In the middle of the night, he awoke wondering if he did have to worry after all. What if Van Boom was not as upright as he said? What if the clever Firebrass had told Van Boom to go to Clemens with his story? What better way to put a man off his guard? But then it would have been better if Van Boom had pretended to Sam that he was pretending to go along with Firebrass.
"I'm beginning to think like King John!" Sam said aloud.
He finally decided that he had to trust Van Boom. He was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what you'd expect from an engineer, but he had a moral backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur's.
The work on the great Riverboat went on day and night. The plates of the hull were bonded, and the beams were welded on. The batacitor and the giant electric motors were built, and the work of the transportation system of the cranes and engines was ended. The cranes themselves were enormous structures on huge rails, powered by electricity from the prototype batacitor. People came from thousands of miles up and down The River, in catamarans, big galleys, dugouts and canoes, to see the fabulous works.
Sam and King John agreed that so many people wandering about would get in the way of the work and would enable spies to function more efficiently.
"Also, it'll put the temptation to steal before them, and we don't want to be responsible for tempting people. They have enough trouble as it is," Sam said.
John did not smile. He signed the order that expelled all noncitizens, except for ambassadors and messengers, and that kept any more from coming in. This still did not prevent many boats from sailing by while the occupants gawked. By then the dirt walls and stone walls along the bank were about finished. There were, however, many breaks through which the curious could stare. These were left for ingress of freight boats bringing in wood and ore and flints. Moreover, since the plain sloped up toward the hills, the tourists could see many of the factories and the cranes, and the great structure of the boatyard was visible for miles around.
After a while, the tourist trade petered off. Too many were getting picked up along the way by grail slavers. Word got around that it was getting dangerous to travel The River in that section. Six months passed. The wood supply in the area was cut off. Bamboo grew to full length in from three weeks to six weeks; the trees took six months to grow to full maturity. Every state for fifty miles both ways from Parolando had enough wood for their own uses only.
Parolando's representatives made treaties with more distant states, trading iron ore and weapons for wood. There was a very large supply of siderite masses left yet, so Sam was not worried about running out of it. But the mining of it took many men and materials and caused the central part of Parolando to look like a heavily shelled landscape. And the more wood that was brought in, the more men, materials, and machines had to be diverted from the boatbuilding to make weapons for trade. Moreover, the increase in shipping resulted in more demand for wood to build freighters. And more men had to be trained and shipped out as sailors and guards for the wood-carrying and ore-carrying fleets. It got to the point where boats had to be rented from neighboring states, and the rent, as always, was iron-nickel ore and finished weapons.
Sam wanted to be at the boatyard from dawn to dusk and even later, because he loved every minute of progress in the construction of the great boat. But he had so many administrative duties only indirectly or not at all connected with the boat that he could be in the boatyard only two to three hours—on a good day. He tried to get John to take over more of the administration, but John would accept only duties which gave him more power over the military forces or allowed him to exert pressure on those who opposed him. The anticipated attempts at assassination of those close to Sam did not occur. The bodyguards and the close watch at nights were continued, but Sam decided that John was going to lay low for a while. He had probably seen that it would be best for his purposes to wait until the boat was nearly finished.
Once, Joe Miller said, "Tham, don't you think maybe you're wrong about John? Maybe he'th going to be content vith being thecond-in-command of the boat?" "Joe, would a sabertooth part with his canines?" "Vhat?"
"John is rotten to the core. The old kings of England were never any great shakes, morally speaking. The only difference between them and Jack the Ripper was that they operated openly and with the sanction of Church and State. But John was such a wicked monarch that it became traditional to never name another English king John. And even the Church, which had a high tolerance for evil in high places, could not stomach John. The Pope slapped the Interdict on the entire nation and brought John crawling and begging to the feet of the Pope, like a whipped puppy. But I suppose that even when he was kissing the Pope's foot, he managed to suck a little blood from the big toe. And the Pope must have checked his pockets after he embraced John.
"What I'm trying to put across is that John couldn't reform even if he wanted to. He'll always be a human weasel, a hyena, a skunk."
Joe puffed on a cigar even longer than his nose and said, "Vell, I don't know. Humanth can change. Look at vhat the Church of the Thecond Chanthe hath done. Look at Goring. Look at you. You told me that in your time vomen vore clotheth which covered them from the neck to the ankleth, and you got ekthited if you thaw a goodlooking ankle, and a thigh, oh my! Now you aren't too dithturbed if you thee . . ."
"I know! I know!" Sam said. "Old attitudes and what the psychologists call conditioned reflexes can be changed. That's why I say that anybody who still carries in him the racial and sexual prejudices he had on Earth is not taking advantage of what The River offers. A man can change, but . . ."
"He can?" Joe said. "But you alvayth told me that everything in life, even the vay a man actth and thinkth, ith determined by vhat vent on long before he vath even born. Vhat ith it? Yeth, it'th a determinithtic philothophy, that'th vhat. Now, if you believe that everything ith fikthed in itth courthe, that humanth are mathyineth, tho to thpeak, then how can you believe that men can change themthelveth?"
"Well," Sam drawled, looking fierce, his excessively bushy eyebrows pulled down, his blue-green eyes bright above the falcon nose, "well, even my theories are mechanically determined and if they conflict, that can't be helped."
"Then, for heaven'th thaketh," Joe said, throwing up his football-sized hands, "vhat'th the uthe of talking about it? Or even doing anything? Vhy don't you jutht give up?"
"Because I can't help myself," Sam said. "Because, when the first atom in this universe bumped against the second atom, my fate was decreed, my very thought and action was fixed."
"Then you can't be, uh, rethponthible for vhat you do, right?" "That's right," Sam said. He felt very uncomfortable.
"Then John can't help it that he'th a murdering treacherouth thoroughly dethpicable thvine?"
"No, but then I can't help it that I despise him for being a swine."
"And I thuppothe that if thomebody thmarter than I am came along and thyowed you, by thtrict undeniable logic, that you vere wrong in your philothophy, that you vould thay that he can't help thinking you're wrong? But he'th wrong, it'th jutht that he'th predetermined, mechanically, to think the vay he doeth."
"I'm right, and I know it," Sam said, puffing harder on his cigar. "This hypothetical man couldn't convince me because his own reasoning does not spring from a free will, which is like a vegetarian tiger—that is, it doesn't exist."
"But your own reathoning doethn't thpring from a free vill, either." "True. We're all screwed. We believe what we have to."
"You laugh at thothe people who have vhat you call invinthible ignoranthe, Tham. Yet you're full of it, yourthelf."
"Lord deliver us from apes that think they're philosophers!"
"Thee! You fall back on inthultth vhen you can't think of anything elthe to thay! Admit it, Tham! You haven't got a lochical leg to thtand on!"
"You just aren't capable of seeing what I mean, because of the way you are," Sam said.
"You thyould talk to Thyrano de Bercherac more, Tham. He'th ath big a thynic ath you, although he doethn't go ath far ath you do vith determinithm."
"I'd think you two incapable of talking to each other. Don't you two resent each other, you look so much alike? How can you stand nose to nose, as it were, and not break up with laughter? It's like two anteaters . . ." "Inthultth! Inthultth! Oh, vhat'th the uthe?"
"Exactly," Sam said. Joe did not say good night, and he did not call alter him. He was nettled. Joe looked so dumb_ with that low forehead and the bone-ringed eyes and comical dill pickle nose and gorilla build and his hairiness. But behind those little blue eyes and the lisping was an undeniable intelligence.
What disturbed him most was Joe's comment that his deterministic belief was only a rationalization to excuse his guilt. Guilt for what? Guilt for just about everything bad that had happened to those whom he loved.
But it was a philosophic labyrinth which ended in a quagmire. Did he believe in mechanical determinism because he wanted to not feel guilty, or did he feel guilty, even though he should not, because the mechanical universe determined that he should feel guilty?
Joe was right. There was no use thinking about it. But if a man's thinking was set on its course by the collision of the first two atoms, then how could he keep from thinking about it if he were Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain?
He sat up later than usual that night, but he was not working at his duties. He drank at least a fifth of ethyl alcohol mixed with fruit juice.
Two months before, Firebrass had said he could not understand the failure of Parolando to make ethyl alcohol. Sam had been upset. He had not known that grain alcohol could be made. He thought that the only supply of liquor would have to be the limited amounts that the grails yielded.
No, Firebrass had said. Hadn't any of his engineers told him? If the proper materials, such as acid, coal gas, or acetaldehyde and a proper catalyst were available, then wood cellulose could be converted into ethyl alcohol. That was common knowledge. But Parolando, until recently, was the only place on The River—he presumed—which had the materials to make grain alcohol.
Sam had called in Van Boom, who replied that he had enough to worry about without providing booze for people who drank too much as it was.
Sam had ordered materials and men diverted. For the first time in the history of The River, as far as anybody knew, potable alcohol was being made on a large scale. This resulted not only in happier citizens, except for the Second Chancers, but in a new industry for Parolando. They exported alcohol in exchange for wood and bauxite.
Sam fell into bed and the next morning, for the first time, refused to get up before dawn. But the next day he rose as usual.
Sam and John sent a message to Iyeyasu that they would regard it as a hostile act if he invaded the rest of the Ulmak territory or Chernsky's Land.
Iyeyasu replied that he had not intention of waging war on these lands, and he proved it by invading the state just north of his, Sheshshub's Land. Sheshshub, an Assyrian born in the seventh century B.C., had been a general of Sargon II, and so, like most powerful people on Earth, had become a leader on the Riverworld. He gave Iyeyasu a good fight, but the invaders were more numerous.
Iyeyasu was one worry. There were plenty of others to keep Sam going day and night. Hacking finally sent a message, through Firebrass, that Parolando should quit stalling He wanted the amphibian promised so long ago. Sam had kept pleading technical difficulties, but Firebrass told him that was no longer acceptable. So the Firedragon III was reluctantly shipped off.
Sam made a visit to Chernsky to reassure him that Parolando would defend Cernskujo. Coming back, a half mile upwind of the factories, Sam almost gagged. He had been living so long in the acid-bath-cum-smoke atmosphere that he had gotten used to it, but any vacation from it cleansed his lungs. It was like stepping into a glueand-sulphur factory. And, though the wind was a fifteenmph breeze, it did not carry the smoke away swiftly enough. The air definitely was hazy. No wonder, he thought, that Publiujo, to the south, complained.
But the boat continued to grow. Standing before the front port of his pilothouse, Sam could look out every morning and be consoled for his toil and tiredness and for the hideousness and stench of the land. In another six months, the three decks would be completed, and the great paddle-wheels would be installed. Then a plastic coating would be put over that part of the hull which would come into contact with water. This plastic would not only prevent electrolysis of the magnalium, it would reduce the water turbulence, thus adding ten mph to the boat's speed.
During this time, Sam received some good news. Tungsten and iridium had been found in Selinujo, the country just south of Soul City. The report was brought by the prospector, who trusted no one else to transmit it. He also brought some bad news. Selina Hastings refused to let Parolando mine there. In fact, if she had known that a Parolandano was digging along her mountain, she would have thrown him out. She did not want to be unfriendly, indeed, she loved Sam Clemens, since he was a human being. But she did not approve of the Riverboat, and she would not permit anything to go out of her land that would help build the vessel.
Sam erupted, and, as Joe said, "Thyot blue thyit for mileth around." The tungsten was very much needed for hardening their machine tools but even more for the radios and, eventually, the closed-circuit TV sets. The iridium could be used to harden their platinum for various uses, for scientific instruments, surgical tools and for pen points.
The Mysterious Stranger had told Sam that he had set up the deposit of minerals here but that his fellow Ethicals did not know that he had done so. Along with the bauxite, cryolite, and platinum would be tungsten and iridium. But an error had been made, and the latter two metals had been deposited several miles south of the first three.
Sam did not tell John at once, because he needed time to think about the situation. John, of course, would want to demand that the metals be traded to Parolando or that war be declared.
While he was pacing back and forth in the pilothouse, clouding the room with green smoke, he heard drums. They were using a code which he did not know but recognized, after a minute, as that used by Soul City. A few minutes later, Firebrass was at the foot of the ladder.
"Sinjoro Hacking knows all about the discovery of tungsten and iridium in Selinujo. He says that if you can come to an agreement with Selina, fine. But don't invade her land. He'd regard that as a declaration of war on Soul City."
Sam looked out the starboard port past Firebrass. "Here comes John hot-footing it," he said. "He's heard the news, too. His spy system is almost as good as yours, a few minutes less good, I'd say. I don't know where the leaks in my system are, but they're so wide that I'd be sunk if I was a boat, and I may be anyway."
John, his eyes inflamed, his face red, and puffing and panting, entered. Since the introduction of grain alcohol, he had put on even more fat, and he seemed to be half drunk all the time and all drunk half the time.
Sam was angered, but at the same time, he was amused. John would have liked to summon him to his palace, in keeping with his dignity as ex-King of England. But he knew that Sam would not come for a long time, if at all, and meanwhile there was no telling how much hankypanky Firebrass and Sam would manufacture. "What's going on?" John said, glaring.
"You tell me," Sam said. "You seem to know more about the shady side of affairs than I do."
"None of your wisecracks!" John said. Without being asked, he poured out a quart of purple passion into a stein. "I know what that message is about, even if I don't know the code!"
"I thought as much," Sam said. "For your information, in case you missed anything . . ." and he told him what Firebrass had said.
