John did not smile. He signed the order that expelled all non-citizens, except for ambassadors and messengers, and that kept any more from coming in. This still did not prevent many boats from sailing by while the occupants gawked. By then the dirt walls and stone walls along the bank were about finished. There were, however, many breaks through which the curious could stare. These were left for ingress of freight boats bringing in wood and ore and flints. Moreover, since the plain sloped up toward the hills, the tourists could see many of the factories and the cranes, and the great structure of the boatyard was visible for miles around.
After a while, the tourist trade petered off. Too many were getting picked up along the way by grail slavers. Word got around that it was getting dangerous to travel The River in that section. Six months passed. The wood supply in the area was cut off. Bamboo grew to full length in from three weeks to six weeks; the trees took six months to grow to full maturity. Every state for fifty miles both ways from Parolando had enough wood for its own uses only.
Parolando’s representatives made treaties with more distant states, trading iron ore and weapons for food. There was a very large supply of siderite masses left yet, so Sam was not worried about running out of it. But the mining of it took many men and materials and caused the central part of Parolando to look like a heavily shelled landscape. And the more wood that was brought in, the more men, materials, and machines had to be diverted from the boatbuilding to make weapons for trade. Moreover, the increase in shipping resulted in more demand for wood to build freighters. And more men had to be trained and shipped out as sailors and guards for the wood-carrying and ore-carrying fleets. It got to the point where boats had to be rented from neighboring states, and the rent, as always, was iron-nickel ore and finished weapons.
Sam wanted to be at the boatyard from dawn to dusk and even later, because he loved every minute of progress in the construction of the great boat. But he had so many administrative duties only indirectly or not at all connected with the boat that he could be in the boatyard only two to three hours—on a good day. He tried to get John to take over more of the administration, but John would accept only duties which gave him more power over the military forces or allowed him to exert pressure on those who opposed him.
The anticipated attempts at assassination of those close to Sam did not occur. The bodyguards and the close watch at nights were continued, but Sam decided that John was going to lay low for a while. He had probably seen that it would be best for his purposes to wait until the boat was nearly finished.
Once, Joe Miller said, “Tham, don’t you think maybe you’re wrong about John? Maybe he’th going to be content vith being thecond-in-command of the boat?”
“Joe, would a sabertooth part with his canines?”
“Vhat?”
“John is rotten to the core. The old kings of England were never any great shakes, morally speaking. The only difference between them and Jack the Ripper was that they operated openly and with the sanction of Church and State. But John was such a wicked monarch that it became traditional to never name another English king John. And even the Church, which had a high tolerance for evil in high places, could not stomach John. The Pope slapped the Interdict on the entire nation and brought John crawling and begging to the feet of the Pope, like a whipped puppy. But I suppose that even when he was kissing the Pope’s foot, he managed to suck a little blood from the big toe. And the Pope must have checked his pockets after he embraced John.
“What I’m trying to put across is that John couldn’t reform even if he wanted to. He’ll always be a human weasel, a hyena, a skunk.”
Joe puffed on a cigar even longer than his nose and said, “Vell, I don’t know. Humanth can change. Look at vhat the Church of the Thecond Chanthe hath done. Look at Göring. Look at you. You told me that in your time vomen vore clotheth which covered them from the neck to the ankleth, and you got ekthited if you thaw a good-looking ankle, and a thigh, oh my! Now you aren’t too dithturbed if you thee….”
“I know! I know!” Sam said. “Old attitudes and what the psychologists call conditioned reflexes can be changed. That’s why I say that anybody who still carries in him the racial and sexual prejudices he had on Earth is not taking advantage of what The River offers. A man can change, but….”
“He can?” Joe said. “But you alvayth told me that everything in life, even the vay a man actth and thinkth, ith determined by vhat vent on long before he vath even born. Vhat ith it? Yeth, it’th a determinithtic philothophy, that’th vhat. Now, if you believe that everything ith fikthed in itth courthe, that humanth are mathyineth, tho to thpeak, then how can you believe that men can chanche themthelveth?”
