The Fabulous Riverboat

by Philip José Farmer

  "But it's nothing like what the preachers said it would be. Which isn't, of course, surprising. And maybe it's just as well. Who'd want to fly around on aerodynamically unstable wings or stand around all day playing harps badly and screeching out hosannas?"

  Lothar laughed and said, "Ask any Chinese or Indian coolie if this isn't a hell of a better world than the last world. It's just us spoiled modern Westerners who grumble and look for first and latest causes. We didn't know much about the operation of our Earthly cosmos, and we know less about this. But we're here, and we may eventually find out who put us here and why. Meanwhile, as long as there are beautiful and willing women – and there are – cigars, dreamgum, wine and a good fight, who cares? I'll enjoy this valley of bright shadows until the good things of life are once more taken from me. Lust to lust until it's dust to dust."

  They were silent after a while, and Clemens could not get to sleep until just before the rains. He got down under the mushroom until the downpour ceased. Back on top of the stone, he shivered and turned for several hours, although he was covered with long heavy towels. Dawn came with Miller's ponderous hand shaking him. Hastily, he climbed down off the stone and got a safe distance from it. Five minutes later, the stone gave forth a blue flame that leaped thirty feet into the air and roared like a lion. At the same time, the stones across the river bellowed.

  Clemens looked at Lothar. "Somebody repaired the break."

  Lothar said, "I've got goose pimples. Who is somebody?" He was silent for a while, but before they had reached the west bank, he was laughing and chattering like a guest at a cocktail party. Too cheerful, Clemens thought.

  "They've never shown their hand before, that I know of," Sam said. "But this time I guess they had to."

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  The next five days were occupied in getting the ship down to the bank. Two weeks more were spent in repairing the Dreyrugr. All that time a watch was kept, but no one came into the area. When the ship was finally launched, still minus masts and sails, and was rowed down The River, there was not a live human in sight.

  The crew, accustomed to seeing the plains thronged with men and women, were uneasy. The silence was unnerving. There were no animals on this world except for the fish in The River and earthworms in the soil, but the humans had always made enough noise.

  "The hyenas'll be here soon enough," Clemens said to Bloodaxe. "That iron is far more precious than gold ever was on Earth. You want battle? You'll get enough down your throat to make you vomit."

  The Norseman, swinging his ax, winced at the pain in his ribs. "Let them come! They'll know they've been in a fight to bring joy to the hearts of the Valkyrie!"

  "Bull!" Joe Miller said. Sam smiled but walked to a position behind the Titanthrop. Bloodaxe was afraid of only one being in the world, but he might lose his never easily controlled temper and go berserk. However, he needed Miller, who was worth twenty human warriors.

  The ship traveled steadily for two days during the sunlit hours. At night, one man steered and the crew slept. Early in the evening of the third day, the Titanthrop, Clemens and von Richthofen were sitting on the foredeck, smoking cigars and sipping at the whiskey their grails had given them at the last stop. "Why do you call him Joe Miller?" Lothar asked.

  "His real name is a rattling jawbreaker, longer than any technical term of a German philosopher," Clemens said. "I couldn't pronounce it when I first met him, I never did. After he learned enough English to tell me a joke – he was so eager he could hardly wait – I decided to call him Joe Miller. He told me a tale so hoary I couldn't believe it. I knew it'd been around a long time; I first heard it, in a slightly different form, when I was a boy in Hannibal, Missouri. And I was still hearing it, much to my disgust, for the hundred thousandth time, when I was an old man. But to have to listen to that story from the lips of a man who'd died one hundred thousand years, maybe a million, before I was born!" "And the story?"

  "Well, there was this traveling hunter who'd been tracking a wounded deer all day. Night came and with it a violent storm. Seeing the light of a fire, the hunter stopped off at a cave. He asked the old medicine man who lived in it if he could spend the night there. And the old medicine man said, 'Sure, but we're pretty crowded here. You'll have to sleep with my daughter.' Need I go any further?"

  "Tham didn't laugh," Joe rumbled. "Thometimeth I think he ain't got a thenthe of humor."

