Lee Harding
NEW RIVERWORLD NOVEL The Fabulous Riverboat
Edw<
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May-Jun«, 1971 Vol.20, No. 11 Itsuo 1 54
ALL NEW STORIES
Ejler Jakobsson, Editor Lester del Rey, Feature Editor
Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Managing Editor Front L. Roggeri, Art Director
Jay Tunick, Circulation Director LX. Murphy, Subscription Director
Jack Gaughan, Associate Art Director
NOVELETTE
EASY WAY OUT, John Brunner 82
SERIAL (Parti)
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, Philip Jos6 Farmer 4
SHORT STORIES
BATTLEGROUND, Greg and Jim Benford 69
THE RIGHT TO REVOLT, Keith Laumer 116
THE RIGHT TO RESIST, Keith Laumer 117
FALLEN SPACEMAN, Lee Harding 152
FEATURES
READING ROOM, Lester del Rey 2
SF CALENDAR 81
HUE AND CRY: Readers Write— and Wrong 174
Cover by GAUGHAN, suggested by FALLEN SPACEMAN
Arnold E. Abramson, Publisher Bernard Williams, Associate Publisher
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3
It would be named the Not For Hire. No one would ever be able to take it away from him, it would be so strongly armored and weapon- ed. Nor would anyone be able to buy or rent it from him. It would be Not For Hire.
The name glowed in great black letters against the white hull. NOT FOR HIRE.
The fabulous Riverboat would have four decks, the boiler deck, the main deck, the hurricane deck and the landing deck for the aer- ial machine. Its overall length would be four hundred and forty feet and six inches. The beam over the paddle-wheel guards would be ninety-three feet. Mean draft, loaded, twelve feet. The hull would be made of magnalium or, per- haps, plastic. The great stacks would spout smoke now and then, because there was a steam boiler aboard. But this was only to pro- pel the big plastic bullets for the steam machine guns. The giant paddlewheels on the sides of the Riverboat would be turned by enormous electrical motors.
The Not For Hire would be the only metal boat on The River, the only boat not propelled by oars or wind, and it would make anybody sit up and stare, whether he was born in 2,000,000 B.C. or in 2000 A.D.
And he, Sam Clemens, would be The Captain, Capital T, capital C, because, aboard this vessel.
carrying a crew of one hundred and twenty, there would be only one Captain.
King John of England could call himself Admiral if he wished, though if Sam Clemens had any- thing to do with it, he’d be First Mate, not Admiral. And if Sam Clemens really had anything to do with it King John — John Lack- land, Rotten John, Dirty John, Lecher John, Pigsty John — would not even be allowed on the boat. Sam Clemens, smoking a big green cigar, wearing a white cap, dressed in a white kilt with a white towel over his shoulders for a cape, would lean out of the star- board port of the great pilothouse and yell, Avast there , you lubbers! Grab hold of that putrescent mass of immorality and treachery and toss him off the gangplank. I don't care if he lands in The River or on the bank ! Get rid of that hu- man garbage!
Over the railing of the boiler deck Prince John would sail. Sly- boots John, screaming, cursing in his French-accented Middle Eng- lish or in Anglo-Norman French or in Esperanto. Then the gang- plank would be drawn up, bells would ring, whistles would blow and Sam Clemens, standing be- hind the pilot, would give the or- der to begin the voyage.
The voyage! Up a River for maybe ten million miles, or may- be twenty million miles, for may-
IF
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be forty years or a hundred years. Such a Riverboat, such a River, such a voyage had never been dreamed of on Earth, long dead Earth! Up The River, the only one on this world, on the only boat like this, with Sam Clemens as La §ipestro , The Captain, and also addressed as La Estro , The Boss.
He was so happy!
And then, as they headed out to- ward the middle of The River, just to test the current, which was strongest in the center of the mighty stream, as the thousands along the bank waved and cheered or wept after the boat, after him, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain— The Captain, The Boss — he saw a man with long yel- low hair and broad shoulders push- ing through the crowd.
THE man wore a towel-like cloth, secured by magnetic tabs under the material, as a kilt. His leather sandals were made of the hide of the whale-sized riverdragon fish. Around his thickly muscled neck he wore a string of brilliantly colored hornfish vertebrae. In his huge powerful hand he gripped the wooden shaft of a large war- axe of iron. His pale blue eyes were fixed on Samuel Clemens and that broad hawk-nosed face was grim.
Sam Clemens screamed to the pilot. Faster! Faster ! Full speed ahead!
The great paddlewheels began
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
to dig into the water more swift- ly— Chunk-chunk . Even through the fiberglas-insulated deck, the vibrations made the deck quiver. Suddenly the blond man, Erik Bloodaxe, tenth-century Viking King, was in the pilothouse.
He shouted at Sam Clemens in Old Norse, Traitor! Droppings of Ratatosk! I told you / would wait along the banks of The River! You betrayed me so you could get the iron from the fallen star and build your great Riverboat!
Sam fled the pilothouse and down the ladders from deck to deck and down into the dark bowels of the hold, but Erik Bloodaxe was al- ways two steps behind.
Past the colossal rotating electric motors Sam Clemens ran and then he was in the chemistry room, where the engineers were making potassium nitrate from human excrement and mixing it with sulfur and charcoal to make gun- powder. Sam grabbed hold of a lighter and a resin torch, pressed the slide and a white-hot glowing wire slid out of the case.
Stop , or Til blow up the whole boat! Sam screamed.
Erik had stopped, but he was swinging the big axe around and around over his head. He grinned and said. Go ahead! You haven t got the guts! You love the River- boat more than you love anything , even your faithless but precious Livy! You wouldnt blow her up!
7
So Tm going to split you down the middle with my axe and then take the Riverboat for myself!
No! No! Sam screamed. You wouldnt dare! You cant! You cant ! This is my dream , my love , my passion , my life , my world! You cant.
The Norseman stepped closer to him; the axe whistled over his head.
I can't? Just stand there and see!
Over his shoulder Sam saw a shadow. It moved forward and be- came a tall, faceless figure. It was X, the Mysterious Stranger, the renegade Ethical who had sent the meteorite crashing into the River- valley so that Sam could have iron and nickel to build his Riverboat on this mineral-poor planet. And so he could sail up The River to the North Polar Sea where the Misty Tower, the Big Grail, call it what you would, was hidden in the cold fog. And there Sam, with the eleven men chosen by X for his as yet unrevealed plan, would storm the Tower and find — find what?
Stranger! Sam called. Save me! Save me!
The laughter was like a wind from the polar sea, turning his en- trails to crystal.
Save yourself , Sam! the Stranger said.
No! No! You promised ! Sam yelled. And then his eyes were open and the last of his groans died away. Or had he dreamed that he was groaning?
8
HE SAT up. His bed was made of bamboo. The mattress was a bamboo fiber cloth stuffed with giant leaves of the irontree. The blanket was made up of five towels secured together by magnetic tabs. The bed was against the wall of a room twenty feet square. It held a desk and a round table and about a dozen chairs, all of bam- boo or pine, and a fired-clay cham- ber pot. There were also a bamboo bucket half-full with water, a tall broad case with many pigeonholes for rolls of paper, a rack with bamboo and pine spears with flint and iron tips, yew bows and ar- rows, a waraxe of nickel-iron and four long steel knives. On the wall were a number of pegs from which white towels hung. On one hat- stand was a naval cap, an officer's, made of leather covered with a thin white cloth.
On the table was his grail, a gray metallic cylinder with a me- tal handle.
On the desk were glass bottles containing a soot-black ink, a number of bone pens and one nickel-iron pen. The papers on the desk were of bamboo, though there were a few sheets of vellum from the inner lining of the stomach of the hornfish.
Glass windows (or ports, as he called them) looked out all around the room and, as far as Sam Clemens knew, this was the only house with glass windows in
IF
the entire Rivervalley. Certain- ly, it was the only one for 10,000 miles either way from this area.
The sole light came from the sky. Though it was not yet dawn, the light was a trifle brighter than that cast by the full moon on Earth. Giant stars of many colors, some so big they looked like chipped- off pieces of the moon, jampacked the heavens. Bright sheets and streamers hung between the stars, behind them, and even, seeming- ly, in front of some of the bright- est. These were cosmic gas clouds, the like of which had never been seen by the unaided eye on Earth. The stars and the clouds made a glory that never ceased to thrill the more sensitive of the humanity along The River.
Sam Clemens, smacking his lips at the sour taste of the liquor he had drunk that evening and the even sourer taste of the dream, stumbled across the floor. He opened his eyes completely when he reached the desk, picked up a lighter and applied the extended hot wire to a stone bracket, where the smoke went out through an opening at the junction of ceiling and wall.
He opened a port and looked out toward The River. A year ago he would have seen only a flat plain about a mile and a half wide and covered with short, tough, bright- green grass. Now it was a hideous mass of piled-up earth, deep pits
and many buildings of bamboo and pine containing brick furn- aces. These were his steel mills (so- called), his glass factory, his smelters, his cement mills, his forges, his blacksmith shops, his armories, his laboratories and his nitric- and sulfuric-acid fac- tories. A half a mile away was a high wall of pine logs enclosing the first metal boat he would build.
Torches flared to his left. Even at night the men were digging out the siderite chunks, hauling up pieces of the nickel-iron.
Behind him had been a forest of thousand-foot irontrees, red pine, lodgepole pine, black oak, white oak, yew trees and thick stands of bamboo. These had stood on the foothills; the hills were mostly still there but the trees, except for the irontrees, were all gone, along with the bamboo. Only the huge irontrees had withstood the steel axes of Clemens' people. The tall grasses had been cut down and their fibers chemically treated to make ropes and paper, but their roots were so tough and so tangled, that there had not been enough rea- son to chop through them. The la- bor and the materials used in chopping through the roots of the short grass of the plains to get to the metal there had been very ex- pensive. Not in terms of money, because that did not exist, but in terms of sweat, worn-out stone and then dulled steel.
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
9
Where this area had been beauti- ful with its many trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build the beautiful boat.
WHOEVER had made this world had planned well. There was not much erosion, even though man had stripped the land of all the vegetation he could. The iron-trees, occupying twenty out of every one hundred square feet of the foothills, stood firm. Nor could the roots of any of the plants be killed; they were so deeply buried.
Sam shivered at the wet and chilly wind which always came late at night from upRiver. He shivered also at the thought of the desola- tion. He loved beauty and nature's order and he loved the parklike ar- rangement of the valley, whatever else he thought about this world. Now he had made it hideous be- cause he had a dream. And he would have to extend that hideous- ness, because his mills and factor- ies needed more wood for fuel, for paper, for charcoal. All that his state had was used up ajid he had about used up all that Cernskujo to the immediate north and Pub- liujo to the immediate south, would trade him. If he wanted more he would have to war on his closest neighbors or make arrange-
ments for trading with the more distant states or those just across The River. Or else conquer them and take their wood away from them. He did not want to do that; he abhorred war in principle and could barely stand it in practice.
But if he was to have his River- boat he had to have wood as fuel for his factories.
He also had to have bauxite and cryolite and platinum if he was to have aluminum generators and motors.
The nearest source of all three was in Soul City, that nation twenty-six miles downRiver dom- inated by Elwood Hacking, who hates whites.
So far, Sam had been able to trade iron weapons for bauxite, cryolite, cinnabar and platinum. Sam's own state, Parolando, need- ed the weapons badly. Adding one burden to the other. Hacking in- sisted that Parolando use its own men to mine and transport the ore.
Sam sighed deeply. Why in hell hadn't the Mysterious Stranger directed the meteorite to fall right by the bauxite deposits? Then, when Sam and Bloodaxe's Vik- ings had sailed into this area im- mediately after the meteorite had struck, they could have claimed the land that was now Soul City for their own. When Hacking arrived, he would have been forced to join Clemens or to leave.
Still, even with the Stranger's
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powers, it could not be easy to de- flect a hundred-thousand-ton, iron-nickel siderite from its course and make it fall only twenty-six miles from the bauxite and other minerals. Actually the Stranger had supposed that he had hit the target on the bull’s-eye. He had told Sam, before he disappeared on some unknown mission, that the minerals were upRiver, all within a seven-mile range. But he had been mistaken. And that had made Sam both glad and angry. He was angry because the minerals were not all within his reach, but he was also happy that the Ethi- cals could make a mistake.
The Stranger called his people the Ethicals. It was they who re- surrected the entire human species and all subhumans intel- ligent enough to have a language. The Resurrection had been ac- complished by purely scientific means. The supernatural had played no part in raising— or re- creating— the dead. All who had died between 2,000,000 B.C. and 2008 A.D. had been resurrected. The only exceptions were idiots and those who had died before the age of five. The Ethicals had re- stored everyone whole and in ex- cellent health, but sterile. They had rejuvenated those who need- ed it. And now, twenty-one years after the first day of resurrec- tion, all looked as if they were no more than twenty-five years old.
But, despite the godlike power of the Ethicals, they could make mistakes and errors.
That fact did not help the hu- mans imprisoned forever be- tween sheer mountains 20,000 feet high in a valley about 9.9 miles wide on the average. They would be imprisoned for thousands of years, if not forever, unless Samuel Langhorne Clemens could build his Riverboat.
SAM went to the unpainted pine cabinet, opened a door, and pulled out an opaque glass bottle. It held about twenty ounces of bourbon donated by people who did not drink. He downed about three ounces, winced, "snorted, slapped his chest and put the bottle back. Hah! Nothing better to start off the day with, especially when you woke up from a nightmare that should have been rejected by the Great Censor of Dreams. If, that is, the Great Censor had any love and regard for one of his fa- vorite dream-makers, Sam Clem- ens. Maybe the Great Censor did not love him after all. It seemed that very few did love Sam any more. He had to do things he did not want to do in order to get the boat built.
And then there was Livy, his wife on Earth for thirty-four years.
He swore, caressed a nonexis- tent moustache, reached back into the cabinet and pulled the bottle
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
11
out again. Another snort. Tears came, but whether engendered by the bourbon or the thought of Livy, he did not know. Probably, in this world of complex forces and mys- terious operations — and opera- tors— the tears were caused by both. Plus other things which his hindbrain did not care to let him peep into at this moment. His hindbrain would wait until his forebrain was bent over, tying its intellectual shoestrings, and would then boot the posterior of said forebrain.
He strode across the bamboo mats and looked through the port window. Down there, about two hundred yards away, under the branches of the thousand-foot irontree, was a round, conical- roofed, two-room hut. Inside the bedroom would be Olivia Lang- don Clemens, his wife — his ex- wife— and the long, lanky, tremen- dously beaked, weak-chinned Savinien de Cyrano II de Berge- rac, swordsman, libertine and man-of-letters.
“Livy, how could you?" Sam said. “How could you break my heart, the heart of Your Youth ?"
A year had passed since she had shown up with Cyrano de Berge- rac. He had been shocked, more shocked than he had ever been in his seventy-four years on Earth and his twenty-one years on the River- world. But he had recovered from it. Or he would have recovered if
he had not gotten another shock, though a lesser one. Nothing could exceed the impact of the first. After all, he could not expect Livy to go without a man for twenty- one years. Not when she was young and beautiful again and still passionate and had no reasonable hope of ever seeing him again. He had lived with a half-dozen women himself, and he could not expect chastity or faithfulness from her. But he had expected that she would drop her mate like a monkey drops a heated penny when she found him again.
Not so. She loved de Bergerac.
He had seen her almost every day since the night she had first come out of the mists of The River. They spoke politely enough and sometimes, when the atmosphere seemed just right, they cracked their reserve and laughed and joked just as they had on. Earth. Some- times, briefly, but undeniably, their eyes told each other that the old love was vibrating between them. Then, when he felt that he had broken out with longing, just like the hives, so he told himself later, laughing while he felt like crying, he had stepped toward her, despite himself, and she had stepped back to Cyrano’s side if he happened to be there or looked around for him if he wasn’t.
Every night she was with that dirty, uncouth, big-nosed, weak- chinned, Adam's-appled, but
12
IF
colorful, strong-minded, witty, vigorous, talented, scary French- man. The virile frog, Sam mut- tered. He could imagine him leap- ing, croaking with lust, toward the white, blackly outlined, curving figure of Livy, leaping, croaking . . .
He shuddered. This was no good. Even when he brought women up here secretly — though he did not have to hide anything — he- could not quite forget her. Even when he chewed dreamgum he could not forget her. If anything, she sailed into the drug-tossed sea of his mind more strongly, blown by the winds of desire. The good ship Livy , white sails bellying out, the trim cleancut curving hull . . .
And he heard her laughter, that lovely laughter. That seemed to be the hardest thing to endure.
He walked away and looked out through the fore ports. He stood by the oak pedestal and the big- spoked riverboat’s wheel he had carved. This room was his “pilot- house” and the two rooms behind made up the “texas.” The whole building was on the side of the hill nearest to the plain. It was on thirty-foot stilts and could be entered through a staircase or ladder (to use a nautical term) on the starboard side or through a port directly from the hill behind the rear chamber of the texas. On top of the pilothouse was a large bell, the only metal bell in the
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
world, as far as he knew. As soon as the waterclock in the corner struck six, he would clang the big bell. And the dark valley would slowly come to life.
II
MISTS still overhung The River and the edge of the banks, but he could see the huge squat mushroom shape of the grailstone a mile and a half down the slope of the plain just by the water’s edge. A moment later, he saw a boat, toy size, emerge from the mists. Two figures jumped out and pulled the dugout onto the shore, then ran off to the right. The light from the skies was bright enough for Sam to see them, though he sometimes lost them when buildings intervened. After going around the two-story pottery factory they cut straight into the hills. He lost them then but it seemed that they were heading for John Plantegenet’s log “palace.”
So much for the sentinel system of Parolando. Every quarter mile on The River’s front was guarded by a hut on thirty-foot stilts with four men on duty. If they saw any- thing suspicious, they were to beat on their drums, blow their bone horns and light their torches.
Two men slipping out of the fog to carry news to King John, ex- King John, of England?
Fifteen minutes later Sam saw a
13
shadow running between shadows. The rope attached to the small bell just inside the entrance rang. He looked through the starboard port. A white face looked up at him. Sam’s own spy, William Grevel, famous wool merchant, citizen of London, died in 1401 in the Year Of Our Lord. There were no sheep or, in fact, any mammals other than man along The River. But the ex-merchant had shown great aptitude for espionage, and he loved to stay up all night and skulk around.
Sam beckoned to him; Grevel ran up the “ladder” and entered after Sam had unbarred the thick oak door.
