The Fabulous Riverboat

  John's tawny eyebrows rose. Sam knew what he was thinking. Perhaps he could use Cawber, one way or another.

  Sam looked at the water-clock. "Time for the inspection tour. Care to come along, John? I'll be with you in a minute," and he sat down at his desk to make a few more entries in his diary. That gave John the chance to leave first, as befitted the ex-King of England and of a good part of France. Sam thought it was ridiculous to worry about who preceded whom, yet he disliked John so much he could not bear to let him gain even this minor victory. Rather than argue about it, or just walk out ahead of Mm, and so cause John to throw a fit, he pretended he had work to do.

  Sam caught up with the group, which included the six Councilmen, just outside the nitric-acid factory. They went through the factories swiftly. The stinks emanating from the nitric and sulfuric acids; from the destructive distillation of wood to make alcohol, acetone, creosote, turpentine and acetic acid; the formaldehyde vats and the treatment of human excrement and lichen scraped off the mountains to extract potassium nitrate – these, combined, were enough to make a hyena lose its breakfast. The Councillors were roasted and deafened in the steel mill and the grinding mills and the forges and blacksmith shops. They were covered with a white dust in the limestone mills and magnesium factory. In the aluminum factory they were again roasted, deafened, and stunk out.

  The gunsmith shop up in the hills was not operating at the moment. Except for distant noises, it was quiet. But it was not beautiful. The earth had been dug up, the trees cut down, and smoke from the factories up The River was black and acrid along the mountains.

  Van Boom, the late-twentieth-century, half Zulu, half Afrikaans, chief engineer, met them. He was a handsome man with a dark bronze skin and curly hair. He stood about six-three and weighed about two hundred and fifty. He had been born in a ditch during The Bloody Years.

  He greeted them cordially enough (he liked Sam and tolerated John), but he did not smile as usual.

  "It's ready," he said, "but I want my objections recorded. It's a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it's wasteful and inefficient." "You make it sound like a Congressman," Sam said.

  Van Boom led them into the high doorway of the bamboo building, where a steel handgun lay on a table. Van Boom picked it up. Even in his big hand, the gun was huge. He strode past the others and out into the light of the sun. Sam was exasperated. He had held out his hand for the gun and the fellow had ignored him. If Van Boom intended to demonstrate it outside, why hadn't he said so in the first place?

  "Engineers," Sam muttered. Then he shrugged. You might as well hit a Missouri mule between the eyes with your pinkie as try to change Van Boom's ways.

  Van Boom held up the gun so that the sunshine twinkled against the silvery gray metal. "This is the Mark I pistol," he said. "Called so because The Boss invented it." Sam's anger melted like ice in a Mississippi River thaw,

  "It's a breech-loading, single-shot, flintlock hand weapon with a rifled barrel and a breakdown action."

  He held the gun in his right hand and said, "You load it so. You press forward the lock switch on the left side of the barrel. This releases the breech lock. You then press down the barrel with the left hand. This action forces the trigger guard into the grip, where the guard acts as a lever to cock the hammer."

  He reached into a bag strapped to his belt and removed a large brown hemispherical object. "This is a bakelite or phenol-formaldehyde-resin bullet, sixty caliber. You press the bullet, so, until it engages the lands of the barrel."

  He removed from his bag a shiny package with black contents.

  "This is a charge of black gunpowder wrapped in cellulose nitrate. Some time in the future, we'll have cordite instead of gunpowder. If we use this gun, that is. Now, I insert the load into the chamber with the primer end first. The primer is a twist of nitrate paper impregnated with gunpowder. Then I lift the barrel with my left hand, thus, locking it into place. The Mark I is now ready to fire. But, for emergency, if the primer does not ignite, you can pour priming powder into the touchhole just forward of the rear sight. In case of misfire, the gun may be cocked with the right thumb. Note that this flash vent on the right side of the action shield protects the shooter's face."

  A man had brought out a large wooden target and had inserted it in a frame on four legs. The target was about twenty yards away. Van Boom turned toward it, held out the gun, clenched both hands and sighted along the front and rear sights.

