The Fabulous Riverboat

by Philip José Farmer

  Sam felt a little panic. For the first time, he realized that, though he hated the Ethical, he had come to depend strongly on him for moral and material support.

  "I hope nothing goes wrong," Sam said. "I almost lost my chance at the iron today. If it hadn't been for Joe and that fellow, Odysseus. . . ."

  Then he said, "Hold it! Odysseus told me that the Ethical who talked to him was a woman!" The darkness chuckled. "What does that mean?"

  "Either you're not the only renegade or else you can change your voice. Or maybe, maybe you're not telling me the truth at all! Maybe you're all in on this and feeding out fine lies for some plan of your own! We're tools in your hands!"

  "I'm not lying! And I can't tell you about your other guesses. If you, or the others I've chosen, are detected and questioned, their stories will confuse my colleagues."

  There was a rustic. "I must go now. You're on your own. Good luck." "Wait! What if I fail?"

  "Somebody else will build the boat, but I have good reasons for wanting you to do it."

  "So I am just a tool. If the tool breaks, throw it away, get another." "I can't assure your success. I'm not a god."

  "Damn you and all your kind!" Sam shouted. "Why couldn't you have let things be as they were on Earth? We had the peace of death forever. No more pain and grief. No more never-ceasing toil and heartache. All that was behind us. We were free, free of the chains of flesh. But you gave us the chains again and fixed it so we couldn't even kill ourselves. You set death beyond our reach. It's as if you put us in hell forever!"

  "It's not that bad," the Ethical said. "Most of you are better off than you ever were. Or at least as well off. The crippled, the blind, the grotesque, the diseased, the starved are healthy and young. You don't have to sweat for or worry about your daily bread, and most of you are eating better by far than you did on Earth. However, I agree with you in the larger sense. It was a crime, the greatest crime of all, to resurrect you. So . . ."

  "I want my Livy back!" Sam cried. "And I want my daughters! They might as well be dead as separated from me, I mean from each other, forever! I'd rather they were dead! At least, I wouldn't be in agony all the time because they might be suffering, but in some terrible plight! How do I know they're not being raped, beaten, tortured? There's so much evil on this planet! There should be, since it has the original population of Earth!"

  "I could help you," the Ethical said. "But it might take years for me to locate them. I won't explain the means because they're too complicated and I have to leave before the rain is over." Sam rose and walked forward, his hands out. The Ethical said, "Stop! You touched me once!" Sam halted. "Could you find Livy for me? My girls?"

  "I'll do it. You have my word. Only . . . only what if it does take years? Suppose you have the boat built by then – in fact, are already a million miles up The River. And then I tell you I've found your wife, but she's three million miles downRiver? I can notify you of her location, but I positively cannot bring her to you. You'll have to get her yourself. What will you do then? Will you turn back and spend twenty years backtracking? Would your crew permit you to do so? I doubt it. Moreover, even if you did this, there's no certainty that your woman would still be in the original location. She may have been killed and translated elsewhere, even farther out of reach." "Damn you!" Sam yelled.

  "And, of course," the Ethical said, "people change. You may like her when you find her." "I'll kill you!" Sam Clemens yelled. "So help me! . . . "

  The bamboo mat was lifted. The Stranger was silhouetted briefly, a batlike, cloaked shape with a dome covering for the head. Sam clenched his fists and forced himself to stand like a block of ice, waiting for his anger to melt away. Then he began pacing back and forth until finally he threw his cigar away. It had turned bitter; even the air he breathed was harsh.

  "Damn them! Damn him! I'll build the boat and I'll get to the north pole and I'll find out what's going on! And I'll kill him! Kill them!"

  The rains stopped. There were shouts from a distance. Sam went outside, alarmed because the Stranger might have been caught, although it did not seem likely. And he knew then that his boat meant more than anything else, that he did not want anything to happen to interfere with its building, even if he could take immediate revenge on the Ethical. That would have to come later.

  Torches were coming across the plain. Presently, the bearers were close enough for Sam to make out the faces of some guards and that of von Richthofen. There were three unknowns with them.

