The Fabulous Riverboat

"That maketh thenthe," Joe said. "If Tham had a hair for every time he vorried, he'd look like a porcupine. Vhich, now that I come to think of it..."

"Out of the mouths of babes... and of tailless monkeys," Sam said. "Or is it the other end? Anyway, if everything goes well—and so far it hasn't—we'll start bonding the magnalium plates for the hull in thirty days. That'll be my happiest day, until we actually launch the boat. I'll be happier even than when Livy said yes ..."

He could have cut himself off sooner, but he wanted to antagonize Cyrano. The Frenchman, however, did not react. Why should he? He had Livy; she was saying yes to him all the time.

"Me, I do not like the idea," Cyrano said, "since I am a peaceful man. I would like to have the leisure to indulge myself with the good things of Life. I would like to have an end to wars, and if there is to be any bloodshed, let it be between gentlemen who know how to wield their swords. But we ca

"But if you did that, if you killed all the inhabitants, within a day your countries would be filled' up," Sam said. "You know how resurrection works. Look at how swiftly this area was reinhabited after the meteorite had killed everybody in it."

Cyrano held up a long—and dirty—finger. Sam wondered if Livy was losing her battle to keep him clean.

"Ah!" Cyrano said. "But these people will remain unorganized, and we, being on the spot, will organize them, take them in as citizens of the expanded Parolando. We will include them in the lottery for the crew of the boat. In the long run, it would be faster to stop the boat building now and do as I suggest."

And I will send you forth in the lead, Sam thought. And it will be David and Bathsheba and Uriah all over again. Except that David probably didn't have a conscience, never lost a wink of sleep over what he'd done.

"I don't think so," Sam said. "In the first place, our citizens will fight like hell to defend themselves, because they're involved in the boat. But they're not going to engage in a war of conquest, especially after they figure out that bringing new citizens into the lottery is going to reduce their chances enormously. Besides, it isn't right."

De Bergerac stood up, his hand on the hilt of his rapier. "Perhaps you are right. But the day that you made an agreement with John Lackland and then murdered Erik Bloodaxe, that day was the day that you launched your boat on blood and treachery and cruelty. I do not reproach you, my friend. What you did was unavoidable, if you wanted the boat. But you ca

He bowed and left. Sam puffed on his cigar and then said, "I hate that man! He tells the truth!"

Joe stood up, and the floor creaked under his eight hundred pounds. "I'm going to bed. My head hurtth. Thith whole thing ith giving me a pain in my athth. Either you do or you don't. It'th that thimple."

"If I had my brainth in my athth, I'd thay the thame thing!" Sam snarled. "Joe, I love you! You're beautiful! The world is so uncomplex! Problems make you sleepy, and so you sleep! But I ..."

"Good night, Tham!" Joe said and walked into the texas. Sam made sure that the door was barred and that the guards he'd posted around the building were alert. Then he went to bed, too.

He dreamed about Erik Bloodaxe, who chased him through the decks and into the hold of the Riverboat, and he awoke yelling. Joe was looming over him, shaking him. The rain was pounding the roof, and thunder was booming somewhere up along the face of the mountain.

Joe stayed awhile after making some coffee. He put a spoonful of dried crystals into cold water, and the coffee crystals heated the mixture in three seconds. They sipped their coffee and Sam smoked a cigarette while they talked about the days when they had voyaged down The River with Bloodaxe and his Vikings in search of iron.

"At leatht, ve uthed to have fun now and then," Joe said. "But not anymore. There'th too much vork to do and too many people out to thkin our hideth. And your voman vould thyow up vith that big-nothed Thyrano."

Sam chuckled and said, "Thanks for the first laugh I've had in days, Joe. Big-nosed! Ye Gods!"

"Thometimeth I'm too thubtle for even you, Tham," Joe said. He rose up from the table and walked back to his room.

There was little sleep thereafter. Sam had always liked to stay in bed even after a full night's sleep. Now he got less than five hours each night, though he did take a siesta sometimes. There always seemed to be someone who had to have a question answered or wanted to thrash out an issue. His chief engineers were far from agreeing on everything, and this alone disturbed Sam. He had thought engineering was a cut-and-dried thing. You had a problem, and you solved it the best way. But Van Boom, Velitsky and O'Brien seemed to be living in worlds that did not quite dovetail. Finally, to spare himself the aggravating and often wasted hours of wrangling, he delegated the final word to Van Boom. They were not to worry him about anything unless they needed his authorization.

It was amazing the number of things which he would have considered to be only in the engineering province which needed his authorization.

Iyeyasu conquered not only the Bushman-Hottentot area across The River from him but nine miles of the Ulmak territory. Then he sent a fleet down to the three-milelong area below the Ulmaks, where seventeenth-century A.D. Sac and Fox Indians lived. This area was conquered with resultant slaughter of half the inhabitants. Iyeyasu then began dickering with Parolando for a higher price for his wood. Also, he wanted an amphibian just like the Firedragon I. By then the second Firedragon was almost done.

At this time over five hundred blacks from Parolando had been exchanged for an equal number of Dravidians. Sam had steadfastly refused to accept the Wahhabi Arabs, or at least had insisted that the Asiatic Indians come first. Hacking apparently did not like this, but nothing had been said in the agreement about which group had priority.

Hacking, having heard from his spies about Iyeyasu's demands, sent a message. He wanted a Firedragon, too, and he was willing to exchange a great amount of minerals for it.

Publius Crassus and Tai Fung allied to invade the area across The River from them. This was occupied by Stone Age peoples from everywhere and every time and stretched for fourteen miles along the left bank. With their superior steel weapons and numbers, the invaders killed half the population and enslaved the rest. And they upped their price for the wood but kept it below Iyeyasu's.

Spies reported that Chernsky, who ruled the fourteenmile-long nation just north of Parolando, had made a visit to Soul City. What happened there was anybody's guess, since Hacking had set up a security system that seemed to be one hundred percent effective. Sam had gotten in eight blacks to spy for him, and he knew that John had sent in at least a dozen. The heads of all were tossed from boats in the mists late at night onto the top of the wall along the bank of Parolando.

Van Boom came to Sam late one night and said that Firebrass had cautiously approached him.

"He offered me the position of chief engineer on the boat," Van Boom said.

"He offered it to you?" Sam said, his cigar almost dropping.

"Yes. He didn't say so in so many words, but I got the idea. The Riverboat will be taken over by the Soul Citizens, and I will be chief engineer."