"The arrogance of you blacks is unendurable," John said. "You are telling Parolando, a sovereign state, how it must conduct itself in vital business. Well, I say you can't! We will get those metals, one way or the other! Selinujo doesn't need them; we do! It can't hurt Selinujo to give them up! We will give a fair trade!"
"In what?" Firebrass said. "Selinujo doesn't want weapons or alcohol. What can you trade?" "Peace, freedom from war!"
Firebrass shrugged and grinned, thus incensing John even more.
"Sure," Firebrass said, "you can make your offer. But what Hacking says still goes."
"Hacking has no love for Selinujo," Sam said. "He kicked out all the Second Chancers, black or white."
"That's because they were preaching immediate pacifism. They also preach, and apparently practice, love for all, regardless of color, but Hacking says they're a danger to the state. The blacks have to protect themselves, otherwise they would be enslaved all over again." "The blacks?" Sam said. "Us blacks!" Firebrass replied, grinning.
This was not the first time Firebrass had given the impression that he was not so deeply concerned with skin color. His identification with blacks, as such, was weak. His life had not been untouched by racial prejudice, but it had not been much affected. And he said things now and then that indicated that he would like a berth on the boat All this, of course, could be a put-on.
"We'll negotiate with Sinjorino Hastings," Sam said. "It would be nice to have radios and TV for the boat, and the machine shops could use the tungsten. But we can get along without them."
He winked at John to indicate that he should take this line. But John was as stone-headed as usual.
"What we do with Selinujo is our problem, nobody else's!"
"I'll tell Hacking," Firebrass said. "But Hacking is a strong person. He won't take any crap from anybody, least of all white capitalist imperialists." Sam choked, and John stared.
"That's what he regards you as!" Firebrass said. "And the way he defines those terms, you are what he says you are."
"Because I want this boat so badly!" Sam shouted. "Do you know what this boat is for, what its ultimate goal . . . ?"
He fought back his anger, sobbing with the effort. He felt dizzy. For a moment, he had almost told about the Stranger. "What is it?" Firebrass said.
"Nothing," Sam replied. "Nothing. I just want to get to the headwaters of The River, that's all. Maybe the secret of this whole shebang is there? Who knows? But I certainly don't like criticism from someone who just wants to sit around on his dead black ass and collect soul brothers. If he wants to do that, more power to him, but I still hold to integration as the ideal. And I'm a Missouri white born in 1835! So how's that for going against your heritage and your environment? The point is, if I don't use the siderite metal to build a boat, which is designed for travel only, not for aggression, then someone else will. And that someone else may use it to conquer and to hold, instead of for tourist purposes.
"Now, we've gone along with Hacking's demands, paid his jacked-up prices for the ones when we could have gone down there and taken them from him. John's apologized for what he called you and Hacking, and if you think it's easy for a Plantagenet to do that, you don't know your history. It's too bad about the way Hacking feels. I don't know that I blame him. Of course, he hates whites. But this is not Earth! Conditions are radically different here!"
"But people bring their attitudes along with them," Firebrass said. "Their hates and loves, dislikes and likes, prejudices, reactions, everything." "But they can change!"
Firebrass grinned. "Not according to your philosophy. Rather, not unless mechanical forces change them. So, Hacking isn't determined by anything to change his attitude. Why should he? He's experienced the same exploitation and contempt here as he did on Earth."
"I don't want to argue about that," Sam said. "I'll tell you what I think we should do!"
He stopped and stared out the port. The whitish-gray hull and upper works gleamed in the sun. How beautiful! And she was, in a sense, all his! She was worth everything he was being put through!
"I'll tell you what," he said more slowly. "Why doesn't Hacking come up here? Pay a little visit? He can look around, see for himself what we're doing. See our problems. Maybe he'll appreciate our problems, see we're not blue-eyed devils who want to enslave him. In fact, the more he helps us, the sooner hell be rid of us."
"I'll give him your message," Firebrass said. "Maybe he'll want to do that."
"We'll greet him in style," Sam said. "A twenty-one gun salute, big reception, food, liquor, gifts. He'll see we aren't such bad fellows after all."
John spat. "Pah!" but he said no more. He knew that Sam's proposal was best.
Three days later, Firebrass brought a message. Hacking would come, after Parolando and Selinujo had agreed on the disposition of the metals.
Sam felt like a rusty old boiler in a Mississippi steamboat. A few more pounds of pressure, and he would blow sky-high. "Sometimes, I think you're right!" he shouted at John.
Maybe we should just take over these countries and get done with!"
"Of course," John said smoothly. "Now, it is obvious that that ex-Countess Huntingdon—she must be decended from my old enemy, the Earl of Huntingdon —is not going to give in. She is a religious fanatic, a nut, as you say. And Soul City will fight us if we invade Selinujo. Hacking can't go back on his word. And he's stronger now that we've given him the Firedragon III. But I say nothing about that; I do not reproach you. I have been thinking much about this mess."
Sam stopped pacing and looked at John. John had been thinking. Shadows would be moving inside shadows; daggers would be unsheathed; the air would get gray and chill with stealth and intrigue; blood would spurt. And the sleeping would do well to stir.
"I do not say that I have been in contact with Iyeyasu, our powerful neighbor to the north," John said. He was slumped down in the tall-backed red leather-covered chair and staring into the purple passion in the tilted stem.
"But I have information, or means of getting it. I am certain that Iyeyasu, who feels very strong indeed, would like to acquire even more territory. And he would like to do us a favor. In return for certain payments, of course. Say, an amphibian and a flying machine? He is wild to fly one of those himself, you know? Or didn't you?
"If he attacked Selinujo, Hacking could not blame us. And if Soul City and Iyeyasujo fought, and Soul City was destroyed and Iyeyasujo weakened, how could that fail to benefit us? Moreover, I happen to have learned that Chernsky has made a secret compact with Soul City and Tifonujo to fight if any of them are invaded by Iyeyasu. Certainly, the resultant carnage would find them weakened and us strengthened. We could then take them over or at least do what we wished without interference. In any case, we would ensure that we had uncontrolled access to the bauxite and the tungsten."
That skull under that mass of tawny hair must hold a thundermugful of worms. Worms that fed on corruption and intrigue and deviousness. He was so crooked, he was admirable.
"Did you ever meet yourself coming around a corner?" Sam said.
"What?" John said, looking up. "Is this another of your unintelligible insults?"
"Believe me, it's as close to a compliment as you'll ever get—from me. Of course, it's all hypothetical. But if lyeyasu did attack Selinujo, what excuse would he have? They've never offended him, and they're sixty miles away from him on our side of The River."
"When did one nation ever need a reasonable excuse for invasion?" John said. "But the fact is that Selinujo keeps sending missionaries into lyeyasujo, though he has kicked out all Chancers. Since Selinujo won't stop doing this, then ... "
"Well," Sam said, "I couldn't let Parolando get involved in a deal like this. But if lyeyasu decides on Ms own to fight, there's nothing we can do about it." "And you call me dishonest!"
"There's nothing I could do about it!" Sam said, clamping down on his cigar. "Nothing! And if something develops that's good for the boat,. then we'll take advantage of it."
"The shipments from Soul City would be held up while the fighting was going on," John said.
"We've got enough stock to keep going for a week. The big worry would be wood. Maybe lyeyasu would be able to keep that coming even with a war going on, since the fighting will be south of us. We could handle the chopping and transportation ourselves. If he didn't intend to invade for a couple of weeks, we could lay in extra stocks of ore from Soul City by offering them increased payments. Maybe promise them an airplane, the APM-1. That's just a toy, now that we've almost got our first amphibian airplane finished. All this is hypothetical, you understand?"
"I understand," John said. He was not trying to mask his contempt.
Sam felt like shouting at him that he had no right to be contemptuous. Whose idea had it been, anyway?
It was the next day that the three chief engineers were killed.
Sam was there when it happened. He was standing on the scaffolding by the starboard side of the boat, looking down into the open hull. The colossal steam crane was lifting the immense electric motor which would be driving the port paddle-wheel. The motor had been moved during the night from the big building where it had been built The moving had taken over eight hours and had been effected by the crane, which also had a gigantic winch. The winch, plus hundreds of men pulling on cables, had pulled the motor on its big car, which moved on steel rails.
Sam got up at dawn to watch the final work, the lifting and then the lowering of the motor into the hull and its attachment to the paddle-wheel axle. The three engineers were standing down in the bottom of the hull. Sam called down to them to get away, that they were too vulnerable if the motor should drop. But the engineers were stationed in three different places so that they could transmit signals to the men on the port scaffolding, who, in turn, were signaling the crane operator.
Van Boom turned to look up at Sam, and his teeth flashed whitely in his dark face. His skin looked purplish in the light of the big electric lamps.
And then it happened. A cable snapped, and another cable snapped, and the motor swung out to one side. The engineers froze for a second and then they ran, but they were too late. The motor fell to one side and crushed all three of them.
The impact shook the great hull and the vibrations made the scaffolding on which Sam stood quiver as if a quake were passing through the land. Blood ran out from under the motor.
It took five hours to put in new cables on the crane, secure these to the motor and lift the motor. The bodies were removed, the hull washed out and then the motor was lowered again. A close inspection had determined that the damage to the motor casing would not affect the operation of the motor.
Sam was so depressed that he would have liked to have gone to bed and remained there for a week. But he could not do so. The work had to go on, and while there were good men who would see to it that it did go on, Sam did not want them to know how shaken he was.
Sam had many engineers, but Van Boom and Velitsky were the only ones from the twentieth century. Though he had advertised by word of mouth and through the drum systems for more, he had gotten none.
The third day, he asked Firebrass into his pilothouse for a private conference. After giving him a cigar and scotch, he asked him if he would be his chief engineer. Firebrass' cigar almost dropped out of his mouth.
"Steer me, stymate! Do I read you unfrosted? You want me as your number one dillion?" "Maybe we should talk in Esperanto," Sam said.
"Okay," Firebrass said. "I'll bring it down to dirt. Just what do you want?"
"I'd like you to get permission to work for me on a temporary basis, supposedly." "Supposedly?"
"If you want it, the position is permanently yours. The day the boat sets out on the long journey, you can be its chief engineer."
Firebrass sat silent for a long time. Sam got up and paced back and forth. Occasionally, he looked out the ports. The crane had put in the starboard motor, and now it was lowering parts of the batacitor into the hull. This would be thirty-six feet high when all the parts were secured together. After it was installed, a trial run would check the operation of the batacitor and the motors. A double cable, six inches thick, would be run out for two hundred feet and its free end, attached to a large shallow hemisphere, would be slipped onto the top of the nearest grailstone. When the stone delivered its tremendous electrical energy, the energy would be transmitted by the cables into the batacitor, which would store it And then the energy would be drawn out at a controlled rate to power the electrical motors.
Sam turned away from the port. "It's not as if I were asking you to betray your country," he said. "In the first place, all you have to do now is to request permission from Hacking to work for me on the building of the boat. Later, you can make up your mind about going with us. Which would you rather do? Stay in Soul City where there is actually little to do except indulge yourself? Or go with us on the greatest adventure of all?"
Firebrass said, slowly, "Now, if I accepted your offer, if, I say, I would not want to go as chief engineer. I would prefer to be the chief of your air force." "That's not as important a position as chief engineer!"
"It's a lot more work and responsibility! Now, I like the idea of flying again, and ..."
"You can fly! You can fly! But you'd have to serve under von Richthofen. You see, I promised him that he would be the chief of our air force, which, after all, will only consist of two planes. What do you care whether or not you're the chief, as long as you get to fly?"
"It's a matter of pride. I have thousands of hours more flying time than Richthofen, in planes far more complex and bigger and speedier. And I was an astronaut. I've been to the Moon and Mars and Ganymede and orbited Jupiter."
"That doesn't mean anything," Sam said. "The planes you'll be flying are very primitive. More like the World War I machines that Lothar flew." "Why does a nigger always have to take second place?" "That's unfair!" Sam said. "You could be chief
ngineer! You'd have thirty-five people under your command! Listen, if I hadn't made Lothar that promise, you'd get the captaincy, believe me!"
Firebrass stood up. "I'll tell you what I'll help you build the boat and set up the training of your engineer's department. But I get to fly during that time, too, and when the time comes we'll talk about who's going to be head of the air force." "I won't break my promise to Lothar," Sam said.
"Yes, but many things may happen between now and then."
Sam was relieved in one way but disturbed in another. Hacking gave his permission, via drum, to use Firebrass. This suggested he wanted Firebrass to know the boat's operation because he would be serving Hacking as chief engineer some day. And even if this was not being considered by Firebrass, he might be planning to remove von Richthofen before the boat was ready for launching. Firebrass did not seem like a cold-blooded murderer but looks meant nothing, as anyone with intelligence finds out if he has lived a few years among the human race.
Hacking sent word a few days later that he would agree to an extra large shipment of minerals in Parolando in return for the AMP-1. Firebrass flew it the thirty-one miles to the northern limit of Soul City, where another flier, a black who had been a general in the U.S. Air Force, took it over. A few days later, Firebrass returned by sailboat.
The batacitor and the electric motors worked perfectly. The paddle-wheels turned over slowly in the air, then were speeded up, the vanes whistling they spun so swiftly.
When the time came, a canal would be dug from the water's edge to the great boat, and it would wheel out into The River under its own power.
