R.W. II - The Fabulous Riverboat

  "Hacking once believed in total segregation of whites and nonwhites. He believed, fiercely believed, that whites could never accept, not soul-accept, non-white peoples – that is, the blacks, Mongolians, Polynesians, and Amerindians. The only way nonwhites could live with dignity, feel beautiful, be a people with its own personality and pride, was to follow the way of segregation. Equal but separate.

  "Then his leader, Malcolm X, quit the Black Muslims. Malcolm X saw that he was wrong. Not all whites were devils, racist fiends, any more than all blacks had flat noses. Hacking fled the states to live in Algeria and there he found that it was the attitude that made racism, not the color of the skin."

  Hardly an original or surprising discovery, Sam thought. But he had told himself that he would not interrupt.

  "And then the young whites of the Untied States, many of them, anyway, rejected their parents' prejudices, and they supported the blacks in their struggles. They got out on the streets and demonstrated, rioted, laid down their lives for the blacks. They genuinely seemed to like blacks, not because they thought they ought to, but because blacks were human beings and human beings can be liked or even loved.

  "Hacking, however, wasn't ever really at ease with an American white, try though he did to think of them as human beings. He was ruined, just as most whites, most older whites, were ruined. But he tried to like those whites who were on his side and he respected those young whites that told their parents, their white racist society, to go to hell.

  "Then he died, as everybody did, black or white. He found himself among ancient Chinese, and he wasn't very happy with them because they regarded all peoples except the Chinese as inferior."

  Sam remembered the Chinese of Nevada and California in the early '60's, the hard-working, thrifty, quiet, meek, cheery little brown men and women. They had taken abuse that most people would not give a mule, been spat upon, cursed, tortured, stoned, robbed, raped, suffered about every indignity and crime that a people could suffer. They had had no rights whatsoever, no protector or protection. And they had never murmured, never revolted, they just endured. What thoughts had those mask-like faces hidden? Had they, too, believed in the superiority of any Chinese to any white devil? If so, why had they not struck back, not once? They would have been massacred if they had, but they would have stood up like men for a few moments.

  But the Chinese believed in time; time was the Chinese ally. If time did not raise a father to fortune, time would raise his son. Or his grandson.

  Firebrass said, "So Hacking left in a dugout, floated downRiver, and after many thousands of miles settled down among some blacks of seventeenth-century A.D. Africa. Ancestors of the Zulus before they migrated to southern Africa. After a while he left them. Their customs were too repulsive, and they were too bloody-minded for him.

  "Then he lived in an area where the people were a mixture of Dark Age Huns and dark whites of the New Stone Age. They accepted him well enough, but he missed his own people, the American blacks. So he took off again and was captured by ancient Moabites and enslaved, escaped, was captured by ancient Hebrews and put into grail slavery, escaped again, found a little community of blacks who'd been pre-Civil War slaves and was happy for a while. But their Uncle Tom attitudes and their superstitions got on his nerves and he took off, sailed downRiver, and lived with several other peoples. Then, one day, some big blond whites, Germans of some kind, raided the people he was with and he fought and was killed.

  "He was resurrected here. Hacking became convinced that the only happy states on The River were going to be made up of people with similar colors, similar tastes, and of the same terrestrial period. Anything else just won't work. People here aren't going to change. Back on Earth he could believe in progress, because the young were flexible-minded. The old ones would die off, and then the children of the young whites would be even more free of racial prejudice. But here that just isn't going to take place. Every man's set in his ways. So, unless Hacking just happened to find a community of late-twentieth-century whites, he would find no whites without racial hatreds or prejudices. Of course, the ancient whites didn't have any against blacks, but they're too strange for a civilized man."

  Sam asked, "What's all this leading up to, Sinjoro Firebrass?"

  "We want a homogeneous nation. We can't get all late-twentieth-century blacks, but we can get as black a nation as possible. Now, we know that you have approximately three thousand blacks in Parolando. We would like to exchange our Dravidians, Arabs, any non-blacks, for your blacks. Hacking is making similar proposals to your neighbors, but he doesn't have any lever with them."

