The Fabulous Riverboat

  Sam listened while his skin prickled with cold. There was a very faint rumble downRiver. He got even colder as he heard a louder rumble from upRiver. "What the hell is it?" "Don't get thcared, Tham," Joe said. "I'm vith you." But he was shivering, too.

  Lightning spread a filamented whiteness on the east bank. Sam jumped and said, "Jesus! I saw something flicker!"

  Joe moved next to him and said, "I thaw it! It'th the thyip! You know, the vun I thaw above the tower. But it'th gone!"

  Joe and Sam stood silent, peering into the darkness. Lightning exploded again, and this time there was no white egg-shape high above The River.

  "It flickered out of nothing and went back to nothing. Like a mirage," Sam said. "If you hadn't seen it, too, I'd have thought it was an illusion."

  Sam awoke on the deck. He was stiff, cold and confused. He rolled over and squinted his eyes at the sun just clearing the eastern range.

  Joe was on his back beside him, and the helmsman was sleeping beside the wheel.

  But it was not this that brought him to his feet. The gold of the sun had faded out as he brought his gaze down; green was everywhere. The muddied plains and mountains, with straws and stubs of debris, were gone. There was short grass on the plains, tall grass and bamboo on the hill, and the giant pine, oak, yew and irontree everywhere on the hills.

  "Business as usual," Sam muttered, wisecracking, though unconsciously, even in his shock. Something had put all aboard the Dreyrugr asleep, and while they were unconscious, the incredible work of clearing off the mud and replanting the vegetation had been done. This section of The River was reborn!

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  He felt insignificant, as weak and helpless as a puppy. What could he, or any human, do to combat beings with powers so vast they could perform this miracle?

  Yet there had to be an explanation, a physical explanation. Science and the easy control of vast forces had done this; there was nothing supernatural about it.

  There was one comforting hope. One of the unknown beings might be on the side of mankind. Why? In what mystical battle?

  By then the entire ship was aroused. Bloodaxe and von Richthofen came up on deck at the same time. Bloodaxe frowned at seeing the German there because he had not authorized him to be on the poop deck. But the sight of the vegetation shook him so much that he forgot to order him off.

  The sun's rays struck down upon the gray mushroom shapes of the grailstones. They sparkled upon hundreds of little exhalations, mounds of seeming fog, that had suddenly appeared on the grass near the stones. The mounds shimmered like heat waves and abruptly coalesced into solidity. Hundreds of men and women lay upon the grass. They were naked, and near each was a pile of towels and a grail.

  "It's a wholesale translation," Sam murmured to the German. "Those who died as a result of the western grails being shut off. People from everywhere. One good thing, it'll be some time before they can get organized, and they won't know there's a source of iron under their feet."

  Lothar von Richthofen said, "How will we find the meteorite? All traces of it must be covered up."

  "If it's still there," Sam said. He cursed. "Anybody who can do this overnight shouldn't have any trouble removing a meteorite, even of that size."

  He groaned and said, "Or maybe it struck in the middle of The River and is now drowned under a thousand feet of water!"

  "You look depressed, my friend," Lothar said. "Don't. In the first place, the meteorite may not have been removed. In the second place, what if it is? You can't be worse off than you were before. And there are still wine, women, song."

  "I can't be satisfied with that," Sam said. "Moreover, I cannot conceive that we were raised from the dead so that we might enjoy ourselves for eternity. There's no sense to a belief like that."

  "Why not?" Lothar said, grinning. "You don't know what motives these mysterious beings have for creating all this and placing us here. Maybe they feed upon feelings."

  Sam was interested. He felt some of his depression lift. A new idea, even though it was in itself depressing, exhilarated him.

  "You mean we might be emotional cattle? That our herders might dine upon large juicy steaks of love, ribs of hope, livers of despair, briskets of laughter, hearts of hate, sweetbreads of orgasm?"