  "Get behind me, gentlemen," he said. "The heat of the passage through the air will burn off the surface of the bullet and leave a thin trail of smoke which you may be able to see. The plastic bullet has to be of such large caliber because of its light weight. But this increases the wind resistance. If we decide to use this gun – which I definitely am against – we might increase the caliber to seventy-five in the Mark II. The effective range is about fifty yards, but the accuracy is not good beyond thirty yards and nothing to brag about within that range."

  The flint was in the hammer. When Van Boom would pull the trigger, the hammer would fall and scrape along the file-like surface of the frizzen. The frizzen covered the priming pan and should be knocked forward by the flint, uncovering the primer twist of the powder charge.

  There was a click as the sear let the hammer go, a flash as the primer twist burned, and a booming. The click-flash-boom took up a time equal to saying click-flash-boom and Van Boom had had time between the click and the boom to bring the gun back into line after it had been jarred away by the impact of the heavy hammer and flint.

  The bullet did leave a very faint trail of smoke, quickly dissipated by the fifteen-mile-an-hour wind. Sam, looking past Van Boom's arm, could see the bullet curve out and then back, carried by the wind. But Van Boom must have been practicing, because the bullet struck near the bull's eye. It went halfway into the soft pine, shattered and left a large hole in the wood.

  "The bullet won't penetrate deeply into a man," Van Boom said, "but it will leave a large hole. And if it hits near bone, the fragments should break the bone."

  The next hour was spent busily and happily with the Consuls and Councillors taking turns shooting. King John was especially delighted, though perhaps a little awed, because he had never seen a gun before. His first experience with gunpowder had come several years after he had been resurrected and he had seen only bombs and wooden rockets.

  At last Van Boom said, "If you keep up, gentlemen, you will exhaust our supply of bullets – and it takes a lot of labor and materials to make these bullets. Which is one reason why I object to making any more. My other reasons are: one, the gun is accurate only at close range; two, it takes so long to load and shoot that a good bowman could drop three pistol handlers while they're loading and stay outside the effective range of the guns. Moreover, a plastic bullet isn't recoverable, whereas an arrow is."

  Sam said, "That's a lot of nonsense! The mere fact that we would have these guns would demonstrate our technological and military superiority. We'd scare the enemy half to death before the battle started. Also, you forget that it takes a long time to train a good bowman, but anyone can shoot one of these after a relatively short lesson."

  "True," Van Boom said. "But could they hit anyone? Besides, I was thinking of making steel crossbows. They can't be handled as fast as longbows, but they don't require any more training than guns do, and the bolts are recoverable. And they're a hell of a lot more deadly than these noisy, stinking gadgets."

  "No, sir!" Sam said. "No, sir! I insist that we make at least two hundred of these. We'll outfit a new group, the Parolando Pistoleers. They'll be the terror of The River – you watch them! You'll see!"

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  For a change King John was on Sam's side. He insisted that the first two pistols should go to Sam and himself and the next dozen to their bodyguards. Then the new group could be organized and trained.

  Sam was grateful for the backing, but he told himself to chec
k on the men who formed the Pistoleers. He did not want it made up largely of men loyal to John.

  Van Boom made no effort to hide his disgust. "I'll tell you what! I'll take a good yew bow and twelve arrows and stand fifty yards away. At a signal all eight of you can advance on me, firing at will with your Mark I's – and I'll drop all eight of you before you get close enough to hit me! Is it a deal? I'm willing to lay my life on the line!" "Don't be childish," Sam said.

  Van Boom rolled his eyes upward. "I'm childish? You're jeopardizing Parolando – and your boat – because you want guns to play with!"

  "Just as soon as the guns are made you can start making all the bows you want," Sam said. "Look! We'll make armor, too, for the Pistoleers! That should dispose of your objections! Why didn't I think of that before? Why, our men will be dressed up in steel that'll repel the Stone Age weapons of the enemy as if they were straws. Let the enemy shoot his yew bows with his flint-tipped arrows. They'll bounce off the steel and the Pistoleers can take their time and blow the enemy into the next county!"