Sam said, in Esperanto, “ Salu - ton, leutenanto G revel. Kio
estas?**
(Translation: “Hello, Lieutenant Grevel. What’s the matter?”)
Grevel said, “ Bonan matenon , Estro. Ciu grasa fripono, Rego Johano, estas jus akceptita duo spionoj. **
(Translation: “Good morning. Boss. That fat rascal. King John, has just received two spies.”)
Neither Sam nor Grevel could understand each other’s English, but they got along very well in Es- peranto, except now and then.
Sam grinned. Bill Grevel had let himself down from the limb of an irontree, passing directly over a sentry, and down a rope onto the edge of the roof of the two-story
building. He had passed through the bedroom, where three women slept, and then crawled to the top of the staircase. John and his spies, a twentieth-century Italian and a sixth-century Hungarian, were at a table below Grevel. The two had reported the results of their trip upRiver. John was fur- ious and justly so, from his view- point.
Sam, hearing Grevel’s report, al- so became furious.
“He tried to assassinate Arthur of New Brittany? What is that man trying to do, ruin all of us?”
He paced back and forth, stop- ped, lit a big cigar and began pac- ing again. Once he stopped to in- vite Grevel to a bite of cheese and a glass of wine.
It was one of the ironies of Chance or, perhaps, of the Ethi- cals, for who knew what things they arranged, that King John of England and the nephew he had murdered most foully should have been located within thirty-two miles of each other. Arthur, Prince of Brittany of dead Earth, had organized the peoples among whom he found himself into a state he called New Brittany. There were very few old Bretons in the ten-mile long territory he ruled, but that did not matter. New Brittany it was.
It had taken eight months be- fore Arthur had discovered that his uncle was his neighbor. He had
14
IF
traveled incognito to Parolando to verify with his own eyes the identity of John, the uncle who had slit his throat and dropped his weighted body into the Seine. Arthur wanted to capture John and keep him alive for as long as possible under exquisite torture. Killing John would only bar him, possibly forever, from getting his revenge. John, murdered, would awake the next day some place thousands of miles away on The River.
But Arthur had sent emissaries demanding that John be given up to him. These demands had been rejected, of course, though only Sam’s sense of honor and his fear of John, kept him from agreeing to Arthur's demands.
Now John had sent four men to assassinate Arthur. Two had been killed; the others had escaped with minor wounds. This would mean invasion. Arthur not only had wanted revenge on John, he would like to get possession of the meteorite iron.
'DETWEEN Parolando and New -■-^Brittany, a fourteen-mile stretch of the right bank of The River was known as Chernsky's Land, or in Esperanto, ternskujo . Chernsky, a sixteenth-century Ukrainian cavalry colonel, had re- fused an alliance with Arthur. But the nation immediately to New Brittany's north was governed by
Iyeyasu. He was a powerful and ambitious person, the man who had established the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600 with its capital at Yedo, later called Tokyo. Sam’s spies said that the Japanese and the Breton had met six times.
Moreover, just to the north of lyeyasujo was Kleomanujo. This was governed by Cleomenes, a king of Sparta and half-brother to that Leonidas who held the pass at Thermoplyae. Cleomenes had met three times with Iyeyasu and Arthur.
Just south of Parolando was an eleven-mile stretch called Publia, after its king, Publius Crassus. Publius had been an officer in Caesar's cavalry during the Gallic campaigns. He was inclined to be friendly, although he extracted a big price for letting Sam cut down his timber.
South of Publia was Tifonujo, ruled by Tai Fung, one of Kublai Khan's captains, killed on Earth when he fell drunk off a horse.
And south of Tifonujo was Soul City, headed by El wood Hacking and Milton Firebrass.
Sam stopped and glared from under bushy brows at Grevel. “The hell of it. Bill, is there isn’t much I can do. If I tell John 1 know about his trying to murder Arthur, who may deserve murder, for all I know, then John knows that I've got spies inside the house. And he'll just deny everything, ask that
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
15
I bring his accusers forth — and you know what would happen to them, to you."
Grevel paled.
Sam said, “Start your blood running again. I won’t do it. No. The only thing to do is to keep quiet and watch for developments. But I’m choking up to here with keeping quiet. That man is the most despicable I ever met— and if you knew my vast range of ac- quaintances, including pub- lishers, you would feel the depth of my words.”
“John could be a tax-collector,” Grevel said, as if he had plumbed the depths of insult. And he had, for him.
“It was a bad day-when I had to agree* to take John on as a part- ner,” Sam muttered, blowing out smoke as he turned toward Grevel. “But if I hadn’t taken him in, I’d have been robbed of my chance at the iron.”
HE DISMISSED Grevel after thanking him. The skies just above the mountains across The River were paling. Soon the entire vault would be rosy on the edges and blue above, but it would be some time before the sun cleared the mountain. Before then, the grailstones would be discharging.
He washed his face in a basin, combed his thick bush of reddish hair straight back, applied the toothpaste with the tip of his
finger to his teeth and gums, and spat. Then he fastened a belt with four sheaths and a bag dangling from a strap and put it around his waist. He placed a long towel around his shoulders as a cape, picked up a cane of oak shod with iron and, with the other hand, picked up the grail. He went down the stairs. The grass was still wet. It rained every night at three o'clock for a half-hour and the val- ley did not dry until after the sun came up. If it were not for the absence of disease germs and viruses, half the valley’s humans would have died of pneumonia and flu long ago.
Sam was young and vigorous again, but he still did not like to exercise.. As he walked, he thought of the little railway he would like to build from his house to the edge of The River. But that would be too restrictive. Why not build an auto- mobile with a motor that burned wood alcohol?
People began joining him; he was kept busy with “ Saluton /” and “ Bonan Matenon!” At the end of his walk, he gave his grail to a man to put on a depression on the top of the gray granite mushroom- shaped rock. About six hundred of the gray cylinders were placed in the depression and the crowd re- treated to a respectful distance. Fifteen minutes later, the rock erupted with a roar. Blue flames soared twenty-five feet high and
16
IF
thunder echoed from the moun- tain. The appointed grail keepers for the day got onto the rock and passed the cylinders around. Sam took his back to the pilothouse, wondering on the way why he did not delegate someone to carry his grail down for him. The truth was, a man was so dependent on the grail, he just could not trust it out of his sight.
Back in the house, he opened the lid. In six containers in snapdown racks were breakfast and various goodies.
The grail had a false bottom in which were concealed an energy- matter converter and programed menus. This morning he got bacon and eggs, toast with butter and jam, a glass of milk, a slice of cantaloupe, ten cigarettes, a marihuana stick, a cube of dream- gum, a cigar and a cup of some de- licious liqueur.
He settled down to eat with gusto and got, instead, a bad taste. Looking out through the star- board port (so he wouldn't see into Cyrano’s door), he saw a youth on his knees before his hut. The fel- low was praying, his eyes closed, his hands church-steepled. He wore only a kilt and a spiral bone from a Riverfish suspended by a leather string around his neck. His hair was dark blond, his face was broad and his body was muscular. But his ribs were beginning to show.
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
The praying man was Hermann Goering, a missionary of the Church of the Second Chance.
Sam swore and reared up from his chair, knocking it backward, picked it up and moved his break- fast from his desk to the big round table in the center of the room. The fellow had spoiled his appetite more than once. If there was one thing Sam could not stand, it was an ex-sinner, and Hermann Goering had sinned more than most and was now, by way of compensation, holier than most. Or so it seemed to Sam, though Goering claimed that he was the lowliest of the low — in a sense.
Take your damned arrogant humility away, Sam had said. Or at least take it downwind . . .
If it had not been for the Mag- na Carta which Sam had drawn up (over King John’s protests, thus repeating history), Sam would have kicked Goering and his followers out long ago. Well, at least a week ago. But the Carta, the constitution of the state of Parolando, the most democratic constitution in the history of mankind, gave total religious freedom and total freedom of speech. Almost total, anyway. There had to be some limitations.
But his own document forbade Sam to stop the missionaries of the Church of the Second Chance from preaching.
Yet if Goering continued to pro-
17
test, to make speeches, to convert more to his doctrine of pacifist resistance Sam Clemens would never get his Riverboat. Her- mann Goering had made a symbol of the boat; he said that it represented man's vanity, greed, lust for violence and disregard of the Creator’s designs for the world of man.
Man should not build river- boats, he should built more stately mansions of the soul. All man needed now was a roof over his head to keep off the rain and thin walls for a little privacy now and then. Man no longer had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. His food and.drink were given to him with nothing expected in re- turn, not even gratitude. Man had time to determine his destiny. But man must not transgress on oth- ers, not rob them of their posses- sions, their love or their dignity. He must respect others and himself. But he could not do this through delivery, robbery, violence, con- tempt. He must . . .
SAM turned away. Goering had some fine sentiments to which Sam subscribed. But Goering was wrong if he thought that licking the boots of the people who had put them here was going to lead to any Utopia or salvation for their souls. Humanity had been tricked again; it was being used, misused and abused. Everything, the
resurrection, the rejuvenation, freedom from disease, free food and liquor and smokes, freedom from hard work or economic neces- sity, everything was an illusion, a candy bar to lead baby mankind into some dark alley where . . . Where what? Sam did not know. But The Mysterious Stranger had said that mankind was being tricked in the crudest hoax of all, even crueler than the first hoax, that of life on Earth. Man had been resurrected and put on this planet as the subject of a tremendous scholarly study. That was all. And when the studies were completed Man would go down in- to darkness and oblivion once more. Cheated again.
But what did the Stranger have to gain by telling this to certain- selected men? Why had he chosen a small number to help him defeat his fellow Ethicals? What was the Stranger really after? Was he ly- ing to Sam and Cyrano and Odysseus and the others whom Sam had not yet met?
Sam Clemens did not know. He was as much in The Great Dark as he had been on Earth. But he did know one thing for certain. He wanted that Riverboat.
The mists had cleared away; breakfast time was over. He checked the water clock and then rang the big bell on the pilothouse. As soon as it had ceased tolling the wooden whistles of the sergeants
18
IF
began shrilling. Up and down the ten-mile stretch of the Rivervalley known as Parolando the whistles shrilled. Then the drums began to beat and Parolando went to work.
Ill
THERE were 17,000 people in the state and the Riverboat would be taking only one hundred and twenty. Twenty of these al- ready knew for sure they would be going. Sam and Joe Miller, Lo- thar von Richthofen, Van Boom, de Bergerac, Odysseus, three en- gineers and King John and their hutmates, had been promised. The rest would know whether or not they had worked for nothing a few days before the boat sailed. At that time, the names would be writ- ten on slips of paper and placed in- side a big wire cage. The cage would be whirled around and around, and then Sam would stop it, and, blindfolded, would reach in and pull out, one after the oth- er, one hundred names. And these lucky ones would be the crew of the Not For Hire.
The Not For Hire had about 5,000,000 miles to travel, if The Stranger could be believed. Aver- aging about 335 miles every twen- ty-four hours, it would take over forty-one years to reach the end of The River. But it would not aver- age that much, of course. The crew would have to put into shore for
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
extensive vacations on land and there would be repairs to be made. In fact, the Riverboat might wear out, although Sam planned on taking many spare parts. Once the boat was on its way it could not put back for parts or pick them up any- where else. There would be no met- al of any consequence from this place on.
It was strange to think that he would be about one hundred and forty years old when he got to the headwaters of The River.
But what was that when he had thousands of years of youth to go?
He looked through the bow ports. The plain was full of people streaming down from the hills to the factories. Behind him the hills would be alive with others on their way to the factories in the hills. And a small army would be work- ing on the big dam to the north- west, near the base of the moun- tains. A concrete wall was being constructed between two steep hills to dam up the water flowing from a spring near the top of the mountain. When the lake behind the dam was full, its overflow would be used to drive electrical generators to power the mills.
At present the electrical energy needed came from a grailstone. A giant stepdown transformer of aluminum took the energy three times a day, sent it through brob- dingnagian aluminum wires to a two-story device known as the ba-
tacitor. This was a late twentieth- century electronic discovery that could accept hundreds of kilovolts in a hundredth of a microsecond and could dis- charge it at any rate from a tenth of a volt to one hundred kilovolts. It was the prototype of the bataci- tor that would be put on the River- boat. At present the energy was chiefly used in a cutting device made by van Boom that sliced through the pieces of nickel-iron dug up on the plain — the energy could also be moderated to melt the metal. The aluminum for the wires and the batacitor had been laboriously and expensively made from aluminum,, silicate derived from the clay under the grass along the base of the mountains. But that supply had run out and now the only economically feasible source was in Soul City.
Sam sat down at his desk, pulled out a drawer and removed a tall book bound in fish-bladder leath- er; the pages were bamboo-fiber paper. It was his diary, The Memoirs of a Lazarus . For the time being he was using mk made of water and tannic acid from oak bark and carbon from finely ground charcoal in suspension to write down the day-by-day hap- penings and his reflections. When the technology of Parolan- do was improved enough he would use an electronic recorder that van Boom had promised him.
He had no sooner started writ- ing than the drums began beating. The big bass drums represented dashes; the small soprano drums, dots. The code was Morse; the lan- guage, Esperanto. Von Richthofen would be landing soon.
SAM stood up to look out again. A half a mile away was the bamboo catamaran on which Lothar von Richthofen had sailed downRiver only ten days ago. Through the starboard ports Sam saw a squat figure with tawny hair coming out of the gateway of King John's log palace. Behind him came bodyguards and syco- phants.
King John was making sure that von Richthofen did not give Sam Clemens any secret messages from Elwood Hacking.
The ex-monarch of England, present co-ruler of Parolando, wore a kilt with red and black checks, a poncholike arrange- ment of towels and knee-length, red-leather Riverdragon boots. Around his thick waist was a wide belt with a number of sheaths con- taining steel daggers, a short sword and a steel axe. One hand held a steel rod coronet, one of many sources of contention be- tween Sam and King John. Sam did not want to waste metal on such useless anachronisms, but John had insisted and Sam had given in.
20
IF
Sam found some satisfaction in thinking about the name of his lit- tle nation. Parolando in Esperanto meant pair land and was so called because two men governed it. But Sam had not mentioned to John that another translation could be Twain Land.
John followed a hard-dirt path around a long, low factory build- ing and then he was at the foot of the staircase of Sam's quarters. A bodyguard, a big thug named Sharkey, pulled the bell rope and the little bell tinkled.
Sam stuck his head out and shouted, "‘Come aboard, John!”
John looked up at him from pale blue eyes and motioned to Sharkey to precede him. John was cautious about assassins and he had reason to be. He was also re- sentful about having had to come to Sam— but he had known that von Richthofen would report to Sam first.
Sharkey entered, inspected Sam's pilothouse and looked through the three rooms of the tex- as. Sam heard a growl, as low and powerful as a lion's, from the rear bedroom. Sharkey came back swiftly and closed the door.
Sam smiled and said, “Joe Mil- ler may be sick, but he can still eat ten Polish prizefighters for break- fast and call for a second helping.”
Sharkey did not reply. He sig- naled through the port that John could come up.
the fabulous riverboat
The catamaran was beached now and the tiny figure of von Richt- hofen was coming across the plain, holding his grail in one hand and the wooden winged ambas- sadorial staff in the other. Through the other port Sam could see the lanky figure of de Berger- ac leading a platoon toward the south wall. Livy was not in sight.
John entered. Sam said, “ Bonan matenon, JohanoV ’
It galled John that Sam refused to address him as Via Rega Mosto — Your Majesty — in pri- vate. La Konsulo — the Con- sul— was their correct title and even that came reluctantly from Sam’s lips. Sam encouraged oth- ers to call him La Estro> The Boss, because that angered John even more.
John grunted and sat down at the round table. Another bodyguard, a big dark proto-Mongolian with massive bones and immensely powerful muscles, Zaksksromb, who presumably had died about 30,000 B.C., lit up a huge brown cigar for John. Zak, as he was known, was the strongest man in Parolando, with the exception of Joe Miller. And it could be argued that Joe Miller was not a man — or, at least, certainly not homo sapiens.
SAM wished Joe would get out of bed, because Zak made him nervous. But Joe was sedating
21
himself with dreamgum. Two days ago a chunk of siderite had slipped from a crane’s tongs as Joe was passing beneath it. The op- erator swore it had been an acci- dent, but Sam had his suspicions. John would want to get rid of Sam’s bodyguard, who was incor- ruptible and who could scare off a legion of assassins just .by boo- ing at them.
Sam puffed on his cigar and said, “Hear anything about your nephew lately?”
John did not start, but his eyes did widen a trifle. He looked at Sam across the table.
“No, should 1?”
“1 just wondered. I’ve been thinking about asking Arthur down for a conference. There’s no reason why you two should be try- ing to kill each other. This isn't Earth, you know. Why can’t we call off old feuds? What if you did drop him off in a sack into the estuary? Let bygones be by- gones. We could use his wood and we need more limestone for calci- um carbonate and magnesium. He's got plenty.”
John glared, then hooded his eyes and smiled.
Tricky John, Sam thought. Smooth John. Despicable John.
“To get wood and limestone we'd have to pay with steel arms,” John said. “I’m not about to per- mit my dear nephew to get his hands on more steel.”
“Just thought I’d broach the subject to you,” Sam said, “be- cause at noon — ”
John stiffened. “Yes?”
“Well, I thought I’d bring up the subject to the Council. We might have a vote on it.”
John relaxed. “Oh?”
Sam thought. You think you’re safe. You’ve got Pedro Ansurez and Frederick Rolfe on your side and a five-to-three vote in the Council is a nay vote . .
Once again he contemplated sus- pending the Magna Carta so that things could be done that needed to be done. But that might mean civil war and that could mean the end of the dream.
He paced back and forth while John described in a loud voice and sickening detail his latest con- quest of his latest blonde. Sam tried to ignore the words; he still got mad because the man boasted, although by now any woman who accepted John had only herself to blame.