  "It's only theory," Lothar said. "But it's as good as any I've heard and better than most. I don't mind them feeding off me. In fact, I may be one of their prize bulls, in a manner of speaking. Speaking of which, look at that beauty there. Let me at her!"

  Briefly illuminated, Sam now plunged back into the dark shadows. Perhaps the German was right. In which case, a human being had as much chance against the unknown as a prize cow had in outwitting her masters. Still, a bull could gore, could kill before he met inevitable defeat.

  He explained the situation to Bloodaxe. The Norwegian looked doubtful. "How can we find this fallen star? We can't dig up the ground everywhere looking for it. You know how tough the grass is. It takes days to dig even a small hole with stone tools. And the grass soon grows to fill up the hole."

  "There must be a way," Sam said. "If only we had a lodestone or some kind of metal detector. But we don't."

  Lothar had been busy waving at the statuesque blonde on the shore, but he had been listening to Sam. He turned and said, "Things look different from the air. Forty generations of peasants can plow land over an ancient building and never know it. But an airman can fly over that land and see at once that something lies buried there. There is a difference in coloration, of vegetation sometimes, though that wouldn't apply here. But the earth reveals subterranean things to him who flies high. The soil is at a different level over the ruins."

  Sam became excited. "You mean that if we could build a glider for you, you might be able to detect the site?"

  "That would be very nice," Lothar said. "We can do that some day. But it won't be necessary to fly. All we have to do is climb high enough on the mountains to get a good view of the valley."

  Sam swore joyfully. "It was a stroke of luck, picking you up! I never would have known about that!"

  He frowned. "But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise."

  Bloodaxe asked impatiently what they were talking about. Sam replied. Bloodaxe said, "This fellow may be of some use after all. There is no great problem, no unsurmountable one, anyway, if we can find enough flint. We can chop steps up for a thousand feet. It will take much time, but it will be worth it." "And if there is no flint?" Sam said.

  "We could blast our way up," Bloodaxe said. "Make gunpowder."

  "For that we need human excrement, of which there is no dearth," Sam said. "And the bamboo and pine can give us charcoal. But what about sulphur? There may be none within a thousand miles or more."

  "We know there's plenty about seven hundred miles downRiver," Bloodaxe said. "But first things first. One, we have to locate the meteorite. Two, having done that, we must put off any digging for it until we have established a fort to hold it. I tell you, we may be the first to it, "but we won't be the only ones. The wolves will be coming from upRiver and downRiver now, sniffing for it. There will be many, and we will have to fight to hold the iron. So – first we locate the star, then we dig in to keep it."

  Sam swore again. "We might be going right past it right now!" he said.

  "Then we'll put in here," Bloodaxe said. "It's as good a place as any to start. Besides, we have to have breakfast."

  Three days later, the crew of the Dreyrugr had determined that there was no flint or chert in the immediate area. Any that might have been there before must have been burned away by the impact of the meteorite. And when the new soil and vegetation had been laid down, it had contained no stone.

  Sometimes rock useful for making tools and weapons could be found in the foothills, at the base of the mountains. Or, if the mountains were broken at the base, as they sometimes were, they yielded wo
rkable rock. This area was barren.

  "We're out of luck," Sam moaned one night while talking to von Richthofen. "We haven't any way to find the meteorite. And even if we did, we would have no means for digging down to it. And if we could do that, how would we mine it? Nickel-iron is a very dense and hard material."

  "You were the world's greatest humorist," Lothar said. "Have you changed a great deal since you were resurrected?"

  "What's that got to do with it?" Sam said. "A humorist is a man whose soul is black, black, but who turns his curdles of darkness into explosions of light. But when the light dies out, the black returns."

  Sam stared into the bamboo fire for a while. There were faces in there, compact, squeezed down, then elongating, spreading out, soaring upward – as the sparks fly – and thinning out until the night and the stars absorbed them. Livy, mournful, spiraled up. His daughter Jean, her face as still and cold as when she lay in the casket, on fire but icy, her lids shut, wavered and passed up with the smoke. His father in his casket. His brother Henry, his features burned and blistered by the steam boiler explosion. And then a smiling grinning face, that of Tom Blankenship, the boy who was the model for Huckleberry Finn.

