet Page 0,21

You mean that fat hideous red-skinned heathen woman?"

"She can't help her red skin, and she isn't heathen. In fact she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder."

"Who can keep track of these English heresies?"

"I think there's something quite elegant about it. A woman as governor of the state of Irrakwa, and a Red at that, accepted as the equal of the governors of Suskwahenny, Pennsylvania, New Amsterdam, New Sweden, New Orange, New Holland - "

"I think sometimes you prefer those nasty little United States to your own native land."

"I am a Frenchman to the heart," said La Fayette mildly. "But I admire the American spirit of egalitarianism."

Egalitarianism again. The Marquis de La Fayette was like a pianoforte that had but a single key. "You forget that our enemy in Detroit is American."

"You forget that our enemy is the horde of illegal squatters, no matter what nation they come from, who have settled in the Red Reserve."

"That's a quibble. They're all Americans. They all pass through New Amsterdam or Philadelphia on their way west. So you encourage them here in the east - they all know how much you admire their anti-monarchist philosophy - and then I have to pay for their scalps when the Reds massacre them out west."

"Now, now, Frederic. Even in humor, you mustn't accuse me of being anti-monarchist. M. Guillotin's clever meat-slicing machine awaits anyone convicted of that."

"Oh, do be serious, Gilbert. They'd never use it against a marquis. They don't cut off the heads of aristocrats who propound these insane democratic ideas. They just send them to Quebec." Frederic smiled - he couldn't resist driving home the nail. "The ones they really despise, they send to Niagara."

"Then what in the world did you do - to get sent to Detroit?" murmured La Fayette.

More humiliation. Would it never end?

The Marie-Philippe was near enough for them to see individual sailors and hear them shouting as the ship made its final tack into Port Irrakwa. The lowest of the Great Lakes, Irrakwa was the only one that could be visited by oceangoing vessels - the Niagara Falls saw to that. In the last three years, since the Irrakwa finished their canal, almost all the shipping that needed to be transported past the falls into Lake Canada came to the American shore and was taken up the Niagara Canal. The French portage towns were dying; an embarrassing number of Frenchmen had moved across the lake to live on the American side, where the Irrakwa were only too happy to put them to work. And the Marquis de La Fayette, supposedly the supreme governor of all Canada south and west of Quebec, didn't seem to mind at all. If Frederic's father ever got back into King Charles's good graces, Frederic would see to it that La Fayette was the first aristocrat to feel the Guillotin knife. What he had done here in Canada was plain treason.

As if he could read Frederic's mind, La Fayette patted his shoulder and said, "Very soon, now, just be patient." For a moment Frederic thought, insanely, that La Fayette was calmly prophesying his own execution for treason.

But La Fayette was merely talking about the fact that at last the Marie-Philippe was near enough to heave a line to the wharf. The Irrakwa stevedores caught the line and affixed it to the windlass, and then chanted in their unspeakable language as they towed the ship close in. As soon as it was in place, they began unloading cargo on the one side, and passengers on the other.

"Isn't that ingenious, how they speed the transfer of cargo," said La Fayette. "Unload it on those heavy cars, which sit on rails - rails, just like mining carts! - and then the horses tow it right up here, smooth and easy as you please. On rails you can carry a much heavier load than on regular wagons, you know. Stephenson explained it to me the last time I was here. It's because you don't have to steer." On and on he blathered. Sure enough, within moments he was talking again about Stephenson's steam engine, which La Fayette was convinced would replace the horse. He had built some in England or Scotland or somewhere, but now he was in America, and do you think La Fayette would invite Stephenson to build his steam wagons in Canada? Oh, no - La Fayette was quite content to let him build them for