The Fabulous Riverboat
Book 2 of The Riverworld Series
By Philip Jose Farmer
Version 1.0

1
"Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows,"
Sam Clemens said. "I can't say that the sleeping is very
restful."
Telescope under one arm, he puffed on a long, green
cigar while he paced back and forth on the poopdeck of
the Dreyrugr (Bloodstained). Ari Grimolfsson, the helms-
man, not understanding English, looked bleakly at
Clemens. Clemens translated for him in wretched Old
Norse. The helmsman still looked bleak.
Clemens loudly cursed him in English for a dunder-
headed barbarian. For three years, Clemens had been
practicing tenth-century Norse night and day. And he was
still only half intelligible to most of the men and women
aboard the Dreyrugr.
"A ninety-five-year-old Huck Finn, give or take a few
thousand years," Clemens said, "I start out down The
River on a raft. Now I'm on this idiot Viking ship, going
upRiver. What next? When will I realize my dream?"
Keeping the upper part of his right arm close to his
body so he would not drop the precious telescope, he
pounded his right fist into his open left palm.
"Iron! I need iron! But where on this people-rich,
metal-poor planet is iron? There has to be some! Other-
wise, where did Erik's ax come from? And how much is
there? Enough? Probably not. Probably there's just a very
small meteorite. But maybe there's enough for what I
want. But where? My God, The River may be twenty
million miles long! The iron, if any, may be at the other
end.
"No, that can't be! It has to be somewhere not too far
away, within 100,000 miles of here. But we may be going
in the wrong direction. Ignorance, the mother of hysteria,
or is it vice versa?"
He looked through the telescope at the right bank and
cursed again. Despite his pleas to bring the ship in so that

he could scan the faces at a closer range, he had been
refused. The king of the Norseman fleet, Erik Bloodaxe,
said that this was hostile territory. Until the fleet was. out
of it, the fleet would stay close to the middle of The River.
The Dreyrugr was the flagship of three, all alike. It was
eighty feet long, built largely of bamboo and resembled a
Viking dragonboat. It had a long low hull, an oak
figurehead carved into a dragon's head, and a curled-tail
stern. But it also had a raised foredeck and poopdeck, the
sides of both extending out over the water. The two bam-
boo masts were fore-and-aft rigged. The sails were a very
thin but tough and flexible membrane made from the
stomach of the deep-dwelling "riverdragon" fish. There
was also a rudder controlled by a wheel on the poopdeck.
The round leather-and-oak shields of the crew hung
over the sides; the great oars were piled on racks. The
Dreyrugr was sailing against the wind, tacking back and
forth, a maneuver unknown to the Norsemen when they
had lived on Earth.
The men and women of the crew not handling the ropes
sat on the oarsmen benches and talked and threw dice and
played poker. From below the poopdeck came cries of ex-
citation or curses and an occasional faint click. Bloodaxe
and his bodyguard were shooting pool, and their doing so
at this tune made Clemens very nervous. Bloodaxe knew
that enemy ships three miles up The River were putting
out to intercept them, and ships from both banks behind
them were putting out to trail them. Yet the king was pre-
tending to be very cool. Maybe he was actually as un-
disturbed as Drake had supposedly been just before the
battle of the Great Armada.
"But the conditions are different here," Clemens mut-
tered. "There's not much room to maneuver on a river
only a mile and a half wide. And no storm is going to help
us out."
He swept the bank with the telescope as he had been
doing ever since the fleet set out three years ago. He was
of medium height and had a big head that made his none-
too-broad shoulders look even more narrow. His eyes
were blue; his eyebrows, shaggy; his nose, Roman. His