  There had always been in Sam the child who wanted to float forever on a raft down the Mississippi, having many adventures but no responsibilities. Now he had the chance to drift forever on a raft. He could have uncounted numbers of thrilling experiences, could meet enough dukes and counts and kings to satisfy the most eager. He could be lazy, could fish, could talk night and day, wouldn't ever have to work for a living, could drift for a thousand years doing exactly as he pleased.

  The trouble was that he could not do exactly as he wanted. There were too many areas where grail-slavery was practiced. Evil men took captives and deprived their prisoners of the luxuries given by their grails: the cigars, liquor, dreamgum. They kept the prisoner half starved, just alive enough so his grail could be used. They tied the slaves' hands and feet together, like chickens on the way to market, so they could not kill themselves. And if a man did succeed in committing suicide, then he was translated someplace else thousands of miles away and like as not would find himself in the hands of grail-slavers again.

  Moreover, he was a grown man and just would not be as happy as a boy on a raft. No, if he went journeying on The River, he needed protection, comfort and – undeniable – desire, authority. Also, there was his other great ambition to be pilot of a Riverboat. He had attained that for a while on Earth. Now, he would be a captain of a Riverboat, the largest, fastest, most powerful Riverboat that had ever existed, on the longest River in the world, a River that made the Missouri-Mississippi and all its tributaries, and the Nile, the Amazon, the Congo, the Ob, the Yellow River, all strung together, look like a little Ozark creek. His boat would be six decks high above the waterline, would have two tremendous side-wheels, luxurious cabins for the many passengers and crew, all of whom would be men and women famous in their time. And he, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, would be the captain. And the boat would never stop until it reached the headwaters of The River, where the expedition would be launched against the monsters who had created this place and roused all of mankind again to its pain and disappointments and frustrations and sorrows.

  The voyage might take a hundred years, maybe two or three centuries, but that was all right. This world did not have much, but it had more than enough time.

  Sam warmed himself in the glow of his images, the mighty Riverboat, himself as captain in the wheelhouse, his first mate perhaps Mr Christopher Columbus or Mr Francis Drake, his Captain of Marines – no, not Captain, Major, since there would be only one aboard with the title of Captain – Sam Clemens, himself – his Major would perhaps be Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Ulysses S. Grant.

  A pinprick of a thought pierced the glorious balloon sailing along in the wind of his dream. Those two ancient bastards, Alexander and Caesar, would never submit long to a subordinate position. They would plot from the very beginning to seize the captainship of the paddle-wheeler. And would that great man, U. S. Grant, take orders from him, Sam Clemens, a mere humorist, a man of letters in a world where letters did not exist?

  The luminescent hydrogen of his images whistled out. He sagged. He thought of Livy again, so near but snatched away by the very thing that had made his other dream possible. She had been shown to him briefly, as if by a cruel god, and then taken away again. And was that other dream possible? He could not even find the vast store of iron that must be somewhere around here.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  "You look tired and pale, Sam," Lothar said. Sam stood up and said, "I'm going to bed."

  "What, and disappoint that seventeenth-century Venetian beauty who's been making eyes at you all evening?" Lothar said.

  "You take care of her," Sam said. He walked away. There had been some moments during the past few hours when he had been tempted to take her off to his hut, especially when the whiskey from the grail had first warmed him. Now he felt listless. Moreover, he knew that his guilt would return if he did take Angela Sangeotti to bed. He had suffered recurrent pangs during the twenty years here with the ten women who had been his mates. And now, strangely enough, he would feel guilt not only because of Livy but because of Temah, his Indonesian companion for the last five years.

  "Ridiculous!" he had said to himself many times. "There is no rational reason why I should feel guilty about Livy. We've been separated for so long that we would be strangers. Too much has happened to both of us since Resurrection Day."