  King John sat up and said, loudly. "You mean he doesn't have anything they want?"

  Firebrass looked coolly at John and said, "That's about it. But we'll have a lever some day."

  "Do you mean when you have enough steel weapons?" Sam said. Firebrass shrugged.

  John crashed his empty cup down on the table. "Well, we don't want your Arabs or your Dravidians or any of your Soul City dregs!" he shouted. "But I'll tell you what we will do! For every ton of bauxite or cryolite or ounce of platinum, we will give you one of our black citizens! You can keep your Saracen infidels or send them packing downRiver or drown them for all we care."

  "Wait a minute," Sam said. "We can't give our citizens away. If they want to volunteer, fine. But we don't just give anybody away. This is a democracy." Firebrass' expression had darkened at John's outburst.

  I wasn't suggesting that you give anybody away," he said. "We're not slave dealers, you know. What we want is a one-per-one voluntary exchange. The Wahhabi Arabs, whom ar-Rahman and Fazghuli represent, feel they're unwelcome at Soul City and they would like to go where they could congregate in their own community, form a sort of Kasbah, you might say."

  Sam thought this sounded fishy. Why couldn't they do that just as well in Soul City? Or why didn't they just get up and leave? One of the beauties of this world was that ties or property or dependence on income did not exist. A man could carry everything he owned on his back – and building another house was easy in a world where new bamboo grew at a rate of two inches a day.

  It was possible that Hacking wanted to get his people into Parolando so that they could spy or revolt when Hacking invaded.

  Sam said, "We'll put your proposition about the exchange to each individual. That's all we can do. Now, does Sinjoro Hacking plan to keep on supplying us with the minerals and with wood?"

  "As long as you keep on sending us raw ore and steel weapons," Firebrass said. "But Hacking is thinking of upping the price."

  John's fist smashed into the tabletop again. "We will not be robbed!" he shouted. "We are paying too much now! Don't push us, Sinjoro Firebrass, or you may find yourselves with nothing! Nothing at all – not even your lives!"

  "Take it easy, Your Majesty," Sam said quietly. To Firebrass he said, "John isn't feeling well. Please forgive him. However, he does have a point. We can be pushed only so far."

  Abdullah X, a very big and very black man, jumped up and pointed a big finger at Sam. In English, he said, "You honkies had better quit badmouthing us. We won't take any crap from you, Mister Whitey! None! Especially from a man that wrote a book like you did about Nigger Jim! We don't like white racists and we only deal with them because there's nothing else we can do just now."

  "Take it easy, Abdullah," Firebrass said. He was smiling and Sam wondered if Abdullah's speech was the second part of a well-prepared program. Probably, Firebrass was similarly wondering if John's explosions had been rehearsed. Actors didn't have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors.

  Sam groaned and said, "Did you read Huckleberry Finn, Sinjoro X?" Abdullah, sneering, said, "I don't read trash."

  "Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?" Abdullah's face darkened. Firebrass grinned.

  "I don't have to read that racist crap, man!" Abdullah shouted. "Hacking told me all about it and what he says is good enough for me!"

  "You read it and then c
ome back and we'll discuss it," Sam said.

  "You crazy?" Abdullah said. "You know there aren't any books on this world."

  "Then you lost out, didn't you?" Sam said. He was trembling a little; he wasn't used to being talked to like this by a black man. "Anyway," Sam said, "this isn't a literary tea-and-discussion group. Let's stick to the issue."

  But Abdullah would not stop shouting about the books that Sam had written. And John, losing his temper, leaped up and screamed, "Silentu, negraco!"

  John had taken the Esperanto word for "black" or "negro" and infixed the disparaging "-ac-" particle. He had gotten his point over quite well.

  There was a moment of shock and silence. Abdullah X's mouth was open, then it closed, and he looked triumphant, almost happy. Firebrass bit his lip. John leaned on the table on his fists and scowled. Sam puffed on his cigar. He knew that John's contempt for all humanity had made him invent the term. John had no racial prejudice; he had never seen more than a half dozen blacks during his lifetime on Earth. But he certainly knew how to insult a person; the knowledge was second nature to him. "I'm walking out!" Abdullah X said. "I may be going home – and if I do you can bet your white ass that you'll pay hell getting any more aluminum or platinum, Mister Charlie."