  "You forget that we've had to barter our ore and even metal weapons for wood and other materials we need." Van Boom said. "The enemy will have arrows with steel tips that can drive through armor. Don't forget Grecy and Agincourt."

  "There's just no dealing with you." Sam said. "You must be half Dutch – you're so stubborn." "If your thinking is representative of the thinking of white men, then I'm glad I'm half Zulu," Van Boom said.

  "Don't get huffy," Sam replied. "And congratulations on the gun! Tell you what, we'll call it the Van Boom Mark I. How's that?"

  "I'd just as soon not have my name attached to it," the engineer said. "So be it. I'll make your two hundred guns. But I'd like to make an improved version, the Mark II we talked about."

  "Let's make two hundred of these first, then we'll start on the Mark II," Sam said. "We don't want to mess around so long trying to get the perfect weapon that we suddenly find we don't have any at all. Still . . ."

  He talked for a while about the Mark II. He had a passion for mechanical gadgets. On Earth he had invented a number of things, all of which were going to make him a fortune. And there was the Paige typesetting machine, into which he had sunk – and it had sunk – all the wealth he had made from his books.

  Sam thought of the typesetting monster and how that wonderful contraption had bankrupted him. For a second, Paige and Van Boom were one and he felt guilty and a little panicky.

  Van Boom next complained about the materials and the labor put into the AMP-1, their aerial machine prototype. Sam ignored him. He went with the others to the hangar, which was on the plains a mile north of Sam's quarters. The craft was only partly finished but would look almost as skeletal and frail when ready to fly as it did now.

  "It's similar to some of the planes built in 1910," von Richthofen said. "I'll be exposed from my waist up when I sit in the cockpit. The whole machine looks more like a metal dragonfly than anything else. The main object is to test out the efficiency of the wood alcohol-burning motor and our materials."

  Von Richthofen promised that the first flight would be made within three weeks. He showed Sam the plans for the rocket launchers which would be attached under the wings. "The plane can carry about six small rockets, but it'll mostly be good only for scouting. It won't go faster than forty miles an hour against the wind. But it'll be fun flying it."

  Sam was disappointed that the plane wasn't a two-seater. He looked forward to flying for the first time in his life – his second life, that is. But von Richthofen said the next prototype would be a two-seater and Sam would be his first passenger.

  "After you've tested it out," Sam said. He expected John to protest about this and to insist that he be taken up first. But evidently John was not too eager to leave the ground.

  The last stop was at the boatyard, located halfway between the hangar and Sam's house. The craft within the pine-log enclosure would be completed within a week. The Firedragon I was the amphibious prototype of the boat that would be the launch for the big boat. It was a beautiful machine, made of thick magnalium, about thirty-two feet long, shaped like a U.S. Navy cruiser with wheels, with three turrets on its sleek top deck. It was powered by steam, burned wood alcohol, could operate in water or on land, carried a crew of eleven and was, so Sam declared, invincible.

  He patted the cold gray hull and said, "Why should we worry about having bowmen? Or having anything but this? This juggernaut could crush a kingdom all by itself. It has a steam-powered cannon the like of which the world, Earth or this planet, has never seen. That is why it is steam-driven and why it has such a huge boiler."

  All in all, the tour had made him happy. It was true that the plans for the great Riverboat had barely been started. But those took time. It was vital that the state be well protected at first, and just making the preparations was fun. He rubbed his hands and puffed on a new cigar, drawing the green smoke deeply into his lungs. And then he saw Livy.

  His beloved Livy, sick for so many years, and dead, finally, in Italy, in 1904.

  Restored to life and youth and beauty, but not, alas, to him.