THE little bell tinkled. Lothar von Richthofen entered. He was a well-built youth with long blond hair and handsome, some- what Slavic, features. He looked like a less stocky and better look- ing Goering. The two had known each other well during World War I, since both had served under Bar- on Manfred won Richthofen, Lo- thar’s older brother. Sam, of
22
IF
course, having died in 1910, knew Sam felt faint. He leaned on the about the Great War only by hear- table until things came back into say, but Lothar had painted so focus. Then he said, "Til take a many word pictures that Sam shot of Kentucky courage my- thought he could visualize those self/*
days. Lothar was a wild, brash and Von Richthofen continued. “It essentially likable person but seems that Hacking isn't too hap- this morning his smiles and his py with the makeup of his state, debonair bearing were gone. It's one-fourth Harlem blacks who
“What's the bad news?" Sam died between 1960 and 1980, you said. know, and one-eighth eighteenth-
Lothar took the cup of bourbon century Dahomeyan blacks. But that Sam offered, downed it and he has a nonblack population of said, “Sinjoro Hacking has just one-fourth fourteenth-century about finished putting up forti- Wahhabi Arabs, fanatics who fications. Soul City has walls still claim that Mohammed is twelve feet high and ten thick on all their prophet and they’re here just fronts. Hacking was nasty to me, for a short trial period. Then very nasty. He called me an ofejo there is the quarter that is thir- and a honkio , words new to me. I teenth-century Asiatic Indian did not care to ask him for an ex- Dravidian, black-skinned Cauca- planation." sians, and one-eighth of people
“ Ofejo might be from the Eng- from anywhere and anytime. A lish ofay,” Sam said, “but I never slight majority of these is twenti- heard the other word. Honkio?” eth-century."
“You'll hear those words a lot in Sam nodded. Though the resur- the future," Lothar said, “if you rected humanity consisted of per- deal with Hacking. And you will, sons who lived from 2,000,000 B.C. Hacking finally got down to busi- to 2008 A.D., one-fourth had been ness after spewing out a torrent born after 1899 A. D. of abuse, mostly about my Nazi “Hacking wants his Soul City to ancestors. I never heard of the be almost entirely black. He said Nazis on Earth, you know, since I that he had believed that integra- died in a plane crash in 1922. He tion was possible when he lived on seemed to be angry about some- Earth. The young whites of his day thing— maybe his anger had noth- were free of the racial prejudices ing to do with me originally. But of their elders and he had known the essence of his speech was that hope. But there aren't too many of he might cut off the bauxite and his former white contemporaries other minerals." in his land. And the Wahhabi
the fabulous riverboat
23
Arabs are driving him out of his mind. Hacking became a Mos- lem on Earth, did you know that? First he was a Black Muslim, an American home-grown variety. Then he became a real Moslem, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and was quite certain that the Arabs, even if they were white, were not racists.
“But the massacre of the Sudanese blacks by the Sudanese Arabs and the history of Arabic enslavement of blacks disturbed him. Anyway, these nineteenth- century Wahhabi are not racists— they’re just religious fanatics and too much trouble. He didn’t say so, but 1 was therejen days and I saw enough. The Wahhabis want to convert Soul City to their brand of Moslemism and if they can't do it peacefully, they’ll do it bloodily. Hacking wants to get rid of them and of the Dravidians, who seem to regard themselves as superior. Anyway, Hacking will continue to furnish us bauxite if we will send him all our black citizens in re- turn for his Wahhabi and Dravidi- an citizens. Plus an increased amount of steel arms. Plus a larger share in the raw siderite.”
Sam groaned. King John spat on the floor. Sam scowled and said, “ Merdo , Johano! Not even a Plantagenet gobs on my floor! Use the spittoon or get out!"
He forced himself to push down his rage and frustration as King
24
John bristled. Now was not a time to bring about a confrontation. The vainglorious ex-monarch would never back down on the spitting issue, which was actually trifling.
Sam gestured self-deprecating- ly and said, “Forget about it, John. Spit all you want to!’’ But he could not resist adding: “As long as I have the same privilege in your house, of course.’’
JOHN growled and popped a chocolate into his mouth. He used the growling, grinding voice that indicated that he, too, was very angry but was imposing great self-control.
“This Saracen, Hacking, gets too much. I say we have kissed his black hand long enough. His de- mands have slowed down the build- ing of the ship—’’
“Boat, John," Sam said. “It’s a boat, not a ship."
“ Boato , smoato. I say, let us conquer Soul City, put the citizens to the sword and seize the min- erals. Then we will be able to make aluminum on the spot. In fact, we could build the boat there. And, to make sure that we are not inter- fered with and have the wood needed, we should conquer all the states between us and Soul City." Powermad John.
Yet, Sam was inclined to think that he might, for once, be right. In a month or so Parolando would
IF
have the weapons that would en- able it to do just what John was proposing. Except that Publia was friendly and their bills were not high, and Tifonujo, though it demanded much, had permitted itself to be stripped of trees. It was possible that both states planned to use the nickel-iron they got for their wood to make weapons so that they could attack Parolando.
The savages across The River were probably planning the same thing.
“I’m not through," von Richthofen said. '‘Hacking made his demands about the trading of citizens on a one-to-one basis. But he won’t come to any agreement unless we send a black to deal with him. He says he was insulted when you sent me, since I’m a Prussian and a Junker to boot. But he’ll overlook that, since we didn’t know any better, if we send him a member of the Council the next time. One who’s black."
Sam’s cigar almost fell out.
"We don’t have a black Coun- cilman."
"Exactly. What Hacking is say- ing is that we had better elect one."
John passed both hands through his shoulder-length tawny hair and then stood up. His pale blue eyes were fiery under the lion-colored eyebrows.
"This Saracen thinks he can tell us how to conduct our internal af- fairs. I say, war!"
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
Sam said, "Now, just a minute. Your Majesty. You have good rea- son to be mad, as the old farmer said — then fell in. But the truth is, we can defend ourselves quite well — but we cannot invade and occupy any large territory."
"Occupy?" John shouted. "We will slaughter half and chain the other half!"
"The world changed much after you died, John — uh. Your Majesty. Admittedly there are other forms of slavery than the outright form, but I don’t want to get into an argument about definitions. There is no use making a fuss, as the fox said to the hens. We just ap- point another Councilman, pro tern. And we send him to Hack- ing."
"There is no provision in the Magna Carta for a pro tem Coun- cilman," Lothar said.
"We change the Carta," Sam said.
"That’ll take a popular elec- tion."
John snorted disgust. He and Sam Clemens had gone through too many blazing arguments about the rights of the people. Sam held firm on these points, and Sam was La Estro , The Boss, to the greatest number of citizens, even if the two Consuls theoreti- cally held equal powers.
"There’s one other thing,’’ Lothar said, still smiling but with an exasperated note in his voice.
25
44 Hacking asks that Firebrass be allowed to visit here for a tour of inspection. Firebrass is especially interested in seeing our airplane.”
JOHN sputtered. “He asks if we care if he sends a spy!"
“I don't know," Sam said. “Firebrass is Hacking's chief of staff. He might get a different idea of us. He’s an engineer— I think he had a Ph.D., too, in physics. I've heard about him. What did you find out, Lothar?”
“He impressed me very much," von Richthofen said. "He was bom in nineteen seventy-four in Syracuse, New York. His father was black and his mother was half - Irish and half-Iroquois Indian. He was in the second party to land on Mars and the first to orbit Jupiter—"
Sam was thinking, men really did that. Landed on the Moon and then Mars. Right out of Jules Verne and Frank Reade, Jr. Fan- tastic, yet no more fantastic than this world. Or, indeed, than the mundane world of 1910. None of it could be explained in a manner to satisfy any reasonable man. It was all incredible.
“We'll put it up to the Council, today, John," Sam said. “If you have no objection. We'll have a general election on the pro tern Councilman. I personally favor Uzziah Cawber."
“Cawber was a slave, wasn't
he?" Lothar said. “ I don't know. Hacking said he didn't want any Uncle Toms sent."
Once a slave , always a slave , Sam thought. Even when a slave revolts , kills and is killed as a pro- test against his slavery -resur- rected, he still does not think of himself as a free man . He was born and raised in a world soaked with the rotten essence of slave- dom and every thought he thinks , every move he makes , is stained with slavery , subtly altered with slavery. Cawber was born in 1841 in Montgomery , Alabama. He was taught to read and write. He served in the house of his master as his secretary. He killed his master's son in 1863, escaped and went West and became a cowboy , of all tnings, and then a miner. He was killed with a Sioux spear in 1876 ; the ex-slave killed by a man about to become a stave . Cawber is de- lighted with this world — or claims to be — because no man can en- slave him here or keep him en- slaved. But he is the slave of his own mind and of the reactions of his nerves. Even when he holds his head high he will jump if some- body cracks a whip and his head will bow before he can stop it .. .
Why, oh, why, had man been brought back to life? Men and women were ruined by what had happened on Earth and they would never be able to undo the damage. The Second Chancers
26
IF
claimed a man could change, en- tirely change. But the Second Chancers were a pack of dream- gummers.
“If Hacking calls Cawber an Uncle Tom, Cawber will kill him,” Sam said. “I say, let’s send him.”
John’s tawny eyebrows rose. Sam knew what he was thinking. Perhaps he could use Cawber, one way or another.
Sam looked at the waterclock. “Time for the inspection tour. Care to come along, John? I’ll be with you in a minute,” and he sat down at his desk to make a few more entries in his diary.
That gave John the chance to leave first, as befitted the ex-Kiftg of England and a good part of France. Sam thought it was ridicu- lous to worry about who preceded whom, yet he disliked John so much he could not bear to let him gain even this minor victory. Rather than argue about it, or just walk out ahead of him, and so cause John to throw a fit, he pre- tended he had work to do.
IV
SAM caught up with the group, which included the six Council- men, just outside the nitric-acid factory. They went through the factories swiftly. The stinks emanating from the nitric and sul-
furic acids, from the destructive distillation of wood to make alcohol, acetone, creosote, turpen- tine and acetic acid, the for- maldehyde vats and the treatment of human excrement and lichen scraped off the mountains to extract potassium nitrate — these, combined, were enough to make a hyena lose its breakfast. They were roasted and deafened in the steel mill and the grinding mills and the forges and blacksmith shops. They were covered with a white dust in the limestone mills and magnesium factory. In the aluminum factory they were again roasted, deafened — and stunk out.
The gunsmith shop up in the hills was not operating at the moment. Except for distant noises, it was quiet. But it was not beautiful. The earth had been dug up, the trees cut down and smoke from the fac- tories up the River was black and acrid along the mountains.
Van Boom, the late twentieth- century, half Zulu, half Afrikaans chief engineer, met them. He was a handsome man with a dark bronze skin and curly hair. He stood about six-three and weighed about two hundred and fifty. He had been born in 1976 in a ditch during The Bloody Years.
He greeted them cordially enough (he liked Sam and toler- ated John), but he did not smile as usual.
“It’s ready,” he said, “but I
27
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
want my objections recorded. It's a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it's wasteful and in- efficient."
"You make it sound like a Con- gressman," Sam said.
Van Boom led them into the high doorway of the bamboo building, where a steel handgun lay on a table. Van Boom picked it up and even in his big hand the gun was huge. He strode past the others and out into the light of the sun. Sam was exasperated. He had held out his hand for the gun and the fellow had ignored him. If Van Boom intended to demonstrate it outside, why hadn’t he said so in the first place?
"Engineers," Sam muttered. Then he shrugged. You might as well hit a Missouri mule between the eyes with your pinkie as try to change Van Boom’s ways.
Van Boom held up the gun so that the sunshine twinkled against the silvery gray metal. "This is the Mark I pistol," he said. "Called so because The Boss invented it."
Sam’s anger melted like ice in a Mississippi River thaw.
"It’s a breech-loading, single- shot, flintlock hand weapon with a rifled barrel and a breakdown action."
He held the gun in his right hand and said, "You load it so. You press forward the lock switch on the left side of the barrel. This re-
leases the breech lock. You then press down the barrel with the left hand. This action forces the trig- ger guard into the grip, where the guard acts as a lever to cock the hammer."
He reached into a bag strapped to his belt and removed a large brown hemispherical object. "This is a bakelite or phenol-for- maldehyde-resin bullet. It is sixty caliber. You press the bullet, so, until it engages the lands of the barrel."
He removed from his bag a shiny package with black contents.
"This is a charge of black gun- powder wrapped in cellulose ni- trate. Some time in the future^ we’ll have cordite instead of gun- powder. If we use this gun, that is. Now, I insert the load into the chamber with the primer end first. The primer is a twist of nitrate paper impregnated with gun- powder. Then I lift the barrel with my left hand, thus, locking it into place. The Mark I is now ready to fire. But, for emergency, if the primer does not ignite, you can pour priming powder into the touchhole just forward of the rear sight. In case of misfire, the gun may be cocked with the right thumb. Note that this flash vent on the right side of the action shield protects the shooter’s face."
A MAN had brought out a large wooden target and had inserted
28
IF
it in a frame on four legs. The tar- get was about twenty yards away. Van Boom turned toward it, held out the gun, clenched both hands and sighted along the front and rear sights.
“Get behind me, gentlemen," he said. "The heat of the passage through the air will burn off the surface of the bullet and leave a thin trail of smoke which you may be able to see. The plastic bullet has to be of such large caliber be- cause of its light weight. But this increases the wind resistance. If we decide to use this gun — which I definitely am against — we might increase the caliber to .75 in the Mark II. The effective range is about fifty yards, but the accuracy is not good beyond thirty yards and nothing to brag about within that range."
The flint was in the hammer. When Van Boom would pull the trigger, the hammer would fall and scrape along the file-like sur- face of the frizzen. The frizzen cov- ered the priming pan and should be knocked forward by the flint, un- covering the primer twist of the powder charge.
There was a click as the sear let the hammer go, a flash as the primer twist burned —and a boom- ing. The click-flash-boom took al- most as long as it would take to say each word and Van Boom had had time between the click and the boom to bring the gun back into
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line after it had been jarred away by the impact of the heavy ham- mer and flint.
The bullet did leave a very faint trail of smoke, quickly dissipated by the fifteen-mile-an-hour wind. Sam, looking past Van Boom's arm, could see the bullet curve out and then back, carried by the wind. But Van Boom must have been practicing, because the bullet struck near the bull's eye. It went halfway into the soft pine, shattered and left a large hole in the wood.
"The bullet won't penetrate deeply into a man," Van Boom said, "but it will leave a large hole. And if it hits near bone, the frag- ments should break the bone."
The next hour was spent busily and happily with the Consuls and Councilmen taking turns shooting. King John was especially delighted, though perhaps a little awed, be- cause he had never seen a gun be- fore. His first experience with gun- powder had come several years after he had been resurrected and he had seen only bombs and wood- en rockets.
At last Van Boom said, "If you keep up, gentlemen, you will exhaust our supply of bullets — and it takes a lot of labor and materials to make these bullets. Which is one reason why I object to making any more. My other reasons are: one, the gun is accurate only at close range; two, it takes so long to
29
load and shoot that a good bow- man could drop three pistol handlers while they’re loading and stay outside the effective range of the guns. Moreover, a plastic bullet isn’t recoverable, whereas an arrow is.”
Sam said, “That’s a lot of non- sense! The mere fact that we would have these guns would demon- strate our technological and mili- tary superiority. We’d scare the enemy half to death before the battle started. Also, you forget that it takes a long time to train a good bowman, but anyone can shoot one of these after a rela- tively short lesson.”
“True,” Van Boom said. “But could they hit anyone? Besides, I was thinking of making steel crossbows. They can’t be handled as fast as longbows, but they don’t require any more training than guns do and the bolts are recover- able. And they’re a hell of a lot more deadly than these noisy stinking gadgets.”
“No sir,” Sam said. “No, sir. 1 insist that we make at least two hundred of these. We’ll outfit a new group, the Parolando Pisto- leers. They’ll be the terror of The River — you watch them; you’ll see!”
FOR a change King John was on Sam’s side. He stated that the first two pistols should go to Sam and to himself and the next
dozen to their bodyguards. Then the new group could be organized and trained.
Sam was grateful for the back- ing, but he told himself to check on the men who formed the Pis- toleers. He did not want it made up largely of men loyal to John.
Van Boom made no effort to hide his disgust. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take a good yew bow and twelve arrows and stand fifty yards away. At a signal all eight of you can advance on me, firing at will with your Mark I’s— and I’ll drop all eight of you before you get close enough to hit me. Is it a deal? I’m willing to lay my life on the line.”
“Don’t be childish,” Sam said.
Van Boom rolled his eyes up- ward. “7’m childish? You're jeo- pardizing Parolando — and your boat — because you want guns to play with!”
“Just as soon as the guns are made you can start making all the bows you want,’’ Sam said. “Look! We’ll make armor, too, for the Pistoleers! That should dis- pose of your objections! Why didn’t I think of that before? Why, our men will be dressed up in steel that’ll repel the Stone Age weap- ons of the enemy as if they were straws. Let the enemy shoot his yew bows with his flint-tipped ar- rows. They’ll bounce off the steel and the Pistoleers can take their time and blow the enemy into the next county!”
30
IF
“You forget that we’ve had to barter our ore and even metal wea- pons for wood and other materials we need,” Van Boom said. “The enemy will have arrows with steel tips that can drive through armor. Don’t forget Crecy and Agin- court.”
“There’s just no dealing with you,” Sam said. “You must be half Dutch — you’re so stubborn.”
“If your thinking is representa- tive of the thinking of white men, then I’m glad I’m half Zulu,” Van Boom said.
“Don’t get huffy,” Sam replied. “Congratulations on the gun. Tell you what, we'll call it the Van Boom-Mark I. How’s that?”
“I’d just as soon not have my name attached to it,” the engineer said. “So be it. I’ll make your two hundred guns. But I’d like to make an improved version. You know, the Mark II we talked about?”
“Let's make two hundred of these first, then we’ll start on the Mark II,” Sam said. “We don't want to mess around so long try- ing to get the perfect weapon that we suddenly find we don't have any at all. Still — ”
He talked for a while about the Mark II. He had a passion for mechanical gadgets. On Earth he had invented a number of things, all of which were going to make him a fortune. And there was the Paige typesetting machine, into which he had sunk — and it had
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
sunk — all the wealth he had made from his books.
Sam thought of the typesetting monster and how that wonderful contraption had bankrupted him. For a second, Paige and Van Boom were one and he felt guilty and a little panicky.
VAN BOOM next complained about the materials and the la- bor put into the AM P-1, their aeri- al machine prototype. Sam ig- nored him. He went with the oth- ers to the hangar, which was on the plains about a mile north of Sam’s quarters. The plains had been left undisturbed in front of the bamboo hangar so that the plane, when it flew, would have a narrow landing strip. The craft was only partly finished but would look almost as skeletal and frail when ready to fly as it did now.