  Sam rose to his feet and said, "Just a minute. If you want an apology, I extend it on behalf of all Parolando."

  Abdullah looked at Firebrass, who looked away. Abdullah said, "I want an apology from him, now!" He pointed at King John.

  Sam leaned close to John and said softly, "There's too much at stake to play the proud monarch, Your Majesty! And you may be playing into their hands with your little fit. They are up to something, you can bet on that. Apologize."

  John straightened up and said, "I apologize to no man, especially not to a commoner who is also an infidel dog!"

  Sam snorted and gestured with his cigar. "Can't you get it through your thick Plantagenet head that there isn't any such thing as royal blood or divine right of kings anymore, that we're all commoners? Or all kings?"

  John did not reply. He walked out. Abdullah looked at Firebrass, who nodded. Abdullah walked out.

  Sam said. "Well, Sinjoro Firebrass, what next? Do you people go home?"

  Firebrass shook his head, "No, I don't believe in hasty decisions. But the conference is suspended as far as the Soul City delegation is concerned. Until John Lackland apologizes, I'll give you until noon tomorrow to decide what to do."

  Firebrass turned to leave. Sam said, "I'll talk to John, but he's as hardheaded as a Missouri mule."

  "I'd hate to see our negotiations fold because one man can't keep his insults to himself," Firebrass said. "And I'd also hate to see our trade stop, because that would mean no Riverboat for you."

  Sam said, "Don't get me wrong, Sinjoro Firebrass. I'm making no threats. But I won't be stopped. I'll get the aluminum if I have to kick John out of the country myself. Or, alternatively, if I have to go down to Soul City and get the aluminum myself."

  "I understand you," Firebrass said. "But what you don't understand is that Hacking isn't out for power. He only wants to have a well-protected state so that his citizens can enjoy life. And they will enjoy their life because they'll all have similar tastes and similar goals. In other words, they'll all be black."

  Sam grunted and then said, "Very well." He fell silent but just before Firebrass left he called, "One minute. Have you read Huckleberry Finn!"

  Firebrass turned back. "Sure. I thought it was a great book when I was a kid. I read it again when I was in college, and I could see its flaws then, but I enjoyed it even more as an adult, despite its flaws."

  "Were you disturbed because Jim was called Nigger Jim?"

  "You have to remember that I was born in 1975 on a farm near Syracuse, New York. Things had changed a lot by then, and the farm had originally been owned by my great-great-great grandfather, who came up from Georgia to Canada via the underground railway and then purchased the farm after the Civil War. No, I wasn't offended by your use of the word. Negroes were called niggers openly in the time you wrote about and nobody thought anything of it. Sure, the word was an insult. But you were portraying people as they actually talked, and the ethical basis of your novel, the struggle between Huck's duty as a citizen and his feeling for Jim as a human being and the victory of the human feeling in Huck – I was moved. The whole book was an indictment of slavery, of the semi-feudal society of the Mississippi, of superstition – of everything stupid of that time. So why should I be offended by it?" "Then why . . ."

  "Abdullah – whose original name was George Robert Lee – was born in 1925 and Hacking was born in 1938. Blacks were niggers then to a lot of whites, though not to all. They found out the hard way that violence – or the threat of it, the same thing that the whites had used to keep them down – was the only way to get their rights as citizens of the United States. You died in 1910, right? But you must have been told by any number of people what happened after that?"

  Sam nodded. "It's hard to believe. Not the violence of the riots. Plenty of that happened in my lifetime and nothing, I understand, ever equaled the Draft Act riots in New York City during the Civil War. I mean, what's hard to visualize is the licentiousness of the late twentieth century."

  Firebrass laughed and said, "Yet you're living in a society that is far more free and licentious – from the viewpoint of the nineteenth century – than any society in the twentieth. You've adapted."