  An arrangement of large towels, held together by magnetic clasps, fell shapelessly about their bodies. A hood shadowed the face of the smallest stranger. The tallest was a man with a long, lean, dark face and a huge hooked nose. "You're runner-up in the contest," Sam said. "There's someone in my hut who has a nose that beats yours all hollow."

  "Norn d'un con! Va te fair foutre!" the tall man said. "Must I always be insulted, no matter where I go? Is this the hospitality you give strangers? Did I travel ten thousand leagues under incredibly harsh conditions to find the man who can put good steel in my hand once more, only to have him verbally tweak my nose? Know, ignorant insolent lout, that Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac does not turn the other cheek. Unless you apologize, immediately, most sincerely, plead with the tongue of an angel, I will stab you through with this nose that you so mock!"

  Sam apologized abjectly, saying that his nerves had been frayed by the battle. He looked in wonder at the legendary figure, and he wondered if he could be one of the chosen twelve.

  The second man, a blond-haired and blue-eyed youth, introduced himself as Herrman Göring. A spiral bone, taken from one of the Riverfishes, hung from a cord around his neck, and by this Sam knew that he was a member of the Church of Second Chance. This meant trouble, because the Second Chancers preached absolute pacifism.

  The third stranger threw the hood back and revealed a pretty face with long black hair done in a Psyche knot. Sam staggered and almost fainted. "Livy!"

  The woman started. She stepped closer to him and, silently, pale in the torchlight, looked at him. She was weaving back and forth, as shocked as he. "Sam," she said weakly.

  He took a step toward her, but she turned and clung to de Bergerac for support. The Frenchman put his arm around her and glared at Sam Clemens. "Courage, my little lamb! He will not harm you while I am here! What does he mean to you?"

  She looked up at him with an expression that Sam could not mistake. He howled and shook his fist at the stars, just coming out from the clouds.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  The Riverboat moved through his dream like a glittering, twenty-million-carat diamond.

  There had never been a boat like it nor would there ever be another.

  It would be named the Not For Hire. No one would ever be able to take it away from him, it would be so strongly armored and weaponed. Nor would anyone be able to buy or rent it from him.

  The name glowed in great black letters against the white hull. NOT FOR HIRE.

  The fabulous Riverboat would have four decks: the boiler deck, the main deck, the hurricane deck and the landing deck for the aerial machine. Its overall length would be four hundred and forty feet and six inches. The beam over the paddle-wheel guards would be ninety-three feet. Mean draft, loaded, twelve feet. The hull would be made of magnalium or, perhaps, plastic. The great stacks would spout smoke now and then, because there was a steam boiler aboard. But this was only to propel the big plastic bullets for the steam machine guns. The giant paddle-wheels on the sides of the Riverboat would be turned by enormous electrical motors.

  The Not For Hire would be the only metal boat on The River, the only boat not propelled by oars or wind, and it would make anybody sit up and stare, whether he was born in 2,000,000 B.C. or in A.D. 2000.

  And he, Sam Clemens, would be The Captain, capital T, capital C, because, aboard this vessel, carrying a crew of one hundred and twenty, there would be only one Captain.

  King John of England could call himsel
f Admiral if he wished, though if Sam Clemens had anything to do with it, he'd be First Mate, not Admiral. And if Sam Clemens really had anything to do with it, King John – John Lackland, Rotten John, Dirty John, Lecher John, Pigsty John – would not even be allowed on the boat. Sam Clemens, smoking a big green cigar, wearing a white cap, dressed in a white kilt with a white towel over his shoulders for a cape, would lean out of the starboard port of the great pilothouse and yell, Avast there, you lubbers! Grab hold of that putrescent mass of immortality and treachery and toss him off the gangplank. I don't care if he lands in The River or on the bank! Get rid of that human garbage!

  Over the railing of the boiler deck Prince John would sail. Slyboots John, screaming, cursing in his French-accented Middle English or in Anglo-Norman French or in Esperanto. Then the gangplank would be drawn up, bells would ring, whistles would blow, and Sam Clemens, standing behind the pilot, would give the order to begin the voyage.

