The Fabulous Riverboat

Sam groaned and said, "Did you read Huckleberry Fi

"Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?" Abdullah's face darkened. Firebrass gri

"I don't have to read that racist crap, man!" Abdullah shouted. "Hacking told me all about it and what he says is good enough for me!"

"You read it and then come back and we'll discuss it," Sam said.

"You crazy?" Abdullah said. "You know there aren't any books on this world."

"Then you lost out, didn't you?" Sam said. He was trembling a little; he wasn't used to being talked to like this by a black man. "Anyway," Sam said, "this isn't a literary tea-and-discussion group. Let's stick to the issue."

But Abdullah would not stop shouting about the books that Sam had written. And John, losing his temper, leaped up and screamed, "Silentu, negraco!"

John had taken the Esperanto word for "black" or "negro" and infixed the disparaging "-ac-" particle. He had gotten his point over quite well.

There was a moment of shock and silence. Abdullah X's mouth was open, then it closed, and he looked triumphant, almost happy. Firebrass bit his lip. John leaned on the table on his fists and scowled. Sam puffed on his cigar. He knew that John's contempt for all humanity had made him invent the term. John had no racial prejudice; he had never seen more than a half dozen blacks during his lifetime on Earth. But he certainly knew how to insult a person; the knowledge was second nature to him. "I'm walking out!" Abdullah X said. "I may be going

ome—and if I do you can bet your whiteass that you'll pay hell getting any more aluminum or platinum, Mister Charlie."

Sam rose to his feet and said, "Just a minute. If you want an apology, I extend it on behalf of all Parolando."

Abdullah looked at Firebrass, who looked away. Abdullah said, "I want an apology from him, now!" He pointed at King John.

Sam leaned close to John and said softly, "There's too much at stake to play the proud monarch, Your Majesty! And you may be playing into their hands with your little fit. They are up to something, you can bet on that. Apologize."

John straightened up and said, "I apologize to no man, especially not to a commoner who is also an infidel dog!"

Sam snorted and gestured with his cigar. "Can't you get it through your thick Plantagenet head that there isn't any such thing as royal blood or divine right of kings anymore, that we're all commoners? Or all kings?"

John did not reply. He walked out. Abdullah looked at Firebrass, who nodded. Abdullah walked out.

Sam said. "Well, Sinjoro Firebrass, what next? Do you people go home?"

Firebrass shook his head, "No, I don't believe in hasty decisions. But the conference is suspended as far as the Soul City delegation is concerned. Until John Lackland apologizes, I'll give you until noon tomorrow to decide what to do."

Firebrass turned to leave. Sam said, "I'll talk to John, but he's as hardheaded as a Missouri mule."

"I'd hate to see our negotiations fold because one man can't keep his insults to himself," Firebrass said. "And I'd also hate to see our trade stop, because that would mean no Riverboat for you."

Sam said, "Don't get me wrong, Sinjoro Firebrass. I'm making no threats. But I won't be stopped. I'll get the aluminum if I have to kick John out of the country myself. Or, alternatively, if I have to go down to Soul City and get the aluminum myself."

"I understand you," Firebrass said. "But what you don't understand is that Hacking isn't out for power. He only wants to have a well-protected state so that his citizens can enjoy life. And they will enjoy their life because they'll all have similar tastes and similar goals. In other words, they'll all be black."

Sam grunted and then said, "Very well." He fell silent but just before Firebrass left he called, "One minute. Have you read Huckleberry Fi

Firebrass turned back. "Sure. I thought it was a great book when I was a kid. I read it again when I was in college, and I could see its flaws then, but I enjoyed it even more as an adult, despite its flaws."

"Were you disturbed because Jim was called Nigger Jim?"

"You have to remember that I was born in 1975 on a farm near Syracuse, New York. Things had changed a lot by then, and the farm had originally been owned by my great-great-great grandfather, who came up from Georgia to Canada via the underground railway and then purchased the farm after the Civil War. No, I wasn't offended by your use of the word. Negroes were called niggers openly in the time you wrote about and nobody thought anything of it. Sure, the word was an insult. But you were portraying people as they actually talked, and the ethical basis of your novel, the struggle between Huck's duty as a citizen and his feeling for Jim as a human being and the victory of the human feeling in Huck—I was moved. The whole book was an indictment of slavery, of the semifeudal society of the Mississippi, of superstition—of everything stupid of that time. So why should I be offended by it?" "Then why—"

"Abdullah—whose original name was George Robert Lee—was born in 1925 and Hacking was born in 1938. Blacks were niggers then to a lot of whites, though not to all. They found out the hard way that violence—or the threat of it, the same thing that the whites had used to keep them down—was the only way to get their rights as citizens of the United States. You died in 1910, right? But you must have been told by any number of people what happened after that?"

Sam nodded. "It's hard to believe. Not the violence of the riots. Plenty of that happened in my lifetime and nothing, I understand, ever equaled the Draft Act riots in New York City during the Civil War. I mean, what's hard to visualize is the licentiousness of the late twentieth century."

Firebrass laughed and said, "Yet you're living in a society that is far more free and licentious—from the viewpoint of the nineteenth century—than any society in the twentieth. You've adapted."

"I suppose so," Sam replied. "But the two weeks of absolute nudity during the first days after resurrection ensured that mankind would never again be the same. Not as regards nudity, anyway. And the undeniable fact of the resurrection shattered many fixed ideas and attitudes. Though the diehard is still with us, as witness your Wahhabi Moslem."

"Tell me, Sinjoro Clemens," Firebrass said. "You were an early liberal, far ahead of your times in many things. You spoke up against slavery and were for equality. And when you wrote the Magna Carta for Parolando you insisted that there should be political equality for all species, races and both sexes. I notice that a black man and a white woman live almost next door to you. Be honest, doesn't it disturb you to see that?"

Sam drew in smoke, blew it out and said, "To be honest, yes, it did disturb me. Well, to tell the truth, it almost killed me! What my mind told me and what my reflexes told me were two different things. I hated it. But I stuck to my guns, I said nothing, I became acquainted with that couple and I learned to like them. And now, after a year, it bothers me only a very little. And that will go away in time."

"The difference between you—representing the white liberal—and the youth of Hacking's day and mine was that we were not bothered. We accepted it." "Don't I get any credit for lifting myself by my mental bootstraps?" Sam asked. "Yawblaw," Firebrass said, lapsing into English—of a sort. "Two degrees off is better than ninety. Pin it."

He went out. Sam was left alone. He sat for a long while, then stood up and went outside. The first person he saw was Herma

"It still hurts. But I can walk without driving hot spikes in it every time I take a step."