  Clemens tweaked Joe's projectile-shaped nose affectionately. He said, "Thometimeth I think you're right. But actually I'm the most humorous man in the world because I'm the most sorrowful. Every laugh is rooted in pain."

  He puffed on his cigar for a while and stared at the shore. Just before dusk, the ship had entered the area where the last of the intense heat from the meteorite had struck. Aside from the few irontrees, everything had been whistled off in a shock of searing flame. The irontrees had given up their huge leaves to the flames, and even the enormously resistant bark had burned off and the wood beneath, harder than granite, had become charred. Moreover, the blast had tilted or leveled many of these, snapping them off at the base. The grailstones had been blackened and were out of plumb but had retained their shape.

  Finally, he said, "Lothar, now is as good a time as any for you to learn something of why we're on this quest. Joe can tell it in his way; I'll explain anything you don't understand. It's a strange tale, but no stranger, actually, than anything that's happened here since we all woke up from the dead."

  "I'm thirthty," Joe said. "Let me get a drink firtht."

  The dark-blue eyes, shadowed in the bone rings, focused upon the hollow of the cup. He seemed to peer therein as if he were trying to conjure up the scenes he was about to describe. Guttural, his tongue hitting certain consonants harder than others, thus giving his English a clanging quality, yet comical with its lisping, voice rising up from a chest deep and resonant as the well of the Delphian oracle, he told of the MistyTower.

  "Thomevhere upon The River, I avoke, naked ath I am now. I vath in a plathe that mutht be far north on thith planet, because it vath colder and the light vath not ath bright. There vere no humanth, yutht uth . . . uh, titantropth, ath Tham callth uth. Ve had grailth, only they vere much larcher than yourth, ath you can thee. And ve got no beer and vithkey. Ve had never known about alcohol, tho ve had none in our grailth. Ve drank The River vater.

  "Ve thought ve vere in the plathe that you go to vhen you die, that the . . . uh . . . godth had given uth thith plathe and all ve needed. Ve vere happy, ve mated and ate and thlept and fought our enemieth. And I vould have been happy there if it had not been for the thyip." "He means ship," Sam said.

  "That'th vhat I thaid. Thyip. Pleathe don't interrupt, Tham. You've made me unhappy enough by telling me that there are no godth. Even if I've theen the godth." Lothar said, "Seen the gods?"

  "Not egthactly. I thaw vhere they live. I did thee their thyip."

  Von Richthofen said, "What? What're you talking about?"

  Clemens waved his cigar. "Later. Let him talk. If you interrupt him too much, he gets confused."

  "Vhere I come from, you don't talk vhile another ith talking. Othervithe, you get punched in the nothe."

  Sam said, "With a nose as big as yours, Joe, that must hurt." Miller delicately stroked his proboscis.

  "It ith the only vone I have, and I'm proud of it. Novhere in thith part of the valley hath any pigmy got a nothe like mine. Vhere I come from, your nothe indicateth the thithe of your – vhat'th your vord for it, Tham?" Sam choked and took the cigar from his lips. "You were telling us of the ship, Joe."

  "Yeth. No! I vath not! I hadn't gotten to it yet. But ath I vath thaying, vun day I vath lying on the bank vatching the fith play. I vath thinking about getting up and making a hook and pole to catch thome. All of a thudden, I heard a thyout. I looked up. There, coming around the bend of The River vath thith terrible monthter.

  "It vath awful. I jumped up, and I vath going to run avay vhen I thaw it had men on itth b
ack. They looked like men, but vhen the monthter got clother, I thaw they were thpindly little runtth vith the mange and no notheth to thpeak of. I could have beat them all to death vith vone hand, and yet they were riding thith monthter Riverthnake like beeth on a bear'th back. Tho. . . ."

  Clemens, listening, felt again as he had when he first heard the story. He felt as if he were standing by the side of this creature from the dawn of man. Despite the clanging and lisping and halting and slow groping after words, this Titan spoke impressively. Clemens could feel his panic and his wonder and almost overpowering urge to run away. Clemens could also feel the opposing urge, the primate's curiosity, the thing that made him, if not wholly a man, at least a near cousin. Behind the shelving brow lay the gray pulse that would not be content just to exist but must be fed on the shapes of unknown things, on patterns never before seen.