Lothar von Richtofen and Gwenafra were not getting along at all. Lothar had always been a "lady killer," and he could not seem to help flirting. More often than not, he followed up the flirtation. Gwenafra had some definite ideas about fidelity with which Lothar agreed, in principle.
It was the practice that tripped him up.
Hacking sent word that he intended to visit Parolando himself in two days. He wanted to hold a series of conferences on their trade, to check on the well-being of Parolando's black citizens and to see the great Riverboat.
Sam sent word back that he would be happy to receive Hacking. He wasn't, but the essence of diplomacy was dissimulation. The preparations for housing Hacking and his large entourage and setting up the conferences occupied Sam so that he did not get much chance to supervise the work on the boat.
Also, special preparations had to be made for docking the large number of ore boats from Soul City. Hacking was sending three times as much as the normal shipment to show his sincerity of desire for peace and understanding. Sam would have preferred that the shipments be spaced out, but then it was desirable to get as much as possible in as short a time as possible. The spies said that Iyeyasu was collecting several large fleets and a great number of fighting men on both sides of The River. And he had sent more messages to Selinujo to stop trying to land their missionaries on his territory.
About an hour before noon, Hacking's boat docked. It was a large, two-masted, fore-and-aft rigged boat, about a hundred feet long. Hacking's bodyguard, all tall wellmuscled blacks holding steel battle axes (but with Mark I pistols in big holsters) marched down the gangplank. Their kilts were pure black, and their leather helmets and cuirasses and boots were of black fishskin leather. They formed in ranks of six on each side of the gangplank, and then Hacking himself came down the gangplank.
He was a tall, well-built man with a dark-brown skin, somewhat slanting eyes, a broad pug nose, thick lips, and a prominent chin. His hair was in the style called "natural." Sam had not yet gotten used to this explosion of kinky hair on top of black men's heads. There was something indefinably indecent in it; a Negro's hair should be cut very close to the head. He still felt this way even after Firebrass had explained that the black American of the late-twentieth-century felt that "natural" hair was a symbol of his struggle for freedom. To them, close-cut hair symbolized castration of the black by the white.
Hacking wore a black towel as a cloak and a black kilt and leather sandals. His only weapon was a rapier in a sheath at his broad leather belt
Sam gave the signal, and a cannon boomed twenty-one times. This was set on top of a hill at the edge of the plain. It was intended not only to honor Hacking but to impress him. Only Parolando had artillery, even if it consisted of only one .75 millimeter cannon.
The introductions took place. Hacking did not offer to shake hands nor did Sam and John. They had been warned by Firebrass that Hacking did not care to shake hands with a man unless he regarded him as a proven friend.
There was some small talk after that while the grails of Hacking's people were set on the nearest grailstone. After the discharge of energy at high noon, the grails were removed, and the chiefs of state, accompanied by their bodyguards and guards of honor, walked to John's palace. John had insisted that the first meeting be held in his place, doubtless to impress Hacking with John's primacy. Sam did not argue this time. Hacking probably knew, from Firebrass, just how things stood between Clemens and Lackland.
Later, Sam got some grim amusement from John's discomfiture at being bearded in his own house. During lunch, Hacking seized the floor and held it with a longwinded vitriolic speech about the evils the white man had inflicted on the black. The trouble was, Hacking's indictments were valid. Everything he said was true. Sam had to admit that. Hell, he had seen slavery and what it meant and had seen the aftermath of the Civil War. He had been born and raised in it. And that was long before Hacking was born. Hell, he had written Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson and A Connecticut Yankee.
It did no good to try to tell Hacking that. Hacking paid him no attention. That high-pitched voice went on and on, mixing
bscenities with facts, exaggerations with facts, lurid tales of miseries, beatings, murders, starvation, humiliations, and on and on.
Sam felt guilty and ashamed and, at the same time, angry. Why attack him? Why this blanket indictment?
"You are all guilty!" Hacking shouted. "Every white man is guilty!"
"I never saw more than a dozen blacks before I died," John said. "What can I have to do with your tale of injustices?"
"If you had been born five hundred years later, you would have been the biggest honky of them all!" Hacking said. "I know all about you, Your Majesty!"
Sam suddenly stood up and shouted, "Did you come here to tell us about what happened on Earth? We know that! But that is past! Earth is dead! It's what's taking place now that counts!"
"Yeah," Hacking said. "And what's taking place now is what took place on good old Earth! Things haven't changed one shitty little bit! I look around here, and who do I see is head of this country? Two honkies! Where's the black men! Your black population is about one-tenth of your population, and so you ought to have at least one black on a ten-man Council! Do I see one? Just one?" "There's Cawber," Sam said.
"Yeah! A temporary member and he's only that because I demanded you send me a black ambassador!"
"The Arabs make up about a sixth of your state," Sam said, "and yet there isn't one Arab on your council."
"They're white, that's why! And I'm getting rid of them! Don't get me wrong! There's lots of Arabs that're good men, unprejudiced men! I met them when I was a fugitive in North Africa. But these Arabs here are religious fanatics, and they won't stop making trouble! So out they go! What we blacks want is a solid black country, where we're all soul brothers! Where we can live in peace and understanding! We'll have our own kind of world, and you honkies can have yours! Segregation with a capital S, Charlie! Here, a big S segregation can work, cause we don't have to depend on the white man for our jobs or food or clothing or protection or justice or anything! We got it made, whitey! All we have to do is tell you to go to hell, keep away from us, and we got it made!"
Firebrass sat at the table with his dark-red kinky head bent over, looking down, and his bronzed hands placed over his face. Sam had the feeling that he was trying to keep from laughing. But whether he was laughing inside himself at Hacking or at the ones who were being berated, Sam could not guess. Perhaps he was laughing at both.
John kept drinking the bourbon. The redness of his face came from more than the liquor. He looked as if he could explode at any time. It was difficult to swallow insults about your injustice to blacks when you were innocent, but then John was guilty of so many hideous crimes that he should suffer for some, even if none were his. And, as Hacking said, John would have been guilty if he had been allowed a chance to be.
Just what did Hacking expect to gain by this? Certainly, if he wanted a closer relationship with Parolando, he was taking a peculiar approach to it.
Perhaps he felt that he had to put any white, no matter who, in his place. He wanted to make it clear that he, Elwood Hacking, a black, was not the inferior of any white.
Hacking had been ruined by the same system that had ruined almost all Americans, black, white, red or yellow, in one form or another, to a greater or lesser degree.
Would it always be this way? Forever twisted, hating, while they lived for who knew how many thousands upon thousands of years along The River?
At that moment, but for that moment only, Sam wondered if the Second Chancers were not right.
If they knew the way out from this imprisonment of hate, they should be the only ones to be listened to. Not Hacking or John Lackland or Sam Clemens or anybody who suffered from lack of peace and love should have a word to say. Let the Second Chancers . . .
But he did not believe them, he reminded himself. They were just like the other faith dispensers of Earth. Wellintentioned, some of them, no doubt of that. But without the authority of truth, no matter how much they claimed it.
Hacking suddenly quit talking. Sam Clemens said, "Well, we didn't plan on any afterdinner speeches, Sinjoro Hacking, but I thank you for your volunteering; we all thank you as long as you don't charge us for it. Our exchequer is rather low at the moment."
Hacking said, "You have to make a joke out of it, don't you? Well, how about a tour? I'd love to see that big boat of yours."
The rest of the day was passed rather pleasantly. Sam forgot his anger and his resentments in conducting Hacking through the factories, the shops and, finally, through the boat. Even half finished, it was magnificent. The most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Even, he thought, even . . . yes, even more beautiful than Livy's face when she had first said she loved him.
Hacking did not become ecstatic, but he obviously was deeply impressed. He. could not, however, refrain from commenting on the stench and the desolation.
Shortly before supper time, Sam was called away. A man who had landed from a small boat had demanded to see the ruler of the land. Since it was a Clemens man who took him in, Sam got the report. He went off at once in one of the two alcohol-burning "jeeps" that had been finished only a week before. The slender, good-looking blond youth at the guardhouse rose and introduced himself, in Esperanto, as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Sam questioned him in German, noting that, whatever the youth's identity, he did speak the soft Austrian version of High German. His vocabulary contained words which Sam did not understand, but whether this was because they were just Austrian vocabulary items or eighteenthcentury items, he did not know.
The man calling himself Mozart said that he had been living about twenty thousand miles up The River. He heard about the boat, but what set him off on his journey was a tale that the boat would carry an orchestra to make music for the amusement of the passengers. Mozart had suffered for twenty-three years in this world of limited materials, where the only musical instruments were drums, whistles, wooden flutes and pan pipes and a crude sort of harp made of bone and the guts of a Riverfish. Then he had heard about the mining of the siderite and the great Riverboat and its orchestra with piano, violin, flute, horns, and all the other beautiful instruments that he had known on Earth, plus others that had been invented since his death in 1791. And here he was. Was there a place for him in the music-making ranks of the boat?
Sam was an appreciator, though not a passionate lover, of some classical music. But he was thrilled at meeting the great Mozart face to face. That is, if this man was Mozart. There were so many phonies on The River, claiming to be everybody from the original one-and-only Jesus H. Christ down to P. T. Barnum, that he took no man's word for his identity. He had even met three men who claimed to be Mark Twain.
"It just so happens that the former archbishop of Salzburg is a citizen of Parolando," Sam said. "Even though you and he parted on bad terms, if I remember correctly, he'll be glad to see you."
Mozart did not turn pale or red. He said, "At last, somebody I knew during my lifetime! Would you believe . . ."
Sam would believe that Mozart had not met anybody he'd known on Earth. So far, he himself had met only three people he'd known, and his acquaintanceship had been extensive during his long life and worldwide travels. That his wife Livy was one of the three was a coincidence exceeding the bounds of probability. He suspected that the Mysterious Stranger had arranged that. But even Mozart's eagerness in seeing the archbishop did not confirm that he was indeed Mozart. In the first place, the impostors that Sam had met had frequently insisted that those who were supposed to be their old friends were either mistaken or else impostors themselves. They had more gall than France. In the second place, the archbishop of Salzburg did not live in Parolando. Sam had no idea where he was. He had sprung him just to test Mozart's reaction. Sam agreed that Sinjoro Mozart could apply for citizen-
hip. First, he straightened him out about the musical instruments. These had not been made yet. Nor would they be wood or brass. They would be electronic devices which could reproduce exactly the sounds of various instruments. But if Sinjoro Mozart was indeed the man he claimed to be, he had a good chance of being the conductor of the orchestra. And he could have all the time he wanted to compose new works.
Sam did not promise him that he would have the conductorship. He had learned his lesson about making promises.
A big party was held in John's palace in honor of Hacking, who seemed to have discharged his venom for the day at the first meeting. Sam talked with him for an hour and found that Hacking was very intelligent and literate, a selfeducated man with a flak for the imaginative and the poetic.
That made his case even sadder, because such talent had been tragically wasted.
About midnight, Sam accompanied Hacking and party to the big thirty-room, second-story, stone-and-bamboo building set aside for state guests. This was halfway between his quarters and John's palace. Then he drove his jeep to his home, three hundred yards away. Joe sulked a little because he had wanted to drive, even though his legs were far too long for him to try this. They staggered up the ladder and barred the door. Joe went into the rear and flopped on his bed with a crash that shook the house on its stilts. Sam looked out the ports just in time to see Cyrano and Livy, their arms around each other, lurch into the door of their hut. To their left, set above them, was von Richthofen's hut, where he and Gwenafra had already gone to bed.
He muttered, "Good night!" not knowing just whom he was addressing, and fell into his own bed. It had been a long, hard and trying day, ending up with a huge party at which everybody had drunk stupendous quantities, of purple passion or grain alcohol and water and chewed much dreamgum and smoked much tobacco and marihuana.
He awoke dreaming that he was caught in a California earthquake on the Fourth of July.
He leaped out of bed and ran on the trembling floor to the pilothouse. Even before he reached the ports, he knew that the explosions and the earth-shaking were caused by invaders. He never reached the ports, because a rocket, whistling, its tail flaming red, struck one of the stilts. The roar deafened him, smoke whirled in through the broken ports and he pitched forward. The house collapsed, and its front part fell down. History repeated itself.
He banged into the wood and broken glass and earth and lay with the wall under him while he tried to come up out of his stunned condition. A big hand picked him up. By the light of an explosion, he saw Joe's great-nosed face. Joe had climbed down from the open end of his room and thrown aside the lumber until he had found Sam. He held the handles of his grail and Sam's with his left hand.
"I don't know how, it's a miracle, but I'm not hurt bad," Sam said. "Just bruised and cut by glass."
"I didn't have time to put on my armor," Joe said. "But I got my akth. Here'th a thword for you and a pithtol and thome bulletin and powder chargeth." "Who the hell can they be, Joe?" Sam said.
"I don't know. Thee! They're coming in through the holeth in the vallth vhere the dockth are."
The starlight was bright. The clouds that sent the rains down every night at three o'clock had not yet come, but the mists over The River were heavy. Out of these, men were still pouring to add to the masses spreading over the plains. Behind the walls, in the mists, must be a fleet.
The only fleet that could get close without causing an alarm would be the Soul City fleet. Anybody else arriving at this hour would have had to have been within view of the spies that Sam and John Lackland had set up along The River, even in hostile territory. It couldn't be Iyeyasu's fleet; that was still sitting in the docks as of the report received just before midnight.
