The Fabulous Riverboat (25 page)

"Exactly," Sam said. Joe did not say good night, and he did not call alter him. He was nettled. Joe looked so dumb_ with that low forehead and the bone-ringed eyes and comical dill pickle nose and gorilla build and his hairiness. But behind those little blue eyes and the lisping was an undeniable intelligence.

What disturbed him most was Joe's comment that his deterministic belief was only a rationalization to excuse his guilt. Guilt for what? Guilt for just about everything bad that had happened to those whom he loved.

But it was a philosophic labyrinth which ended in a quagmire. Did he believe in mechanical determinism because he wanted to not feel guilty, or did he feel guilty, even though he should not, because the mechanical universe determined that he should feel guilty?

Joe was right. There was no use thinking about it. But if a man's thinking was set on its course by the collision of the first two atoms, then how could he keep from thinking about it if he were Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain?

He sat up later than usual that night, but he was not working at his duties. He drank at least a fifth of ethyl alcohol mixed with fruit juice.

Two months before, Firebrass had said he could not understand the failure of Parolando to make ethyl alcohol. Sam had been upset. He had not known that grain alcohol could be made. He thought that the only supply of liquor would have to be the limited amounts that the grails yielded.

No, Firebrass had said. Hadn't any of his engineers told him? If the proper materials, such as acid, coal gas, or acetaldehyde and a proper catalyst were available, then wood cellulose could be converted into ethyl alcohol. That was common knowledge. But Parolando, until recently, was the only place on The River—he presumed—which had the materials to make grain alcohol.

Sam had called in Van Boom, who replied that he had enough to worry about without providing booze for people who drank too much as it was.

Sam had ordered materials and men diverted. For the first time in the history of The River, as far as anybody knew, potable alcohol was being made on a large scale. This resulted not only in happier citizens, except for the Second Chancers, but in a new industry for Parolando. They exported alcohol in exchange for wood and bauxite.

Sam fell into bed and the next morning, for the first time, refused to get up before dawn. But the next day he rose as usual.

Sam and John sent a message to Iyeyasu that they would regard it as a hostile act if he invaded the rest of the Ulmak territory or Chernsky's Land.

Iyeyasu replied that he had not intention of waging war on these lands, and he proved it by invading the state just north of his, Sheshshub's Land. Sheshshub, an Assyrian born in the seventh century B.C., had been a general of Sargon II, and so, like most powerful people on Earth, had become a leader on the Riverworld. He gave Iyeyasu a good fight, but the invaders were more numerous.

Iyeyasu was one worry. There were plenty of others to keep Sam going day and night. Hacking finally sent a message, through Firebrass, that Parolando should quit stalling He wanted the amphibian promised so long ago. Sam had kept pleading technical difficulties, but Firebrass told him that was no longer acceptable. So the Firedragon III was reluctantly shipped off.

Sam made a visit to Chernsky to reassure him that Parolando would defend Cernskujo. Coming back, a half mile upwind of the factories, Sam almost gagged. He had been living so long in the acid-bath-cum-smoke atmosphere that he had gotten used to it, but any vacation from it cleansed his lungs. It was like stepping into a glueand-sulphur factory. And, though the wind was a fifteenmph breeze, it did not carry the smoke away swiftly enough. The air definitely was hazy. No wonder, he thought, that Publiujo, to the south, complained.

But the boat continued to grow. Standing before the front port of his pilothouse, Sam could look out every morning and be consoled for his toil and tiredness and for the hideousness and stench of the land. In another six months, the three decks would be completed, and the great paddle-wheels would be installed. Then a plastic coating would be put over that part of the hull which would come into contact with water. This plastic would not only prevent electrolysis of the magnalium, it would reduce the water turbulence, thus adding ten mph to the boat's speed.

During this time, Sam received some good news. Tungsten and iridium had been found in Selinujo, the country just south of Soul City. The report was brought by the prospector, who trusted no one else to transmit it. He also brought some bad news. Selina Hastings refused to let Parolando mine there. In fact, if she had known that a Parolandano was digging along her mountain, she would have thrown him out. She did not want to be unfriendly, indeed, she loved Sam Clemens, since he was a human being. But she did not approve of the Riverboat, and she would not permit anything to go out of her land that would help build the vessel.

