The Fabulous Riverboat

"So I am just a tool. If the tool breaks, throw it away, get another." "I can't assure your success. I'm not a god."

"Damn you and all your kind!" Sam shouted. "Why couldn't you have let things be as they were on Earth? We had the peace of death forever. No more pain and grief. No more never-ceasing toil and heartache. All that was behind us. We were free, free of the chains of flesh. But you gave us the chains again and fixed it so we couldn't even kill ourselves. You set death beyond our reach. It's as if you put us in hell forever!"

"It's not that bad," the Ethical said. "Most of you are better off than you ever were. Or at least as well off. The crippled, the blind, the grotesque, the diseased, the starved are healthy and young. You don't have to sweat for or worry about your daily bread, and most of you are eating better by far than you did on Earth. However, I agree with you in the larger sense. It was a crime, the greatest crime of all, to resurrect you. So ..."

"I want my Livy back!" Sam cried. "And I want my daughters! They might as well be dead as separated from me, I mean from each other, forever! I'd rather they were dead! At least, I wouldn't be in agony all the time because they might be suffering, but in some terrible plight! How do I know they're not being raped, beaten, tortured? There's so much evil on this planet! There should be, since it has the original population of Earth!"

"I could help you," the Ethical said. "But it might take years for me to locate them. I won't explain the means because they're too complicated and I have to leave before the rain is over." Sam rose and walked forward, his hands out. The Ethical said, "Stop! You touched me once!" Sam halted. "Could you find Livy for me? My girls?"

"I'll do it. You have my word. Only... only what if it does take years? Suppose you have the boat built by then—in fact, are already a million miles up The River. And then I tell you I've found your wife, but she's three million miles downRiver? I can notify you of her location, but I positively ca

"And, of course," the Ethical said, "people change. You may like her when you find her." "I'll kill you!" Sam Clemens yelled. "So help me... !"

The bamboo mat was lifted. The Stranger was silhouetted briefly, a batlike, cloaked shape with a dome covering for the head. Sam clenched his fists and forced himself to stand like a block of ice, waiting for his anger to melt away. Then he began pacing back and forth until finally he threw his cigar away. It had turned bitter; even the air he breathed was harsh.

"Damn them! Damn him! I'll build the boat and I'll get to the north pole and I'll find out what's going on! And I'll kill him! Kill them!"

The rains stopped. There were shouts from a distance. Sam went outside, alarmed because the Stranger might have been caught, although it did not seem likely. And he knew then that his boat meant more than anything else, that he did not want anything to happen to interfere with its building, even if he could take immediate revenge on the Ethical. That would have to come later.

Torches were coming across the plain. Presently, the bearers were close enough for Sam to make out the faces of some guards and that of von Richthofen. There were three unknowns with them.

An arrangement of large towels, held together by magnetic clasps, fell shapelessly about their bodies. A hood shadowed the face of the smallest stranger. The tallest was a man with a long, lean, dark face and a huge hooked nose. "You're ru

"Norn d'un con! Va te fair foutre!" the tall man said. "Must I always be insulted, no matter where I go? Is this the hospitality you give strangers? Did I travel ten thousand leagues under incredibly harsh conditions to find the man who can put good steel in my hand once more, only to have him verbally tweak my nose? Know, ignorant insolent lout, that Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac does not turn the other cheek. Unless you apologize, immediately, most sincerely, plead with the tongue of an angel, I will stab you through with this nose that you so mock!"

Sam apologized abjectly, saying that his nerves had been frayed by the battle. He looked in wonder at the legendary figure, and he wondered if he could be one of the chosen twelve.

The second man, a blond-haired and blue-eyed youth, introduced himself as Herrman Goring. A spiral bone, taken from one of the Riverfishes, hung from a cord around his neck, and by this Sam knew that he was a member of the Church of Second Chance. This meant trouble, because the Second Chancers preached absolute pacifism.

The third stranger threw the hood back and revealed a pretty face with long black hair done in a Psyche knot. Sam staggered and almost fainted. "Livy!"

The woman started. She stepped closer to him and, silently, pale in the torchlight, looked at him. She was weaving back and forth, as shocked as he. "Sam," she said weakly.

He took a step toward her, but she turned and clung to de Bergerac for support. The Frenchman put his arm around her and glared at Sam Clemens. "Courage, my little lamb! He will not harm you while I am here! What does he mean to you?"

She looked up at him with an expression that Sam could not mistake. He howled and shook his fist at the stars, just coming out from the clouds.

15

The Riverboat moved through his dream like a glittering, twenty-million-carat diamond.

There had never been a boat like it nor would there ever be another.

It would be named the Not For Hire. No one would ever be able to take it away from him, it would be so strongly armored and weaponed. Nor would anyone be able to buy or rent it from him.

The name glowed in great black letters against the white hull. NOT FOR HIRE.

The fabulous Riverboat would have four decks: the boiler deck, the main deck, the hurricane deck and the landing deck for the aerial machine. Its overall length would be four hundred and forty feet and six inches. The beam over the paddle-wheel guards would be ninety-three feet. Mean draft, loaded, twelve feet. The hull would be made of magnalium or, perhaps, plastic. The great stacks would spout smoke now and then, because there was a steam boiler aboard. But this was only to propel the big plastic bullets for the steam machine guns. The giant paddle-wheels on the sides of the Riverboat would be turned by enormous electrical motors.

The Not For Hire would be the only metal boat on The River, the only boat not propelled by oars or wind, and it would make anybody sit up and stare, whether he was born in 2,000,000 B.C. or in A.D. 2000.

And he, Sam Clemens, would be The Captain, capital T, capital C, because, aboard this vessel, carrying a crew of one hundred and twenty, there would be only one Captain.

King John of England could call himself Admiral if he wished, though if Sam Clemens had anything to do with it, he'd be First Mate, not Admiral. And if Sam Clemens really had anything to do with it, King John—John Lackland, Rotten John, Dirty John, Lecher John, Pigsty John—would not even be allowed on the boat. Sam Clemens, smoking a big green cigar, wearing a white cap, dressed in a white kilt with a white towel over his shoulders for a cape, would lean out of the starboard port of the great pilothouse and yell, Avast there, you lubbers! Grab hold of that putrescent mass of immortality and treachery and toss him off the gangplank. I don't care if he lands in The River or on the bank! Get rid of that human garbage!