“It's similar to some of the planes built in nineteen-ten,” von Richthofen said. “I'll be exposed from my waist up when I sit in the cockpit. The whole machine looks more like a metal dragonfly than anything else. The main object is to test out the efficiency of the wood- alcohol-burning motor and our materials.”
Von Richthofen promised that the first flight would be made with- in three weeks. He showed Sam the plans for the rocket launchers to be mounted under the wings. “The plane can carry about six
31
rockets, but it’ll mostly be good only for scouting. It won’t go fast- er than forty miles an hour against the wind. But it'll be fun flying it.”
Sam was disappointed that the plane wasn’t a two-seater. He had never flown. But von Richthofen said the next prototype would be a two-seater and Sam would be his first passenger.
‘‘After you’ve tested it out,” Sam said. He expected John to protest about this and to insist that he be taken up first. But evidently John was not too eager to fly.
The last stop was at the boat- yard, located halfway between the hangar and Sam’s house. The craft within the pine-log enclosure would be completed within a week. The Firedragon I was the amphi- bious prototype of the boat that would be the launch for the big boat. It was a beautiful machine, made of thick magnalium, about thirty-two feet long, shaped like a U.S. Navy cruiser with wheels, with three turrets on its sleek top deck. It was powered by steam, burned wood alcohol, could oper- ate in water or on land, carried a crew of eleven and was, so Sam declared, invincible.
He patted the cold gray hull and said, “Why should we worry about having bowmen? Or having anything but this? This juggernaut could crush a kingdom all by itself. It has a steampowered cannon the like of which the world. Earth or
this planet, has never seen. That is why it is steamdriven and why it has such a huge boiler.”
All in all, the tour had made him happy. It was true that the plans for the great Riverboat had barely been started. But those took time. It was vital that the state be well protected at first, and just making the preparations was fun. He rubbed his hands and puffed on a new cigar, drawing the green smoke deeply into his lungs.
And then he saw Livy.
He beloved Livy, sick for so many years, and dead, finally, in Italy, in 1904.
Restored to life and youth and beauty, but not, alas, to him.
SHE was walking toward him, carrying her grail by its han- dle, wearing a white, scarlet-edged kilt that came halfway down her thighs and a thin white scarf for a bra. She had a fine figure, good legs, handsome features. Her forehead was broad and satiny white. Her eyes were large and luminous. Her lips were full and shapely; her smile, attractive; her teeth, small and very white. She customarily wore her dark hair parted, combed down smooth in front but twisted into a figure eight in the back. Behind an ear she wore one of the giant crimson rose- like blooms that grew from the vines on the irontrees. Around her neck was a necklace made of the
32
IF
convoluted red vertebrae of the hornfish.
Sam's heart felt as if it were being licked by a cat.
She swayed as she walked to- ward him and her breasts bounced beneath the semiopaque fabric. Here was his Livy, who had always been so modest, had worn heavy clothes from the neck down to the ankle and had never undressed before him in the light. Now she reminded him of the half-naked women of the Sandwich Islands and he felt uneasy. He knew why. His queasiness among the natives had been as much due to their un- wanted attraction for him as repulsion, each feeling dependent on the other and having nothing to do with the natives.
Livy had had a puritanical up- bringing but she had not been ruined by it. On Earth she had learned to drink and to like beer, had even smoked a few times and had become an infidel or, at least, a great doubter. She had even tolerated his constant swearing and had let loose with a few blisterers herself if the girls were not around. The accusations that she had censored his books and so emas- culated them were off the target. He had done most of the censoring himself.
Yes, Livy had always shown adaptability.
Too much. Now, after twenty years of absence from him, she had
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
fallen in love with Cyrano de Ber- gerac. And Sam had the uneasy feeling that that wild Frenchman had awakened in her something that Sam might have awakened if he had not been so inhibited himself. But after these years on The River and the chewing of a certain amount of dreamgum he had lost many of his own inhibi- tions.
It was too late for him.
Unless Cyrano left the scene . . .
“Hello, Sam," she said in En- glish. “How are you on this fine day?"
“Every day is fine here," he said. “You can't even talk about the weather, let alone do anything about it."
She had a beautiful laugh. “Come along with me to the grailstone," she said. “It's almost time for lunch."
Every day he swore not to come near her because to do so hurt too much. And every day he took advantage of the smallest chance to get as close to her as he could.
“Jim-dandy," he said. “Come along. How's Cyrano?"
“Oh, very happy because he's finally going to get a rapier. Bildron, the swordsmith, prom- ised that he'd have the first one— after yours and the other Councilmen's, of course. He'd taken so long to reconcile him- self to the fact that he would never hold a metal sword in his hand
33
again. Then he heard about the meteroite and came here — and now the greatest swordsman in the world will have a chance to show everybody that his reputa- tion wasn’t a lie, as some say.”
“Now Livy,” he said. “I didn’t say people had lied about his repu- tation. 1 said that maybe they exaggerated some. I still don’t be- lieve that story about his holding off two hundred swordsmen all by himself.”
“The fight at the Porte de Nesle was authentic! And it wasn’t two hundred, you’re the one pumping it up, Sam, just as you always do. There was a crowd of hired thugs that could have been a hundred or might just as well tiave been. Even if there had been only twenty-five, the fact is that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed to save his friend, the Chevalier de Lignieres —he killed two and wounded sev- en and ran the rest of them off. That is God’s truth!”
“I don't want to get into an argument about the merits of your man,” he said. “Or about any- thing. Let’s just talk like we used to when we had so much fun— before you got sick.”
She stopped, her face grim.
“I always. knew you resented my illness, Sam.”
“No, that wasn't it,” he said. “I think 1 felt guilty that you were sick, as if somehow I were to blame. But 1 never hated you for
34
it. I hated myself if I hated any-
yy
one.
“I didn’t say you hated me,” she said. “1 said you resented my ill- ness and you showed it in many ways. Oh, you may have thought you were always noble and gentle and loving — and most of the time you were — you really were. But there were enough times when you looked, you spoke, you muttered, you gestured — how can I describe exactly how you were? I can’t, but I knew you resented me, some- times loathed me, because 1 was sick.”
“I didn’t!” he cried so loudly that a number of people stared.
“Why argue about it?” she said. “Whether you did or not doesn't matter now. I loved you then and 1 still do, in a way. But not as I did.”
He was silent during the rest of the walk across the plain to the big mushroom-shaped stone. The cigar tasted like burning skunk cabbage.
Cyrano was not present. He was superintending the building of a section of the wall which would eventually guard the shore of The River. Sam was glad. It was dif- ficult enough for him to see Livy alone but when she was with the Frenchman, he could not endure his thoughts.
In silence, he and Livy parted.
A BEAUTIFUL woman with lovely, honey-colored hair ap-
IF
proached him and he was able to set aside his feelings about Livy for a while. The woman’s name was Gwenafra. She had, on evi- dence, died at about the age of seven in a country that must have been Cornwall about the time the Phoenicians came there to exploit the tin mines. She had been resur- rected among people of whom none spoke her ancient Celtic lan- guage and had been adopted by a group that spoke English. From her description, one of them had been that Sir Richard Francis Burton whom Sam had thought he'd seen on the shore shortly be- fore the meteorite struck. Burton and his friends had built a small sailboat and set out for the head- waters of The River— as might have been expected of a man who had spent half his life exploring in the wildernesses of Africa and the other continents. On Earth Bur- ton had sought the headwaters of the Nile and had found, instead. Lake Tanganyika. But on this world he had again been seeking the source of a river — the greatest river of them all— undaunted by the prospect that it might be ten million miles long or even twenty.
After little more than a year his boat had been attacked by evil men and one had stuck a stone knife into little Gwenafra and thrown her into The River, where she had drowned. She had awak- ened the next day on the banks
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
somewhere far up in the northern hemisphere. The weather was colder, the sun weaker and the people there said that you did not have to go more than twenty thousand grailstones before you were in an area where the sun was always half above, half below the mountains. And there lived hairy, ape-faced men ten feet tall and weighing seven to eight hundred pounds.
(This was true, Joe Miller had been one of the titanthrops there.)
The people up River who adopted her spoke Suomenkieltla , which in English meant Finnish. DownRiver a little way were the Swedes. These were twentieth-cen- tury people who lived a peaceful life and Gwenafra grew up rela- tively happy with loving foster parents. She learned Finnish, Swedish, English, a Chinese dia- lect of the fourth century B.C. and Esperanto.
She drowned again by accident one day and woke up here. She still remembered Burton; she cherished a childhood crush she had had for him. But, being a realist, she was ready to love other men. And she had— and had just split with one, Sam had heard. She wanted a man who would be faithful to her and these were not easy to find in this world.
Sam was very much attracted to her. The only thing that had kept him from asking her to move in
35
with him had been the fear of angering Livy. That fear was ridi- culous— she had no claim on him as long as she was living with Cyrano. And she had made it plain that she did not care what he did in his private life — or his public life. Nevertheless, against all logic, he was afraid to take another woman as his hutmate. He did not want to snap the last thin link.
He chatted with Gwenafra a while and confirmed that she was still unattached.
V
LUNCH was upsetting. The “roulette wheel" concealed somewhere in the false bottom of the grail, the wild caster of dice, came up with a meal that only a Goshute Indian could have swal- lowed and even he might have gagged a little. Sam threw out all the food, but was able to console himself with two cigars, cigarettes and six ounces of an unfamiliar but delicious liqueur. Just smell- ing it sent his taste buds into a dance.
The meeting with the Council and John took three hours. After much wrangling and a number of votes, it was decided to put to the people the question of amending the Carta so that a pro tem Coun- cilman could be elected. John held up things for an hour, arguing that a vote wasn't needed. Why couldn't
the Council simply say that the amendment was passed? No amount of explaining ever seemed to clarify such matters in John's head. It was not that he was un- intelligent. It was just that he was not emotionally suited to compre- hend democracy.
The vote was unanimous to ac- cept Firebrass as Hacking's offi- cial visiting fireman. But he would have a close eye kept on him.
After all this John rose and made a speech, occasionally lapsing from Esperanto into Nor- man French when he was over- powered by emotion. He thought that Parolando should invade Soul City before Soul City in- vaded Parolando. The invasion should be launched as soon as the handguns and the armored amphi- bian, Firedragon /, were ready. However, it might be best to test the mettle of their metal and the troops on New Brittany first. His spies were certain that Arthur planned to attack them soon.
John's two toadies backed him, but the others, including Sam, voted them down. John's face be- came red and he scolded and drummed his fingers on the oak table, but nobody decided to change his mind.
After supper the drums relayed a message from Hacking. Firebrass would” be arriving tomorrow, some time before noon.
Sam retired to his office. By the
IF
36
light of lamps burning fish- oil— soon they would have elec- tricity— he and Van Boom and Tanya Velitsky and John Wesley O’Brien, the engineers, discussed their ideas about the Riverboat and drew rough sketches on paper. Paper was still scarce, but they would need enormous amounts to draw their blueprints. Van Boom said that they should wait until they were able to make a certain kind of plastic. Lines could be drawn on this with magnetized “pens” and corrections could easily be made by demagnetizing. Sam replied that that was fine. But he wanted to start building the Riverboat the moment the amphibian was completed. Van Boom said that he could not agree to that. Too many things were in the way.
It was late when Sam said good night.
Van Boom pulled the Mark I gun out of a large bag. “We have ten of these now," he said. “This one is yours. Compliments of Parolando’s Engineering Corps. And here are twenty packages of powder and twenty plastic bul- lets. You can sleep with them un- der your pillow."
Sam thanked him. Van Boom left and Sam barred the door.
He went into the back room to talk to Joe Miller a while. Joe was still awake, but he said he was tak- ing no sedation that night. He
the FABULOUS riverboat
would be getting up in the morning. Sam bade the giant good night and went into his bedroom, next to the pilothouse. He drank two shots of bourbon and lay down. After a while he managed to doze, though he was afraid that the three-o’clock rain would wake him as usual and he would have trouble getting back to sleep.
HE AWOKE but the rain was long past. Shouts came from somewhere and then an explosion that rattled the ports in the pilot- house. Sam leaped out of bed, wrapped a kilt around his waist, seized an axe in one hand and ran into the pilothouse. He suddenly remembered his pistol, but de- cided he would go back for it when he found out what was going on.
The River was still smothered in fog, but hundreds of dark figures were spilling out of it and the tops of tall masts sticking out above it. Torches were flaring all over the plains and in the hills. Drums were beating.
There was another explosion. A brightness in the night with bodies flying in all directions.
He looked through the star- board port. The gates of the log wall around King John's palace were open and men were stream- ing out. Among them was the stocky figure of John.
By then more men had ap- peared out of the mists over The
37
River. Bright starlight showed them lining up and moving out, rank after rank. The first of the in- vaders were by now in the great factories and advancing swiftly across the plain toward the foot- hills. Some explosions occurred inside factories as bombs were thrown to dislodge the defenders. And then a red tail flared out, disappeared, and something black shot toward him. Sam threw himself to the floor. A roar came beneath him, the floor heaved and the glass ports blew in. A wiff of acrid smoke came to him and was gone.
He should get up and run, he re- alized, but he couldn't. He was deafened and frozen. Another rocket would be coming his way and that one might be closer.
A giant hand gripped his shoul- der and pulled him up. Another hand slid under his legs and he was being carried out. The arms and the chest of the giant were very hairy and as hard-muscled and as warm as a gorilla's. A voice as deep as if it were at the end of a railroad tunnel rumbled, "‘Take it eathy, Bothth."
“Put me down, Joe," Sam said. “I'm all right, except for my shame. And that's all right, too, 1 ought to feel ashamed."
His shock was fading and a sense of relative calm flowed in to fill the vacuum. The appearance of the massive titanthrop had
steadied him. Good old Joe— he might be a dumb subhuman and sick at the moment, but he was still worth a battalion.
Joe had put on his suit of leather armor. In one hand was the haft of an enormous double-headed axe of steel. The face under the hooded helmet was low-browed, bulging with bone bars and but- tresses and massive jaws. It was the face of a being between ape and man, though closer to man. But the unexpected feature, the comical yet terrifying feature, was the nose. This was the huge outlandishly protruding nose of the proboscis monkey. It pro- voked stares and laughter, though few had the foolhardiness to laugh in Joe's face. He was ten feet tall and weighed almost as much as a pair of lions.
“Who are they?" he rumbled. “They from Thoul Thity ?"
“I don't know," Sam said. “Do you feel up to fighting? How's the head?"
“It hurtth. Yeah, I can fight okay. Vere do ve go from here?"
Sam led him downhill toward the men collecting around John. He heard his name called and turned to see the tall lanky figure of de Bergerac, Livy by his side. She carried a small round shield of leather-covered oak and a steel- tipped spear. Cyrano held a long, dully shining blade. Sam's eyes widened. It was a rapier.
38
IF
Cyrano said, “ Morbleu !" He switched to Esperanto. “Your smith gave this to me just after supper— he said there was no sense in waiting/’ Cyrano whipped the rapier, cutting the air with a sharp sound. “I’ve come alive again. Steel — sharp steel!”
A NEARBY explosion made them all leap for the ground. Sam waited until he was sure that another rocket was not coming and then looked at his pilothouse.
It had received a direct hit; its front was blown open; a fire was racing through it and would soon be in the texas. His diary was gone but he could retrieve his grail later. It was indestructible.
In the next few minutes the wooden missiles, tails flaming, arched out, wobbling, from wooden bazookas held on the shoulders of the Parolandoj rocketeers. The missiles landed near and sometimes among the enemy and exploded with gouts of fire and much black smoke, quick- ly carried away by the wind.
Three runners arrived to report. The attack had been launched from three places, all from The River. The main body was concen- trated here, apparently to seize the Parolandoj leaders, the larger factories and the amphibian. The other two armies were about a mile away on each side. The invaders
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
were composed of men from New Brittany and Kleomanujo and the Ulmaks from across The River. The Ulmaks were savages who had lived in Siberia circa 30,000 B.C. and whose descendants had migrated across the Bering Straits to become Amerinds.
So much for King John's spy ser- vice, Sam thought. Unless— un- less he is in on the attack . But if he were he wouldn't be standing out here where he's likely to get killed any moment . . .
Anyway, Arthur of New Brit- tany would never make a deal with his murderer uncle.
The rockets continued to arc down from both sides, the five- pound warheads with their rock fragment shrapnel taking a toll. The Parolandoj had the advan- tage; they could lie flat while their rockets exploded among upright targets. The invaders had to keep moving, otherwise they might just as well go home.
Nevertheless, it was frightening to lie on the ground and wait for the next noisy blast and hope that it would not come closer than the last one. There were screams from the wounded that were not, however, as heartrending as they would have been if Sam had not been nearly deafened. Then, suddenly, the rockets had quit blowing up the world. A huge hand shook Sam’s shoulder. He looked up to see that many around him were
39
getting to their feet. The ser- geants were yelling into the stunned ears of their men to form a battle array. The enemy was so close now that neither side was us- ing the missiles or else they had all been launched.
Ahead was a dark body, a sea of screaming whooping fiends. They ran up the hill and the first, sec- ond, and third ranks fell, pierced by arrows. But those behind did not break, they leaped over the fall- en and kept on coming. Suddenly, the archers were being hammered down or thrust through or clubbed.
Sam kept close behind Joe Miller, who moved ahead slowly, his axe rising and falling. And then the giant was down, and the enemy were struggling on top of him like a pack of jackals on a lion. Sam tried to get to him; his axe smashed through a shield and a head and an uplifted arm and then he felt a burning pain along his ribs. He was pushed back and back, while he slashed away with the axe. He stumbled over a pile of wood. Above him was the burning floor of his house; the stilts were on fire.
He turned on his side and there was the handgun, the Mark I, that he had left by his bedside. Near it lay three packages of powder with the nitrate-soaked twists and a number of the plastic bullets.
His axe was gone; it had be- come wedged in a skull.
40
T WO men whirled by him in a dance, their hands gripping each other, straining, grunting with the strain, glaring into each other’s bloody faces. They stopped and Sam recognized King John— his opponent was taller but not as thickly built. He, too, had tawny hair and eyes that were blue in the flames overhead.
Sam broke open the pistol, put in the bullet and the charge as he had done that morning up in the hills, locked the barrel and rose to his feet. The two men still strug- gled, one slipping back a little, then the other, trying to throw each other. John held a steel knife in his right hand, the other man a steel axe.
Sam looked around; no one was coming at him. He stepped for- ward and extended the muzzle of the big pistol, holding it steady with both hands. He pulled the trig; ger, the click sounded, the gun was jarred to one side by the heavy hammer, there was a flash, he had the gun back in line, a boom, a cloud of smoke — and John’s assail- ant fell to one side, the entire right side of his skull blown away.