  His logic made no difference. He suffered. And why not? Rationality had nothing to do with true logic; man was an irrational animal, acting strictly in accordance with his natal temperament and the stimuli to which he was peculiarly sensitive.

  So why do I torture myself with things that cannot be my fault because I cannot help my responses?

  Because it is my nature to torture myself for things that are not my fault. I am doubly damned. The first atom to move on primeval Earth and to knock against another atom started the chain of events that have led, inevitably, mechanically, to my being here and walking through the dark on a strange planet through a crowd of aged youths from everywhere and every time to a bamboo hut where loneliness and guilt and self-recriminations, all rationally unnecessary but nevertheless unavoidable, await me.

  I could kill myself, but suicide is useless here. You wake up twenty-four hours later, in a different place but still the same man who jumped into The River. Knowing that another jump won't solve a thing and probably will make you even more unhappy.

  "Stone-hearted relentless bastards!" he said and shook his fist. Then he laughed sorrowfully and said, "But They can't help their hard hearts and cruelty any more than I can help what I am. We're all in it together."

  This thought did not, however, make him wish any the less to get his revenge. He would bite the hand that had given him eternal life.

  His bamboo hut was in the foothills under a large irontree. Although only a shack, it represented genuine luxury in this area, where stone tools to build houses were a rarity. The translatees had had to settle for makeshift housing, bamboo plants bent and tied together with grass ropes at the top and sides and covered with huge elephant-ear leaves from the irontrees. Of the five hundred varieties of bamboo in the valley, some could be split and made into knives, which, however, easily lost their edge.

  Sam entered his hut, lay down on the cot, and covered himself with several big towels. The faint sound of distant revelry disturbed him. After tossing for a while, he gave in to the temptation to chew a piece of dreamgum. There was no predicting what its effect might be: ecstasy, bright many-colored shifting shapes, a feeling that all was right with the world, a desire to make love, or abysmal gloom with monsters springing out of the darkness at him, recriminating ghosts from dead Earth, burning in the flames of hell while faceless devils laughed at his screams.

  He chewed and swallowed his saliva and knew at onc
e that he had made a mistake. It was too late then. He continued to chew while he saw before him that time when he was a boy and had drowned, or at least was close to it, and would have drowned if he had not been dragged from the waters. That was the first time I died, he thought, and then, no, I died when I was born. That's strange, my mother never told me about that

  He could see his mother lying on the bed, hair tangled, skin pale, eyelids half-opened, jaw dropped. The doctor was working on the baby – himself, Sam – while he smoked a cigar. He was saying out of the corner of his mouth to Sam's father, "Hardly seems worth saving."

  His father said, "You had a choice between saving that and saving Jane?"

  The doctor had a shock of bright red hair, a thick drooping red moustache, and pale blue eyes. His face was strange and brutal. He said, "I bury my mistakes. You worry too much. I'll salvage this bit of flesh, though it's really not worth doing, and save her, too."

  The doctor wrapped him up and put him on the bed, and then the doctor sat down and began writing in a little black book. Sam's father said, "Must you write at a time like this?"

  The doctor said, "I must write, though I'd get more writing done if I didn't talk so much. This is a log I keep on all the souls I bring into the world. I intend some day to write a big case history of the infants, find out if any ever amounted to anything. If I can bring one genius, one, into this vale of heavy tears, I will think my life worthwhile. Otherwise, I've been wasting my time bringing thousands of idiots, hypocrites, dogs in the mangers, etc. into this sad place."

  Little Sam wailed, and the doctor said, "Sounds as if he's a lost soul before he's dead, don't he? As if he's bearing the blame for all the sins of the world on his tiny shoulders."

  His father said, "You're a strange man. Evil, I think. Certainly not God-fearing."

  "I pay tribute to the Prince of Darkness, yes," the doctor said.

  The room was filled with the odor of blood, the doctor's boozy breath and cigar and sweat.