Joe peered over a pile of wood and said, "There'th a hell of a battle around John'th palathe. And the guetht houthe, vhere Hacking and hith boyth vath, ith on fire."
The flames lit a number of bodies on the ground and showed the tiny figures struggling around the log stockade of John's palace. Then, the cannon and its caisson was pushed before the stockade.
"That's John's jeep!" Sam said, pointing at the vehicle which had just driven up behind the cannon.
"Yeah, and it'th our cannon!" Joe said. "But it'th Hacking'th men that're going to blatht John out of hith. little love netht."
"Let's get to hell out of here!" Sam said, and he scrambled over the lumber and in the opposite direction. He could not understand why the invaders had not sent men to his house yet. The rocket that had hit had come from the plains. And if Hacking and his men had sneaked out of the guesthouse to launch a surprise attack in conjunction with an attack from the supposed ore boats, then Sam should have been a primary target along with John Lackland.
He'd find out later what it was all about—if there was a later.
That Hacking's men had gotten hold of the cannon was ill news for Parolando. Even as he thought this, he heard the big gun boom, one, two, three. He whirled in his flight and saw pieces of wood flying out from the smoke. John's walls were wide open, and the next few shells should reduce his log palace to rubble.
There was only one good thing about the invaders having their hands on the cannon. The supply of shells was limited to fifty. Even with the many tons of nickel-iron still in the ground, metal was not so common that it could be wasted to any extent on explosive shells.
Ahead was Cyrano and Livy's hut. The door was open, and the place was empty. He looked up the hill. Lothar von Richthofen, clad only in a kilt, carrying a rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other, was running toward him. A few paces behind was Gwenafra with a. pistol and a bag of bullets and gunpowder packages.
There were other men and women coming toward him. Among them were a few crossbowmen.
He shouted at Lothar to organize them, and he turned to look down on the plains. The docks were still black with men. If only the cannon could have been turned to catch them packed together and unable to retreat. But the cannon had been wheeled around from John's palace, which was flaming, and was being trained on Parolandanoj hurrying up the hill.
Then a big dark machine came through a wide breach in the wall. Sam cried out with dismay. It was the Firedragon III given to Hacking. But where were the three amphibians of Parolando?
Presently he saw two coming toward the hills. Of a sudden, the steam machine guns in the turrets began to stutter hissingly, and his men—to men!—were falling. The Soul Citizens had captured the amphibians!
Everywhere he looked, he saw a battle raging. There were men fighting around the Riverboat. He cried out again, because he could not endure the thought of its being damaged. But no cannon shells were delivered near it. Apparently the enemy was as concerned about it as he was.
Rockets from the hills behind them were soaring over their heads and blowing up among the army below. Enemy rockets rose in reply; scores of red flames streaked above them; some came so close they could see the blur of the cylindrical body, the long bamboo stick protruding from the rear, and a whoosh as an exceptionally large one shot about ten feet above their heads. It just missed the top of the hill and blew up with a tremendous blast on the other side. Leaves from a nearby irontree fluttered down.
The next half hour—or was it two hours?—was a shrieking, yelling, shouting, gunpowder-stinking, bloodstinking, sweating, bowel-churning chaos. Tune after time, the Soul Citizens charged up the hill, and tune after time they were repelled by rockets, by sixty-nine-caliber plastic bullets, by crossbow bolts and longbow arrows. Then a charge carried them through to the defenders, and it was rapier, broadsword, ax, club, spear and dagger that drove them back.
Joe Miller, ten feet high, eight hundred pounds heavy, his hairy hide drenched with blood—his own and others—swung his ax with its eighty-pound nickel-steel head at the end of an oak shaft three niches thick and six feet long. It crashed through oak shield and leather armor, brushed aside rapiers and spears and axes, split breastbones, took off arms and necks, halved skulls. When his enemies refused to come near him, he charged them. Time and again, he broke up charges that might otherwise have succeeded.
Many flintlock Mark I pistols were fired at him, but their shooters were so unnerved by him that they fired from too far away, and the big plastic bullets wobbled off to one side.
Then an arrow went through his left arm, and a man braver, or more foolhardy, than the rest stepped under bis ax and thrust a rapier into his thigh. The butt end of the shaft came back and broke his jaw and then the reversed ax severed his head. Joe could still walk, but he was losing blood fast. Sam ordered him to retreat to the other side of the hill, where the badly wounded were being treated.
Joe said, "No! I ain't going!" and he fell to his knees with a groan.
"Get back there! That's an order!" Sam screamed, and he ducked, though it was too late, as a bullet whistled by his ear and smashed to bits against the side of an irontree. Some of the plastic must have ricocheted; he felt a stinging in his arm and calf.
Joe managed to heave himself up, like a sick elephant, and shambled off. Cyrano de Bergerac appeared from the darkness; he was covered with gunpowder smoke and streaked with blood. He held the basket hilt of a long, thin, bloody rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Behind him, equally dirty and bloody, her long dark hair loose behind her, was Livy, She carried a pistol and a bag of ammunition, and her function was to reload the pistols. Seeing Sam, she smiled, her teeth white in the powderblackened face.
"My God, Sam! I thought you were dead! That rocket against your house. . . !" "I wish you were behind me in this," he said.
That was all he had time to say, though he would not have said anything more, whatever the case. The enemy came back in another charge, slipping and sliding up over the piles of the fallen or leaping over them. The bowmen by then were out of ammunition, and the pistoleers had only a few more charges. But the enemy had about expended its powder too, though it had more arrows.
Joe Miller was gone, but Cyrano de Bergerac tried to make up for it and came close to doing so. The man was a demon, seemingly as thin and as flexible and as swift as the rapier he wielded. From time to time, he shot the pistol with his left hand into an opponent's face and then lunged with the rapier, thrusting into another. He would toss the gun behind him, and Livy would stoop and pick it up and reload. Sam thought, briefly, of what a change had come about in Livy. He had never suspected her potentiality for action under conditions like these. That frail, often sickly, violence-loathing woman was coolly performing duties that many men would have run from.
Among them me, he thought, if I had any time to think about it.
And especially now that Joe Miller was not by his side to protect him physically and to give him moral support, both of which he needed badly.
Cyrano thrust beneath a shield which a shrieking Wahhabi Arab lifted too high in his frenzy, and then Livy, seeing that she had to do it, that Cyrano could not, held the pistol in both hands and fired. The hammer made the barrel swerve, she brought it back into line, smoke and flame spurted out, and an Arab fell back with his shoulder torn off.
A massively built Negro leaped over the body with his ax raised in both hands and Cyrano, withdrawing the blade from the first man before he hit the ground, ran the axman through the adam's apple.
Then the enemy retreated down the hill again. But now they waited while the big dark-gray amphibian, like a Merrimac on wheels, huffed toward them. Lothar von Richthofen pushed against Sam who stepped aside when he saw the aluminum-alloy tube and the rocket with its ten-pound warhead. A man knelt while Lothar loaded the rocket into the bazooka and then aimed it. Lothar was very good at this, and the rocket sailed down, its fiery arc ending against the front of the amphibian, its bull's eye the single beam of light in its nose. Smoke covered it, and then the wind carried that away. The amphibian had stopped, but it came on now, its turrets turning and the steam guns lifting.
"Well, that was the last one," Lothar said. "We might as well get to hell out of here. We can't fight that. Who should know better than we, heh?"
The enemy was re-forming behind the armored vehicle. Many of them were uttering the ululating cries which the Ulmaks, the pre-Amerinds across The River, made during charges. Apparently, Hacking had enlisted those Ulmaks not yet conquered by Iyeyasu.
Suddenly, Sam could not see as well. Only the fires from the burning houses and from the open hearths and smelters, which were still operating, enabled him to see anything at all. The rain clouds had come as swiftly as they always did, like wolves chasing the stars, and within a few minutes it would rain savagely.
He looked around him. Every attack had thinned them out. He doubted that they could have withstood the next one, even if the amphibian had not come.
There was still fighting going on to the north and the south on the plains and the hills along the plains. But the shooting and the cries had lessened.
The plains seemed to be darker than ever with the enemy.
He wondered if Publiujo and Tifonujo had joined the invasion.
He took a last look at the giant hull of the Riverboat with its two paddle-wheels, half hidden beneath the scaffolding and behind the colossal cranes. Then he turned. He felt like weeping, but he was too numbed. It would be some time before the tears would come.
It was more likely that his blood would run out before then, after which there would be no tears. Not in this body, anyway.
Guided by the fires of a dozen scattered huts, he stumbled down the other side. Then the rains smashed down. And, at the same tune, a tentacle of the enemy ran toward them from the left. Sam turned and pulled the trigger of his flintlock, and the rain, of course, drowned out the spark. But the enemy's pistols were also rendered useless, except as clubs.
They came at the Parolandanoj with their swords and spears and axes. Joe Miller lunged forward, growling with a voice as deep as a cave bear's. Though wounded, he was still a formidable and terrifying fighter. By the flashes of lightning and the rumbling of thunder, his ax cut them down. The others jumped in to help him, and in a few seconds the Soul Citizen survivors decided they had had enough. They would run off and wait for reinforcements. Why get killed now when victory was theirs?
Sam climbed two more hills. The enemy attacked from the right. A wing had broken through and raced on ahead to cut down the men and take the women captive. Joe Miller and Cyrano met them, and the attackers ran away, slipping and sliding through the wet roots of the cutaway grass.
Sam counted the survivors. He was shaken. There were about fifteen. Where had they all gone? He would have sworn that at least a hundred had been with him when he ordered them to cut and run for it.
Livy was still close behind Cyrano. Since the guns were no good now, she kept at Cyrano's back and helped him with a spear thrust when she could.
Sam was cold and wet. And he was as miserable as Napoleon must have been on the retreat from Russia. All, all gone! His proud little nation and its nickel-iron mines and its factories and its invulnerable amphibians with their steam guns and its two airplanes and the fabulous Riverboat! All gone! The technological triumphs and marvels and the Magna Carta with the most democratic constitution any country had ever known and the goal of the greatest journey ever to be made! All gone! And how? Through treachery, base treachery!
At least, King John had not been part of the betrayal. His palace had been demolished and he along with it, in all probability. The Great Betrayer had been betrayed.
Sam quit grieving then. He was still too frozen with the terror of battle to think much about anything except survival. When they got to the base of the mountain, he led them north along it until they were opposite the dam. A lake about a quarter of a mile long and a half a mile wide was before them. They cut down along it, coming after a while to a thick concrete wall across the top of which they walked. Then they were on top of the dam itself.
Sam walked back and forth a few paces until he found a sunken symbol, a diagonal cross, in the concrete. He called, "Here it is! Now, if only nobody squeals on us or some spy hasn't found out about it!"
He let himself down into the cold water while the lightning streaked and the thunder bellowed far away. He shivered but he kept on going down, and when the water was up to his armpits his foot struck the first rung. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank down, his hand running along the concrete until it encountered the first rung. After that he pulled himself down by other rungs and at the sixth knew that the entrance was a few inches below it. He went under it and then up, and his head popped up into air and light. A platform a few inches higher than the water was in front of him. Overhead was a dome the highest point of which was ten feet. Beyond the platform was an entrance. Six big electric light bulbs lit the chamber harshly.
Shivering, gasping, he climbed onto the platform and went to the entranceway. Joe followed him a moment later. He called weakly, and Sam had to turn back and help him crawl onto the platform. He was bleeding from a dozen places.
The others came after him, one by one. They helped him get the titanthrop through the entrance and down an incline into a large chamber. There were beds, towels, food, liquor, weapons and medicine. Sam had prepared this place for just such an emergency, but he had thought he was being foolishly cautious. Only the heads of the state and the workers who had built this place knew about it.
Another entrance, at the bottom of the dam, was hidden beneath the flow which powered the wheels connected to the generators. This led to a shaft up which a man could climb only to come to a seemingly blank wall. But the man who knew how could open that wall.
The whole project was, he knew, a product of the romantic foolishness of which he had not entirely rid himself. The idea of secret doors under a waterfall and under the lake and of hidden apartments where he could rest and plan his revenge while his enemies hunted in vain for him was irresistible. He had laughed at himself at times for having built the refuge. Now he was glad. Romanticism did have its uses.
Also hidden was a detonator. To set off the tons of dynamite inside the base of the dam he had only to connect two wires, and the dam would go up and the water of the lake would roar out and carry the central part of Parolando out into The River.
Sam Clemens and his Riverboat would also be destroyed, but that was the price to be paid.
The wounded were treated and put under the sedation of dreamgum or liquor. Sometimes, chewing the gum deadened the pain and other times it seemed to increase it. The only way to neutralize the pain-expanding effects then was to pour liquor down the patient.
They ate and slept while the guard watched at both entrances. Joe Miller was half unconscious most of the time, and Sam sat beside him and nursed him as best he could. Cyrano came back from bis vigil at the door under the waterfall to report that it was night again outside. That was all he knew about the conditions outside. He had seen or heard no one through the waterfall.
Lothar and Sam were the least wounded. Sam decided that they should sneak out past the waterfall exit and spy. Cyrano protested that he should go, too, but Sam refused. Livy did not say anything, but she looked gratefully at Sam. He turned away; he did not want any thanks for sparing her mate.
He wondered if Gwenafra was dead or if she had been captured. Lothar said that she had disappeared during the last attack and that he had tried to get to her but had been driven back. He now felt ashamed of himself for not having done more, even though it had not been possible.