  "I suppose so," Sam replied. "But the two weeks of absolute nudity during the first days after resurrection ensured that mankind would never again be the same. Not as regards nudity, anyway. And the undeniable fact of the resurrection shattered many fixed ideas and attitudes. Though the diehard is still with us, as witness your Wahhabi Moslem."

  "Tell me, Sinjoro Clemens," Firebrass said. "You were an early liberal, far ahead of your times in many things. You spoke up against slavery and were for equality. And when you wrote the Magna Carta for Parolando you insisted that there should be political equality for all species, races and both sexes. I notice that a black man and a white woman live almost next door to you. Be honest, doesn't it disturb you to see that?"

  Sam drew in smoke, blew it out and said, "To be honest, yes, it did disturb me. Well, to tell the truth, it almost killed me! What my mind told me and what my reflexes told me were two different things. I hated it. But I stuck to my guns, I said nothing, I became acquainted with that couple and I learned to like them. And now, after a year, it bothers me only a very little. And that will go away in time."

  "The difference between you – representing the white liberal – and the youth of Hacking's day and mine was that we were not bothered. We accepted it." "Don't I get any credit for lifting myself by my mental bootstraps?" Sam asked. "Yawblaw," Firebrass said, lapsing into English – of a sort. "Two degrees off is better than ninety. Pin it."

  He went out. Sam was left alone. He sat for a long while, then stood up and went outside. The first person he saw was Hermann Göring. His head was still wrapped in a towel, but his skin was less pale, and his eyes did not look odd. Sam said, "How's your head?"

  "It still hurts. But I can walk without driving hot spikes in it every time I take a step."

  "I don't like to see a man suffer," Sam said. "So I suggest that you could avoid more suffering, if not downright pain, by leaving Parolando." "Are you threatening me?"

  "Not with any action from me. But there are plenty who may get so riled up they'll run you out on a rail. Or take you down to The River and drown you. You're upsetting everybody with your preachings. This state was founded with one main goal, the building of the Riverboat. Now, a man may say anything he wants to and not run foul of the law here. But there are those who sometimes ignore the law, and I wouldn't want to have to punish them because you tempted them. I suggest that you do your Christian duty and remove yourself from the premises. That way, you won't be tempting good men and women to commit violence." "I'm not a Christian," Göring said.

&
nbsp; "I admire a man who can admit that. I don't think I ever met a preacher who came out and said so, in so many words."

  "Sinjoro Clemens," Göring said, "I read your books when I was a young man in Germany, first in German and then in English. But levity or mild irony aren't going to get us any place. I am not a Christian, though I try to practice the better Christian virtues. I am a missionary for the Church of the Second Chance. All Terrestrial religions have been discredited, even if some won't admit it. The Church is the first religion to rise on the new world, the only one which has any chance to survive. It . . ."

  "Spare me the lecture," Sam said. "I've heard enough from your predecessors and from you. What I'm saying, in utter friendliness and a desire to save you from harm and also, to be honest, to get you but of my craw, is that you should take off. Right now. Or you'll be killed."

  "Then I'll rise at dawn tomorrow somewhere else and preach The Truth there, wherever I find myself. You see, here, as on Earth, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church. The man who kills one of us only ensures that The Truth, the chance for eternal salvation, will be heard by more people. Murder has spread our faith up and down The River far faster than any conventional means of travel."

  "Congratulations," Sam said exasperatedly, dropping into English, as he often did when angry. "But tell me, doesn't the repeated killing of your missionaries bother you? Aren't you afraid of running out of body?" "What do you mean?" "Tenets, anyone?"

  Sam got no reaction except a puzzled look. Sam resumed in Esperanto. "One of your major tenets, if I remember correctly, is that Man wasn't resurrected so he could enjoy life here forever. He is given only a limited time, though it may look like a long time to most, especially if they don't happen to be enjoying life here. You postulate something analogous to a soul, something you call a psychomorph, right? Or sometimes a ka. You have to, otherwise you can't claim a continuity of identity in a man. Without it a man who dies is dead, even if his body is reproduced exactly and made alive again. That second body is only a reproduction. The lazarus has the mind and the memories of the men who died, so he thinks he's the man who died. But he isn't. He's just a living duplicate. Death terminated the first man. He's through.