John fell gasping onto the ground. Then he raised himself, looking at Sam, who was reload- ing the gun. “Many thanks, part- ner! That man was my nephew, Arthur!’'
Sam did not reply. If he had been thinking he would have
IF
waited until Arthur had killed John and then blown Arthur’s head off. It was ironic that he, Sam, who had much to gain by John’s death, should be responsible for saving him. Moreover, he could not ex- pect gratitude from John. The man had no such thing in his soul.
Sam completed reloading the pistol and strode away, looking for Joe Miller. But he saw Livy reeling backward as a big Ul- mak, whose left arm dangled bloodily, drove her back with blows of a stone axe on her shield. Her spear had been broken and in a few seconds he would have beaten her to her knees or shattered the shield. Sam reversed the pistol and broke the Ulmak’s skull from be- hind with the butt of his gun. Livy fell exhausted and weeping on the ground and he would have gotten down to comfort her. But she seemed all right and he did not know where Joe Miller was. He plunged into the embattled mass and saw Joe on his feet again, de- molishing heads, trunks and arms with sweeps of his great axe.
Sam stopped a few paces from a man who was coming up from be- hind Joe, a large axe in both hands. Sam fired and the bullet took part of the man’s chest off.
A minute later, the invaders were running for their lives. The sky was graying; by its light it was evident that Parolandoj were coming in from north and south.
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
The other two columns had been shattered and the reinforcements were outnumbering thejnvaders. Moreover, they brought rockets, which blew up the boats and canoes waiting for the defeated.
Sam felt too exhilarated to be depressed by the losses and the damage. For the first time came out of the blue funk that always seized him during a fight. He actually enjoyed the battle during the last ten minutes.
A MOMENT later his pleasure was gone. A wild-eyed and naked Hermann Goering, his scalp caked with blood, appeared on the battleground. His arms were raised straight up and he was shouting, “Oh, brothers and sis- ters! Shame! Shame! You have killed, you have hated, you have lusted for the blood and the ecstasy of murder! Why did you not throw down your arms and take in your enemies with love? Let them do with you what they would? You would have died and suffered but final victory would have been yours! The enemy would have felt your love— and the next time he might have hesitated before again waging war. And the time after that and the next time he might have asked himself, fcWhat am I doing? Why am I doing this? What good is this? I have gained nothing — ' and your love would
41
have seeped through the stone over his heart and—"
John, coming up behind Goering, struck him on the back of the head with the hilt of his knife. Goering fell forward and lay on his face without moving.
“So much for traitors," John shouted. He stared around wildly and then yelled, “Where are Trimalchio and Mordaunt?"
Sam said, “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to hang around here. You’ll never catch them. They’ll know you know they sold out to Arthur.’’
John's striking of Goering was illegal, since free speech was every one's right in Parolando, Bpt Sam did not think that arresting John would be the right course at that moment.
Sam, too, had felt like hitting Goering.
Livy, still weeping, staggered past. Sam followed her to where Cyrano sat on a pile of corpses. The Frenchman was wounded in a dozen places, though not serious- ly, and his rapier was bloody from tip to guard. He had given a splen- did account of himself and his weapon.
Livy threw herself on Cyrano and Sam turned away. She had not even thanked him for having saved her earlier.
Sam sighed.
There was a crash behind him. He turned. The rest of his house
had fallen in, bringing the stilts with it.
He felt drained of every atom of strength, but there would be little rest for him today. The casualties and the damage had to be as- sessed. The dead had to be taken to the rendering factory up in the hills, since their fat was used to make glycerin. The practice was gruesome but necessary and the owners of the bodies did not mind. Tomorrow they would be alive and well again somewhere far away along The River.
In addition, the entire popula- tion would have to be kept ready for a call to arms and the work on erecting the walls along the River- edge would have to be speeded up. Scouts and messengers would have to be sent out to determine just what the military situation was. The Ulmaks and the Kleomenujoj and the New Bretons might launch an all-out full-scale attack.
A captain reported that Kleo- menes, the leader of Kleomenujo, had been found dead near the Riveredge, where a piece of rock shrapnel had entered his skull. So ended the halfbrother of the great Spartan, Leonidas, who defended the pass of Thermopylos. Or so he ended in this area at least.
Sam appointed some men to leave by boat immediately for the two countries. They were to in- form them that Parolando did not
42
IF
intend to take vengeance if the new leaders would guarantee friendship to Parolando. John complained that he should have been consulted and there was a short but savage argument. Sam finally agreed that John was right in principle, but there was no time to discuss certain matters. John informed him that, under the law, Sam had to take the time. Any de- cision had to be agreed upon by both of them.
Sam hated to agree but John was right. They couldn't be giving con- tradictory orders.
They went together to inspect the factories. These were not bad- ly damaged. The invaders had not, of course, wanted to wreck them since they had intended to use them. The amphibian, the Firedragon /, was untouched. Sam shuddered when he thought of what might have happened if it had been completed and had fall- en into the hands of the enemy. With it, they could have crushed the Parolandoj in the center and dug in to fight on the perimeter un- til reinforcements came. He would set up a large special guard around the vehicle.
He fell asleep after lunch in a Councilman's hut. It seemed that he had just closed his eyes when he was shaken awake. Joe was stand- ing over him, breathing bourbon fumes from his tremendous proboscis.
THE FABULOUS Rl VERBOAT
“The delegathyon from Thool Thity chutht landed."
"Firebrass," Sam said, standing up from the chair. “I forgot all about him. What a time for him to show up!"
HE WALKED down to the River, where a catamaran was beached near the grailstone. John was already there, greeting the delegation, which consisted of six blacks, two Arabs and two Hindus. Firebrass was a short, bronze- skinned, curly-haired man with big brown eyes flecked with green. His huge forehead and shoulders and thickly muscled arms contrasted with his skinny legs, making him look all top. He spoke in Esperanto at first but later used English. It was a very strange English, full of terms and slang that Sam did not understand. But there was a warmth and openness about Fire- brass that made Sam feel good just to have him around.
“We better go back to Esperanto," Sam said, smiling and pouring three more slugs of scotch into Firebrass's cup. "Is that spaceman's lingo or Soul City dialect?"
"Marsman's," Firebrass said. "Soul City English is pretty wild, but the official language, of course, is Esperanto, though Hack- ing was considering Arabic. But he isn't too happy about his Arabs any more," he added in a lower
43
voice, looking at Abd ar-rahman and Ali Fazghuli, the Arab mem- bers of his delegation.
“As you can see,” Sam said, “we are in no condition to have a long leisurely conference. Not now. We have to clean up, get informa- tion about what’s going on out- side Parolando and set up our de- fences. But you are welcome, of course, and we’ll get around to business within a few days.’’
“I don't mind,’’ Firebrass said. “I’d like to look around, if you don’t mind.’’
“I don’t, but my co-Consul has to give his consent, too.’’
John, smiling as if it hurt his teeth to be exposed to the air — and it probably did this time — said that Firebrass was welcome. But he would have to be accompanied by a guard of honor every time he left the quarters that would be as- signed to him. Firebrass thanked him but another delegate, Abdullah X, protested loudly and occasionally obscenely. Fire- brass said nothing for a minute and then told Abdullah to be po- lite, since they were guests. Sam was grateful, though he wondered if the whole speech had not been arranged.
It had not been easy to sit there and listen, though all of the vitriol- ics had been hurled at the white race in general. Though it trou- bled him, Sam had to agree with Abdullah; he was right about con-
ditions as they had been. But old Earth was dead; they were living in a new world.
Sam personally conducted the delegates to three huts, side by side, owned by men and women who had been killed last night. Then he moved into a hut near the delegation.
Drums boomed by the grail- stone. After a minute, drums from across The River thundered back an answer. The new chief of the Ulmaks wanted peace. The old chief, Shrubgrain, had been put to death and his head would be de- livered within the hour by canoe if peace could be arranged. Shurb- grain had failed his people by lead- ing them to defeat.
Sam gave orders to transmit a request for a conference with the new chief, Threezburm.
Drums from Chernsky's Land said that Iyeyasu, who ruled a twelve-mile stretch of land be- tween New Brittany and Kleo- menujo, had invaded New Brit- tany. The news meant that the New Bretons would not be bothering Parolando, but it also worried Sam. Iyeyasu was a very ambi- tious man. Once he had consoli- dated his state with New Brittany he might decide he was strong enough to take Parolando.
More drums. Publius Crassus sent his congratulations and warmest regards, and he would be visiting tomorrow to see what he
44
IF
could do to aid Parolando.
And also to see how hard we’ve been hit and if we'd be easy pick- ings, Sam thought. So far, Publius had been cooperative, but a man who had served under Julius Caesar was never above a little of his own brand of Caesarism.
Goering, his head wrapped in a bloody towel, staggered by, sup- ported by two of his followers. Sam hoped he would take the hint and leave Parolando, but he didn't have much faith in the German's perceptiveness.
He went to sleep that night while torches burned everywhere over the land and guards peered into the shadows and the mists. His sleep was troubled, despite his in- tense fatigue. He tossed and rolled and once he awoke, his heart beat- ing, his skin cold, certain that there was a third person in the hut. He fully expected to see the shadowy figure of The Mysterious Stranger crouched by his bed. But nobody was there except the monstrous form of Joe stretched out on the huge bamboo bed near him.
VI
THE next morning he arose un- refreshed in a refreshed world. The three-o'clock rain had washed away the blood and the stink of gunpowder. The bodies were out of sight and the sky was clear and
blue. Business as usual was re- sumed but without about four hundred and fifty men and wom- en. Half of these were in the ren- dering factory; the rest were in the hospital. Those who wanted to be put out of their misery were given their wish. Time had been when an axe was the only euthanasiast but now, thanks to Parolando's tech- nology, the work was done with a potassium cyanide pill.
Some decided to stick it out. In time their limbs or eyes would grow back. Those afraid of the pain boarded The Suicide Express. There bodies would go to the ren- dering factory.
Sam’s secretary had been killed. Sam asked Gwenafra if she would like to take Millie’s place. Gwen- afra seemed very pleased; the new position gave her a high status and she had made no secret of the fact that she liked to be near Sam. Lothar von Richthofen, however, did not seem pleased.
“Why shouldn’t she be my. sec-, retary, regardless of her relation- ship to you?” Sam said.
“There is no reason,” Lothar said, “except that I might have a very good chance with her if she isn't around you much.”
“Let the best man win.”
“My sentiments, too, but I don't like your wasting her time or lead- ing her on. You know that you won't take another hutmate as long as Livy is here.”
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
45
“Livy has nothing to say about what I do,” Sam said.
Lothar smiled slightly and said, “Sure, Sam.”
Gwenafra tagged along with him,, taking notes, sending mes- sages, receiving them, arranging schedules and appointments. Though he was very busy, he found moments when he could talk and joke with her and he felt a warmth every time he looked at her. Gwen- afra seemed to adore him.
Two days passed. The twenty- four hour shift on the amphibian was showing results— it would be completed in another two days. The Soul City delegation strolled around with two -of King John’s men watching them. Joe Miller, who had gone back to his bed after the battle, said he was well again. Now Sam had both Gwenafra and the titanthrop with him and his world seemed much more com- fortable, though it was a long way from being Utopia. Word came via the drum telegraph that Odysseus had loaded his ships with flints and would be back in a month. He had gone as com- mander of a ten-boat fleet to bar- ter with the chief of Selinujo. On Earth she had been Countess Hunt- ingdon, Selina Hastings, born 1707, died 1791. She was now a member of the Church of the Sec- ond Chance and traded her flint with Parolando only because Parolando permitted some of
46
Goering’s missionaries to preach at will in its territory. In return for the flint she had been promised a small metal steamboat in which she proposed to go up and down The River and preach. Sam thought she was fooling herself. The first place she put into she was liable to have her throat cut for the sake of the boat. But that was her business.
THE Councilmen met with the Soul City delegation. Sam would have liked to put it off, since John was in a mood even uglier than usual. One of his women had tried to kill him — or at least so he claimed. He had been stabbed in the side before he broke her jaw and knocked her head against the corner of a table. The woman had died an hour later still uncon- scious, and John’s word that she had attacked him first had to be accepted. Sam would have liked to have collected some neutral eye- witness account but that was im- possible.
John was in pain from the stab wound, half-drunk with bourbon as an anesthetic and smarting be- cause the woman had dared to de- fy him. He slumped in a large, high-backed, ornately carved oak chair covered with red hornfish leather. One hand was around a clay vessel full of whiskey, a cigarette dangled from his lips and
IF
he glowered at everybody. The conference was taking place at a round table in the largest room in John’s palace.
Firebrass was talking. “Hack- ing once believed in total segrega- tion of whites and nonwhites. He believed, fiercely believed, that whites could never accept, not really accept, nonwhite peoples, that is, the blacks, Mongolians, Polynesians, and Amerindians. The only way nonwhites could live with dignity, feel beautiful, be a people with its own personality and pride, was the way of segre- gation. Equal but separate.
“Then his leader, Malcolm X, quit the Black Muslims. Malcom X saw that he was wrong. Not all whites were devils, racist Fiends, any more than all blacks had flat noses. Hacking fled the states to live in Algend and there he found that it was the attitude that made racism, not the color of the skin."
Hardly an original or surprising discovery, Sam thought. But he had told himself that he would not interrupt.
“And then the young whites of the United States rejected their parents' prejudices and they sup- ported the blacks in their strug- gles. They got right out on the streets and demonstrated, rioted, laid down their lives for the blacks. They genuinely seemed to like blacks, not because they thought they ought to, but because blacks
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
were human beings and human be- ings can be liked or even loved.
“Hacking, however, wasn't ever really at ease with an American white, try though he did to think of them as human beings. He was ruined, just as most whites, most older whites, were ruined. But he tried and he respected those young whites that told their parents, their white racist society, to go to hell.
“Then he died, as everybody did, black or white. He found him- self among ancient Chinese and he wasn’t very happy with them be- cause they regarded all peoples except the Chinese as inferior.’’
Sam remembered the Chinese of Nevada and California in the early '60s, the hard-working, thrifty, quiet, meek, cheery little brown men and women. They had taken abuse that most people would not give a mule, been spat upon, cursed, tortured, stoned, robbed, raped, suffered about every in- dignity and crime that a people could suffer. They had had no rights whatsoever, no protector or protection. And they had never murmured, never revolted, they just endured. What thoughts had those masklike faces hidden? Had they, too, believed in the superiority of any Chinese to any white devil? If so, why had they not struck back, not once?
Firebrass said, “So Hacking left in a dugout, floated downRiver and after many thousands of miles
47
settled down among some blacks of seventeenth-century A.D. Africa. Ancestors of the Zulus be- fore they migrated to southern Africa. He learned Zulu but after a while he left. Their customs were too repulsive and they were too bloody minded for him.
‘Then he lived in an area where the people were a mixture of Dark Age Huns and dark whites of the New Stone Age. They ac- cepted him well enough, but he missed his own people, the Amer- ican blacks. So he took off again and was captured by ancient Moabites and enslaved, escaped, was captured by ancient Hebrews and put into grail slavery, escaped -again, found a little community of blacks who'd been pre-Civil War slaves and was happy for a while. But their Uncle Tom attitudes and their superstitions got on his nerves and he took off, sailed downRiver and lived with several other peoples. Then, one day, some big blond whites, Germans of some kind, raided the people he was with. He fought, was killed.
“He was resurrected here. Hacking became convinced that the only happy states on The River are going to be made up of people with similar colors, similar tastes, and of the same terrestrial per- iod. Anything else just won't work. People here aren't going, to change. Back on Earth he could be- lieve in progress, because the
young whites were flexible minded. The old ones would die off and then the children of the young whites would be even more free of racial prejudice. But here that just isn't going to take place. Every man’s set in his ways. So, unless Hacking just happened to find a community of late twentieth-cen- tury whites, he would find no whites without racial hatreds or prejudices. Of course, the ancient whites didn’t have any, but they’re too strange for a civilized man.”
SAM asked, “What’s all this leading up to?”
“We want a homogeneous na- tion. We can't get all late twen- tieth-century blacks, but we can get as black a nation as possible. Now, we know that you have ap- proximately three thousand blacks in Parolando. We would like to exchange our Dravidians, Arabs, any nonblacks, for your blacks. Hacking is making similar pro- posals to your neighbors, but he doesn't have any lever with them.” King John sat up and said, loud- ly, “You mean he doesn't have anything they want?”
Firebrass looked coolly at John and said, “That's about it. But we'll have a lever some day.”
“Do you mean when you have enough steel weapons?” Sam said. Firebrass shrugged.
John crashed his empty cup down on the table. “Well, we don't
48
IF
want your Arabs or your Dravidians or any of your Soul City dregs,” he shouted. “But I’ll teli you what we will do. For every ton of bauxite or cryolite or ounce of platinum, we will give you one of our black citizens! You can keep your Saracen infidels or send them packing downRiver or drown them for all we care.”
“Wait a minute,” Sam said. “We can't give our citizens away. If they want to volunteer, fine. But we don't just give anybody away. This is a democracy.”
Firebrass’s expression had dark- ened at John's outburst. “I wasn’t suggesting that you give anybody away,” he said. “We’re not slave dealers, you know. What we want is a one-per-one-voluntary ex- change. The Wahhabi Arabs, whom ar-Rahman and Fazghuli represent, feel they're unwelcome at Soul City and they would like to go where they could congregate in their own community, form a sort of Kasbah, you might say.”
Sam thought this sounded fishy. Why couldn’t they do that just as well in Soul City? Or why didn't they just get up and leave? One of the beauties of this world was that ties or property or dependence on income did not exist. A man could carry everything he owned on his back — and building another house was easy in a world where new bamboo grew two inches a day.
It was possible that Hacking
wanted to get his people into Parolando so that they could spy or revolt when Hacking invaded.
Sam said, “We’ll put your proposition about the exchange to each individual. That’s all we can do. Now, does Sinjoro Hack- ing plan to keep on supplying us with the minerals and with wood?” “As long as you keep on send- ing us raw ore and steel weapons,” Firebrass said. “But Hacking is thinking of upping the price.” John’s fist smashed into the table top again. “We will not be robbed,” he shouted. “We are pay- ing too much now. Don’t push us, Sinjoro Firebrass, or you may find yourselves with nothing. Not even your lives!”