The two applied a dark stain all over their bodies and then went down the steel rungs of the shaft. The walls were damp here, and the rungs were slippery with moisture. Electric lights illuminated the shaft.
They went out behind the waterfall, which roared and splashed at them. The ledge curved around, following the lower half of the dam, until it ran out about twenty yards from the end. Here they climbed down steel rungs to the junction of the dam wall and the earth. From there, they walked cautiously along the channel which had been cut out of the earth. The roots of the grass still stuck out of the walls of the channel. The roots went deeper than any cuts made so far; it seemed impossible to kill the grass.
The sky was bright with the jampack of huge stars and the extensive glowing gas clouds. They were able to proceed swiftly in the pale darkness. After a half a mile, they went at right angles to the canal, heading toward John's ruined palace. Crouching in the shadows beneath the outflung branches of an irontree, they looked down on the plains below. There were men and women in the huts around them. The men were the victors, and the women were the victims. Sam quivered when he heard some of the screams and the calls for help, but he tried to push them out of his mind. To rush into any hut and try to rescue one women was to throw away their chances of doing any good for Parolando. And it would certainly result in their being captured or killed.
Yet, if he heard Gwenafra's voice, he knew that he would go to her rescue. Or would he?
The fires in the open hearths and the smelters were still blazing, and men and women were working in them. Evidently, Hacking had already put his slaves to work. Many guards stood around the buildings, but they were drinking liquor and ethyl alcohol.
The plains were well lit for as far as he could see with huge bonfires. Around them were many men and women, drinking and laughing. Occasionally a struggling and screaming woman was carried off into the shadows. Sometimes, she was not taken away. Sam and Lothar walked down the hill as if they owned
t, but they did not go near the buildings or the fires.
Nobody had challenged them, though they had come within twenty yards of a number of patrols. Most of the enemy seemed to be celebrating the victory with purple passion or any other liquor they had been able to get from the supplies of their prisoners. The exceptions were the Wahhabi Arabs, whose religion forbade drinking alcohol. And there were a few blacks who were not on duty but who were abstemious. These were disciples of Hacking, who did not drink.
Whatever the laxity now, discipline had been maintained during the day. The corpses had been taken away, and a big stockade of poles removed from other buildings had been set up on the plain just beside the first of the hills. Though Sam could not see within it, he surmised from the guard towers around it that prisoners were within it.
The two strolled along, staggering now and then as if they were drunk. They passed within twenty feet of three short dark men who spoke a strange language. Sam could not identify it, though it sounded "African." He wondered if these were not eighteenth-century Dahomeyans.
They walked boldly between a nitric acid factory and an excrement-treatment building and out onto the plain. And they stopped. Twenty yards ahead, Firebrass was in a bamboo cage so narrow that he could not sit down in it. His hands were tied behind him.
On a big X-frame of wood, upside down, his legs tied to the upper part of the X and his arms to the lower members, was Goring.
Sam looked around. A number of men, talking and drinking, stood in the big doorway of the excrement plant. Sam decided not to go any closer or to try to talk to Firebrass. He longed to know why he was in the cage, but he did not dare to ask him. It was necessary to find out all he could and then get back to the hideout inside the dam. So far, the situation looked hopeless. It was best to sneak out during the rains and leave the country. He could blow up the dam and wash out everything, including the forces of Soul City, but he did not want to lose the boat. As long as he had a chance to get that back, he would let the dam alone.
They went on by Firebrass' cage, hoping he would not see them and call to them. But he stood bent over, leaning his head against the bamboo bars. Goring groaned once. They kept on going and soon were around the corner of the building.
Their slow and seemingly drunken wanderings took them near a big building that had been occupied by Fred Rolfe, King John's supporter on the Council. The number of armed men on guard around it convinced Sam that Hacking was inside it.
It was a one-story house of lodgepole-pine logs and bamboo. Its windows were unblinded, and the light from within showed people inside. Suddenly, Lothar gripped Sam's arm and said, "There she is! Gwenafra!"
The torch light shone on her long honey-colored hair and very white skin. She was standing by the window and talking to someone. After a minute, she moved away, and the bushy hair and black face of Elwood Hacking moved across the bright square. Sam felt sick. Hacking had taken her for his woman for the night.
Gwenafra had not looked frightened. She had seemed relaxed, but Gwenafra, though volatile and uninhibited most of the time, could be self-restrained when the occasion demanded. He pulled Lothar away.
"There's nothing we can do now, and you'd be throwing away any chance she might have at all."
They drifted around for a while, observing the other factories and noting that the bonfires stretched both ways along the walls as far as their eye could detect. In addition to the Soul Citizens, there were the Ulmaks and a number of Orientals. Sam wondered if these could be the Burmese, Thai, and Ceylonese New Stone Age peoples living across The River from Selinujo.
To get out of Parolando, they would have to go over the wall. And they would have to steal several small boats if they were to get down The River to Selinujo. They had no idea about what had happened to Publiujo or Tifonujo, but they suspected that these countries would be next on Hacking's list. To escape just to the north to Chernsky's Land was foolish. Iyeyasu would be moving on that as soon as he found out about the invasion here, if he had not already done that.
It was ironic that they would flee to the very country the citizens of which had been forbidden entrance to Parolando.
They decided they would return to the dam now, tell what they had seen and make plans. The best chance to get away would be when it rained.
They rose and started to walk about, skirting the huts which housed the enemy and the captive women.
They had just passed into the shade of a gigantic irontree when Sam felt something tighten around his neck from behind. He tried to yell, to turn around, to struggle, but the big hand squeezed, and he became unconscious.
He awoke gasping and coughing, still under the irontree. He started to get up, but a deep voice growled, "None o' that! Sit still, or I'll split yer skull with this ax!"
Sam looked around. Lothar, his hands tied behind him and a gag in his mouth, was sitting propped up under a half-grown fir tree sixty feet away. The man who had spoken was a very big man with excessively broad shoulders, a deep chest and brawny arms. He wore a black kilt and black cape, and he held the handle of a medium-sized ax. Sheaths at his belt held a steel tomahawk and a steel knife, and a Mark I pistol was stuck in his belt. He said, "You be Sam Clemens?"
"That's right," Sam said, his voice low, also. "What does this mean? Who are you?"
The big man jerked a head full of thick hair at Lothar. "I moved him away so he couldn't hear what we have to say. A man we both know sent me."
Sam was silent for a minute and then he said, "The Mysterious Stranger?"
The big man grunted. "Yes. That's what he said you called him. Stranger's good enough. I guess you know what it's all about, so there's not much use us jawing too long about it. You satisfied that I've talked with him?"
"I'd have to be," Sam said. "It's obvious that you've met him. You're one of the Twelve he's picked. It was a he, wasn't it?"
"I didn't jump him to find out," the man said. "I tell you, this child ain't ever run up against a human, red, black, or white, that ever threw a scare-fit into me. But that Stranger, he's the one that'd make a grizzly scoot just by looking at him. Not that I'm afraid of him, you understand, it's just that he makes me feel . . . strange. Like I was a feather-plucked bluejay."
"Enough of that. My handle's Johnston. Mought as well give you my history, since it'll save a lot of jawing later.
John Johnston. I was born in New Jersey about 1827, I reckon, and died in Los Angeles in the veterans' hospital in 1900. Between times, I was a trapper in the Rocky Mountains. Up to when I came to this River, I killed me hundreds of Injuns, but I ain't never had to kill a white man, not even a Frenchman. Not till I got here. Since then, well, I collected quite a few white scalps."
The man stood up and moved out into the starlight. His hair was dark but looked as if it would be a bright red in the noonday sun.
"I talk a hell of a lot more'n I used to," he said. "You can't get away from people in this valley. People give a child bad habits."
They walked over to Lothar. On the way, Sam said, "How'd you happen to get here? And at this time?"
"The Stranger told me where to find you, told me about you and your big boat, the Misty Tower, and all that. Why hash it all over? You know. I agreed to find you and go with you on your boat. Why not? I don't like being set down here. There ain't no elbow room; you can't turn around without knocking noses. I was about thirty thousand miles upRiver when I wake up one night, and there's that man sitting in the shadows. We had a long talk with him doing most of it. Then I got up and set out. I heard about some of what was going on here way up The River. I snuck into here while the fighting was still going on, and I been looking for you ever since. I listened to them blacks talking; they said they couldn't find your body. So I been skulking around, seeing what I could see. Once, I had to kill me one a those Ayrabs cause he stumbled across me. I was hungry, anyway."
They had reached Lothar, but Sam straightened up at the last words. "Hungry?" he said. "You mean. . . ?"
The man did not reply. Sam said, "Say, uh, you . . . you wouldn't be that Johnston called 'Liver Eating' Johnston, would you? The Crow Killer?"
The voice rumbled, "I made me peace with the Crows and became their brother. And I quit eating human liver some time after. But a man has to eat."
Sam shivered. He stooped down and untied Lothar's bonds and removed the gag. Lothar was furious, but he was also curious. And, like Sam, he seemed to find Johnston a little awing. The man exuded a peculiar savage force. Without even half trying, Sam thought I'd hate to see him in action.
They walked back to the dam. Johnston did not say anything for a long time. Once, he disappeared, leaving Sam feeling strange and cold. Johnston was about six and a half feet tall and looked as if he weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, all bone and muscle. But he moved as silently as a tiger's shadow..
Sam jumped. Johnston was back. Sam said, "What happened?"
Johnston said, "Never mind. You say you didn't get around much. I been all over this place; I know the sitchyation passing well. Lots a your people to the north and the south got away over the walls. If they'd a stood up, they might've licked the blacks. But the blacks ain't won by a long shot. Iyeyasu is getting ready to move against them. I wouldn't be surprised none if he invades tonight. I scouted around his place some before I came here. He ain't going to put up with the blacks owning all this iron and the boat. He will take it away from them or know why."
Sam groaned. It made no difference whether Hacking or Iyeyasu had the boat, if he couldn't get it. But by the time they were inside the dam, he felt better. Maybe the two forces would destroy each other, and the Parolandanoj who'd fled could come back and take over. All wasn't lost yet.
Moreover, the appearance of the Herculean Liver Eating Johnston heartened him. The Mysterious Stranger had not entirely abandoned him. He was still planning, and he had sent a damn good man for fighting, if the stories about him could be believed. Johnston was the sixth man the Stranger had chosen. The other six would show up sometime. But then one had been lost. Odysseus had disappeared.
Still he could show up again. The River was a great place for bad pennies, if you could call the Twelve that. They were bad for somebody. For the Stranger's people, the Ethicals, Sam hoped.
In the dam, Johnston had to be introduced and the situation explained. Joe Miller, wrapped in towels, sat up and shook hands with Johnston. And Johnston, awe in his voice, said, "Night and day, this man-child seed many queer things. But I ain't never seed one like you. You didn't have to crush my hand, friend."
"I didn't try," Joe said. "You look pretty big and thtrong to me. Bethideth, I been thick."
About half an hour before the rains, they moved out. The land was relatively quiet by then. The celebrators had gone to bed, and everybody had cleared away from the fires in expectation of the rain. But the guard towers and the factories were full of enemy guards, and these had stopped drinking. Apparently, Hacking had called a halt to it.
Johnston, like a giant ghost, drifted away while they leaned against the side of the sulfuric acid factory. Ten minutes later, he was suddenly beside them.
"I been giving those blacks the ear," he said. "That Hacking is shore one smart nigger. All that drinking and whooping it up and staggering around, why, that's all put on! That's fer the benefit of spies from Iyeyasujo. Hacking knows the Jap is going to attack tonight, and he's making it look like it's gonna be easy. But his men are worried. They're short of gunpowder."
Sam was startled by the news. He asked Johnston if he had overheard anything else.
"Yeah, I heard a couple of them Citizens talking about why Hacking decided he had to attack us. He knew Iyeyasu was going to do it, so he decided he had to jump the gun. If he didn't, the Jap would have control of the metal and the amphibians and everything, and he'd just conquer Soul City next and then have everything. Them jackasses was laughing fit to kill. They said it was King John arranged with Hacking to take over. And then Hacking blew up King John in his own house because he didn't trust John. Said John was a traitor and even if he wasn't, he was a whitey and couldn't be trusted."
Sam said, "But why in hell would John do that to us? What did he have to gain?"
"Hacking and John was gonna conquer all the land for a hundred miles along The River and then split it. John was gonna rule the white half, and Hacking was gonna rule the black half. Half and half, with the two sharing everything equal. They was gonna build two boats, two of everything." "What about Firebrass? Why's he in the cage?"
"Dunno, but somebody did call him a traitor. And that kraut, what's his name, Herring . . ." "Goring."
"Yeah. Well, it wasn't Hacking was to blame for his being tortured. Some a them Wahhabi Ayrabs did it. They's got it in for the Second Chancers, you know, and they got him and tortured him, with the help a some a them African niggers, the Dahomeyans, who used to torture a dozen people before breakfast every day, according to what I heard. By the time Hacking heard of it and stopped it, Goring was dying. But he talked to Hacking, called him his soul brother and said he forgave him. Said he'd see him later along The River. Hacking was pretty shook up about it, from what his men said."
Sam digested the news, which set the teeth of his stomach even more on edge. He was so upset he couldn't even get any amusement from Hacking's double cross of the champion double-crosser, King John. He did have to admire Hacking's statesmanship and perception, however. Hacking had realized there was only one way to deal with John, and he had taken that way. But then Hacking did not have Sam Clemens' conscience.
