The Fabulous Riverboat

  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 engineer! 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 SoulCity, 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 SoulCity. 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 well-muscled 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 fish-skin 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 obscenities 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 b
lack 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. Well-intentioned, 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 after-dinner 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 eighteenth-century 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 citizenship. 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 self-educated man with a flair 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 thei
r 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.

  Chapter 25

  * * *

  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 bulleth 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.