hair was long and reddish brown. His face was innocent of
the mustache that had been so well known during his ter-
restrial life. (Men had been resurrected without face hair.)
His chest was a sea of brown-red curly hair that lapped at
the hollow of his throat. He wore only a knee-length white
towel secured at the waist, a leather belt for holding
weapons and the sheath for his telescope, and leather slip-
pers. His skin was bronzed by the equatorial sun.
He removed the telescope from his eye to look at the
enemy ships trailing by a mile. As he did so, he saw some-
thing flash in the sky. It was a curving sword of white, ap-
pearing suddenly as if unsheathed from the blue. It
stabbed downward and then was gone behind the moun-
tains.
Sam was startled. He had seen many small meteorites in
the night sky but never a large one. Yet this daytime giant
set his eyes afire and left an afterimage on his eyes for a
second or two. Then the image faded, and Sam forgot about
the falling star. He scanned the bank again with his
telescope.
This part of The River had been typical. On each side of
the mile-and-a-half-wide River was a mile-and-a-half-
wide grass-grown plain. On each bank, huge mushroom-
shaped stone structures, the grailstones, were spaced a mile
apart. Trees were few on the plains, but the foothills were
thick with pine, oak, yew and the irontree. This was a
thousand-foot-high plant with gray bark, enormous ele-
phant-ear leaves, hundreds of thick gnarly branches, roots
so deep and wood so hard that the tree could not be cut,
burned or dug out. Vines bearing large flowers of many
bright colors grew over their branches.
There was a mile or two of foothills, and then the
abruptness of smooth-sided mountains, towering from
20,000 to 30,000 feet, unscalable past the 10,000-foot
mark.
The area through which the three Norse boats were
sailing was inhabited largely by early nineteenth-century
Germans. There was the usual ten percent population
from another place and time of Earth. Here, the ten per-

cent was first-century Persians. And there was also the
ubiquitous one percent of seemingly random choices from
any time and any place.
The telescope swung past the bamboo huts on the plains
and the faces of the people. The men were clad only in
various towels; the women, in short towellike skirts and
thin cloths around the breasts. There were many gathered
on the bank, apparently to watch the battle. They carried
flint-tipped spears and bows and arrows but were not in
martial array.
Clemens grunted suddenly and held the telescope on the
face of a man. At this distance and with the weak power of
the instrument, he could not clearly see the man's features.
But the wide-shouldered body and dark face suggested
familiarity. Where had he seen that face before?
Then it struck him. The man looked remarkably like the
photographs of the famous English explorer Sir Richard
Burton that he'd seen on Earth. Rather, there was some-
thing suggestive of the man. Clemens sighed and turned
the eyepiece to the other faces as the ship took him away.
He would never know the true identity of the fellow.
He would have liked to put ashore and talk to him, find
out if he really was Burton. In the twenty years of life on
this river-planet, and the seeing of millions of faces,
Clemens had not yet met one person he had known on
Earth. He did not know Burton personally, but he was
sure that Burton must have heard of him. This man—if he
was Burton—would be a link, if thin, to the dead Earth.
And then, as a far-off blurred figure came within the
round of the telescope, Clemens cried out incredulously.
"Livy! Oh, my God! Livy!"
There could be no doubt. Although the features could
not be clearly distinguished, they formed an overwhelm-
ing, not-to-be-denied truth. The head, the hairdo, the
figure and the unmistakable walk (as unique as a finger-
print) shouted out that here was his Earthly wife.
"Livy!" he sobbed. The ship heeled to tack, and he lost
her. Frantically, he swung the end of the scope back and
forth.

Eyes wide, he stomped with his foot on the deck, and he
bellowed, "Bloodaxe! Bloodaxe! Up here! Hurry!"
He swung toward the helmsman and shouted that he
should go back and direct the ship toward the bank.
Grimolfsson was taken aback at first by Clemens'
vehemence. Then he slitted his eyes, shook his head, and
growled out a no.
"I order you to!" Clemens screamed, forgetting that the
helmsman did not understand English. "That's my wife!
Livy! My beautiful Livy, as she was when she was twenty-
five! Brought back from the dead!"
Someone rumbled behind him, and Clemens whirled to
see a blond head with a shorn-off left ear appear on the
level of the deck. Then Erik Bloodaxe's broad shoulders,
massive chest and huge biceps came into view, followed by
pillarlike thighs as he came on up the ladder. He wore a
green-and-black checked towel, a broad belt holding
several chert knives and a holster for his ax. This was of
steel, broadbladed and with an oak handle. It was, as far
as Clemens knew, unique on this planet, where stone and
wood were the only materials for weapons.
He frowned as he looked over the river. He turned to
Clemens and said, "What is it, sma-skitligr? You made me
miscue when you screamed like Thor's bride on her wed-
ding night. I lost a cigar to Toki Njalsson."
He took the ax from its holster and swung it. The sun
glinted off the blue steel. "You had better have a good
reason for disturbing me. I have killed many men for far
less."
Clemens' face was pale beneath the tan, but this time it
was not caused by Erik's threat. He glared, the wind-
ruffled hair, staring eyes and aquiline profile making him
look like a kestrel falcon.
"To hell with you and your ax!" he shouted. "I just saw
my wife, Livy, there on the right bank! I want ... I de-
mand . . . that you take me ashore so I can be with her
again! Oh, God, after all these years, all this hopeless
searching! It'll only take a minute! You can't deny me this;
you'd be inhuman to do so!"