The news changed everything. Apparently, Iyeyasu was on the way now, which meant that Sam's plans to sneak out during the rains would not work. The Soul Citizens were too alert. "What's the matter, Sam?" Livy said. She was sitting
ear him and looking sadly at him. "I think it's all up with us."
"Oh, Sam!" she replied. "Where's your manhood? It isn't all up with us! You get depressed so easily if things don't go your way all the time! Why, this is the greatest opportunity you could ask for to get your boat back! Let Hacking and Iyeyasu destroy each other and then take over. Just sit back up in the hills until they have clawed each other to death and then jump on them while they're gasping out their last!"
Sam said angrily, "What are you talking about? Jump on them with fifteen men and women?"
"No, you stupe! You have at least five hundred prisoners in that stockade and God knows how many more in other stockades. And you have thousands who ran away to Cernskujo and Publiujo!"
"How can I get hold of them now?" Sam said. "It's too late! The attack will be launched in a few hours, you can bet on that! Besides, the refugees were probably put in stockades, too! For all I know, Chernsky and Publius Crassus may be in cahoots with Hacking!"
"You're still the same paralyzed pessimist I knew on Earth," she said. "Oh, Sam, I still love you, in a way, that is. I still like you as a friend, and . . ."
"Friend!" he said so loudly that the others jumped. Cyrano said, "Morbleu!" and Johnston hissed, "Shet up, you want them black Injuns to get us?" "We were lovers for years," he said.
"Not always, by a long shot," she said. "But this is no place for a discussion of our failures. I don't intend to thrash those out, anyway. It's too late. The point is, do you or do you not want your boat?"
"Of course, I do," he said fiercely. "What do you think . . . ?" "Then get off your dead ass, Sam!" she said.
From anybody else, the remark would have been unremarkable. But from her, his fragile, soft-voiced, clean-speeched Livy, it was unthinkable. But she had said it, and now that he thought back on it, there had been times on Earth, which he had suppressed in his memory, when . . .
"The lady makes a powerful lot a sense!" Johnston rumbled.
He had far more important things to think about. But the really important things were best recognized by the unconscious, and it, must have been this that sent the thought. For the first time, he understood, really understood, with the cells of his body, from the brain on down, that Livy had changed. She was no longer his Livy. She had not been for a long tune, perhaps had not been for some years on Earth before her death.
"What do you say, Mr. Clemens?" the mountain man rumbled.
Sam gave a deep sigh, as if he were breathing out the last fragments of Olivia Langdon Clemens de Bergerac, and said, "Here's what we do."
The rains lashed down; thunder and lightning made the skies and the land hideous for a half hour. Johnston appeared out of the rain with two bazookas and four rockets tied together on his broad back. Then he disappeared again and a half hour later was back with some throwing knives and tomahawks, all of steel, and some new blood, not his, splashed on his arms and chest.
The rain clouds went away. The land was brightly silver under the magnificent stars, as big as apples, as numerous as cherries on a tree in season, as luminous as jewels before electric lights. Then it got colder, and they shivered under the irontree. A thin mist formed over The River; within fifteen minutes, it was so thick that the waters and the grailstones and the high walls along the banks could not be seen. A half hour later, Iyeyasu struck. The big boats and the small boats, crammed with men and weapons, came from across The River, where the Sacs and Foxes had once ruled, from the northern part of the exUlmak territory, from the land where the Hottentots and Bushmen had once lived in peace. And the main bulk came from the right bank of The River, from the three lands where Iyeyasu was now lord.
Iyeyasu attacked at ten points along the Riverfront walls. Mines blew up the walls, and men poured through the breaches. The number of rockets shot in the first ten minutes was awesome. Iyeyasu must have been saving them for a long time. The three amphibians of the defenders lumbered up, their steam machine guns chuffing and expelling the plastic bullets in garden hose fashion. The carnage they made was great, but Iyeyasu launched a surprise. Rockets with wooden warheads containing jellied alcohol (made from soap plus wood alcohol) struck all around the three armored vehicles and made direct hits on each at least twice. The crude napalm spread fierily over the vehicles, and if the burning stuff did not get inside the vehicles, it seared the lungs of the men inside.
Sam was shaken by the sight, but not so much that he did not tell Lothar to remind him of this when it was all over, if either of them was still around.
"They have to be made more airtight, and we'll have to install a closed-circuit air system, like Firebrass described," he said.
Johnston appeared as unexpectedly as if he had stepped out of a door in the night, and behind him was Firebrass. The man looked exhausted and as if he were in pain, but he still managed to grin at Sam. He was, however, trembling.
"Hacking was told that I was betraying him," Firebrass said. "And he believed his informant. Who was, by the way, our esteemed and always reliable King John. John told him that I was selling him down The River, that I had revealed everything to you so I could become chief of your air force. Hacking would not believe that I was dickering with you just to string you along. I can't blame him too much. I should have sent word through our spies what I was doing. That I didn't convince him that I wasn't double-crossing him didn't surprise me." "Were you?" Sam said.
Firebrass grinned. "No, I wasn't, though I was mightily tempted. But why should I betray him when I'd been promised I could be head flier after Hacking took over the boat? The truth is, Hacking was eager to believe John.
He doesn't like me because I'm not his idea of what a soul brother should be. And I had too easy a life according to him. He resented it because I never lived in a ghetto and I had every advantage he didn't have."
"The job of chief engineer can still be yours," Sam said. "I'll admit that I'm relieved about not having to promise you the captaincy of the air force. But you can still fly, if you want to."
"That's the best offer I've had since I died," Firebrass said. "I'll take it."
He moved closer to Sam and whispered in his ear. "You would have had to "take me along in some capacity anyway. I'm one of The Twelve!"
Sam felt as if a cold rod had been plunged through him from the top of his head down. "The Ethical? The Stranger?" "Yes. He said you called him the Mysterious Stranger." "Then you were betraying Hacking?"
"That little speech I just made was for public consumption," Firebrass said. "Yes, I did betray Hacking, if you insist on using that word. But I regard myself as an espionage agent for a higher authority. I have no intention of worrying about all-black or all-white states on The River, when I can find out how and why we, the whole human race, were put here. I want answers to my questions, as Karamazov once said. All this white-black turmoil is trivial on this planet, no matter how important it was on Earth. Hacking must have sensed that I thought that, though I tried to conceal it."
Sam did not recover from the shock for some time. Meanwhile, the battle raged on the plain with the Soul Citizens getting the worst of it. Though they cost the invaders three men for one, they were pushed back within a half an hour. Sam decided that it was time for them to act, and they trotted off toward the stockade where the Parolando prisoners were kept. Lothar fired two rockets into the gates of the stockade, and before the smoke had cleared, the fifteen charged through the blasted gates. Cyrano and Johnston did most of the work in killing the fifteen guards. Cyrano was a demon with lightning for a sword, and Johnston downed four men with thrown tomahawks and three with thrown knives. He broke two legs and a chest with a foot like iron. The prisoners were directed to the armory, where bows and arrows and swords were still in supply.
Sam sent two men each to the north and the south to go over the walls and try to contact the Parolandanoj there.
Then he led the rest back up into the hills. They would camp by the dam until they saw how the battle was going. Sam did not have the slightest idea of what they should do. He told Cyrano he would have to play it by ear. He had to repress the impulse to remark that he was doing this even though Cyrano was tone deaf.
Afterward, Sam thanked whoever there was to thank that he had not camped on top of the dam itself. Instead, he had sat down on a knoll above and to the left side of the dam, facing outward. He had a better view of the hills and the plains, where the rockets were still exploding but were not as numerous as in the beginning. The starlight glimmered on the waters of the big lake behind the dam as if all was peace and quiet in the world.
Suddenly, Johnston leaped up and said, "Looky there! Yonder! Atop a the dam!"
Three dark figures had emerged from the water onto the dam. They ran toward the land. Sam told the others to withdraw behind the great trunk of the irontree. Joe Miller and Johnston seized the three as they raced up to the tree. One tried to stab Joe, and Joe squeezed the neck and the blood spurted out from broken veins and arteries. The others were knocked out. By the time they regained consciousness, they did not have to tell Sam what they had done. And he guessed that they had done so at the order of King John.
The earth shook under their feet, and the irontree leaves rattled like dishes in a pantry. The white wall of the dam flew outward with a gigantic cloud of smoke and a roar that pushed in on their eardrums. The enormous chunks of concrete flew through the smoke like white birds above a factory chimney. They tumbled over and over and struck the ground far ahead of the waters. The lake was no longer the peaceful and quiet glimmer of a wonderful world to come. It seemed to hurl itself forward. The roar as it raced down the canyon which Sam's men had dug with so much sweat and time deafened the watchers again.
The water, hundreds of thousands of tons, funneled by the canyon, rammed through the earthen walls, tearing out great chunks of it. The sudden withdrawal also removed a great amount of earth around the lake's shores, so much so that the watchers had to scramble for even higher ground. And the thousand-foot-high irontree, its twohundred-feet-deep roots abruptly exposed, its foundation partly dug away, toppled over. It seemed to take a long time falling, and the explosions of enormous roots breaking and the whistling of air through the huge leaves and the vines covering it terrified the humans. They had thought they were far enough away, but even though the giant tree was falling away from them, they were threatened by eruptions of roots from the earth.
The tree struck with a crash on the other side of the lake and tore out the overhanging dirt and continued on down into the emptying lake. It slid out entirely from the root anchors on the bank and went on top first into the waters. These were whirling around and around, and, picking up the enormous tree as if it were a toothpick, the waters carried it down the canyon for a half a mile before it became wedged between the two walls of the canyon.
The waters roared out in a wall at least a hundred feet, high by the time it had hit the plains. Its front must have borne a tangle of half-grown trees and bamboo plants, huts, people, and debris. It flashed across the mile and a half of plain, spreading out but channeled, for a few minutes, by the cyclopean secondary walls that Sam had built to defend the factories and the Riverboat, but which had proved useless in two attacks.
Everything was picked up and carried on out into The River. The factories crumbled as if they were made of cookies. The gigantic Riverboat was lifted up like a toy boat cast into the ocean surf. It rode out into The River, pitching, and then was sunk in darkness and turmoil. Sam threw himself on the ground and clawed at the grass. His boat was lost! Everything was lost, factories, mines, amphibians, airplanes, smithies, armories, and his crew. But worst of all, the Riverboat was lost. The dream was shattered, the great shining jewel of his dream had been smashed. The grass was cold and wet in his face. His fingers felt as if they were fastened in the flesh of the earth and would never come free again. But Joe's huge hand lifted him up and sat him down, as if he were a dummy. Joe's monstrous hairy body was pressed close to bis, warming him. And Joe's grotesque face with the shelving brows and the absurdly long nose was by him.
"They're all gone!" Joe said. "Jethuth! Vhat a thight! There ain't nothing left, Tham!" The plain was buried under a whirl and toss of waters, but in fifteen minutes the waters had drained off. The River had resumed its normal appearance along the shores of Parolando, though it must have been swollen downstream.
The great buildings and the boat in its scaffoldings were gone. The cyclopean walls on the sides, a mile apart, were gone. There were little lakes here and there where the mines and the basements of the factories had been. The vast weight of water had gouged out part of the plain where it had been dug up. But the roots of the grasses were so deep, so tough, and so thickly intertwined that even the scrape of hundreds of thousands of tons of water had not ripped the earth out. The stone and earth walls along the banks had been swept away as if they were sand.
The skies paled, and the starlit darkness became gray. The great fleet of the invaders was gone, somewhere far down The River, or under it, broken, smashed, fragments floating or half hulls upside down. The two armies on the plain and the sailors were all dead, crushed by the weight of the water, drowned, rubbed into nothing or squeezed out like toothpaste.
But Parolando extended for ten miles along The River, and the lake had, after all, only raged across a two-milebroad area. Its main damage had been in the middle of Parolando, where it had carried everything out that stood within a half-mile-wide area. Those on the edges had been drowned and the buildings smashed or only submerged briefly.
Dawn brought with it a thousand men in boats or over the walls of Chernsky's Land from the north.
At their head was King John.
Sam drew up his men in battle formation with Joe Miller in the center, but King John limped forward, his hand held out in sign of peace. Sam went forward to talk to him. Even after John had explained what he had done, Sam expected to be killed. But later he realized that John needed him and Firebrass and others if he was going to get the boat rebuilt. Also, he would be taking a perverted pleasure in keeping Sam alive while Sam wondered when the dagger in the night would come.
As it turned out, not everything had to be started from scratch again. The boat, almost entirely undamaged, was found beached on a hill across The River a mile down. It had been deposited as gently as a cat's footstep by the withdrawing waters. The work of getting the great hull back was not easy; but it took much less time than making another one.
John explained more than once to Sam what he had done, but the deviousnesses and the two times two double crosses were so complicated that Sam could never see the picture as a whole. John had made a deal to betray Sam, knowing full well that Hacking would betray him also. John would have been disappointed if Hacking had not tried to stab him in the back. He would have lost all his faith in human nature.
John had made a deal with Iyeyasu to help him invade after Hacking's invasion. Iyeyasu liked the idea that Hackrag would weaken his forces while taking Parolando. At the last moment, John had made a deal with Publius Crassus, Tai Fung and Chernsky that they would help him mop up on Iyeyasu's forces, which would be shattered by the waters released by the blown-up dam.