  The voyage! Up a River for maybe ten million miles or maybe twenty million miles, for maybe forty years or a hundred years. Such a Riverboat, such a River, such a voyage had never been dreamed of on Earth, long dead Earth! Up The River, the only one on this world, on the only boat like this, with Sam Clemens as La Sipestro, The Captain, and also addressed as La Estro, The Boss. He was so happy!

  And then, as they headed out toward the middle of The River, just to test the current, which was strongest in the center of the mighty stream, as the thousands along the bank waved and cheered or wept after the boat, after him, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain – The Captain, The Boss – he saw a man with long yellow hair and broad shoulders pushing through the crowd.

  The man wore a towel-like cloth, secured by magnetic tabs under the material, as a kilt. His leather sandals were made of the hide of the whale-sized Riverdragon fish, Around his thickly muscled neck he wore a string of brilliantly colored hornfish vertebrae. In his huge powerful hand he gripped the wooden shaft of a large war ax of iron. His pale-blue eyes were fixed on Samuel Clemens and that broad hawk-nosed face was grim.

  Sam Clemens screamed to the pilot, "Faster! Faster! Full speed ahead!"

  The great paddle-wheels began to dip into the water more swiftly – chunk, chunk. Even through the fiberglass-insulated deck the vibrations made the deck quiver. Suddenly the blond man, Erik Bloodaxe, tenth-century Viking King, was in the pilothouse.

  He shouted at Sam Clemens in Old Norse. "Traitor! Droppings of Ratatosk! I told you I would wait along the banks of The River! You betrayed me so you could get the iron from the fallen star and build your great Riverboat!"

  Sam fled the pilot house and down the ladders from deck to deck and down into the dark bowels of the hold, but Erik Bloodaxe was always two steps behind.

  Past the colossal rotating electric motors Sam Clemens ran, and then he was in the chemistry room, where the engineers were making potassium nitrate from human excrement and mixing it with sulfur and charcoal to make gunpowder. Sam grabbed hold of a lighter and a resin torch, pressed the slide, and a white-hot glowing wire slid out of the case. "Stop, or I'll blow up the whole boat!", Sam screamed.

  Erik had stopped, but he was swinging the big ax around and around over his head. He grinned and said, "Go ahead! You haven't got the guts! You love the Riverboat more than you love anything, even your faithless but precious Livy! You wouldn't blow her up! So I'm going to split you down the middle with my ax and then take the Riverboat for myself!"

  "No! No!" Sam screamed. "You wouldn't dare! You can't! You can't! This is my dream, my love, my passion, my life, my world! You can't!"

  The Norseman stepped closer to him; the ax whistled over his head. "I can't? Just stand there and see!"

  Over his shoulder Sam saw a shadow. It moved forward and became a tall, faceless figure. It was X, the Mysterious Stranger, the renegade Ethical who had sent the meteorite crashing into the River-valley so that Sam could have the iron and nickel to build his Riverboat on this mineral-poor planet. And so he could sail up The River to the NorthPolarSea where the MistyTower, the Big Grail, call it what you would, was hidden in the cold fog. And there Sam, with the eleven men chosen by X for his as-yet-unrevealed plan, would storm the Tower, and find – find what? Whatever was there. "Stranger!" Sam called. "Save me! Save me!"

  The laughter was like a wind from the polar sea, turning his guts to crystal. "Save yourself, Sam!"

  "No! No! You promised!" Sam yelled. And then his eyes were open and the last of his groans died away. Or had he dreamed that he was groaning?

  He sat up. His bed was made of bamboo. The mattress was a bamboo fiber cloth stuffed with giant leaves of the irontree. The blanket was made up of five towels secured together by magnetic tabs. The bed was against the wall of a room twenty feet square. It held a desk and a round table and about a dozen chairs, all of bamboo or pine, and a fired-clay chamber pot. There were also a bamboo bucket half full of water, a tall broad case with many pigeonholes for rolls of paper, a rack with bamboo and pine spears with flint and iron tips, yew bows and arrows, a war ax of nickel-iron and four long steel knives. On the wall were a number of pegs from which white towels hung. On one hat-stand was a naval cap, an officer's, made of leather covered with a thin white cloth.