“Well,” Sam drawled, looking fierce, his excessively bushy eyebrows pulled down, his blue-green eyes bright above the falcon nose, “well, even my theories are mechanically determined and if they conflict, that can’t be helped.”
“Then, for heaven’th thaketh,” Joe said, throwing up his football-sized hands, “vhat’th the uthe of talking about it? Or even doing anything? Vhy don’t you jutht give up?”
“Because I can’t help myself,” Sam said. “Because, when the first atom in this universe bumped against the second atom, my fate was decreed, my every thought and action was fixed.”
“Then you can’t be, uh, rethponthible for vhat you do, right?”
“That’s right,” Sam said. He felt very uncomfortable.
“Then John can’t help it that he’th a murdering treacherouth thoroughly dethpicable thvine?”
“No, but then I can’t help it that I despise him for being a swine.”
“And I thuppothe that if thomebody thmarter than I am came along and thyowed you, by thtrict undeniable lochic, that you vere wrong in your philothophy, that you vould thay that he can’t help thinking you’re wrong? But he’th wrong, it’th jutht that he’th predetermined, mechanically, to think the vay he doeth.”
“I’m right, and I know it,” Sam said, puffing harder on his cigar. “This hypothetical man couldn’t convince me because his own reasoning does not spring from a free will, which is like a vegetarian tiger—that is, it doesn’t exist.”
“But your own reathoning doethn’t thpring from a free vill, either.”
“True. We’re all screwed. We believe what we have to.”
“You laugh at thothe people who have vhat you call invinthible ignoranthe, Tham. Yet you’re full of it, yourthelf.”
“Lord deliver us from apes that think they’re philosophers!”
“Thee! You fall back on inthultth vhen you can’t think of anything elthe to thay! Admit it, Tham! You haven’t got a lochical leg to thtand on!”
“You just aren’t capable of seeing what I mean, because of the way you are,” Sam said.
“You thyould talk to Thyrano de Bercherac more, Tham. He’th ath big a thynic ath you, although he doethn’t go ath far ath you do vith determinithm.”
“I’d think you two incapable of talking to each other. Don’t you two resent each other, you look so much alike? How can you stand nose to nose, as it were, and not break up with laughter? It’s like two anteaters….”
“Inthultth! Inthultth! Oh, vhat’th the uthe?”
“Exactly,” Sam said. Joe did not say good-night, and he did not call after him. He was nettled. Joe looked so dumb with that low forehead and the bone-ringed eyes and comical dill pickle nose and gorilla build and his hairiness. But behind those little blue eyes and the lisping was an undeniable intelligence.
What disturbed him most was Joe’s comment that his deterministic belief was only a rationalization to excuse his guilt. Guilt for what? Guilt for just about everything bad that had happened to those whom he loved.
But it was a philosophic labyrinth which ended in a quagmire. Did he believe in mechanical determinism because he wanted to not feel guilty, or did he feel guilty, even though he should not, because the mechanical universe determined that he should feel guilty?
Joe was righ
t. There was no use thinking about it. But if a man’s thinking was set on its course by the collision of the first two atoms, then how could he keep from thinking about it if he were Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain?
He sat up later than usual that night, but he was not working at his duties. He drank at least a fifth of ethyl alcohol mixed with fruit juice.
Two months before, Firebrass had said he could not understand the failure of Parolando to make ethyl alcohol. Sam had been upset. He had not known that grain alcohol could be made. He thought that the only supply of liquor would have to be the limited amounts that the grails yielded.
No, Firebrass had said. Hadn’t any of his engineers told him? If the proper materials, such as acid, coal gas, or acetaldehyde, and a proper catalyst were available, then wood cellulose could be converted into ethyl alcohol. That was common knowledge. But Parolando, until recently, was the only place on The River—he presumed—which had the materials to make grain alcohol.
Sam had called in van Boom, who replied that he had enough to worry about without providing booze for people who drank too much as it was.