Sam erupted, and, as Joe said, "Thyot blue thyit for mileth around." The tungsten was very much needed for hardening their machine tools but even more for the radios and, eventually, the closed-circuit TV sets. The iridium could be used to harden their platinum for various uses, for scientific instruments, surgical tools and for pen points.

The Mysterious Stranger had told Sam that he had set up the deposit of minerals here but that his fellow Ethicals did not know that he had done so. Along with the bauxite, cryolite, and platinum would be tungsten and iridium. But an error had been made, and the latter two metals had been deposited several miles south of the first three.

Sam did not tell John at once, because he needed time to think about the situation. John, of course, would want to demand that the metals be traded to Parolando or that war be declared.

While he was pacing back and forth in the pilothouse, clouding the room with green smoke, he heard drums. They were using a code which he did not know but recognized, after a minute, as that used by Soul City. A few minutes later, Firebrass was at the foot of the ladder.

"Sinjoro Hacking knows all about the discovery of tungsten and iridium in Selinujo. He says that if you can come to an agreement with Selina, fine. But don't invade her land. He'd regard that as a declaration of war on Soul City."

Sam looked out the starboard port past Firebrass. "Here comes John hot-footing it," he said. "He's heard the news, too. His spy system is almost as good as yours, a few minutes less good, I'd say. I don't know where the leaks in my system are, but they're so wide that I'd be sunk if I was a boat, and I may be anyway."

John, his eyes inflamed, his face red, and puffing and panting, entered. Since the introduction of grain alcohol, he had put on even more fat, and he seemed to be half drunk all the time and all drunk half the time.

Sam was angered, but at the same time, he was amused. John would have liked to summon him to his palace, in keeping with his dignity as ex-King of England. But he knew that Sam would not come for a long time, if at all, and meanwhile there was no telling how much hankypanky Firebrass and Sam would manufacture. "What's going on?" John said, glaring.

"You tell me," Sam said. "You seem to know more about the shady side of affairs than I do."

"None of your wisecracks!" John said. Without being asked, he poured out a quart of purple passion into a stein. "I know what that message is about, even if I don't know the code!"

"I thought as much," Sam said. "For your information, in case you missed anything..." and he told him what Firebrass had said.

"The arrogance of you blacks is unendurable," John said. "You are telling Parolando, a sovereign state, how it must conduct itself in vital business. Well, I say you can't! We will get those metals, one way or the other! Selinujo doesn't need them; we do! It can't hurt Selinujo to give them up! We will give a fair trade!"

"In what?" Firebrass said. "Selinujo doesn't want weapons or alcohol. What can you trade?" "Peace, freedom from war!"

Firebrass shrugged and grinned, thus incensing John even more.

"Sure," Firebrass said, "you can make your offer. But what Hacking says still goes."

"Hacking has no love for Selinujo," Sam said. "He kicked out all the Second Chancers, black or white."

"That's because they were preaching immediate pacifism. They also preach, and apparently practice, love for all, regardless of color, but Hacking says they're a danger to the state. The blacks have to protect themselves, otherwise they would be enslaved all over again." "The blacks?" Sam said. "Us blacks!" Firebrass replied, grinning.

This was not the first time Firebrass had given the impression that he was not so deeply concerned with skin color. His identification with blacks, as such, was weak. His life had not been untouched by racial prejudice, but it had not been much affected. And he said things now and then that indicated that he would like a berth on the boat All this, of course, could be a put-on.

"We'll negotiate with Sinjorino Hastings," Sam said. "It would be nice to have radios and TV for the boat, and the machine shops could use the tungsten. But we can get along without them."

He winked at John to indicate that he should take this line. But John was as stone-headed as usual.

"What we do with Selinujo is our problem, nobody else's!"