“Take it easy, Your Majesty,” Sam said quietly. To Firebrass he said, “John isn’t feeling well. Please forgive him. However, he does have a point. We can be pushed only so far.”
ABDULLAH X, a very big and very black man, jumped up and pointed a big finger at Sam. In English, he said, “You honkies had better quit badmouthing us. We won't take any crap from you. Mister Whitey! None! Especially from a man that wrote a book like you did about Nigger Jim. We don’t like white racists and we only deal with them because there’s nothing else to do but that just now.”
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
49
“Take it easy, Abdullah,” Fire- brass said. He was smiling and Sam wondered if Abdullah's speech was part of a well prepared program. Probably Firebrass was wondering if John's explo- sions had been rehearsed. Actors didn't have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors.
Sam groaned and said, “Did you read Huckleberry Finn , Sinjoro X?"
Abdullah, sneering, said, “I don’t read trash.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about, dp you?”
Abdullah’s face darkened. Fire- brass grinned.
“I don't have to read that racist crap, man,” Abdullah shouted. “Hacking told me all about it and what he says is good enough for me.
“You read it and then come back and we'll discuss it," Sam said.
“You crazy?” Abdullah said. “You know there aren’t any books on this world.”
“Then you lost out, didn't you?” Sam said. He was trembling a lit- tle; he wasn’t used to being talked to like this by a black man. “Any- way,” Sam said, “this isn't a literary tea and discussion group. Let's stick to the issue.”
But Abdullah would not stop shouting about the books that Sam had written. And John, los- ing his temper, leaped up and
screamed, “ Silentu , negracor
John had taken the Esperanto word for “black” or “negro” and infixed the disparaging “-ac-” particle. He had gotten his point over quite well.
There was a moment of shock and silence. Abdullah X’s mouth was open, then it closed and he looked triumphant, almost happy. Firebrass bit his lip. John leaned on the table on his fists and scowled. Sam puffed on his cigar. He knew that John's contempt for all humanity had made him in- vent the term. John had no racial prejudice; he had never seen more than a half-dozen blacks during his lifetime on Earth. But he cer- tainly knew how to insult a per- son; the knowledge was second nature to him.
“I’m walking out,” Abdullah X said. “I may be going home— and if I do you can bet your white skin that you'll pay hell getting any more aluminum or platinum. Mister Charlie."
Sam rose to his feet and said, “Just a minute. If you want an apology, I extend it on behalf of all Parolando."
Abdullah looked at Firebrass, who looked away. Abdullah said, “I want an apology from him, now!" He pointed at King John.
Sam leaned close to John and said softly, “There's too much at stake to play the proud monarch. Your Majesty! And you may be
50
IF
playing into their hands with your little fit. They are up to some- thing, you can bet on that. Apolo- gize.
John straightened up and said,
“I apologize to no man, espe- cially not to a commoner.”
Sam snorted and gestured with his cigar. “Can't you get it through your thick Plantagenet head that there isn't any such thing as royal blood or divine right of kings any more, that we're all commoners? Or all kings?''
JOHN did not reply. He walked out. Abdullah looked at Fire- brass, who nodded. Abdullah walked out.
Sam said, “Well, Sinjoro Fire- brass, what next? Do you people go home?''
Firebrass shook his head. “No, 1 don't believe in hasty decisions. But the conference is suspended as far as the Soul City delegation is concerned. Until John Lackland apologizes. I'll give you until noon tomorrow to decide what to do.''
Firebrass turned to leave. Sam said, “I'll talk to John, but he's as hardheaded as a Missouri mule.''
“I'd hate to see our negotiations fold because one man can't keep his insults to himself,'' Firebrass said. “And I'd also hate to see our trade stop, because that would mean no Riverboat for you."
Sam said, “Don't get me wrong,
THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
Sinjoro Firebrass. I'm making no threats. But-I won't be stopped. I'll get the aluminum if I have to kick John out of the country my- self. Or, alternatively, if I have to go down to Soul City and get the aluminum myself.”
“I understand you,” Firebrass said. “But what you don't under- stand is that Hacking isn't out for power. He only wants to have a well protected state so that his citi- zens can enjoy life. And they will enjoy their life because they'll all have similar tastes and similar goals. In other words, they'll all be black.”
Sam grunted and then said, “Very well.” He fell silent but just before Firebrass left he called, “One minute. Have you read Huckleberry FinnT'
Firebrass turned back. “Sure. I thought it was a great book when I was a kid. I read it again when I was in college and I could see its flaws then.”
“Were you disturbed because Jim was called Nigger Jim?”
“You have to remember that I was bom in nineteen-seventy-five on a farm near Syracuse, New York. Things had changed a lot by then and the farm had originally been owned by my great-great- great grandfather, who came up from Georgia to Canada via the underground railway and then purchased the farm after the Civil War. No, I wasn't offended by
51
your use of the word. Negroes were called niggers openly in the time you wrote about and nobody thought anything of it. Sure, the word was an insult. But you were portraying people as they actual- ly talked and the ethical basis of your novel, the struggle between Huck’s duty as a citizen and his feeling for Jim as a human being and the victory of the human feel- ing in Huck — 1 was moved. The whole book was an indictment of slavery, of the semifeudal society of the Mississippi, of supersti- tion— of everything stupid of that time. So why should I be offended by it?”
“Then why—”
“Abdullah — whose original name was George Robert Lee — was born in nineteen- twenty-five and Hacking was bom in nineteen-thirty-eight. Blacks were niggers then to a lot of whites, though not all. They found out the hard way that violence — or the threat of it, the same thing that the whites had used to keep them down — was the only way to get their rights as citizens of the United States. You died in nine- teen-ten, right? But you must have been told by any number of peo- ple what happened after that?”
Sam nodded. “It's hard to be- lieve. Not the violence of the riots. Plenty of that happened in my life- time and nothing, I understand, ever equaled the Draft Act riots in
New York City during the Civil War. 1 mean, what’s hard to visualize is the licentiousness of the late twentieth century.”
FIREBRASS laughed and said, “Yet you’re living in a society that is far more free and licen- tious— from the viewpoint of the nineteenth century — than any society in the twentieth.
You’ve adapted.”
“I suppose so,” Sam replied. “But the two weeks of absolute nudity that the entire human spe- cies lived through during the first days after resurrection ensured that mankind would never again be the same. Not as regards nud- ity, anyway. And the undeniable fact of the resurrection shattered many fixed ideas and attitudes. Though the diehard is still with us, as witness your Wahhabi Mos- lems.”
“Tell me, Sinjoro Clemens,” Firebrass said. “You were an early liberal, far ahead of your times in many things. You spoke up against slavery and were for equality. And when you wrote the Magna Carta for Parolando you insisted that there Should be political equality for all species, races and both sexes. I notice that a black man and a .white woman live almost next door to you. Be hpnest, doesn't it disturb you to see that?”
Sam drew in smoke, blew it out
IF
52
and said, “To be honest, yes, it did not downright pain, by leaving disturb me. Well, to tell the truth, Parolando.” it almost killed me! What my “Are you threatening me?"
mind told me and what my re- “Not with any action from me.
flexes told me were two different But there are plenty who may get things. I hated it. But 1 stuck to my so riled up they'll run you out on a guns, I said nothing, I became ac- rail. Or take you down to The quainted with that couple and I River and drown you. You’re up- learned to like them. And now, setting everybody with your after a year, it bothers me only a preachings. This state was found- very little. And that will go away in ed with one main goal, the build- time.’’ ing of the Riverboat. Now, a man
“The difference between may say anything he wants to and you — representing the white lib- not run foul of the law here. But eral— and the youth of Hacking’s there are those who sometimes ig- day and mine was that we were not nore the law and I wouldn’t want to bothered. We accepted it.’’ have to punish them because you
“Don’t I get any credit for lift- tempted them. I suggest that you ing myself by my mental boot- do your Christian duty and re- straps?’’ Sam asked. move yourself from the premises.
“Yawblaw,” Firebrass said, That way, you won’t be tempting lapsing into English— of a sort, good men and women to commit “Two degrees off is better than violence.’’
ninety. Pin it.’’ “I’m not a Christian,’’ Goering
said.
HE WENT out. Sam was left “I admire a man who can admit alone. He sat for a long that. I don’t think I ever met a while, then stood up and went out- preacher who came out and said side. The first person he saw was so, in so many words.”
Hermann Goering. His head was “Sinjoro Clemens,” Goering still wrapped in a towel but his said, “I read your books when I skin was less pale and his eyes did was a young man in Germany, not look odd. first in German and then in Eng-
Sam said, “How’s your head?” lish. But levity or mild irony aren’t “It still hurts. But I can walk going to get us any place. I am not without driving hot spikes in it a Christian, though I try to prac- every time I take a step.” tice the better Christian virtues. I
“I don’t like to see a man suf- am a missionary for the Church fer,” Sam said. “So I suggest that of the Second Chance. All Ter- you could avoid more suffering, if restrial religions have been dis-
the FABULOUS RIVERBOAT 53
credited, even if some won’t admit it. The Church is the first religion to rise on the new world, the only one which has any chance to sur- vive. It — ”
“Spare me the lecture," Sam said. “I’ve heard enough from your predecessors and from you. What I’m saying, in utter friendliness and a desire to save you from harm and also, to be honest, to get you out of my craw, is that you should take off. Right now. Or you'll be killed."
“Then I’ll rise at dawn tomor- row somewhere else and preach The Truth there, wherever I find myself. You see, here, as on Earth, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church. The man who kills one of us only ensures that The Truth, the chance for eternal salvation, will be heard by more people. Murder has spread our faith up and down The River far faster than any conventional means."
"Congratulations," Sam said ex- asperatedly, dropping into Eng- lish as he often did when angry. “But tell me, doesn't the repeated killing of your missionaries bother you? Aren't you afraid of running out of body?"
"What do you mean?"
"Tenets, anyone?''
Sam got no reaction except a puzzled look. Sam resumed in Esperanto. "One of your major tenets, if I remember correctly, is
that Man wasn’t resurrected so he j could enjoy life here forever. He i is given only a limited time, though it may look like a long time to most, especially if they don’t hap- pen to be enjoying life here. You postulate something analogous to a soul, something you call a psychomorph, right? Or some- times a ka . You have to, otherwise you can’t claim a continuity of identity in a man. Without it a man who dies is dead, even if his body is reproduced exactly and made alive again. That second body is only a reproduction. The Lazarus has the mind and the memories of the man who died, so he thinks he's the man who died. But he isn't. He's just a living du- plicate. Death terminated the first man. He's through.
"Unless he has a soul — or a psy- chomorph or a /ctf — call it what you will. This is an entity which is born with the body, accompanies it, registers and records every- thing the body does and, indeed, must be an incorporeal incor- poration of the body, if you'll ex- cuse that contradiction. So that, when the flesh dies, the ka still exists. It exists in some fourth dimension or in some polariza- tion which protoplasmic eyes can't see or mechanical devices can't detect. Is that correct?"
"You're close enough," Goer- ing said. "Crudely put but satis- factory."
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((CO FAR," Sam said, expel- energy-matter converters, made ^ling a big cloud of green whole and young again and then smoke, "we have— you have, not recordings are made of these I— the postulated soul of the bodies — which are destroyed and Christians and the Moslems and the dead are raised on a new world, others ad nauseam . But you claim such as this, again through e-m that the soul does not go to a hell or conversion, a heaven. It flits around in some "The psychomorphs, or kasy sort of fourth-dimensional limbo, have an affinity to their proto- It would do so forever if it were plasmic twins. The moment a not for the interference of other duplicate of the dead body is beings. These are extra-Terres- made, the ka attaches itself and trials who came into existence begins recording. So that, if the long before humanity did. These body is killed and duplicated a superbeings came to Earth when hundred times, the ka still retains mankind did not yet exist — in fact, the identity, the mind and the they visited every planet in the uni- memories of all the bodies. So that verse that might have sentient life it is not just one duplicate after someday." another being created. It is a mat-
"You're not phrasing exactly ter of preservation of the pristine as we do," Goering said. "We individual." maintain that every Galaxy has "But!" Sam said, waving his one — or perhaps many — ancient cigar and then stabbing its glow- species inhabiting certain planets, ing end close to Goering's cheek. These beings may have arisen in "But! You maintain that a man our Galaxy or they may have or- cannot be killed an indefinite iginated in an earlier, now dead, number of times. You say that. Galaxy or universe. In any event, after a couple of hundred times they are wise and knew long ago death does have a final effect, that sentient life would arise on Continued dying weakens the link Earth and they set up devices between body and ka and even- which started recording these sen- tually the duplication of the body tients from the moment they ap- does not cause the ktt to merge with peared. These devices are unde- it. The ka wanders off, haunts the tectable by the sentients. spooky corridors of the fourth
"At some time which these An- dimension or whatever. It be- cients, as we call them, have deter- comes, in effect, a ghost, a lost mined, the recordings are sent to a soul. It is done for." special place. There the dead are "That is the essence of our fleshed out from the recordings by faith," Goering said. "Or I should
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say our knowledge, since we know this to be true.”
Sam raised his bushy eyebrows. “Indeed? Know?”
“Yes. Our founder heard The Truth a year after Resurrection, a year to the day after all of human- ity rose from the dead. A man came to him at night as he prayed for a revelation on a high ledge up in the mountains. This man told him certain things, showed him certain things, that no terrestrial mortal could tell or show. This man was an agent of The Ancients and he revealed The Truth, and told our founder to go out and preach the doctrine of the Second Chance.
“Actually, Second Chance is a misnomer. It is really our First Chance, because we never had a chance for salvation and eternal life while we were on Earth. But life on Earth was a necessary prelude to this Riverworld. The Creator made the universe and then The Ancients preserved humankind— indeed, all sentients throughout the universe. They preserved . But salvation is up to mankind only.
“It is up to each man to save himself, now that he has been given the chance.”
“Through the Church of the Sec- ond Chance and that only, I sup- pose,” Sam said. He did not' want to sneer but he could not help it.
“That is what we believe,” Goer- ing said.
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64YV7HAT were the credentials ▼ ▼ of this mysterious strang- er?” Sam said. He thought of his Mysterious Stranger, and felt panic. Could the two be the same? Or from among the same beings, who called themselves the Ethi- cals? His Stranger, the man who sent the ‘nickel-iron meteorite here and who had enabled Joe Miller to see the Tower in the mists of the North Polar Sea, was a renegade of the Ethicals. If he were to be be- lieved.
“Credentials?” Goering said. “Papers from God?” He laughed. “The founder knew that his visi- tor could not be just a man be- cause he knew things that only a god, or a superior being, coiild know about him. And he showed him some things that he had to believe. And he told him how we were brought back to life and why. He did not tell him everything. Some things will be revealed later. Some things we must find out for ourselves.”
“What is the name of this founder?” Sam Said. “Or don’t you know? Is that one of the hidden things?”
“No one knows,” Goering said. “It is not necessary to know. What is a name? He only called himself Viro. That is, in Esperanto, a man. From the Latin vir. We call him La Fondinto, The Founder, or La Viro, The Man.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
IF
“No, but I have met two who knew him well. One was there when LaViro preached the first time, seven days after the Stranger had talked to him.”
“La Viro is definitely male? Not a woman?”
“Oh, yes!”
Sam sighed deeply and said, “That's a great weight off my mind. If the founder had turned out to be Mary Baker Eddy I would have curled up and died.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Sam said, grin- ning. “I wrote a book about her once. I wouldn't want to meet her; she'd scalp me alive. But some of the wild mystical things you told me reminded me of her.”
“Except for the ka , everything in our explanation is based on the physical. And the ka is physical but at right angles, you might say, to our reality. We believe that it is science, the science of The Ancients, which has given us a physical resurrection. There's nothing supernatural about any- thing, except our belief in The Creator, of course. The rest is all science.”
“Like Mary Baker Eddy's reli- gion?” Sam asked.
“I do not know of her.”
“So how do we attain this salva- tion?”
“By becoming love. And that implies, of course, that we do not offer violence, even in self-defense.
We believe that we can become love only by attaining a certain transcendent state and that comes through self-knowledge. So far most of mankind has not learned how to use dreamgum; man has abused the drug, just as he abuses everything.”
“And you think you have be- come love , whatever that phrase means?”
“Not yet. But I am on the way.” “Through dreamgum?”
“Not just with it. It helps. But you have' to act, too, you have to preach and suffer for your belief. And learn not to hate. Learn to love.”
“So that is why you oppose my Riverboat? You think that we are wasting our time by building it?” “It's a goal that will bring no one any good. So far it has resulted in the devastation of the land, in greed and pain and bloodshed, in anxiety and treachery. In hate, hate, hate! And for what? So you can have what nobody else has, a giant boat of metal propelled by electricity, the apex of the tech- nology this planet offers, a ship of fools. So you can journey to the headwaters of The River. When you get there, then what? You should be journeying to the head- waters of the soul!”
“There are some things you don’t know," Sam said. His smugness was soured by a vision. There was the devil, crouching in
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the darkness, whispering in his ear. But someone had crouched in the darkness and whispered in the ear of the founder of the Church, "too. Was the Church’s Stranger the devil? The being who had come to Samuel Clemens had said that the others were the devils and he wanted to save mankind.
The devil would say something like that, of course.
“Don’t my words touch your heart at all?” Goering said.
Sam rapped his chest with his fist and said, “Yes, I do believe I have a touch of indigestion.”
Goering made a fist and clamped his lips.
“Watch out, you’ll lose your love,” Sam said and walked away. But he did not feel particularly tri- umphant, It was a fact that he did have a little stomach upset. Invin- cible ignorance always upset him, even though he knew he should just laugh at it.
VII
THE afternoon of the next day arrived. Sam Clemens and John Lackland had been arguing all morning. John said that he would never apologize for any- thing he said to a commoner, es- pecially to a man called Abdul- lah, a Saracen.
Finally Sam, exasperated past caution and reasonableness, said, “We can’t afford to have the baux-
ite cut off by Hacking. We can’t af- ford anything that will put a stop to building the Riverboat. Maybe you’re doing this to force a war be- tween us and Soul City. It isn’t go- ing to work, Your Majesty!”
Sam had been walking back and forth, waving a panatela as he spoke. John sprawled before the oaken round table in Sam’s pilothouse. Joe Miller sat in a corner on a big chair specially built for him. The massive palaeo- lithic Mongolian, Zaksksromb, stood behind John.
Suddenly, Sam whirled and planked both fists on the table. Leaning on the table, his cigar in one corner of his mouth, the red- dish tangle of his eyebrows drawn down, he snarled at John.