Sam had ordered materials and men diverted. For the first time in the history of The River, as far as anybody knew, potable alcohol was being made on a large scale. This resulted not only in happier citizens, except for the Second Chancers, but in a new industry for Parolando. They exported alcohol in exchange for wood and bauxite.
Sam fell into bed and the next morning, for the first time, refused to get up before dawn. But the next day he rose as usual.
Sam and John sent a message to Iyeyasu that they would regard it as a hostile act if he invaded the rest of the Ulmak territory of Chernsky’s Land.
Iyeyasu replied that he had no intention of waging war on these lands, and he proved it by invading the state just north of his, Sheshshub’s Land. Sheshshub, an Assyrian born in the seventh century B.C., had been a general of Sargon II, and so, like most powerful people on Earth, had become a leader on the Riverworld. He gave Iyeyasu a good fight, but the invaders were more numerous.
Iyeyasu was one worry. There were plenty of others to keep Sam going day and night. Hacking finally sent a message, through Firebrass, that Parolando should quit stalling. He wanted the amphibian promised so long ago. Sam had kept pleading technical difficulties, but Firebrass told him that was no longer acceptable. So the Firedragon III was reluctantly shipped off.
Sam made a visit to Chernsky to reassure him that Parolando would defend Ĉernskujo. Coming back, a half mile upwind of the factories, Sam almost gagged. He had been living so long in the acid-bath-cum-smoke atmosphere that he had gotten used to it, but any vacation from it cleansed his lungs. It was like stepping into a glue-and-sulfur factory. And, though the wind was a fifteen-mph breeze, it did not carry the smoke away swiftly enough. The air definitely was hazy. No wonder, he thought, that Publiujo, to the south, complained.
But the boat continued to grow. Standing before the front port of his pilothouse, Sam could look out every morning and be consoled for his toil and tiredness and for the hideousness and stench of the land. In another six months, the three decks would be completed, and the great paddle wheels would be installed. Then a plastic coating would be put over the part of the hull which would come into contact with water. This plastic would not only prevent electrolysis of the magnalium, it would reduce the water turbulence, thus adding ten mph to the boat’s speed.
During this time, Sam received some good news. Tungsten and iridium had been found in Selinujo, the country just south of Soul City. The report was brought by the prospector, who trusted no one else to transmit it. He also brought some bad news. Selina Hastings refused to let Parolando mine there. In fact, if she had known that a Parolandano was digging along her mountain, she would have thrown him out. She did not want to be unfriendly, indeed, she loved Sam Clemens, since he was a human being. But she did not approve of the Riverboat, and she would not permit anything to go out of her land that would help build the vessel.
Sam erupted, and, as Joe said, “thyot blue thyit for mileth around.” The tungsten was very much needed for hardening their machine tools but even more for the radios and, eventually, the closed-circuit TV sets. The iridium could be used to harden their platinum for various uses, for scientific instruments, surgical tools, and for pen points.
The Mysterious Stranger had told Sam that he had set up the deposit of minerals here but that his fellow Ethicals did not know that he had done so. Along with the bauxite, cryolite, and platinum would be tungsten and iridium. But an error had been made, and the latter two metals had been deposited several miles south of the first three.
Sam did not tell John at once, because he needed time to think about the situation. John, of course, would want to demand that the metals be traded to Parolando or that war be declared.
While he was pacing back and forth in the pilothouse, clouding the room with green smoke, he heard drums. They were using a code which he did not know but recognized, after a minute, as that used by Soul City. A few minutes later, Firebrass was at the foot of the ladder.
“Sinjoro Hacking knows all about the discovery of tungsten and iridium in Selinujo. He says that if you can come to an agreement with Selina, fine. But don’t invade her land. He’d regard that as a declaration of war on Soul City.”
Sam looked out the starboard port past Firebrass. “Here comes John hotfooting it,” he said. “He’s heard the news, too. His spy system is almost as good as yours, a few minutes less good, I’d say. I don’t know where the leaks in my system are, but they’re so wide that I’d be sunk if I was a boat, and I may be anyway.”