  So Joe Miller stayed upon the bank, though his hand closed around the handle of the grail, ready to carry it with him if he had to flee.

  The monster floated closer. Joe began to think that it might not be alive. But if it were not, why the great head poised at its front as if to strike? Yet it did not look alive. It gave a feeling of deadness. This did not mean much, of course. Joe had seen a wounded bear pretend death convincingly and then rise up and tear the arm off a fellow hunter.

  Moreover, though he had seen the hunter die, he had also seen the hunter alive again, that day he awoke on the banks with others of his kind. And if he, and Joe, too, could come alive again, why couldn't this petrified snakelike head lose its dead woodenness and seize him in its teeth?

  But he ignored his fears and, trembling, approached the monster. He was a Titan, older brother to man, fresh with the dawn and with the primate's have-to-know what's going on.

  A pygmy, mangy as the others but wearing on his brow a glass circlet with a stained-red flaming sun, beckoned to Joe Miller. The others upon the wooden beast stood behind the man with the glass circlet and held spears and strange devices that Joe learned later were bows and arrows. They did not seem frightened of the colossus, but that may have been because they were so tired from their seldom-ceasing rowing against the current that they did not care what happened.

  It took a long time for the pygmy chief to get Joe aboard the ship. They came ashore to charge their grails while Joe backed away from them. They ate, and Joe ate also, but at a distance. His fellows had run for the hills, having been also panicked by the ship. Presently seeing that the Riversnake did not threaten Joe, they slowly approached it. The pygmies retreated to the ship.

  And now the chief took a strange object from his grail and held a glowing wire to its tip, and smoke came from it and from the pygmy's mouth. Joe jumped at the first puff; his fellows scattered for the foothills again. Joe wondered if the nose-less pygmies could be the brood of the dragon. Perhaps her children took this larval form, but, like their mother, they could breathe out fire and smoke?

  "But I ain't a dummy," Joe said. "It didn't take me long to figure out that the thmoke came from the obchect, vhich in Englith ith a thigar. Their chief made it plain that if I'd get on the thyip, I could thmoke the thigar. Now, I mutht've been crathy to do tho, but I vanted to thmoke that thigar. Maybe I thought I'd impreth my tribe, I don't know."

  He jumped on the ship, his weight causing it to tilt a little on the port. He swung his grail to show them that if they attacked him, he would bash their skulls in with it. They took the hint and did not come close. The chief gave Joe a cigar, and though Joe coughed a little and found the taste of tobacco strange, he liked it. Moreover, when he had drunk beer for the first time, he was entranced.

  So Joe decided to go on the Riversnake's back up The River with the pygmies. He was put to work on a mighty sweep, and he was called Tehuti. 'Tehuti?" von Richthofen said.

  "The Greek form is Thoth," Clemens said. "To the Egyptians, he looked something like the long-beaked ibisgod. I suppose he must also have reminded them of the baboon-god, Bast, but that tremendous nose outweighed that consideration. So, Thoth, or Tehuti, he became."

  Days and nights flowed by like The River. Sometimes, Joe became tired and wished to be put ashore. By now, he could speak the pygmies' language, though haltingly. The chief would agree to do as Joe wished since it was obvious that any denial might result in the slaughter of his entire crew. But he would speak sadly of Tehuti's education ending there, just when he was doing so well. He had been a brute, though with the face of the god of wisdom, and soon he would be a man. Brute? God? Man? What were they?

  The order was not quite right, the chief would say. The correct sequence, ever upward, was brute, man and god. Yet it was true you might see a god disguised as a beast, and man merged insensibly from animal into deity, balanced between the two, and now and then changed into one or the other.

  That was beyond the bread loaf-shaped brain of Tehuti. He would squat and scowl at the nearing bank. There would be no more cigars or beer. The people on the bank were his kind, but they were also not his tribe, and they might kill him. Moreover, he was beginning for the first time to experience intellectual stimulation, and that would cease once he was back among the Titanthrops.