“You gave in once, at Runny- mede, when you signed the Magna Carta. It was about the only de- cent thing you ever did during your reign — and there are some who say you had your fingers crossed then. Well, this is another showdown, John, Your Majesty. You apolo- gize to Abdullah, who has a right to an apology — or I’ll call a special session of the Council and we'll determine your fitness to continue as co-Consul!”
John glowered at him for a full minute at the least. Then he said, “Your threats don’t scare me. But it’s evident that you would sooner plunge our land into civil war than go to war with Soul City. I do not
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understand this madness, but then a rational man always has trouble understanding irration- ality. So — I will apologize, why not? A king can afford to be gracious to a commoner. It costs him nothing and enhances his graciousness.”
John rose and swaggered out, his huge bodyguard behind him.
Ten minutes later Sam heard that John had appeared at the state guest house and offered his apology. Abdullah X accepted it, though sullenly. It was evident that he had been ordered to do so.
Just before the factory whistles announced the end of lunch hour, Cawber entered. He sat down without waiting for Sam to invite him. Sam raised his eyebrows, be- cause this was the first time that this had happened. There was something indefinable in Caw- ber’s attitude. Sam, watching him carefully, listening to every inflection of his voice, decided that his attitude was that of a slave who has decided to be a slave no more.
CAWBER knew that he would be the emissary to Soul City. He sat leaning forward, huge black arms resting on the oak, his hands spread out. He spoke in Esperanto and, like many people, often in the present tense, using an adverb of time to indicate future or past if he wanted to clarify.
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Cawber’s team had talked to ev- ery one of the approximately three thousand undoubted Negroes (there was some confusion of classification about some of the prehistorics). A third of these was willing, though not eager, to go to Soul City in exchange for Hack- ing’s unwanted citizens. Most were late twentieth-century blacks. The others maintained that they had work that gave them prestige, that they liked being on an equal footing with the whites and that they did not want to give up their chance to be on the River- boat.
The latter was probably the big- gest determinant, Sam thought. He was not the only one who dfeamed of the Riverboat. It drove through the minds of many during sleep, gleaming like a jewel with a fire- fly trapped inside it.
Firebrass and his people were re- quested to come to the conference room. Firebrass was late because he had been inspecting the air- plane. He was laughing about its quaintness, fragility and slow- ness, and yet he was envious that von Richthofen would be the one to fly it.
“You’ll certainly get a chance to fly it, too,” Sam said. “Provided that you are still here, of course, when — ”
Firebrass waved aside Sam’s as- surances, became serious. “What is your decision, gentlemen, re-
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garding my government’s propo- sal?”
Sam looked at John, who ges- tured that Sam had the floor. John intended that any ill feelings should first be directed at Sam.
“This is a democracy,” Sam said. “And we can’t tell our citizens to get out unless they’ve been guilty of illegal behavior. So, as I see it — as we see it — any citizen of Parolando may go to Soul City if he wishes. 1 think we actually reached basic agreement on this when we last met. It will be up to your government to negotiate with each citizen. As for taking in your Arabs and Dravidians and so forth— we’ll give them a chance to come with us if they want: but we reserve the right to get rid of them if they don’t work out. Where they’ll go then is up to them.”
“Well,” Firebrass said, “I don’t suppose Hacking wants anybody who isn't willing to live in Soul City, no matter how black that person is.”
“What about the shipments of minerals?” Sam said. “Will those be discontinued during the nego- tiations?”
“I really couldn’t say," Fire- brass replied. “I doubt it, but I'd have fto confer. Of course, you’ll have to keep up your present rate of ore and weapons 'to us before the price is raised.”
“I notice you said is , not might be" Sam said.
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“Anything I say is subject to confirmation or negation from Soul City,” Firebrass said, smiling.
The rest of the conference was that Cawber would go to Soul City as Parolando’s ambassador if the Carta could be changed to arrange it. Everything else was still up in the air. Sam Clemens received the impression that Firebrass did not intend to speed things up. Quite the contrary. He was willing to let things drag on or even to put his own foot on the brake if things showed signs of accelerating. He wanted to remain in Parolando and Sam could only think that he wished to do so in order to spy. Perhaps he also wanted to stir up trouble.
Later, when he discussed the meeting with John, he found some variations to his conclusions. John agreed that Firebrass was a spy but he could not see why Fire- brass would stir up trouble.
“He would want the boat to be built as swiftly as possible. The sooner it’s completed, the sooner Hacking will try to seize it. Do you think for one moment that Hacking doesn't intend to get the boat? Do you think for one mo- ment that we have a single neigh- bor who doesn’t intend to try for the boat? Arthur made the abor- tive attempt to take us over be- cause of his hatred for me. He should have waited until the boat was nearly completed and then.
IF
with Kleomenes and the Ulmaks, launched all the force they could mount in an all-out attack. As things worked out* he and Kleo- menes were killed and lyeyasu has invaded their countries while their successors are fighting among themselves.”
“According to our spies* he's winning, too*” Sam said.
“If he consolidates his state with the other two* then he'll be a very formidable enemy.”
And so will you be, John Lack- land, Sam thought. Of all the peo- ple I II have to watch after the boat is built, youll bear the closest watching . . .
FI REBRASS announced that he and his delegation would re- main at Soul City's embassy while the negotiations went on.
“It's nice to have you*'' Sam said. “But Soul City has its own in- dustries. I know it's been using our ore to make weapons and several things our spies can't find out about.”
Firebrass looked surprised and then he laughed uproariously. “You twist my stick, stymate!" he said in English. Then, in Esperan- to, “Well, why shouldn't we be frank? I like that. Yes* we know you have spies among us just as you know we have ours here. Who doesn't have his men in his neigh- bors' lands? But what are you get- ting at?"
“You're the most technically trained man Hacking has. You're a Ph. D. You’re in charge of the fac- tories and of research and devel- opment. So why does Hacking send you here when he needs you there?”
“I’ve set everything up to run smoothly. Soul City doesn't need me right now— and I was bored. I wanted to come here* where it’s at.”
“So you can see what we’re do- ing, like our Mark 1 handguns and our airplane and the amphibian and its steam cannon?”
Firebrass grinned and nodded. “Yes. Why not? If I don’t see these things, someone else will.”
Sam relaxed. He said, “Have a cigar. You can look all you want. We're not doing anything you wouldn't have figured out for yourself* except for the steam cannon maybe. That, by the way, is my invention. Come along with me. I'm very proud of it and want you to see it. It's almost finished.” Firedragon / rested inside its supporting framework of timbers. It was silvery gray and shaped like a flat-bottomed boat but had seven huge metal wheels with plas- tic tires on each side. Twin screws protected by- a screen protruded from its rear. Its length was thirty feet, its beam ten and its height was twelve feet. Three turrets stuck out from the upper deck. One held the pilot and captain and radio
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operator, though' at the moment Parolando had ho radios. The center turret was higher than the others and the barrel of a short stubby weapon encased in wood projected from it. The rear turret was designed for gunners who would be armed with Mark I hand- guns and perhaps rifles.
‘The amphibian bums wood al- cohol to generate steam," Sam said. “Let's go inside, through this hatch in the side here. You'll notice that the boiler takes up about a third of the interior. There's a good reason for that, as you'll see."
They climbed up a ladder into the interior of the center turret, which was lit by a single light bulb. Firebrass exclaimed at this— it was the only electric light bulb he had ever seen on The River. Sam explained that it was powered by a fuel cell.
“And here is the Superdooper Steam Machine Cannon," he said. He pointed at the cylinder sticking out of the gray bulkhead of the tur- ret. Underneath it were a pistol- like butt and a trigger. Firebrass got behind it, put his finger on the trigger and looked out through the opening above the barrel. He raised and lowered the weapon. “There'll be a chair for the oper- ator to sit in," Sam said. “He'll be able to rotate the turret any way he wants by pushing pedals. He can depress the gun about twenty degrees up or down. The steam
from the boiler is the motive power for the eighty-caliber plas- tic bullets. The gun is fired from an open breech. That is, there’s no bullet in the barrel when the trig- ger is pulled. Pulling the trigger releases a catch which permits the breech block to move forward, im- pelled by a spring. During its for- ward travel the breech block picks up a plastic bullet from the clip and pushes it into the breech. Just before the block reaches the breech the camming lugs on either side engage in their slots and turn the breech block a quarter turn to the right, thus locking the breech. You follow me?"
Firebrass nodded.
“Good. As soon as the quarter turn is completed, the inlet channel in the breech block comes into line with the feed channel from the high- pressure steam line. This allows hot, say approximately four hundred-degree F., steam to enter the chamber in the breech block. The plastic cartridge is forced through the barrel by the expansion of steam. At the same time the steam pressure, acting against the rear of the chamber, begins to force the breech block back. Because of the greater weight of the block, however, the block doesn't begin to move until the bullet has already cleared the muzzle of the rifle.
“As the block begins to move backward, the camming lugs move in the camming slots and turn the
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bolt a quarter turn to the left, thus shutting off the steam. Then the breech block returns to its original position. If the trigger is still held back, the operation is repeated in- definitely.”
Firebrass said, “I’m impressed. But won’t the gun operate most ef- ficiently if its temperature is the same as the incoming high-pres- sure steam? That way, less of the steam’s energy would be used to heat the gun and this means more steam to propel the bullet. Ah, I see! You do have a hollow jacket around the barrel. The steam travels through that before it en- ters the weapon itself, right?”
“Yes. There’s an insulating jack- et of plaster encased in wood. Note that bleeder valve. It permits the gun to be heated up before use — a few seconds before it’s fired. If that isn’t done the gun might jam. And since the gun's maximum temper- ature is the same as the steam in the boiler, there’s no danger of burning up the barrel. You can use the gun like a fire hose. In fact, that'll be about the only way it’ll be effective. The accuracy of a light plastic bullet with such compar- atively low muzzle velocity isn’t high.”
FIREBRASS was far from be- ing depressed because of the military superiority the amphibian would give Parolando. This prob- ably was because he was planning
on building one for Soul City. Or, if Parolando had one, then per- haps he might build two. In which case, Parolando would have to build three.
Soul City could not outbuild Parolando. But Parolando could not cut the supplies off, because then Soul Scity would cut off the bauxite, cryolite, platinum and ir- idium.
The exhilaration from showing off his deadly invention whistled out almost audibly from Sam. The only solution to the problem, if Soul City did start a weapons race, would be to smash Soul City and take direct control of the minerals. This meant putting off the building of the Riverboat. And it also meant offending the two states, Publiujo and Tifonujo, that lay between Parolando and Soul City. And if those two states got to- gether, they would be formidable, what with the weapons that Paro- lando had to give them in exchange for (heir wood.
Sam had thought that that po- tentiality was bad enough. But a few days later lyeyasu completed his conquest of his neighboring states and sent a mission to Paro- lando. He made no demands that could not be met. In fact, in one way his proposals were helpful. He said that his nation had lost enough trees and he would like to give them a chance to grow again — but for an increase in the
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number of weapons from Paro- lando he was willing to provide a large quantity of wood and of ex- crement for their gunpowder in- dustry. He would invade the terri- tories across The River and take their wood from them.
What it amounted to was that Parolando would be paying lyeyasu to collect the wood. It would be cheaper and also a lot less painful for Parolandoj, who would not have to do their own kill- ing, enslaving or raiding.
And Sam Clemens would have one more thing to rob him of sleep.
John Lackland thought the pro- posal excellent. “Our factories are turning out weapons efficiently/' he said. “We can afford export more. And we must build a fleet of Firedragons , so that the swords we give these people will be easily overpowered by our machines."
“When are we going to start building the Riverboat?" Sam asked.
NO. ONE gave him an answer, but the next day Van Boom, Velitsky, and O'Brien, his chief engineers, brought him the first rough overall sketches. They were drawn in black on white plastic boards with a pencil connected to a fuel cell. The magnetic field at the tip of the pencil rearranged the loose and very thin covering of par- ticles within its range. The lines re-
mained polarized until a reverse field was passed over them. Thus the demand for paper for drawings was greatly cut down and the plans could be changed as desired.
Firebrass said he would like to help build the boat. Permission was given, though John objected at first. Sam replied that the more help they had, the faster the plans would move. And he did not see how any amount of knowledge on Firebrass's part would enable him to steal the boat. Though Sam did not tell John, he had an idea about Firebrass. That was to get him so involved, so “het up" about the boat that he would take an offer of a berth on the vessel.
The machinery necessary to roll out the first plates for the hull was almost finished. The dam had been finished a week ago and the water from the cataract was filling it up. The aluminum wires of the gen- erators which would be turned by the waterfall from the dam were being wound. The prototype bata- citor, which would be four stories high, would be finished in a month, if enough materials were available.
Five hundred missionaries of the Church of the Second Chance asked for sanctuary in Parolando a few days later, lyeyasu had kicked them out of his new state, prom- ising various exquisite tortures if they tried to sneak back. Sam did not hear about them immediately
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because he was up at the dam.
The Chancers refused to go when John sent word to them to leave immediately. John Lackland, hearing this, smiled grimly, tugged at his lion-colored hair, and swore his favorite oath, “By the teeth of God!"
Sam was at the dam to super- vise the installation of tons of dynamite inside the hollow walls. This was to be one more trick up his sleeve, a last-ditch operation and perhaps a suicidal one — if ever an enemy were about to make a'successful invasion.
Von Richthofen, red-faced and blowing hard from his run up the hill, told him of the arrival of the Chancers and their refusal to move. He did not mention John.
Sam told Lothar to tell the Chancers that he would be down in the evening. They could wait for him but were not to move outside a radius of twenty yards from the grailstone near which they had landed. For a moment he considered ordering them to leave at once and telling the soldiers that they could pound them a little w ith the Hats of their swords if they wished. He was hot and sweating and covered with cement dust, and he felt an especial animosity to- ward the Chancers. Here was a world blessed by the absence of flies and mosquitoes and hu- mans, the Chancers, were trying to fill the gap.
The rumbling and splash of giant mortars pouring out concrete, the yells of the straw bosses and the scraping of shovels and clatter of iron wooden-wheeled barrows kept Sam from hearing the ex- plosions that came a half-hour later. He knew nothing of what had happened until von Richtho- fen came running toward him again.
Sam felt as if he would come loose at the joints and slump into a puddle. John had tested out the new guns on the Chancers. A hun- dred Mark I flintlocks had killed almost five hundred men and women in three minutes. John himself had fired and loaded ten times, using the last five bullets to finish off the wounded.
About thirty women, the most beautiful, had been spared. These had been taken to John's palace.
LONG before he reached the water's edge, Sam saw the big crowd gathered around the grailstone. He sent Lothar ahead of him to clear the way. The crowd parted before them, like the Red Sea before Moses, he thought, but the Red Sea was before him after he got through the parting. The bodies were piled against each other, covered with blood, their flesh tom, bones shattered by the big-caliber bullets. In his ninety- seven years of life Sam had never grown accustomed to the silence
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of the dead. It seemed to hang over them like an invisible and chilling cloud. The mouth that would not speak again, the brain that could not think . . .
It did no good to remember that tomorrow these same people, in fresh and healthy bodies, would be up and doing somewhere along the banks. The effect of death could not be diluted with intel- lectualizing.
John was issuing orders about the disposal of the bodies to the soap and skin factories. He grinned at Sam like a bad boy caught pull- ing the cat's tail.
‘"This is a massacre!" Sam shouted. "A massacre! Unjusti- fied! Unforgivable! There was no reason for it, you bloody-minded, killing beast! That's all you ever have been, you murdering dog, all you ever will be! Swine! Swine! Swine!"
John lost his smile and took a step back as Sam, his hands clenched, moved close to him. The huge massive-boned Zaksksromb, holding a big club of oak with steel spikes set in its end, started to- ward Sam.
Lothar von Richthofen shouted, "None of that -leave him alone or I call Joe Miller! And I'll shoot the first man who makes a move to- ward Sam."
Sam looked behind him. Lothar was holding a big pistol in his hands and it was pointed at John.
John's dark skin paled, and his eyes opened wide. Even the light blue irises seemed to become paler.
Later Sam wished that he had told Lothar to fire. Even though the hundred pistoleers were John's men, they might have hesi- tated if John had been killed at the first shot. They were surrounded by armed men and women, most of whom were not fond of John and almost all of whom were shocked by the slaughter. They might have withheld their fire. Even if they had not, Sam could have thrown himself down to the ground and the first shots might have missed. After that, who knew what would have happened?
But it was no good fantasizing. He had not given the order.
Nevertheless, he had to take some strong and immediate action. If he let John get away with this, he would lose everybody's respect, not to mention his own. And he might as well resign his Consulship. In which case he would lose the River- boat.
He turned his head slightly, though not so much that he could not keep an eye on John. He saw Livy’s white face and big dark eyes; she looked as if she were going to vomit. He ignored her and called to Cyrano de Bergerac, who was standing on the edge of the inner circle, his long rapier in his hand.
"Captain de Bergerac!" Sam
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pointed at John. “Arrest the co- Consul."
JOHN was holding a pistol in one hand, but he did not bring up its muzzle.
He said in a mild voice, “I pro- test. I told them to get out at once and they refused to go. I warned them and they still refused — so l ordered them shot. What difference does it make, really? They will be alive tomorrow."
Cyrano marched straight to John, stopped, saluted, and said, “Your weapons, sire."
Zaksksromb growled and lifted his spiked club.
“No, Zak," John Lackland said. “According to the Carta one Con- sul can arrest the other if he thinks the other is acting contrary to the Carta. I won't be under arrest long."
He handed Cyrano his gun, butt first, unbuckled his belt and gave it to Cyrano. Its sheaths held a long knife and short sword.
“I will return to my palace while you and the Council decide my fate," he said. “According to the Carta you must convene wjthin an hour after the arrest and have a de- cision in two hours, as long as no national emergency interferes."
He walked away, Cyrano be- hind him. John's men hesitated a moment and then, at the thun- dered orders of Zaksksromb, fol- lowed John to the palace. Sam
69 SUM 69
mratnni
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is where DUNE MESSIAH befbu. Author Frank Herbert returns te the AunewortA of Arrakis for an epic of imperial intrigue auA human ecolegy-an epic that spans the universe. That’s why we can tell you where DUNE MESSIAH begins, but net where it en As —
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THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT
67
stared after them. He had expected more resistance. And then it occurred to him that John knew very well that Sam Clemens had to do just what he did or lose face. And John knew Sam well enough to know that Sam might want to avoid a decision that could lead to civil war, but he would do so if he thought his Riverboat endangered.