"I'll tell Hacking," Firebrass said. "But Hacking is a strong person. He won't take any crap from anybody, least of all white capitalist imperialists." Sam choked, and John stared.

"That's what he regards you as!" Firebrass said. "And the way he defines those terms, you are what he says you are."

"Because I want this boat so badly!" Sam shouted. "Do you know what this boat is for, what its ultimate goal... ?"

He fought back his anger, sobbing with the effort. He felt dizzy. For a moment, he had almost told about the Stranger. "What is it?" Firebrass said.

"Nothing," Sam replied. "Nothing. I just want to get to the headwaters of The River, that's all. Maybe the secret of this whole shebang is there? Who knows? But I certainly don't like criticism from someone who just wants to sit around on his dead black ass and collect soul brothers. If he wants to do that, more power to him, but I still hold to integration as the ideal. And I'm a Missouri white born in 1835! So how's that for going against your heritage and your environment? The point is, if I don't use the siderite metal to build a boat, which is designed for travel only, not for aggression, then someone else will. And that someone else may use it to conquer and to hold, instead of for tourist purposes.

"Now, we've gone along with Hacking's demands, paid his jacked-up prices for the ones when we could have gone down there and taken them from him. John's apologized for what he called you and Hacking, and if you think it's easy for a Plantagenet to do that, you don't know your history. It's too bad about the way Hacking feels. I don't know that I blame him. Of course, he hates whites. But this is not Earth! Conditions are radically different here!"

"But people bring their attitudes along with them," Firebrass said. "Their hates and loves, dislikes and likes, prejudices, reactions, everything." "But they can change!"

Firebrass grinned. "Not according to your philosophy. Rather, not unless mechanical forces change them. So, Hacking isn't determined by anything to change his attitude. Why should he? He's experienced the same exploitation and contempt here as he did on Earth."

"I don't want to argue about that," Sam said. "I'll tell you what I think we should do!"

He stopped and stared out the port. The whitish-gray hull and upper works gleamed in the sun. How beautiful! And she was, in a sense, all his! She was worth everything he was being put through!

"I'll tell you what," he said more slowly. "Why doesn't Hacking come up here? Pay a little visit? He can look around, see for himself what we're doing. See our problems. Maybe he'll appreciate our problems, see we're not blue-eyed devils who want to enslave him. In fact, the more he helps us, the sooner hell be rid of us."

"I'll give him your message," Firebrass said. "Maybe he'll want to do that."

"We'll greet him in style," Sam said. "A twenty-one gun salute, big reception, food, liquor, gifts. He'll see we aren't such bad fellows after all."

John spat. "Pah!" but he said no more. He knew that Sam's proposal was best.

Three days later, Firebrass brought a message. Hacking would come, after Parolando and Selinujo had agreed on the disposition of the metals.

Sam felt like a rusty old boiler in a Mississippi steamboat. A few more pounds of pressure, and he would blow sky-high. "Sometimes, I think you're right!" he shouted at John.

Maybe we should just take over these countries and get done with!"

"Of course," John said smoothly. "Now, it is obvious that that ex-Countess Huntingdon—she must be decended from my old enemy, the Earl of Huntingdon —is not going to give in. She is a religious fanatic, a nut, as you say. And Soul City will fight us if we invade Selinujo. Hacking can't go back on his word. And he's stronger now that we've given him the Firedragon III. But I say nothing about that; I do not reproach you. I have been thinking much about this mess."

Sam stopped pacing and looked at John. John had been thinking. Shadows would be moving inside shadows; daggers would be unsheathed; the air would get gray and chill with stealth and intrigue; blood would spurt. And the sleeping would do well to stir.

"I do not say that I have been in contact with Iyeyasu, our powerful neighbor to the north," John said. He was slumped down in the tall-backed red leather-covered chair and staring into the purple passion in the tilted stem.

"But I have information, or means of getting it. I am certain that Iyeyasu, who feels very strong indeed, would like to acquire even more territory. And he would like to do us a favor. In return for certain payments, of course. Say, an amphibian and a flying machine? He is wild to fly one of those himself, you know? Or didn't you?