  So he would look at the chief and blink, grin and shake his head and tell him he was going to stay on the ship. He took his turn at the sweep and resumed his study of the most marvelous of all things: a tongue that knew philosophy. He became fluent in their speech and began to grasp the wonderful things the leader told him, although sometimes it was as painful as grasping a handful of thorns. If this or that idea eluded him, he pursued it, caught it, swallowed it, perhaps vomited it up a score of times. Eventually, he digested it and got some nourishment from it.

  The River flowed by. They rowed, always staying close to the shore, where the current was weakest. Days and nights, and now the sun did not climb so high in the heavens but was a little lower at its zenith than it had been the week before. And the air grew colder.

  Sam said, "Joe and his party were getting close to the north pole. The inclination of this planet's equator to the plane of the ecliptic is zero. As you know, there are no seasons; day and night are equal in length. But Joe was approaching the point where he would see the sun always half below the horizon and half above. Or would have if it hadn't been for the mountains."

  "Yeth. It vath alvayth tvilight. I got cold, though not ath cold ath the men. They vere thyivering their atheth off."

  "His big bulk radiates heat slower than our puny bodies," Clemens said.

  "Pleathe, pleathe! Thyould I talk or jutht keep my big mouth thyut?" Lothar and Sam grinned at him.

  He continued. The wind grew stronger, and the air became misty. He began to get uneasy. He wanted to turn back, but by now he did not want to lose the respect of the leader. He would go every inch of the way toward their unknown goal with them. "You didn't know where they were going?" Lothar said. "Not egthactly. They vanted to get to the headvaterth of the River. They thought maybe the godth lived there, and there the godth vould admit them into the true aftervorld. They thaid that thith vorld vathn't the true vorld. It vath a thtage on the vay to the true vorld. Vhatever that ith."

  One day, Joe heard a rumble that sounded as faintly but yet as near as gas moving within his bowels. After a while, as the noise became like thunder, he knew it was water falling from immense heights.

  The ship swung into a bay protected by a finger of land. The grailstones no longer lined The River. The men would have to catch fish and dry them. There was also a store of bamboo tips on the ship; these had been collected in the sunlit region for just such an eventuality.

  The leader and his men prayed, and the party began climbing a series of cataracts. Here the superhuman strength of Tehuti – Joe Miller – helped them in overcoming obstacles. Other times, his great weight was a hindrance and a danger.

  Upward they went, wet because of the ever-present spray. When they came to a cliff smooth as ice for a thousand feet up, they despaired. Reconnoitering, they found a rope dangling
from the face of a cliff. It was formed to towels tied together. Joe tested its strength and climbed up, hand over hand, his feet braced against the cliff, until he reached the top. There he turned to watch the others follow him. The chief, first after Joe, tried much easier, and halfway up to the top he could go no farther. Joe pulled him and the extremely heavy weight of the rope to the top. He did the same for each man in the party.

  "Where in hell did the rope come from?" von Richthofen said.

  "Someone had prepared the way for them," Clemens said. "Given the primitive technology of this planet, no one could have found a way to get that rope up to the rock around which one end of the rope was tied. Maybe a balloon might have lifted a man up there. You could make a balloon of Riverdragon skin or human skins, you know. You could make hydrogen by passing steam over highly heated charcoal in the presence of a suitable catalyst. But in this world of scarce metal, where's the catalyst?

  "Hydrogen could be made without a catalyst but at an enormous cost in fuel. But there was no evidence of the furnaces needed to make the hydrogen. Besides, why would the towels be left behind, when they'd be needed again? No, some unknown person, let's call him The Mysterious Stranger, put that rope there for Joe and party. Or for whoever might come along. Don't ask me who he was or how he did it. Listen. There's more."

  The party, carrying the rope, walked for several miles in the mist-ridden twilight on a plateau. They came to another cliff where The River broadened out above them into a cataract. It was so wide, it seemed to Joe that there was enough water to float the moon of Earth upon it. He would not have been surprised to see that great silver-and-black orb appear on the brink of the cataract far above and hurtle down that thunder of waters and be smashed to pieces on the rocks in the maelstrom foot.