So John had gone along with him. John did not want to force a showdown. Not now. He had satisfied his bloodlust for the mo- ment. The Councilmen would meet and find that, legally, John was within his rights. Morally, he was not. But then his supporters would argue that even there he was justified. After all, the dead would be alive again and the lesson to the Second Chancers would be invaluable. They would steer clear of Parolando for a long time. And surely Sam Clemens would have to admit that this was desir- able. If the Chancers continued to make converts, the Riverboat would never be built. Moreover, other states, less weakened with the Chancer philosophy, would in- vade Parolando.
And he, Sam Clemens, would say that next John's supporters would be claiming that it was all right to torture people. After all, the pain could last only so long, and any injury would be healed just by killing the victim. Then rape would be justified, because, after
68
all, the woman wasn't going to be made pregnant or diseased — and if she got hurt, too bad. Kill her and she'd be all right in the morning. Never mind the mental damage. A little dreamgum would cure that.
No, Sam would say, it’s a ques- tion, not of murder, but of rights. If you killed a man, you removed him without his consent to a place so far away he could walk a thousand years along the Riverbank and never get back. You took him away from his love, his friends, his home. Force was force and it was al- ways . . .
Oh, oh! He’d better watch him- self!
“Sam!" a lovely voice said.
He turned. Livy was still pale, but her eyes looked as if they were normal.
“Sam! What about the women he carried off?"
“Where’s my head?" he said aloud. “Come on, Lothar!" See- ing the ten-foot high Miller half- way across the plain, he waved at him and the titanthrop turned to intercept them. Lothar ordered a hundred archers who had just ar- rived to follow them.
Near the great log building, he slowed down. The ex-king must have realized what he had done by now and he might be prepared to fight if he thought it was the only thing he could do.
TO BE CONCLUDED
IF
If you can't aim a bullat at tha anamy — try aiming tha anamy at your bullat!
GREG and JIMBENFORD
69
IT WAS a sound like Fingernails scraping on metal, shrieking in the narrow confines of the capsule. The walls reflected it, piling har- monic on harmonic until it ceased to be a noise and became a force.
The force battered at Kunihei Katsura's sweating face and dark- ened the lines of fatigue. He un- consciously cringed away and for the first time thought of reaching for his pistol. If it got in he would have only one shot.
He glanced at the laser cannon control grid linked to the larger gun on the roof. Green light: No target . The alien was too close to his life-support bubble for the sys- tem to register it.
The thing was lunging against the walls, the screech rising to an unbearable pitch. Katsura lifted the safety on his pistol and braced for the attack.
Then he realized with a start that the thing was not getting in. The shrill rasp did not give way to a tearing sound as the organic sheets yielded to armored claws.
It stopped quickly and circled back around the small hemisphere to the viewport. Beyond, on the floor of the barren gray canyon that stretched away for two miles, lay the mangled wet clumps of things that had been men. The scene was framed in the port, stark under the white glare of an alien star.
A reddish-black object fell
across his field of vision, and it was a moment before Katsura could recognize the claw with its razor edges. Abruptly the full body of the thing filled the port, stand- ing upright on its hind legs to bring its full weight to bear on the bubble. Ten feet long — at least. Its underbelly was yellow-green, covered with an oHy liquid that seemed to ooze from between overlapping platelets.
Katsura stopped an impulse to fire point-blank at the thing. A projectile weapon would shatter the tempered organiform and the alien could reach him with one in- credibly swift slash.
It was something like an insect, if an insect ever had two eyes mounted over each of its eight legs. Or if an insect ever killed twenty-three men.
The thing scraped frantically at the smooth surface of the bubble, slipping as it tried to gain a hold. Despite its speed it was massive. If it ever got a hold and reached the top of the hemisphere its weight would surely collapse the bubble.
Katsura wiped moisture from his brow. His mind raced over the last ten minutes, trying to think of a way out.
is it going to get in, Kunihei?"
He started. The computer's voice was tinny as it came through the comm line speaker mounted on the bubble wall.
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IF
HE'D always resented CAS (Computer, Analog and Ser- vices), partly because its efficiency cut so severely into the number of men needed for an exploratory ship. It got lonely out among the stars. CAS was stripped of most of the standard machine-human interface equipment which would have taken the edge off its know- it-all nature. No space for luxury out here.
"Why didn’t you say anything about that thing coming?” he said sharply.
"Perimeter radar detected no signal attributable to a moving ob- ject.”
"Well, do you see it now?" he shouted.
Great time for the system to fail.
"Yes, Kunihei. Do you think it is going to get in?”
"No. If it could, it already would have.” He subsided, think- ing. He looked at his wrist watch. Had it been only minutes ago when he’d heard a strangled gasp over his suit radio and the rush of air past a microphone? He had turned to see the insect slicing Hil- lary almost in half with one long arching cut, and three other men lying where they had fallen.
The laser cannon was already warmed up for testing and Kat- sura was the only man in the bub- ble. The gun fired as soon as it identified the other members of
the expedition and Katsura. ex- pected to see the alien burned in- stantly.
But it wasn't. When the rock had boiled away, there was no body — and an instant later the monster was on the other side of the canyon, behind Davis.
It hadn’t run the distance; noth- ing could. His warning shout to Davis did no good — before the words were out, the man was with- out a head.
It went that way for the rest. The tracking and aiming were done by the ship’s computer, but the mechanical construction of the directing optics limited its response time. The cannon was just a little too slow, and the men were even slower. Some of them fired with their own weapons, but no one hit. One by one they were chopped down and lay still under the harsh numbing whiteness of an alien high noon. Those minutes had seemed unreal, a fantasy, the dark nightmare of a tortured mind.
The expedition had never sus- pected life here, on a desiccated, barren world. The planet had no name — they were its discoverers— and fitted in neatly just above the minimum standards for a life-sup- porting world: 0.3 Earth mass, av- erage equatorial temperature of 45° F., air with a heavy nitrogen and CO2 content and little oxy- gen, no oceans, no satellite, little water in the air (though there was
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71
some snow at the poles).
But the surface was cratered and bleak, no large scale vegetation could be seen and. the computer reported no significant radiation anywhere on the EM spectrum. Not even a magnetosphere to give noise. Still, there were a few scat- tered cities. Dried husks of build- ings, wrecked vehicles, gray dust drifting in the angled streets. Someone had used this world as a base.
They orbited for three days. The high-resolution television showed nothing moving in the streets. So they went down.
441ZUNIHEI, I have replayed *^the tapes of the assault. The radar and microwave both show a sequence of blips of about one-second duration over a thirty- second interval. Radar signal con- stant over the duration; but micro- wave pulse only at beginning and end. Radar shows the locations as somewhat random. With a drift in our direction, however.”
“So that's the alien.”
“Yes.”
“And your power systems didn't have any failures which would cause those signals?”
“No.”
Standing futilely inside the cap- sule, Katsura had time to notice the metallic device strapped over the beetlerlike armor of the thing.
The insect touched it every time, just before it vanished.
“Teleportation/’ It could be nothing else.
“That was my deduction,” said the flat voice of the computer.
Mankind hadn’t found it yet, didn’t even know if it was possible. Weli , he thought wryly, we know now.
Probably the only reason the thing didn’t materialize inside the bubble itself was the small size of the interior. There must be some law against materializing in the space already occupied by another object. So it was trying to break in, instead.
Suddenly the insect seemed to lose interest in Katsura. It stopped clawing at the smooth surface and lay against the window, staring in- ward with a pair of eyes. The two pupils in each enlarged to accom- modate the darker interior and carefully swept about the room, ignoring the man.
There wasn't much to see. Aside from the control grid comm unit and some power tools for installa- tion, the cramped room was bar- ren. It was to have been a main- tenance and defense outpost on the perimeter of camp.
The inspection finished, it scut- tled down the side and reached for the panel at its middle. Just as its forelegs touched the ground it vanished.
Before Katsura could raise his
IF
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head the creature was near the oth- er wall of the canyon, by Davis' body. The automatic tracker clicked once and fired, but the spurt of dust and gas thrown up by the bright red beam couldn't conceal that the thing had van- ished too soon. The body was also gone.
The gun continued scanning the area. In the silence, the scene took on an ominous peacefulness.
Then the insect was back and Katsura glimpsed it lifting anoth- er body slightly clear of the ground before it was gone. The cannon optics swiveled* pulsed again. Too late.
Five more men were taken be- fore he noticed the white area on the alien's back. At first Katsura didn’t know what it was and then he couldn’t believe it. But when there were only two bodies left to collect, there was no mistake.
They were all hanging by their hands, tied together along some kind of belt. Stripped bare, their suits and clothes gone. Like some- thing he had seen long ago in a slaughterhouse.
His training stopped him from being sick. Nausea abated after a moment, though he had to avoid looking closely at the alien. It picked up the last body and van- ished again, the cannon futilely following with a shot.
After a pause it reappeared, its load now heavy and shifting
BATTLEGROUND
roughly back and forth, as it moved. The insect was out of the camp perimeter now, a half mile away. The tracker had not made its final fix, due to the change in distance, before the thing was gone again.
It suddenly became visible slight- ly farther away, winked out again to appear an instant later at the other side of the canyon. Erratical- ly it followed a zig-zag path, grad- ually making its way back toward the city. The cannon was hopeless- ly lost.
In a moment the insect was too far away to distinguish it from the gnarled rocks that dotted the plain. The broken spires of the dead city swallowed it up.
The thing was alone, probably, the last remnant of an alien out- post on this hostile planet. Thrown back on its own resources for sur- vival, vicious from a constant struggle. Lonely.
Hungry.
KATSURA noticed that his clothes were wet, his body trembling. With a jagged sigh he sank to the floor.
For a long time he simply lay there, breathing deeply and staring up at the stars through the view- port. He had thought of them as friendly lights, beacons of home, but now they seemed ominously impartial.
73
Gradually, reluctantly, the panic began to seep out of his body as he tried to think again. “CAS, have you sent a signal out to the other exploration teams?"
“Yes, l’m programed to notify all sister teams and the flagship immediately upon any violent hu- man-alien interaction. I also sent a notification of the reduction of crew strength below one half."
Good. You could always de- pend on the tidy mind of the com- puter. Exploration teams never operated far from one another, especially at this distance from the home worlds. He’d have help with- in a few days if he could sit tight and hold on.
“Kunihei, you have approxi- mately thirty minutes of air left under normal consumption."
Katsura blinked. He had been about to check his inventory. The encounter must have taken a lot of air. They had always told him to breathe slowly in tense situa- tions to correct for the reflex to gulp it in.
“There is no reserve air in the bubble, Kunihei. You will have to come back to the ship."
Automatically, he began pulling on the thin pressure suit. The best time to go get supplies — or reach the ship — was now. The alien would be busy and it would take time to get here from the city.
Still, the thing was amazingly fast.
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He stopped. “CAS, if this in- sect can teleport, why did it take the time to evade by zig-zagging back to the city? Why not go di- rectly?"
Lines in the tired face deepened. It wasn't that the alien could jump only short distance; when it was picking up the bodies the thing had gone so far it was nearly be- yond sight.
“The only information relating to discontinuous displacement in my second-level banks is the known limit on time travel."
No time to think. But there had to be a pattern somewhere.
“CAS, cut your ship service down as much as you can and switch over to your special prob- lem-solving program. Figure this thing out. I'm going to make it on back to the ship."
Katsura struggled wearily to his feet and looked out. The graceful blue curves of the vessel stood out against the dark sky. A half mile away were the burnished metal canisters of oxygen tanks and sup- plies brought from the ship with tractor beams. A smaller pile of air tanks lay only a short distance away. He should be able to make it to them and back.
Following Katsura's order, the computer began to alter itself. Emergency Heuristic Program be- gan to activate special subroutines to reassign memory space. Assess- ment criteria altered, self-consis-
IF
tency parameters relaxed. Micro- filmed references were reintegrated into direct-access memory loca- tions.
Glancing out the port, Katsura slipped into the tiny lock and was out the other side before the cy- cling was finished. He set out in a rapid lope, taking longer steps in the lighter gravity. His breath be- gan to come in short gasps.
THE emergency program had split the higher centers of the operations computer into four sub-programs. The first scanned memory for any information on spatial or temporal displacement, gradually working farther and far- ther afield. This memory was fed to the Advocate and Critic sections where hypotheses were created and discarded. The best went on to the Analyst, which applied them to the situation and developed strategy.
BLINKING against the glare, Katsura looked down the can- yon toward the city.
At first he didn’t believe it. He slammed to a halt, hoping he was wrong. Far down the canyon, flit- ting rapidly from one point to an- other and coming closer, was the insect. Somehow it knew.
Panic seized him. He turned on his heel and ran wildly in the other direction. With every step he took
BATTLEGROUND
Katsura could feel the claws poised behind him, about to slice through suit and flesh.
A glance over his shoulder. The creature was on the edge of the field now, only a few jumps from the life-support capsule. Katsura dug in hard for the last few steps, thrusting forward to catch the lev- er of the air lock. He fumbled with it for an agonizing moment and the door swung open.
As he rolled through the narrow passage, he could see the dark fig- ure materialize outside the lock and quickly closed the outer sec- tion and dogged it. Something heavy clanged against the door as it sealed and Katsura sprawled on the floor of the bubble.
The clawing sound came again and the alien came around to the port. It stayed there for a mo- ment, staring down at the man from a set of unblinking eyes, and then disappeared. It reappeared in the rocks nearby, then teleported to the stack of oxygen tanks and moved on to the path back down the canyon. The strange zig-zag- ging started and in a moment it was lost in the ruins of the city.
ANALYST had scanned all work on time travel, knew the limit that basic theory and experi- ment set on any time displace- ment: roughly one hour, before costs exponentiated and became
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astronomical. Critic pointed out that those experiments were done in the laboratories, not out in the field. Advocate replied that space is reasonably isotropic, time is not. It did not seem likely there would be a limit on spatial tele- portation.
The discussion continued.
KATSURA noticed that it was taking him longer to catch his breath. His lungs heaved des- perately to draw in air, gradually slowing.
He bit his lip. He hadn't ex- pected it to give out this soon. Fil- tration systems being what they are, the first sign that the cyclers were scraping the bottom of the barrel was a surplus of carbon dioxide. Lungs react to this ex- cess and not to the lack of oxygen.
A man's last moments of oxy- gen starvation, with bursting capil- laries and straining heart, are not pleasant ones.
There was no time to wait, to marshal his strength or give the alien a chance to relax its guard. The air inside the bubble was be- coming fiat and thick, heavy with an oily musk.
He bent down and opened his air line. It was much harder to breathe near the floor. That meant a gradient of CO2 content had al- ready been set up in the cabin. Katsura took a last breath of
the capsule's air and sealed his suit again. Its supply was slightly bet- ter, but the smell of his own body was in every breath he took.
He looked through the port. The alien sun was slowly lowering almost directly behind the city, casting shadows across the plain. Seeing the creature's approach would be harder now, against the reddening glare of sunset.
The small stack of oxygen tanks stood only two hundred yards away. It seemed impossible that the alien could have reached him before he could cross that dis- tance, tired as he was. But it had.
ADVOCATE and Critic sub- programs continued to assess the literature of space-time, avoid- ing misinterpretation by calling the original papers from the physics section of the microfilm library. Einstein, Minkowski, Wheeler, Littenberg, relativity, inertial frame, world line ... A world line diagram taken from the Litten- berg formulation of relativity showed promise, passed the scru- tiny of Critic, moved on to Ana- lyst.
S LOWLY, this time, he opened the lock doors. He was halfway out before the small box caught his eye. It was attached to the smooth surface above the lock by
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IF
suction cups and had a lever that was tripped by the opening of the door. A small light winked on simultaneously.
Katsura flipped the lever back with his hand and the light went out. He scrambled back inside, secured the door and watched through the port. The insect ap- peared soon along the erratic path it had used before, but stopped in a moment and studied the situa- tion from behind a rock, where the cannon couldn’t reach it.
After a slight hesitation it ap- peared again, rapidly teleporting through the steps back to the city. It had probably guessed he had found the alarm and would be watching in the distance for him to come out.
ANALYST reviewed the theo- ry. The world-line concept was employed in relativity from the be- ginning, going all the way back to Minkowski. It was the path which described both the location and the time of every event in the his- tory of an object. In space-time the world-line wound from birth to death. Scientists and writers, including the great H.G. Wells, had assumed time travelers would return to their same location — if you started in the laboratory, you would come out of your machine in the same spot, at another time. Otherwise, the planet would have
moved in the duration, and the traveler could, emerge somewhere light-years away, in space.
But the alien represented an un- known. The insect might find it just as convenient to travel back along its own world line, flitting through incidents in its own past and points where it had been, un- til it reached the location it want- ed. Say, a time when it had been somewhere on the plain beyond this capsule, before the expedition arrived. Then the alien would keep its place, as Wells had visualized, while it moved forward in time.
And emerge seemingly at the same instant, displaced in space.
The same as teleportation.
KATSURA choked and his surroundings came rushing back. The air was really foul now, curling through his helmet with a weight of its own. He didn’t have time to speculate. It was either make another run for it or stay here and strangle.
He jerked the lock door open and slipped through. The light on the box outside flashed on as he emerged. Should have smashed that while I was out here , he thought. No time now .
Almost without hope he began the long weary lope toward the distant supplies. Through the mist that began to cloud his vision he could still make out the signs of
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77
slashed pressure suits and splat- tered blood that marked the spots where the rest of the expedition had died.
ANALYST reformulated the picture.
Space and time are like two lines on a plane, at right angles to each other. It might be possible to travel along either of them inde- pendently. Teleportation is simply moving along the space line, but man’s idea of time travel is like the long side of a triangle, shut- tling through space and time sim- ultaneously to reach an event in the past or future.
But instead of traveling along the space axis for teleportation, the alien was taking the long way around,. down the hypotenuse and up the time line. Either way, it could reach the same point in space-time.
But a path like that should pro- duce a pattern in local space. An- alyst called for a graphing of all locations the insect had taken up. The points began to be plotted with appropriate error bars on a topographical map of the area be- tween the ship and city. A pattern emerged. All the points were clear- ly on three paths around the area. Preliminary geological constructs of the local region indicated these paths would be preferred by heavy objects moving over the terrain.
KATSURA stumbled on an outcropping, regained his bal- ance and ran on. The cannon be-