  •••

  She was walking toward him, carrying her grail by its handle, wearing a white scarlet-edged kilt that came halfway down her thighs and a thin white scarf for a bra. She had a fine figure, good legs, handsome features. Her forehead was broad and satiny white. Her eyes were large and luminous. Her lips were full and shapely; her smile, attractive; her teeth, small and very white. She customarily wore her dark hair parted, combed down smooth in front but twisted into a figure eight in the back. Behind an ear she wore one of the giant crimson rose-like blooms that grew from the vines on the irontrees. Her necklace was made of the convoluted red vertebrae of the hornfish. Sam's heart felt as if it were being licked by a cat.

  She swayed as she walked toward him, and her breasts bounced beneath the semi-opaque fabric. Here was his Livy, who had always been so modest, had worn heavy clothes from the neck down to the ankle, and had never undressed before him in the light. Now she reminded him of the half-naked women of the Sandwich Islands. He felt uneasy, and he knew why. His queasiness among the natives had been as much due to their unwanted attraction for him as repulsion, each feeling dependent on the other and having nothing to do with the natives per se.

  Livy had had a Puritanical upbringing, but she had not been ruined by it. On Earth she had learned to drink and to like beer, had even smoked a few times and had become an infidel or, at least, a great doubter. She had even tolerated his constant swearing and had let loose with a few blisterers herself if the girls were not around. The accusations that she had censored his books and thus emasculated them were off the target. He had done most of the censoring himself. Yes, Livy had always shown adaptability.

  Too much. Now, after twenty years of absence from him, she had fallen in love with Cyrano de Bergerac. And Sam had the uneasy feeling that that wild Frenchman had awakened in her something that Sam might have awakened if he had not been so inhibited himself. But after these years on The River and the chewing of a certain amount of dreamgum, he had lost many of his own inhibitions. It was too late for him. Unless Cyrano left the scene . . .

  "Hello, Sam," she said in English. "How are you on this fine day?"

  "Every day is fine here," he said. "You can't even talk about the weather, let alone do anything about it!"

  She had a beautiful laugh. "Come along with me to the grailstone," she said. "It's almost time for lunch."

  Every day he swore not to come near her because to do so hurt too much. And every day he took advantage of the smallest chance to get as close to her as he could. "How's Cyrano?" he said.

  "Oh, very happy because he's finally getting a rapier. Bildron, the swordsmith, promised that he'd have the first one – after yours and the other Councilmen's, of course. Cyrano had taken so long to reconcile himself to the fact that he would never hold a metal sword in his hand again. Then he heard about the meteorite and came here ?
?? and now the greatest swordsman in the world will have a chance to show everybody that his reputation wasn't a lie, which some liars say it was."

  "Now, Livy," he said, "I didn't say people lied about his reputation. I said that maybe they exaggerated some. I still don't believe that story about his holding off two hundred swordsmen all by himself."

  "The fight at the Porte de Nesle was authentic! And it wasn't two hundred! You're the one pumping it up, Sam, just as you always do. There was a crowd of hired thugs that could have been a hundred or might just as well have been. Even if there had been only twenty-five, the fact is that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed to save his friend, the Chevalier de Lignieres.

  He killed two and wounded seven and ran the rest of them off. That is God's truth!"

  "I don't want to get into an argument about the merits of your man," he said. "Or about anything. Let's just talk like we used to when we had so much fun – before you got sick."

  She stopped. Her face set grimly. "I always knew you resented my illness, Sam."

  "No, that wasn't it," he said. "I think I felt guilty that you were sick, as if somehow I were to blame. But I never hated you for it. I hated myself if I hated anyone."

  "I didn't say you hated me," she said. "I said you resented my illness and you showed it in many ways. Oh, you may have thought you were always noble and gentle and loving – and most of the time you were – you really were. But there were enough times when you looked, you spoke, you muttered, you gestured – how can I describe exactly how you were? I can't, but I knew you resented me, sometimes loathed me, because I was sick."

  "I didn't!" he cried so loudly that a number of people stared.

  "Why argue about it? Whether you did or not doesn't matter now. I loved you then and I still do, in. a way. But not as I did."

  He was silent during the rest of the walk across the plain to the big mushroom-shaped stone. The cigar tasted like burning skunk cabbage.