John had sent the three men to set off the explosives in the dam when the greatest number of invaders and defenders would be concentrated between the tunneling secondary-defense walls. Beofre that happened, John had fled in his boat, hidden by the fog.
"Then you weren't in your palace when the cannons opened up on it?" Sam said.
"No," John replied, smiling his cat's smile. "I was miles to the north, traveling to meet Iyeyasu. You have never thought much of me, Samuel, but you should get down on your knees now and kiss my hand in gratitude. Without me, you would have lost all."
"If you had told me Hacking was going to invade, I could have kept everything," Sam said. "We could have ambushed Hacking."
The sun came up and struck the tawniness of John's hair and the peculiar gray-blue of his eyes. "Ah, yes, but Iyeyasu would still have been a formidable problem. Now he's gone, and there is little to keep us from ruling all the land we need, including the bauxite and platinum of Soul City and the iridium and tungsten of Selinujo. I presume you have no objections to conquering those two states?"
There was a bonanza in the aftermath. Hacking was taken prisoner, and Gwenafra was found alive. Both had been pushed during the fighting into the hills to the west. Hacking was getting ready to lead a charge back down the hills, when the edge of the waters deluged his part. Gwenafra escaped, though she almost drowned. Hacking had been hurled against a tree. Both his legs and one arm were broken, and he was bleeding internally.
Sam and John hastened to where Hacking lay under an irontree. Gwenafra cried when she saw them and embraced Sam and Lothar. She seemed to have given Sam a much longer embrace than she did Lothar, which was not entirely unexpected, since she and Lothar had been quarreling violently for the last few months.
John wanted to finish Hacking off with some refined tortures, preferably as soon after breakfast as possible. Sam objected strongly. He knew that John could have his way if he insisted, since his men outnumbered Sam's by fifty to one. But Sam was past being cautious, at that moment, anyway. And John backed away. He needed Sam and the men whose loyalty he commanded.
"You had a dream, White Sam," Hacking said in a weak voice. "Well, I had one, too. A land where brothers and sisters could loaf and invite their souls. Where we'd be all black. You wouldn't know what that means. No white devils, no white eyes. Just black soul brothers. It would have been as near heaven as you can get in this hell of a world. Not that we wouldn't have had trouble, no place without trouble, man. But there wouldn't have been any white-man trouble. It'd be all ours. But that isn't to be."
"You could have had your dream," Sam said. "If you'd waited. After the boat was built, we'd have left the iron to whomever could take it. And then . . ."
Hacking grimaced. Sweat covered his black skin and his face was tight with pain. "Man, you must be out of your skull! You really think I believed that story about you sailing off on this quest for the Big Grail? I knew you was going to use that big boat to conquer us blacks and lock those chains around us again. An Old South whitey like you . . ."
He closed his eyes. Sam said, "You are wrong! If you knew me, if you'd taken the trouble to know me instead of stereotyping me . . ."
Hacking opened his eyes and said, "You'd lie to a nigger even when he was on his deathbed, wouldn't you? Listen! That Nazi, Goring, he really shook me up. I didn't tell them to torture him, just kill him, but those fanatical Arabs, you know them. Anyway, Goring gives me a message. Hail and farewell, soul brother, or something like that. I forgive you, because you know not what you do. Something like that. Ain't that a crock? A message of love from a damn Nazi! But you know, he had changed! And he could be right. Maybe all them Second Chancers are right. Who knows? Sure seems stupid to bring us up from the dead, give us our youth back, just so some can kick and some can hurt all over again. Stupid, isn't it?"
He stared up at Sam and then said, "Shoot me, will you? Put me out of my pain? I'm really suffering."
Lothar stepped up beside Sam and said, "After what you did to Gwenafra, I'll be glad to."
He pointed the muzzle of the big flintlock at Hacking's head.
Hacking grinned painfully and muttered, "Rape on principle, mother! I swore off that on Earth, but that woman just brought out the devil in me! Besides, so what? What about all those black slave women you white mothers raped?"
As Sam walked away, the pistol boomed. He jumped, but he kept on walking. It was the kindest thing that Lothar could have done for Hacking. Tomorrow, he would be walking along the banks of The River somewhere far away. He and Sam might even see each other again, although Sam was not looking forward to that. Lothar, stinking of gunpowder, caught up with him.
"I should have let him suffer. But old habits are hard to break. I wanted to kill him, so I did. That black devil just smiled at me. Then I spread his smile all over him."
"Don't say any more," Sam replied. "I'm sick enough. I'm about to chuck the whole thing and settle down with a steady job of missionarying. The only one whose suffering meant anything today were the Second Chancers."
"You'll get over that," Lothar said, and he was right. But it took three years.
The land was again like a shell-pocked battlefield, stinking with fumes and black with smoke. But the great Riverboat was completed. There was nothing to do to it now except to try it out. Even the last touch, the painting on the Riverboat's name in big black letters on the white hull, had been done. On both sides of the hull, ten feet above the water line, were the letters NOT FOR HIRE.
"What does that mean, Sam?" he had been asked by many.
"It means just what it says, contrary to most words in print or speech," Sam said. "The boat is no man's to hire. It's a free boat and its crew are free souls. No man's." "And why is the boat's launch called Post No Bills?"
"That comes from a dream I had," Sam would say. "Somebody was trying to put up advertising on it, and I told him that the launch was built for no mercenary purpose. What do you think I am, advance agent for P. T. Barnum? I said."
There was more to the dream, but Sam told no one except Joe about this.
"But the man who was pasting up those garish posters, advertising the coming of the greatest Riverboat of them all and the greatest Riverboat show of them all was I!" Sam said. "I was both men in the dream!" "I don't get it, Tham," Joe said. Sam gave up on him.
The twenty-sixth anniversary of Resurrection Day was the day that the sidewheeler Not for Hire first turned its paddles. It was about an hour after the grailstones flamed to charge the breakfast grails. The cables and cap connected to the grailstone had been removed and the cables wound up within the hold through a port in the forward section on the starboard side. The grails had been removed from the stone a mile north and rushed to the big boat in the amphibious, armored, steam-driven launch, the Post no Bills. The fabulous Riverboat, gleaming white with red and black and green trimmings, moved out from the canal and into The River behind a huge breakwater on its starboard side. This deflected the current so that the boat would not be swung to the south as it emerged from the canal and so carried into the edge of the canal's mouth.
Whistles blowing, iron bells clanging, the passengers cheering as they leaned over the railings, the people on the banks shouting, the magnificent paddle-wheels churning, the Not for Hire moved with stately grace out into The River.
The Riverboat had an overall length of four hundred and forty feet and six inches. The beam over the paddlewheel guards was ninety-three feet. The mean draft loaded was twelve feet. The giant electric motors driving the paddle-wheels delivered ten thousand shaft horsepower and enough power left over to take care of all the boat's electrical needs, which were many. Top speed, theoretically, was forty-five miles an hour in still water. Going upstream against the fifteen-mile-an-hour current, it would be thirty. Going downstream, it would be sixty. The boat would be going up The River most of the time and cruising at fifteen miles an hour relative to the ground.
There were four decks; the so-called boiler deck, the main deck, the hurricane deck and the landing deck. The pilothouse was at the fore edge of the hurricane deck, and the long texas, containing the captain's and chief officers' quarters, was behind the pilothouse. However, the pilothouse was itself double-decked. It was set forward of the two tall but thin smokestacks which rose thirty feet high. Firebrass had advised against the stacks, because the smoke from the big boilers (used only to heat water and to drive the machine guns) could be piped out on the side. But Sam had snorted and said, "What do I care about air resistance? I want beauty! And beauty is what we'll get! Whoever heard of a Riverboat without tall, graceful, impressive smokestacks! Have you no soul, brother?"
There were sixty-five cabins, each about twelve by twelve with snap-up beds and tables and folding chairs. Each cabin had a toilet and a washbasin with hot and cold running water, and there was a shower for every six cabins.
There were three big lounges, one in the texas, one on the hurricane deck and one on the main deck. These held pool tables, dart games, gymnastic equipment, card tables, a movie screen and a stage for dramas or musicals, and the main deck lounge held a podium for the orchestra.
The upper deck of the pilothouse was luxuriously furnished with carved oaken chairs and tables covered with red and white and black Riverdragon fish leather. The pilot sat in a large and comfortable swivel chair before the instrument board. On this was a bank of small closedcircuit TV screens, giving him views of the control centers of the boat. Before him was a microphone which enabled him to speak to anybody on the boat. He controlled the boat with two levers on a small movable board before him. The left stick controlled the port wheel; the right, the starboard. A screen before him was a radar indicator used at night. Another screen showed him the depth of the water from the bottom of the boat as measured by sonar. A toggle on the instrument board could switch the piloting to automatic, though the rule was that a pilot had to be on duty at all times.
Sam was dressed in bleached fish-leather sandals, a white kilt, a white cape and a white officer's cap of plastic and leather. He wore a bleached leather belt with a bleached holster containing a ponderous Mark II .69 four-shooter pistol and a bleached sheath with a ten-inch knife.
He paced back and forth, a big green cigar in his mouth, his hands held straight down except when he removed the cigar. He watched the pilot, Robert Styles, steering the boat for the first time. Styles was an old Mississippi pilot, a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts. When he had appeared about two years before, Sam had been overcome with joy. For one of the few tunes in his life, he had wept. He had known Rob Styles when they were both Mississippi pilots.
Styles was nervous, as anybody would be the first time, even the steel-nerved Captain Isaiah Sellers of ancient Mississippi fame. There was nothing to piloting the boat A one-eyed Sunday school teacher with a hangover could do it, his six-year-old child could do it, once he got the hang of the two sticks. Push forward for increased speed, put in the middle position to stop the wheels, pull back to reverse the wheels. To steer the boat to port, pull back a little on the port stick and forward a little on the starboard stick. To steer to starboard, do the reverse.
But it took some practice before the proper coordination was achieved.
Luckily, there was no memory work involved in piloting a boat on this River. There were no islands, no sandbars, and there would be few logs with snags. If the boat got too close to shallow water, sonar activated an alarm bell. If a boat was ahead at night, or a log hidden in the water, the radar or sonar would indicate it and a red light would flash.
Sam watched Styles for half an hour while the banks floated by and the thousands of people on them waved and cheered. Or cursed, since many were disappointed because they had. been eliminated from the crew by the lottery. But he couldn't hear the curses.
Then Sam took over the piloting, and, after another half hour, asked John if he would like to try. John was dressed entirely in black, as if he were determined to do just the opposite of whatever Sam did. But he took the sticks and did well for an ex-king who had never done a lick of work in his life and had always let inferiors do whatever steering was necessary.
The boat sailed up past the dead Iyeyasu's kingdom, now split into three states again, and then Sam ordered the vessel turned back. Rob Styles got fancy and pivoted her "on a dime" as he said, demonstrating her maneuverability. While the port wheel backed, the starboard raced at full speed and the boat rotated as if stuck on a pin. Then she headed downstream. With the current and wind behind her, and the paddle-wheels turning at maximum speed, the Not for Hire raced along at sixty miles an hour. But not for too long. Sam had Styles bring her in close to the shore, where the sonar indicated about one foot of clearance between hull and bottom on the port side. Even above the slapping of the wheels and the splashing of water and the whistling and clanging of bells, they could hear the crowds. The faces whizzed by as if in a dream.
Sam opened the fore ports of the pilothouse so they could feel the wind and increase their impression of speed.
The Not for Hire raced all the way downstream to Selinujo, and then it turned again. Sam wished, almost, that there was another boat that he could race against. But it was being in heaven to have the only metal, electrically powered Riverboat in existence. A man couldn't have everything, not even in the after-Earthlife.
During the return trip, the huge hatch in the stern was lowered, and the launch slipped out through the entrance into The River. It cut back and forth at top speed and raced ahead of the mother boat. Its steam machine guns traced lines along the water, and the thirty steam guns on the Not for Hire shot back, though not at the launch.
The big three-place amphibian monoplane came out of the opening in the stern, too, and its wings were straightened out and locked, and then it took off. Firebrass was at the controls with his woman and Gwenafra as passengers.
A moment later, the tiny, one-seater, open-cockpit scout-fighter was shot off the top of the texas by a steam catapult. Lothar von Richthofen took it up, the wood-alcohol-burning motor buzzing, and raced ahead until he was out of sight. Then he returned, climbed and entertained with the first aerial acrobatics that the Riverworld had ever seen—to the best of Sam's knowledge.
Lothar concluded with a dive at the end of which he fired four rockets into the water and then the twin machine guns. These were .80 caliber and shot aluminum bullets from aluminum cartridges. There were one hundred thousand of these stored on the boat, and when they were all gone, they would not be replaced.
Lothar landed the tiny monoplane on the landing deck, the top of the texas, and the devices caught the hook trailed out by the plane. Even so, the whirling propeller stopped only ten feet from the smokestacks. Lothar took the plane up again and again landed. Then Firebrass returned in the amphibian, and he later took the wheeled plane up for one flight.
Sam looked down through the port front at the marines drilling on the fore part of the broad boiler deck. Under the midnoon sun, which heated the air to an estimated eighty degrees Fahrenheit, they marched back and forth and performed intricate maneuvers under Cyrano's orders. Their silvery duralumin plumed helmets were like those of the ancient Romans. They wore gray-and-red-striped chainmail shirts which fell halfway down their thighs. Their legs were cased in leather boots. They carried rapiers and long knives and the Mark II pistols. They were the pistoleers only, however. The main part of the marines were watching the show; these were the bowmen and the rocketeers.