The ax whistled and sparkled. The Norseman grinned.
"All this fuss for a woman? What about her?" And he
gestured at a small dark woman standing near the great
pedestal and tube of the rocket-launcher.
Clemens became even paler. He said, "Temah is a fine
girl! I'm very fond of her! But she's not Livy!"
"Enough of this," Bloodaxe said. "Do you take me to
be as big a fool as you? If I put into shore, we'd be caught
between the ground and river forces, ground like meal in
Freyr's mill. Forget about her."
Clemens screamed like a falcon and launched himself,
arms out and flapping, at the Viking. Erik brought the flat
of the ax against Clemens' head and knocked him to the
deck. For several minutes, Clemens lay on his back, eyes
open and staring at the sun. Blood seeped from the roots
of the hair falling down over his face. Then he got to all-
fours and began to vomit.
Erik gave an impatient order. Temah, looking sidewise
with fright at Erik, dipped a bucket at the end of a rope in-
to The River. She threw the water over Clemens, who sat
up and then wobbled to his feet. Temah drew another
bucket and washed off the deck.
Clemens snarled at Erik. Erik laughed and said, "Little
coward, you've been talking too big for too long! Now,
you know what happens when you talk to Erik Bloodaxe
as if he were a thrall. Consider yourself lucky that I did
not kill you."
Clemens spun away from Erik, staggered to the railing,
and began to climb upon it. "Livy!"
Swearing, Bloodaxe ran after him, seized him around
the waist and dragged him back. Then he pushed Clemens
so heavily that Clemens fell on the deck again.
"You're not deserting me at this time!" Erik said. "I
need you to find that iron mine!"
"There isn ..." Clemens said and then closed his mouth
tightly. Let the Norseman find out that he did not know
where the mine—if there was a mine—was located, and he
would be killed on the spot.
"Moreover," Erik continued cheerfully, "after we find

the iron, I may need you to help us toward the Polar
Tower, although I think I can get there just by following
The River. But you have much knowledge that I need.
And I can use that frost giant, Joe Miller."
"Joe!" Clemens said in a thick voice. He tried to get
back onto his feet. "Joe Miller! Where's Joe? He'll kill
you!"
The ax cut the air above Clemens' head. "You will tell
Joe nothing of this, do you hear? I swear by Odin's blind
socket, I will get to you and kill you before he can put a
hand on me. Do you hear?"
Clemens got to his feet and swayed for a minute. Then
he called, in a louder voice, "Joe! Joe Miller!"

