Riverworld02- The Fabulous Riverboat (1971)

by Philip José Farmer

  It did no good to remember that tomorrow these same people, in fresh and healthy bodies, would be up and doing somewhere along the banks. The effect of death could not be diluted with intellectualizing.

  John was issuing orders about the disposal of the bodies to the soap and skin factories. He grinned at Sam like a bad boy caught pulling the cat's tail.

  "This is a massacre!" Sam shouted. "A massacre! Unjustified! Unforgivable! There was no reason for it, you bloody-minded, killing beast! That's all you ever have been, you murdering dog, all you ever will be! Swine! Swine! Swine!"

  John lost his smile and took a step back as Sam, his hands clenched, moved close to him. The huge massive-boned Zaksksromb, holding a big club of oak with steel spikes set in its end, started toward Sam.

  Lothar von Richthofen shouted, "None of that – leave him alone or I call Joe Miller! And I'll shoot the first man who makes a move toward Sam." Sam looked behind him. Lothar was holding a big pistol in his hands, and it was pointed at John.

  John's dark skin paled, and his eyes opened wide. Even the light-blue irises seemed to become paler.

  Later Sam wished that he had told Lothar to fire. Even though the hundred pistoleers were John's men, they might have hesitated if John had been killed at the first shot. They were surrounded by armed men and women, most of whom were not fond of John and almost all of whom were shocked by the slaughter. They might have withheld their fire. Even if they had not, Sam could have thrown himself down to the ground and the first shots might have missed. After that, who knew what would have happened?

  But it was no good fantasizing. He had not given the order.

  Nevertheless, he had to take some strong and immediate action. If he let John get away with this, he would lose everybody's respect, not to mention his own. And he might as well resign his Consulship. In which case, he would lose the Riverboat.

  He turned his head slightly, though not so much that he could not keep an eye on John. He saw Livy's white face and big dark eyes; she looked as if she were going to vomit. He ignored her and called to Cyrano de Bergerac, who was standing on the edge of the inner circle, his long rapier in his hand.

  "Captain de Bergerac!" Sam pointed at John. "Arrest the co-Consul."

  John was holding a pistol in one hand, but he did not bring up its muzzle.

  He said in a mild voice, "I protest. I told them to get out at once and they refused to go. I warned them and they still refused – so I ordered them shot. What difference does it make, really? They will be alive tomorrow."

  Cyrano marched straight to John, stopped, saluted, and said, "Your weapons, sire." Zaksksromb growled and lifted his spiked club.

  "No, Zak," John Lackland said. "According to the Carta, one Consul can arrest the other if he thinks the other is acting contrary to the Carta. I won't be under arrest long."

  He handed Cyrano his gun, butt first, unbuckled his belt, and gave it to Cyrano. Its sheaths held a long knife and short sword.

  "I will return to my palace while you and the Council decide my fate," he said. "According to the Carta, you must convene within an hour after the arrest and have a decision in two hours, as long as no national emergency interferes."

  He walked away, Cyrano behind him. John's men hesitated a moment and then, at the thundered orders of Zaksksromb, followed John to the palace. Sam stared after them. He had expected more resistance. And then it occurred to him that John knew very well that Sam Clemens had to do just what he did or lose face. And John knew Sam well enough to know that Sam might want to avoid a decision that could lead to civil war, but he would not if he thought his Riverboat endangered.

  So John had gone along with him. John did not want to force a showdown. Not now. He had satisfied his bloodlust for the moment. The Councilmen would meet and find that, legally, John was within his rights. Morally, he was not. But then his supporters would argue that even there he was justified. After all, the dead would be alive again and the lesson to the Second Chancers would be invaluable. They would steer clear of Parolando for a long time. And surely Sam Clemens would have to admit that this was desirable. If the Chancers continued to make converts, the Riverboat would never be built. Moreover, other states, less weakened with the Chancer philosophy, would invade Parolando.

  And he, Sam Clemens, would say that next John's supporters would be claiming that it was all right to torture people. After all, the pain could last only so long, and any injury would be healed just by killing the victim. Then rape would be justified, because, after all, the woman wasn't going to be made pregnant or diseased – and if she got hurt, too bad. Kill her and she'd be all right in the morning. Never mind the mental damage. A little dreamgum would cure that.

  No, Sam would say, it's a question, not of murder, but of rights. If you killed a man, you removed him without his consent to a place so far away he could walk a thousand years along the Riverbank and never get back. You took him away from his love, his friends, his home. Force was force and it was always . . . Oh, oh! He'd better watch himself! "Sam!" a lovely voice said.

  He turned. Livy was still pale, but her eyes looked as if they were normal, "Sam! What about the women he carried off?"

  "Where's my head?" he said aloud. "Come on, Lothar!" Seeing the ten-foot-high Miller halfway across the plain, he waved at him and the Titanthrop turned to intercept them. Lothar ordered a hundred archers who had just arrived to follow them.

