The Fabulous Riverboat

Sam sat down at his desk, pulled out a drawer and removed a tall book bound in fish-bladder leather and with pages of bamboo-fiber paper. It was his diary, The Memoirs of a Lazarus. For the time being he was using ink made of water and ta

He had no sooner started writing than the drums began beating. The big bass drums represented dashes; the small soprano drums, dots. The code was Morse; the language, Esperanto. Von Richthofen would be landing in a few minutes.

Sam stood up to look out again. A half a mile away was the bamboo catamaran on which Lothar von Richthofen had sailed downRiver only ten days ago. Through the starboard ports Sam saw a squat figure with tawny hair coming out of the gateway of King John's log palace. Behind him came bodyguards and sycophants.

King John was making sure that von Richthofen did not give Sam Clemens any secret messages from Elwood Hacking.

The ex-monarch of England, present coruler of Parolando, wore a kilt with red and black checks, a poncholike arrangement of towels, and knee-length, redleather Riverdragon boots. Around his thick waist was a wide belt with a number of sheaths containing steel daggers, a short sword, and a steel ax. One hand held a steel rod coronet, one of many sources of contention between Sam and King John. Sam did not want to waste metal on such useless anachronisms, but John had insisted and Sam had given in.

Sam found some satisfaction now in thinking about the name of his little nation. Parolando in Esperanto meant pair land and was so called because two men governed it. But Sam had not mentioned to John that another translation could be Twain Land.

John followed a hard-dirt path around a long, low factory building, and then he was at the foot of the staircase of Sam's quarters. His bodyguard, a big thug named Sharkey, pulled the bell rope and the little bell tinkled.

Sam stuck his head out and shouted, "Come aboard, John!"

John looked up at him from pale blue eyes and motioned to Sharkey to precede him. John was cautious about assassins, and he had reason to be. He was also resentful about having had to come to Sam, but he had known that von Richthofen would report to Sam first.

Sharkey entered, inspected Sam's pilothouse and looked through the three rooms of the texas. Sam heard a growl, as low and powerful as a lion's, from the rear bedroom. Sharkey came back swiftly and closed the door. Sam smiled and said, "Joe Miller may be sick, but he

an still eat ten Polish prizefighters for breakfast and call for a second helping."

Sharkey did not reply. He signaled through the port that John could come up without fear of being ambushed.

The catamaran was beached now, and the tiny figure of von Richthofen was coming across the plain, holding his grail in one hand and the wooden winged ambassadorial staff in the other. Through the other port Sam could see the lanky figure of de Bergerac leading a platoon toward the south wall. Livy was not in sight. John entered. Sam said, "Bonan matenon, Johano!"

It galled John that Sam refused to address him as Via Rega Mosto—Your Majesty—in private. La Konsulo—the Consul—was their correct title and even that came reluctantly from Sam's lips. Sam encouraged others to call him La Estro, The Boss, because that angered John even more.

John grunted and sat down at the round table. Another bodyguard, a big dark proto-Mongolian with massive bones and immensely powerful muscles, Zaksksromb, who presumably had died about 30,000 B.C., lit up a huge brown cigar for John. Zak, as he was known, was the strongest man in Parolando, with the exception of Joe Miller. And it could be argued that Joe Miller was not a man—or, at least, certainly not Homo sapiens.

Sam wished Joe would get out of bed. Zak made him nervous. But Joe was sedating himself with dreamgum. Two days ago a chunk of siderite had slipped from a crane's tongs as Joe was passing beneath it. The operator swore it had been an accident, but Sam had his suspicions.

Sam puffed on his cigar and said, "Hear anything about your nephew lately?"

John did not start, but his eyes did widen a trifle. He looked at Sam across the table. "No, should I?"

"I just wondered. I've been thinking about asking Arthur down for a conference. There's no reason why you two should be trying to kill each other. This isn't Earth, you know. Why can't we call off old feuds? What if you did drop him off in a sack into the estuary? Let bygones be bygones. We could use his wood, and we need more limestone for calcium carbonate and magnesium. He's got plenty." John glared, then hooded his eyes and smiled.

Tricky John, Sam thought. Smooth John. Despicable John.

"To get wood and limestone we'd have to pay with steel arms." John said. "I'm not about to permit my dear nephew to get his hands on more steel."

"Just thought I'd broach the subject to you," Sam said, "because at noon—" John stiffened. "Yes?"

"Well, I thought I'd bring up the subject to the Council. We might have a vote on it." John relaxed. "Oh?"

Sam thought, You think you're safe. You've got Pedro Anseurez and Frederick Rolfe on your side and a jive-tothree vote in the Council is a nay vote...

Once again he contemplated suspending the Magna Carta so that things could be done that needed to be done. But that might mean civil war and that could mean the end of the dream.

He paced back and forth while John described in a loud voice and sickening detail his latest conquest of his latest blonde. Sam tried to ignore the words; he still got mad because the man boasted, although by now any woman who accepted John had only herself to blame.

The little bell tinkled. Lothar von Richtofen entered. He was now wearing his hair long and so, with his handsome, somewhat Slavic, features, he looked like a less stocky and better-looking Goring. The two had known each other well during World War I, since both had served 'under Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Lothar's older brother. Lothar was a wild, brash, and essentially likable person, but this morning his smiles and his debonair bearing were gone. "What's the bad news?" Sam said.

Lothar took the cup of bourbon that Sam offered, downed it, and said, "Sinjoro Hacking has just about finished putting up fortifications. Soul City has walls twelve feet high and ten thick on all fronts. Hacking was nasty to "me, very nasty. He called me an ofejo and a honkio, words new to me. I did not care to ask him for an explanation."

"Ofejo might be from the English ofay," Sam said, "but I never heard the other word. Honkio?"

"You'll hear those words a lot in the future," Lothar said, "if you deal with Hacking. And you will. Hacking finally got down to business after spewing out a torrent of abuse, mostly about my Nazi ancestors. I never heard of the Nazis on Earth, you know, since I died in a plane crash in 1922. He seemed to be angry about something—maybe his anger had nothing to do with me originally. But the essence of his speech was that he might cut off the bauxite and other minerals."

Sam leaned on the table until things came back into focus. Then he said, "I'll take a shot of Kentucky courage myself."

Von Richthofen continued, "It seems that Hacking isn't too happy with the makeup of his state. It's one-fourth Harlem blacks who died between 1960 and 1980, you know, and one-eighth eighteenth-century Dahomeyan blacks. But he has a one-fourth nonblack population of fourteenth-century Wahhabi Arabs, fanatics who still claim that Mohammed is their prophet and they're here just for a short trial period. Then there is the one-fourth composed of thirteenth-century, Asiatic-Indian, Dravidian, black-ski