2
A voice from below the poopdeck muttered. It was so
deep that it made the hairs on the backs of men's necks
rise even after hearing it for the thousandth time.
The stout bamboo ladder creaked beneath a weight,
creaked so loudly it could be heard above the song of wind
through leather ropes, flapping of membranous sails, grind
of wooden joints, shouts of crew, hiss of water against the
hull.
The head that rose above the edge of the deck was even
more frightening than the inhumanly deep voice. It was as
large as a half pony of beer and was all bars and arches
and shelves and flying buttresses of bone beneath a
pinkish and loose skin. Bone circled the eyes, small-
seeming and dark blue. The nose was inappropriate to the
rest of his features, since it should have been flat-bridged
and flaring-nostriled. Instead, it was the monstrous and
comical travesty of the human nose that the proboscis
monkey shows to a laughing world. In its lengthy shadow
was a long upper lip, like a chimpanzee's or comic-strip
Irishman's. The lips were thin and protruded, shoved out
by the convex jaws beneath.
His shoulders made Erik Bloodaxe's look like pretzels.
Ahead of him he pushed a great paunch, a balloon trying
to rise from the body to which it was anchored. His legs
and arms seemed short, they were so out of proportion to
the long trunk. The juncture of thigh and body was level
with Sam Clemens' chin, and his arms, extended, could
hold, and had held, Clemens out at arm's length in the air
for an hour without a tremor.
He wore no clothes nor did he need them for modesty's
sake, though he had not known modesty until taught by
Homo sapiens. Long rusty-red hair, thicker than a man's,
less dense than a chimpanzee's, was plastered to the body
by his sweat. The skin beneath the hairs was the dirty-pink
of a blond Nordic.

He ran a hand the size of an unabridged dictionary
through the wavy, rusty-red hair that began an inch above
the eyes and slanted back rapidly. He yawned and showed
huge human-seeming teeth.
"I vath thleeping," he rumbled, "I vath dreaming of
Earth, of klravulthithmengbhabajving—vhat you call mam-
mothth. Thothe vere the good old dayth."
He shuffled forward, then stopped. "Tham! Vhat hap-
pened! You're bleeding! You look thick!"
Bellowing for his guards, Erik Bloodaxe stepped
backwards from the titanthrop. "Your friend went mad!
He thought he'd seen his wife—for the thousandth
time—and he attacked me because I wouldn't take him in
to the bank to her. Tyr's testicles, Joe! You know how
many times he's thought he saw that woman, and how
many times we stopped, and how many tunes it always
turned out to be a woman who looked something like his
woman but wasn't!
"This tune, I said no! Even if it had been his woman, I
would have said no! We'd be putting our heads in the
wolfs mouth!"
Erik crouched, ax lifted, ready to swing at the giant.
Shouts came from middeck, and a big redhead with a flint
ax ran up the ladder. The helmsman gestured for him to
leave. The redhead, seeing Joe Miller so belligerent, did
not hesitate to retreat.
"Vhat you thay, Tham?" Miller said. "Thyould I tear
him apart?"
Clemens held his head in both hands and said, "No.
He's right, I suppose. I don't really know if she was Livy.
Probably just a German hausfrau. I don't know!"
He groaned. "I don't know! Maybe it was her!"
Fishbone horns blared, and a huge drum on the mid-
deck thundered. Sam Clemens said, "Forget about this,
Joe, until we get through the straits—if we do get through!
If we're to survive, we'll have to fight together. Later . . ."
"You alvayth thay later, Tham, but there never ith a
later. Vhy?"
"If you can't figure that out, Joe, you're as dumb as you
look!" Clemens snapped.

Tearshields glinted in Joe's eyes, and his bulging cheeks
became wet.
"Every time you get thcared, you call me dumb," he
said. "Vhy take it out on me? Vhy not on the people that
thcare you the thyit outa you, vhy not on Bloodakthe?"
"I apologize, Joe," Clemens said. "Out of the mouths of
babes and apemen. . . . You're not so dumb, you're
pretty smart. Forget it, Joe. I'm sorry."
Bloodaxe swaggered up to them but kept out of Joe's
reach. He grinned as he swung his ax. "There shall soon
be a meeting of the metal!" And then he laughed and said,
"What am I saying? Battle any more is the meeting of
stone and wood, except for my star-ax, of course! But
what does that matter? I have grown tired of these six
months of peace. I need the cries of war, the whistling
spear, the chunk of my sharp steel biting into flesh, the
spurt of blood. I have become as impatient as a penned-up
stallion who smells a mare in heat; I would mate with
Death."
"Bull!" Joe Miller said. "You're jutht ath bad ath Tham
in your vay. You're thcared, too, but you cover it up vith
your big mouth."
"I do not understand your mangled speech," Bloodaxe
said. "Apes should not attempt the tongue of man."
"You underthtand me all right," Joe said.
"Keep quiet, Joe," Clemens said. He looked upRiver.
Two miles away, the plains on each side of The River
dwindled away as the mountains curved inward to create
straits not more than a quarter mile wide. The water
boiled at the bottom of the cliffs, which were perhaps
3,000 feet high. On the cliff-tops, on both sides, unidenti-
fied objects glittered in the sun.
A half mile below the straits, thirty galleys had formed
three crescents. And, aided by the swift current and sixty
oars each, they were speeding toward the three intruders.
Clemens viewed them through his telescope and then
said, "Each has about forty warriors aboard and two
rocket-launchers. We're in a hell of a trap. And our own
rockets have been in storage so long, the powder's likely to