John, his eyes inflamed, his face red, and puffing and panting, entered. Since the introduction of grain alcohol, he had put on even more fat, and he seemed to be half drunk all the time and all drunk half the time.
Sam was angered, but at the same time, he was amused. John would have liked to summon him to his palace, in keeping with his dignity as an ex-King of England. But he knew that Sam would not come for a long time, if at all, and meanwhile there was no telling how much hanky-panky Firebrass and Sam would manufacture.
“What’s going on?” John said, glaring.
“You tell me,” Sam said. “You seem to know more about the shady side of affairs than I do.”
“None of your wisecracks!” John said. Without being asked, he poured out a quarter of purple passion into a stein. “I know what that message is about even if I don’t know the code!”
“I thought as much,” Sam said. “For your information, in case you missed anything….” and he told him what Firebrass had said.
“The arrogance of you blacks is unendurable,” John said. “You are telling Parolando, a sovereign state, how it must conduct itself in vital business. Well, I say you can’t! We will get those metals, one way or the other! Selinujo doesn’t need them; we do! It can’t hurt Selinujo to give them up. We will give a fair trade!”
“In what?” Firebrass said. “Selinujo doesn’t want weapons or alcohol. What can you trade?”
“Peace, freedom from war!”
Firebrass shrugged and grinned, thus incensing John even more.
“Sure,” Firebrass said, “you can make your offer. But what Hacking says still goes.”
“Hacking has no love for Selinujo,” Sam said. “He kicked out all the Second Chancers, black or white.”
“That’s because they were preaching immediate pacifism. They also preach, and apparently practice, love for all, regardless of color, but Hacking says they’re a danger to the state. The blacks have to protect themselves, otherwise they would be enslaved all over again.”
“The blacks?” Sam said.
“Us blacks!” Firebrass replied, grinning.
This was not the first time Firebrass had given the impression that he was not so deeply concerned with skin color. His identification with blacks, as such, was weak. His life had not been untouched by racial prejudice, but it had not been much affected. And
he said things now and then that indicated that he would like a berth on the boat.
All this, of course, could be a put-on.
“We’ll negotiate with Sinjorino Hastings,” Sam said. “It would be nice to have radios and TV for the boat, and the machine shops could use the tungsten. But we can get along without them.”
He winked at John to indicate that he should take this line. But John was as stone-headed as usual.
“What we do with Selinujo is our problem, nobody else’s!”
“I’ll tell Hacking,” Firebrass said. “But Hacking is a strong person. He won’t take any crap from anybody, least of all white capitalist imperialists.”
Sam choked, and John stared.
“That’s what he regards you as!” Firebrass said. “And the way he defines those terms, you are what he says you are.”
“Because I want this boat so badly!” Sam shouted. “Do you know what this boat is for, what its ultimate goal…?”
He fought back his anger, sobbing with the effort. He felt dizzy. For a moment, he had almost told about the Stranger.
“What is it?” Firebrass said.
“Nothing,” Sam replied. “Nothing. I just want to get to the headwaters of The River, that’s all. Maybe the secret of this whole shebang is there? Who knows? But I certainly don’t like criticism from someone who just wants to sit around on his dead black ass and collect soul brothers. If he wants to do that, more power to him, but I still hold to integration as the ideal. And I’m a Missouri white born in 1835! So how’s that for going against your heritage and your environment? The point is, if I don’t use the siderite metal to build a boat, which is designed for travel only, not for aggression, then someone else will. And that someone else may use it to conquer and to hold, instead of for tourist purposes.
“Now, we’ve gone along with Hacking’s demands, paid his jacked-up prices for the ores when we could have gone down there and taken them from him. John’s apologized for what he called you and Hacking, and if you think it’s easy for a Plantagenet to do that, you don’t know your history. It’s too bad about the way Hacking feels. I don’t know that I blame him. Of course, he hates whites. But this is not Earth! Conditions are radically different here!”
To Your Scattered Bodies Go/The Fabulous Riverboat Page 42
