The Fabulous Riverboat

"It's a lot more work and responsibility! Now, I like the idea of flying again, and ..."

"You can fly! You can fly! But you'd have to serve under von Richthofen. You see, I promised him that he would be the chief of our air force, which, after all, will only consist of two planes. What do you care whether or not you're the chief, as long as you get to fly?"

"It's a matter of pride. I have thousands of hours more flying time than Richthofen, in planes far more complex and bigger and speedier. And I was an astronaut. I've been to the Moon and Mars and Ganymede and orbited Jupiter."

"That doesn't mean anything," Sam said. "The planes you'll be flying are very primitive. More like the World War I machines that Lothar flew." "Why does a nigger always have to take second place?" "That's unfair!" Sam said. "You could be chief

ngineer! You'd have thirty-five people under your command! Listen, if I hadn't made Lothar that promise, you'd get the captaincy, believe me!"

Firebrass stood up. "I'll tell you what I'll help you build the boat and set up the training of your engineer's department. But I get to fly during that time, too, and when the time comes we'll talk about who's going to be head of the air force." "I won't break my promise to Lothar," Sam said.

"Yes, but many things may happen between now and then."

Sam was relieved in one way but disturbed in another. Hacking gave his permission, via drum, to use Firebrass. This suggested he wanted Firebrass to know the boat's operation because he would be serving Hacking as chief engineer some day. And even if this was not being considered by Firebrass, he might be pla

Hacking sent word a few days later that he would agree to an extra large shipment of minerals in Parolando in return for the AMP-1. Firebrass flew it the thirty-one miles to the northern limit of Soul City, where another flier, a black who had been a general in the U.S. Air Force, took it over. A few days later, Firebrass returned by sailboat.

The batacitor and the electric motors worked perfectly. The paddle-wheels turned over slowly in the air, then were speeded up, the vanes whistling they spun so swiftly.

When the time came, a canal would be dug from the water's edge to the great boat, and it would wheel out into The River under its own power.

Lothar von Richtofen and Gwenafra were not getting along at all. Lothar had always been a "lady killer," and he could not seem to help flirting. More often than not, he followed up the flirtation. Gwenafra had some definite ideas about fidelity with which Lothar agreed, in principle.

It was the practice that tripped him up.

Hacking sent word that he intended to visit Parolando himself in two days. He wanted to hold a series of conferences on their trade, to check on the well-being of Parolando's black citizens and to see the great Riverboat.

Sam sent word back that he would be happy to receive Hacking. He wasn't, but the essence of diplomacy was dissimulation. The preparations for housing Hacking and his large entourage and setting up the conferences occupied Sam so that he did not get much chance to supervise the work on the boat.

Also, special preparations had to be made for docking the large number of ore boats from Soul City. Hacking was sending three times as much as the normal shipment to show his sincerity of desire for peace and understanding. Sam would have preferred that the shipments be spaced out, but then it was desirable to get as much as possible in as short a time as possible. The spies said that Iyeyasu was collecting several large fleets and a great number of fighting men on both sides of The River. And he had sent more messages to Selinujo to stop trying to land their missionaries on his territory.

About an hour before noon, Hacking's boat docked. It was a large, two-masted, fore-and-aft rigged boat, about a hundred feet long. Hacking's bodyguard, all tall wellmuscled blacks holding steel battle axes (but with Mark I pistols in big holsters) marched down the gangplank. Their kilts were pure black, and their leather helmets and cuirasses and boots were of black fishskin leather. They formed in ranks of six on each side of the gangplank, and then Hacking himself came down the gangplank.

He was a tall, well-built man with a dark-brown skin, somewhat slanting eyes, a broad pug nose, thick lips, and a prominent chin. His hair was in the style called "natural." Sam had not yet gotten used to this explosion of kinky hair on top of black men's heads. There was something indefinably indecent in it; a Negro's hair should be cut very close to the head. He still felt this way even after Firebrass had explained that the black American of the late-twentieth-century felt that "natural" hair was a symbol of his struggle for freedom. To them, close-cut hair symbolized castration of the black by the white.

Hacking wore a black towel as a cloak and a black kilt and leather sandals. His only weapon was a rapier in a sheath at his broad leather belt

Sam gave the signal, and a ca

The introductions took place. Hacking did not offer to shake hands nor did Sam and John. They had been warned by Firebrass that Hacking did not care to shake hands with a man unless he regarded him as a proven friend.

There was some small talk after that while the grails of Hacking's people were set on the nearest grailstone. After the discharge of energy at high noon, the grails were removed, and the chiefs of state, accompanied by their bodyguards and guards of honor, walked to John's palace. John had insisted that the first meeting be held in his place, doubtless to impress Hacking with John's primacy. Sam did not argue this time. Hacking probably knew, from Firebrass, just how things stood between Clemens and Lackland.

Later, Sam got some grim amusement from John's discomfiture at being bearded in his own house. During lunch, Hacking seized the floor and held it with a longwinded vitriolic speech about the evils the white man had inflicted on the black. The trouble was, Hacking's indictments were valid. Everything he said was true. Sam had to admit that. Hell, he had seen slavery and what it meant and had seen the aftermath of the Civil War. He had been born and raised in it. And that was long before Hacking was born. Hell, he had written Huckleberry Fi

It did no good to try to tell Hacking that. Hacking paid him no attention. That high-pitched voice went on and on, mixing

bscenities with facts, exaggerations with facts, lurid tales of miseries, beatings, murders, starvation, humiliations, and on and on.

Sam felt guilty and ashamed and, at the same time, angry. Why attack him? Why this blanket indictment?

"You are all guilty!" Hacking shouted. "Every white man is guilty!"

"I never saw more than a dozen blacks before I died," John said. "What can I have to do with your tale of injustices?"

"If you had been born five hundred years later, you would have been the biggest honky of them all!" Hacking said. "I know all about you, Your Majesty!"

Sam suddenly stood up and shouted, "Did you come here to tell us about what happened on Earth? We know that! But that is past! Earth is dead! It's what's taking place now that counts!"

"Yeah," Hacking said. "And what's taking place now is what took place on good old Earth! Things haven't changed one shitty little bit! I look around here, and who do I see is head of this country? Two honkies! Where's the black men! Your black population is about one-tenth of your population, and so you ought to have at least one black on a ten-man Council! Do I see one? Just one?" "There's Cawber," Sam said.