  Near the great log building, he slowed down. John knew that his co-Consul had forgotten about the abducted women, but that he would soon remember them. And John might be prepared to submit himself to the Council's judgment of the massacre, because, legally, he was within his rights. But surrendering the women to Sam might be just a little too much for John. His infamous temper might betray him, and then civil war would explode in Parolando.

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  Sam saw thirty or so women walking out through the open gates, and he knew that John had decided to rectify his mistake. Even so, he could be accused of kidnapping, a graver crime than murder in this topsy-turvy world. But if the women were unharmed, it would be too much trouble to push the charge.

  He stopped, and this time he thought his heart would stop. Gwenafra was with the women!

  Lothar, crying her name, ran to her. She ran to him with her arms out, and they embraced.

  After a minute of hugging, kissing and sobbing, she pulled herself away and went to Sam. He cursed himself because there, was no one else he could reasonably blame. If he had shown that he wanted her when she had made it plain that he could have her, then she might not have turned to von Richthofen. Why hadn't he taken her, then? Why had he clung to the idea that Livy would eventually come back and that, if he took another woman now, Livy would resent it so much she would never have anything to do with him?

  His thinking wasn't logical. But whatever the philosophers claimed, the main use of logic was to justify your emotions.

  Gwenafra had kissed him while her tears ran down his bare chest. Now she left his arms and went back to Lothar, and Sam Clemens was left with the problem of what to do with – or to – John Lackland.

  He strode through the gates with Joe Miller lumbering behind him. A moment later, von Richthofen had caught up with him. He was swearing and muttering in German, "I'll kill him!"

  Sam stopped. "You get out of here! I'm mad enough, but I can control myself! You're in the lion's den now, and if you try anything, he can have you killed and claim self-defense. He'd love that. In fact, he may have done all this just to set up our murder." Lothar said, "But you're here with only Joe!" "I wouldn't ever call Joe an only! Anyway, if you hadn't been so busy mugging with Gwen, you would have heard me order the troops to storm the palace and kill everybody in it if I'm not out in fifteen minutes."

  Lothar stared at Sam. "You've certainly gotten much more aggressive!"

  "The more trouble I have and the longer the building of the Riverboat takes, the meaner I get," Sam said. There was no point
in telling him that his anger at him and Gwenafra was turned onto John, who already had so much directed at him that he should have curled up and crisped away. And would have if there were any justice in the world.

  He entered the largest building inside the stockade of tall lodgepole-pine logs and he brushed past Sharkey. The slope-shouldered thug started to block his way, but Sam did not break his stride. A cavernous growl came from the vast hairy figure behind Sam. Sharkey snarled soundlessly and made the mistake of not moving to one side far enough. A huge reddish-haired hip sent the two hundred and thirty pound man staggering back as if he were a hollow dummy. "I'll kill you one of these days!" Sharkey said in English.

  Joe turned his head slowly as if it were a turret on a battleship and the tremendous proboscis were a cannon. "Yeth? You and vhat army?"

  "You're getting pretty snappy with the comeback, Joe," Sam muttered. "My influence, no doubt." "I'm not ath dumb ath motht people think," Joe said. "That wouldn't be possible."

  His rage had become a dull red now. Even with Joe as his bodyguard, he was far from being safe. But he was banking that John would go only so far with him, because he wanted that boat, too.

  John was sitting at the big round oaken table with a dozen of his thugs. The giant Zaksksromb was standing behind him. All held clay steins. The room reeked of tobacco and liquor. John's eyes were red, but then they usually were. Light came in through the windows but the direct sunlight was blocked off by the stockade poles. Some pine torches burned smokily. Sam stopped, took a cigar out of the little box in the bag hanging from his belt and lit it. It angered him that his hand shook so much, and that increased his anger at John. He said, "All right, Your Majesty! It was bad enough that you took those alien women for your own vile purposes! But to take Gwenafra? She's a citizen of this state! You really put your neck in the noose, John, and I'm not just using figurative language!"

  John downed the whiskey in the stein and gently put it down on the table. Softly, he said, "I had those women removed for their own safety. The crowd was very ugly; they wanted to kill the missionaries. And Gwenafra was taken along through a mistake. I will ascertain who is responsible for that and punish him."

  "John," Sam said, "I ought to arrest your assertions for vagrancy. They certainly are without any visible support. But I got to hand it to you. You just dispossessed the devil. You are now the father of lies and grand master, past, present and future, of deceit. If being barefaced is the criterion of the greatest liar, all other liars are whiskered like Santa Claus."

  John's face turned red. Zaksksromb sneered and lifted his club chest-high. Joe growled.

  John blew out a deep breath and said, smiling, "You are upset over a little blood. You will get over it. You cannot disprove anything I have said, isn't that right? By the way, have you called a meeting of the Council yet? The law of the land requires you to do so, you know."