  On the table was his grail, a gray metallic cylinder with a metal handle.

  On the desk were glass bottles containing a soot-black ink, a number of bone pens, and one nickel-iron pen. The papers on the desk were of bamboo, though there were a few sheets of vellum from the inner lining of the stomach of the hornfish.

  Glass windows (or ports, as he called them) looked out all around the room. As far as Sam Clemens knew, this was the only house with glass windows in the entire River-valley. Certainly, it was the only one for 10,000 miles either way from this area.

  The sole light came from the sky. Though it was not yet dawn, the light was a trifle brighter than that cast by the full moon on Earth. Giant stars of many colors, some so big they looked like chipped-off pieces of the moon, jam-packed the heavens. Bright sheets and streamers hung between the stars, behind them, and even, seemingly, in front of some of the brightest. These were cosmic gas clouds, glories that never ceased to thrill the more sensitive of humanity along The River.

  Sam Clemens, smacking his lips at the sour taste of the liquor he had drunk that evening and the even sourer taste of the dream, stumbled across the floor. He opened his eyes completely when he reached the desk, picked up a lighter, and applied the extended hot wire to a fish-oil lamp in a stone bracket.

  He opened a port and looked out toward The River. A year ago he would have seen only a flat plain about a mile and a half wide and covered with short, tough, bright-green grass. Now it was a hideous mass of piled-up earth, deep pits and many buildings of bamboo and pine containing brick furnaces. These were his steel mills (so called), his glass factory, his smelters, his cement mills, his forges, his blacksmith shops, his armories, his laboratories, and his nitric and sulfuric-acid factories. A half a mile away was a high wall of pine logs enclosing the first metal boat he would build.

  Torches flared to his left. Even at night the men were digging out the siderite chunks, hauling up pieces of the nickel-iron.

  Behind him had been a forest of thousand-foot-high irontrees, red pine, lodgepole pine, black oak, white oak, yew trees and thick stands of bamboo. These had stood on the foothills; the hills were mostly still there but the trees, except for the irontrees, were all gone, along with the bamboo. Only the huge irontrees had withstood the steel axes of Clemens' people. The tall grasses had been cut down and their fibers chemically treated to make ropes and paper, but their roots were so tough and so tangled that there had not been enough reason to chop them out. The labor and the materials used in chopping through the roots of the short grass of the plains to get to the metal there had been very expensive. Not in terms of money, because that did not exist, but in terms of sweat, worn-out stone and dulled steel.

  Where this area had been beautiful with its man
y trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat.

  Sam shivered at the wet and chilly wind which always came late at night from upRiver. He shivered also at the thought of the desolation. He loved beauty and nature's order and he loved the park-like arrangement of the valley, whatever else he thought about this world. Now he had made it hideous because he had a dream. And he would have to extend that hideousness, because his mills and factories needed more wood for fuel, for paper, for charcoal. All that his state possessed was used up and he had about used up all that Cernskujo to the immediate north and Publiujo to the immediate south would trade him. If he wanted more he would have to war on his closest neighbors or make arrangements for trading with the more distant states or those just across The River. Or else conquer them and take their wood away from them. He did not want to do that; he abhorred war in principle and could barely stand it in practice.

  But if he was to have his Riverboat he had to have wood as fuel for his factories.

  He also had to have bauxite and cryolite and platinum if he was to have aluminum generators and motors.

  The nearest source of all three was in SoulCity, that nation twenty-six miles downRiver dominated by Elwood Hacking, who hated whites.

  So far, Sam had been able to trade iron weapons for bauxite, cryolite, cinnabar and platinum. Sam's own state, Parolando, needed the weapons badly. Adding one burden to the other, Hacking insisted that Parolando use its own -men to mine and transport the ore.

  Sam sighed deeply. Why in hell hadn't the Mysterious Stranger directed the meteorite to fall right by the bauxite deposits? Then, when Sam and Bloodaxe's Vikings had sailed into this area immediately after the meteorite had struck, they could have claimed the land that was now SoulCity for their own. When Hacking arrived, he would have been forced to join Clemens or to leave.