be crystallized. They'll go off in the tubes and blow us to
kingdom come.
"And those things on top of the cliffs. Apparatus for
projecting Greek fire?"
A man brought the king's armor: a triple-layered leather
helmet with imitation leather wings and a nosepiece, a
leather cuirass, leather breeches and a shield. Another
man brought a bundle of spears: yew shafts and flint tips.
The rocket crew, all women, placed a projectile in the
swivable launching tube. The rocket was six feet long, not
counting the guide stick, built of bamboo, and looked ex-
actly like a Fourth of July rocket. Its warhead contained
twenty pounds of black gunpowder in which were many
tiny chips of stone: shrapnel.
Joe Miller, the deck creaking beneath his 800 pounds,
went below to get his armor and weapons. Clemens put on
a helmet and slung a shield over his shoulder, but he
would not use a cuirass or leggings. Although he feared
wounds, he was even more frightened of drowning because
of the heavy armor if he fell into The River.
Clemens thanked whatever gods there were that he had
been lucky enough to fall in with Joe Miller. They were
blood-brothers now—even if Clemens had fainted during
the ceremony, which demanded mingling of blood and
some even more painful and repulsive acts. Miller was to
defend him, and Clemens was to defend Miller to the
death. So far, the titanthrop had done all the battling. But
then he was more than big enough for two.
Bloodaxe's dislike of Miller was caused by envy.
Bloodaxe fancied himself as the world's greatest fighter
and yet knew that Miller would have no more trouble
dispatching him in combat than Miller would with a dog.
And with a small dog at that.
Erik Bloodaxe gave his battle orders, which were
transmitted to the other two ships by flashes of sunlight off
obsidian mirrors. The ships would keep sails up and try to
steer between the galleys. This would be difficult because
a ship might have to change course to avoid ramming and

so lose the wind. Also, each ship would thrice be subjected
to crossfire.
"The wind's with them," Clemens said. "Their rockets
will have more range until we're among them."
"Teach your grandmother to suck . . ." Bloodaxe said
and stopped.
Some bright objects on the cliff-tops had left their posi-
tions and now were swooping through the air in a path that
would bring them close above the Vikings. The Norsemen
shouted with bewilderment and alarm, but Clemens
recognized them as gliders. In as few words as possible, he
explained to Bloodaxe. The king started to relay the in-
formation to the other Vikings but had to stop because the
lead galleys fired off the first volley of rockets. Wobbling,
trailing thick black smoke, ten rockets arced toward the
three sailships. These changed course as quickly as possi-
ble, two almost colliding. Some of the rockets almost
struck the masts or the hulls, but none hit and all splashed
unexploded, falling into The River.
By then the first of the gliders made its pass. Slim-
fuselaged, long-winged, with black Maltese crosses on the
sides of its slim and silvery fuselage, it dived at a 45-
degree angle toward the Dreyrugr. The Norsemen archers
bent their yew bows and, at a command from the chief
archer, loosed their shafts.
The glider swooped low over the water, several arrows
sticking out of the fuselage, and it settled down for a land-
ing on The River. It had failed to drop its bombs on the
Dreyrugr. They were somewhere below the surface of The
River.
But now other gliders were coming in at all three ships,
and the enemy lead galleys had loosed another flight of
rockets. Clemens glanced at their own rocket-launcher.
The big blond crew-women were swiveling the tube under
the command of small dark Temah, but she was not ready
to touch the fuse. The Dreyrugr was not yet within range
of the nearest galley.
For a second, everything was as if suspended in a
photograph: the two gliders, their wingtips only two feet
apart, pulling up out of the dive and the small black