  The horrible thing was that John would get away with it. Everybody, including his supporters, would know he was lying. But there was nothing to do about it unless they wanted to start a civil war, and that would mean that the wolves – Iyeyasu, Hacking, maybe the supposed neutrals, Publius Crassus, Chernsky, Tai Fung, and the savages across The River – would invade. Sam snorted and walked out. Two hours later, his expectations were realities. The Councilmen voted an official reprimand against John for his mishandling of the situation and his hastiness. He was directed to confer with his co-Consul in any such future situations.

  No doubt John would laugh uproariously when he was told of the decision and he would call for more liquor, tobacco, marihuana and women to celebrate.

  However, he did not have a complete victory. Every Parolandoj knew how Sam Clemens had stood up to John, stormed his palace with only one supporter, released the women and insulted John to his face. John knew that; his triumph was standing on shaky legs.

  Sam asked the Council to exile every Second Chancer La Parolando for their own protection. But several Councillors pointed out that this would be illegal. The Carta would have to be changed. Besides, it was unlikely that John would take any more action against them after the warning he had received.

  They knew as well as Sam why he was taking advantage of the emotional climate to oust the Second Chancers. But there were some stubborn men on the Council. Perhaps they felt angry because they had not been able to do anything about John, and at least they could make a stand for principle in this case.

  Sam would have bet that the survivors of the massacre would want to leave immediately. But they insisted on staying. The slaughter had done nothing except to convince them that Parolando needed them very much. Göring was building several large huts for them. Sam sent word down that this should stop. Parolando was already short of wood. Göring sent word back that he and his male comrades would move out and sleep under the grailstones. Sam swore and blew smoke in the face of the Chancer messenger and said that it was too bad pneumonia did not exist. Afterward, he felt ashamed, but he did not relent. He wasn't going to scant his furnaces so that people he did not even want could sleep under a roof.

  He felt upset enough, but that evening he got two messages which opened the earth under him. One was that Odysseus had disappeared at night from his boat while on the way back to Parolando. Nobody knew what had happened to him. He was just gone. The second message informed him that William Grevel, the man who'd been spying on John, had been found under a ledge at the base of the mountain, his skull smashed in.

  Somehow, John had found him out and executed him. And John would be laughing because Sam could not prove that or, for that matter, even admit that Grevel had been working for him.

  Sam called in von Richthofen and de Bergerac and others whom he considered to be his people. It was true that de Bergerac and he were hostile because of Livy, but de Bergerac preferred Clemens to John, with whom he had had some hot words.

  "Maybe Odysseus' disappearance from the boat is only a coincidence," Sam said. "But that, plus Grevel's death, makes me wonder if John isn't striking at me through my friends. He may be planning on cutting you down, one by one, under circumstances where he can't be accused. He's crafty. He probably won't do anything now for some time. But Odysseus was gotten rid of in a place where an investigation will probably reveal nothing. And I can't accuse John about Grevel without exposing what I've been doing. So, watch out for situations where accidents could happen. And be careful when you are alone."

  "Morbleu! de Bergerac said. "If it wasn't for this ridiculous law against dueling, I could challenge John and run him through. You, Sinjoro Clemens, were responsible for that law!"

  "I was raised in a country where duels were common," Sam said. "The whole idea sickens me. If you'd seen the tragedies . . . well, never mind. I guess you did see, and it doesn't seem to have affected you. Anyway, do you think for one moment that John would ever let you live long enough to meet him for a duel? No, you'd disappear or have an accident, you can bet on that." "Vhy can't Chohn have an acthident?" Joe Miller said.

  "How would you get past the living wall of his bodyguards?" Sam said. "No, if John has an accident, it'll have to be a genuine one."

  He dismissed them with the exception of de Bergerac and of Joe, who never left him unless he was sick or Sam wanted privacy. . .

  "The Stranger said that he'd picked out twelve humans for the final onslaught against the MistyTower," Sam said. "Joe, you, Richard Francis Burton, Odysseus and me make five. But none of us know who the other seven are. Now Odysseus is gone, and God knows if we'll ever see him again. The Stranger implied that all of the twelve would join the others on the Riverboat somewhere along the line. But if Odysseus was resurrected somewhere to the south, downRiver, so far away he can't get back up here before the Riverboat is built, then he is out of luck."

  Cyrano shrugged and rubbed his long nose. "Why worry? Or is that your nature? For all we know, Odysseus is not dead. He may have been contacted by this Mysterious Stranger – who, by the way, Odysseus claims is a woman and so his
Stranger is not the one that you and I met – mordioux! – I digress! As I said, Odysseus may have been called away suddenly by this so-mysterious person and we will find out in time what did happen! Let that shadowy angel – or fiend – take care of the matter. We must concentrate on getting this fabulous boat constructed and skewering anybody who gets in our way."

  "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 cannot build the boat without interference, because those who do not have iron desire it and will not stop until they get it. So, me, I think that John Lackland may be right in one particular. Perhaps we should wage an all-out war as soon as we have enough weapons, and clear The River, on both sides, of all opposition for thirty miles both ways. We can then have unlimited access to the wood and the bauxite and platinum . . ."