Seeing Gwenafra's honey-colored head in the crowd on the main deck made him happy. He saw Livy's dark head near her, and he was unhappy.
Gwenafra, after another six months of a jealousy-ridden life with von Richthofen, had accepted Sam's offer and moved in with him. But Sam still could not see Livy without some pain of loss.
If it were not for Livy, and for John's presence, he would have been as happy as he could be. But she would be with them throughout the possibly forty years of the journey. And John, well, John made him uneasy and prowled through his nightmares.
John had been so willing to let Sam be the captain and so unhesitant about accepting the first mate's position that Sam knew he was up to no good. But when would The Mutiny, as Sam thought of it, take place? It was inevitable that John would try to take over the full command of the Riverboat, and any intelligent man, knowing this, would have dumped him, one way or the other.
But Sam had been too conscience-stricken by his killing of Bloodaxe. He could not commit another assassination, not even if he knew that John would not be permanently dead. A corpse was a corpse, and a double cross was a double cross.
The question was, when would John strike? At the beginning, or much later during the voyage, when Sam's suspicions had been lulled?
Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.
A yellow-haired, near-giant entered the pilothouse. His name was Augustus Strubewell, he was John's aide-decamp, and he had been picked up by John during his sojourn in Iyeyasujo after Hacking's invasion. He had been born in 1971 in San Diego, California, had been an AllAmerican fullback, a captain of the U.S. Marines, decorated for bravery in the Middle East and South America and had made a career in the movies and TV. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, except that, like John, he bragged of his conquests among women. Sam did not trust him. Anybody who worked for John Lackland had to have something wrong with him.
Sam shrugged. He might as well enjoy himself for the moment. Why let anything rob him of the joy of the greatest day of his life?
He leaned out of the port and watched the marine drill team and the crowd. The sun sparkled on waves, and the breeze was cooling. If it became too warm, he could shut the ports and turn on the air conditioning. From the tall pole on the bow the flag of the Not for Hire flapped in the wind. It was square and bore a scarlet phoenix on a light-blue field. The phoenix symbolized the rebirth of mankind.
He waved at the people massed along the bank and pressed a button which set off a series of steam whistles and clanging of bells.
He drew in smoke from his fine cigar and stuck his chest out and paraded back and forth. Strubewell handed John a glass full of bourbon, and then he offered Sam another. Everybody in the pilothouse—Styles, the six other pilots, Joe Miller, von Richthofen, Firebrass, Publius Crassus, Mozart, John Lackland, Strubewell, and three other of John's aides—took a glass.
"A toast, gentlemen," John said in Esperanto. "To a long and happy journey and may we all get what we deserve."
Joe Miller, standing near Sam, the top of his head almost touching the ceiling, held a glass containing about half a quart of bourbon. He sniffed at the amber liquor with his monstrous proboscis and then tasted it with the top of his tongue.
Sam was just about to toss the four-ounce drink down when he saw Joe's apish face grimace. "What's the matter, Joe?" he said. "Thith thtuff hath thomething in it!"
Sam sniffed and could detect nothing but the most excellent of Kentucky's best.
But when John and Strubewell and the others reached for their weapons, he threw the liquor in John's face. Yelling, "It's poison!" he dived for the floor.
Strubewell's Mark II pistol boomed. The plastic bullet shattered against the bulletproof plastic of the port above Sam's head.
Joe roared—he sounded like a lion suddenly released from its cage—and he threw his liquor into Strubewell's face.
The other aides fired once and then they fired again. The Mark II pistols were four-shot revolvers which electrically ignited the powder in the aluminum cartridges. They were even larger and heavier than the Mark I's, but they could be fired much more swiftly, and cordite, not black gunpowder, propelled the plastic bullets.
The pilothouse became a fury of booming, deafening explosives, the scream of shattered plastic ricocheting, the shouts and screams of men and the bellowing of Joe.
Sam rolled over, reached up and flicked the automatic pilot switch. Rob Styles was on the floor, Ms arm almost torn off. One of John's aides was dying in front of him. Strubewell went flying over him and banged against the glass and then fell on him. John was gone, fled down the ladder.
Sam crawled out from under Strubewell. Four of his pilots were dead. All of the aides, except for Strubewell, who was only unconscious, were dead. Their necks had been broken or their jaws shattered by Joe. Mozart was crouched quivering in a corner. Firebrass was bleeding from the many plastic fragments, and Lothar was bleeding from a gash in his arm. One of the aides had struck him with a knife just before Joe twisted his head 180 degrees.
Sam arose shakily and looked out the port. The crowd watching the marines had dispersed, but not without leaving a dozen bodies behind. The Marines on the boiler deck were firing at men shooting at them from around the sides of the main deck. Some of the fire seemed to be coming from cabin ports in the main deck.
Cyrano stood with his rapidly dwindling crew of Marines, shouting orders. Then John's men charged, firing, and Cyrano went down. But he was up again, his sword silvery and then red. The enemy broke and ran away, and Cyrano ran after them. Sam shouted, "You fool! Go back!" but he was not heard, of course.
He tried to struggle up out of his shock. John had slipped something into their drinks, poison or a sedative, and only Joe's subhumanly sensitive nose had saved them from drinking and then keeling over and allowing John to take over the pilothouse with little trouble.
He looked out the starboard port. Only a half mile ahead was the huge breakwater behind which the boat was to anchor for the night. Tomorrow, the long journey would officially begin. Would have begun, he thought. He flicked off the automatic pilot toggle switch and took the control sticks in his hands.
"Joe," he said, "I'm going to run this right up alongside the bank. I may even ground us. Get out the bullhorn. I'll tell the people ashore what's happened, and we'll get help."
He pulled back on the starboard stick and advanced the port stick. "What's wrong?" he yelled.
The boat was proceeding straight on its course up The River, holding to a distance of about a hundred yards off the shore.
He moved the sticks back and forth, frantically, but the boat did not deviate. John's voice came from the intercom.
"It's no use, Samuel, Boss, Captain, swine! I have control of the boat. My engineer, the man who will be chief engineer, put in a duplicate set of controls . . . never mind where. I have cut off your controls, and the boat will go where I want it to. So you don't have any advantage at all. Now my men will storm the pilothouse and take you. But I would prefer that there be as little damage as possible. So, if you will just get off the boat, I will let you go unharmed. Provided, that is, that you can swim a hundred yards."
Sam raged and swore and pounded his fists on the instrument panel. But the boat continued on past the dock, while the crowds gathered there waved and cheered and wondered why the boat did not stop.
Lothar, looking out of the stern port, said, "They're trying to sneak up on us!" and he fired at a man who had appeared around the far end of the texas on the hurricane deck.
"We can't hold out long!" Firebrass said. "We don't have much ammunition!"
Sam looked at the fore ports. Some men and women had run out onto the boiler deck and then turned for a stand. Livy was among them.
There was another charge. A man thrust at Cyrano, who was engaged in running his rapier through the man next to him. Livy tried to knock the blade aside with her pistol, which must have been empty, but the sword went into her stomach. She fell backward with the sword still sticking out of her. The man who had killed her died a second later, when Cyrano's rapier went through his throat.
Sam cried, "Livy! Livy!" and he was out through the door of the pilothouse and running down the ladder. Bullets screamed by him and smashed against the bulkheads and the ladder. He felt a stinging and then heard a shouting behind him, but he did not stop. He was vaguely aware that Joe Miller and the others had run out after him. Perhaps they were trying to rescue him or perhaps they knew that they might as well get out now before they were overwhelmed in the trap of the pilothouse.
There were corpses and wounded everywhere. John's men had not been numerous; he had depended upon surprise, and it had not failed him. Dozens had been shot down in the first volleys, and dozens more had been shot during the panic. Many more had jumped into the water, seeing that there was no way to escape, no place to hide, and they were not armed.
Now the boat was turning into shore, its paddle-wheels operating at full speed, the water flying, the wheels chuffchuffing, the deck trembling. John was turning the boat into shore, where a number of heavily armed men and women awaited him.
These would be the disaffected, the people who were angered because the lottery had cut them out of a place on the crew. Once they got aboard, they would sweep away the few left in Sam's party.
Sam had run along the hurricane deck after leaving the pilothouse ladder. He held a pistol with two ^hots left in it and his rapier in the other hand. He did not know how they had gotten into his hands; he had no memory of having removed them from his holster and sheath.
A face appeared at the edge of the deck on the ladder just ahead. He fired at it, and the face dropped back. He was on the edge of the deck then and shooting even as he leaned over to look down the ladder. The plastic bullet did not miss this time. The man's chest erupted red, and he fell back down the ladder, taking two men with him. But others on the deck below raised their pistols, and he had to jump back. The volley missed him, though some bullets striking the edge blew apart and the fragments stung him on the legs.
Joe Miller, behind him, said, '"Tham! Tham! There'th nothing to do but jump for it! They got uth thurrounded!"
Below, Cyrano, still wielding his rapier, holding off three men at one time, backed to the railing. Then his blade pierced a throat, the man fell, and Cyrano whirled and leaped over the railing. When he came up he began to swim strongly to get away from the starboard paddlewheel thrashing toward him.
Bullets struck the sides of the cabins behind Sam, and Lothar cried, "Jump, Sam! Jump!"
But they could not jump yet. They could not have cleared the main deck below, let alone the boiler deck.
Joe had already turned and was running with his great ax toward the men firing from behind the rear of the cabins along the hurricane deck. The bullets streaked toward him, wobbling, leaving a thin trail of smoke, but he was too far away to worry about their accuracy. And he was depending upon his terrifying aspect and his prowess, which they well knew, to panic them.
The others ran behind him until they came to the great paddle-wheel housing. This was about ten feet from the edge of the hurricane deck, and if they stood up on the railing and leaped out, they could grab hold of the big iron eyes through which cables had been secured when the housing had been lifted and then placed over the wheel by the crane.
They jumped, one after the other, while bullets screamed by. They grabbed the eye, their bodies banging into the side of the hard metal housing. But they pulled themselves up and onto the top of the housing and crawled over, stood up and jumped out. The water was thirty feet below, a height which would have made Sam hesitate under different conditions. This time, he went out, fell straight, holding his nose, and plunged into the water feet first.
He came up in time to see Joe jump off, not from the housing but from the main deck. He had fought down the ladder and out across the deck, scattering the pygmies before him. Even so, his hairy skin was splotched with blood. He went over the side in a dive with pistols booming and arrows streaking after him.
Sam dived then, because several of the steam machine guns had been depressed and the .75 caliber bullets were probing for him.
The boat turned back about two minutes later. John must have discovered that his chief enemy had escaped. By then, Sam was ashore and running, though he thought his legs would fold under him. The firing was not renewed. Perhaps John had changed his mind about killing him. He would want Sam to suffer, and Sam would suffer most if he were still at the site of his defeat.
John's voice boomed out from a bullhorn. "Farewell, Samuel! You fool! Thanks for building the Riverboat for me! And I will change its name to one which will suit me better! I go now to enjoy the fruits of your labors! Think of me as much as you please! Farewell!" His bullhorn-amplified laughter blasted Sam's ears.
Sam came out of his hiding place in a hut and climbed the wall on the edge of the water. The boat had stopped and let down a long gangplank on cables to permit the traitors to come aboard. He heard a voice below him and looked down. There was Joe, his reddish hairs black with water except where the blood was starting to appear again.
"Lothar and Firebrath and Thyrano and Johnthton made it," he said. "How you feel, Tham?"
Sam sat down on the hard-packed dirt and said, "If it would do any good, I'd kill myself. But this world is hell, Joe, genuine hell. You can't even commit a decent suicide. You wake up the next day, and there you are with your problems stuck on you with glue or stuck . . . well, never mind." "Vhat do ve do now, Tham?"
Sam did not reply for a long time. If he couldn't have Livy, Cyrano could not have her, either. He could endure the thought of having lost her if she was not where he could see her.
Later, the shame at exulting in Cyrano's loss would come.
Not now. He was too stunned. The loss of the boat had been even a greater shock than seeing Livy killed.
After all these years of hard work, of grief, of betrayal, of planning, of hurting, of ... of ... It was too much to bear.
Joe was grieved to see him cry, but he sat patiently by until Sam's tears had quit flowing. Then he said, "Do ve thtart building another boat, Tham?"
Sam Clemens rose to his feet. The gangplank was being drawn up by the electromechanical machinery of his fabulous Riverboat. Whistles were shrilling exultantly, and bells were clanging, John would still be laughing. He might even be watching Sam through a telescope. Sam shook his fist, hoping that John was watching him.
"I'll get you yet, traitor John!" he howled. "I'll build another boat, and I'll catch up with you! I don't care what obstacles I encounter or who gets in my way! I'll run you down, John, and I'll blast your stolen boat out of The River with my boat! Nobody, absolutely nobody, the Stranger, the Devil, God, nobody, no matter what his powers, is going to stop me! "Some day, John! Some day!"
Volume III of the Riverworld series will take Sam Clemens all the way up The River with Richard Francis Burton and the rest of The Twelve to the Misty Tower and the secret of the Ethicals. Technological Note: Potassium nitrate is prepared on the Riverworld by feeding a certain type of earthworm human excrement. The end product of this diet is crystallized potassium nitrate, which, mixed with charcoal and sulfur, makes black gunpowder.