bombs dropping toward the decks of their targets, the ar-
rows halfway toward the gliders, the German rockets half-
way toward the Viking ships, on the downcurve of their
arcs.
Clemens felt the sudden push of wind behind him, a
whistling, an explosion as the sails took the full impact of
air and rolled the ship over sharply on its longitudinal ax-
is. There was a tearing sound as if the fabric of the world
were being ripped apart; a cracking as if great axes had
slammed into the masts.
The bombs, the gliders, the rockets, the arrows were
lifted upward and backwards, turned upside down. The
sails and masts left the ship, as if they had been launched
from tubes, and soared away. The ship, released from the
push of sail, rolled back to horizontal from an almost 90-
degree angle to The River. Clemens was saved from flying
off the deck in the first slam of wind only because the
titanthrop had seized the wheel with one hand and
clutched him with the other. The helmsman had also
clung to the wheel. The rocket crew, their shrieks carried
upRiver by the wind, mouths open, hair whipping, flew
like birds from the ship, soared and then splashed into The
River. The rocket tube tore loose from its pedestal and
followed them.
Bloodaxe had grabbed the railing with one hand and
kept hold of his precious steel weapon with the other.
While the ship rocked back and forth, he managed to stick
the axhandle in the holster and then to cling to the railing
with both hands. It was well for him that he did, because
the wind, screaming like a woman falling off a cliff, be-
came even more powerful and within a few seconds, a hot
blast tore at the ship, and Clemens was as deafened and as
seared as if he were standing near a rocket blast.
A great swell of Riverwater lifted the ship high.
Clemens opened his eyes and then screamed but could not
hear his own voice because of his stunned ears.
A wall of dirty brown water, at least fifty feet high, was
racing around the curve of the valley between four and
five miles away. He wanted to close his eyes again but
could not. He continued to gaze with his lids rigid until the

elevated sea was a mile away. Then he could make out the
individual trees, the giant pines, oaks, and yews scattered
along the front of the wave, and, as it got closer, pieces of
bamboo and pine houses, a roof somehow still intact, a
shattered hull with a half mast, the sperm-whale-sized,
dark-gray body of a Riverdragon fish, plucked from the
five-hundred-feet depths of The River.
Terror numbed him. He wanted to die to escape this
particular death. But he could not, and so he watched with
frozen eyes and congealed mind as the ship, instead of
being drowned and smashed beneath hundreds of thou-
sands of gallons of water, rose up and up and up on the
slope of the wave, up and up, the dirty brown wreckage-
strewn cliff towering above, always threatening to ava-
lanche down upon the ship, and the sky above, now
turned from bright noon-blue to gray.
Then they were on the top, poised for a downward slide,
rocked, dipped, and went down toward the trough.
Smaller, but still huge waves fell over the boat. A body
landed on the deck near Clemens, a body catapulted from
the raging waters. Clemens stared at it with only a spark of
comprehension. He was too iced with terror to feel
anymore; he had reached the limits.
And so he stared at Livy's body, smashed on one side
but untouched on the other side! It was Livy, his wife,
whom he had seen on that Riverbank.
Another wave that almost tore nun and the titanthrop
loose struck the deck. The helmsman screamed as he lost
his grip and followed the woman's corpse overboard.
The boat, sliding upward from the depths of the trough,
turned to present its broadside to the wave. But the boat
continued to soar upward, though it tilted so that Miller
and Clemens were hanging from the stump of the wheel's
base as if they were dangling from a tree trunk on the face
of a mountain. Then the boat rolled back to horizontal
position as it raced down the next valley. Bloodaxe had
lost his grip and was shot across the deck and would have
gone over the other side if the ship had not righted itself in
time. Now he clung to the port railing.
On top of the third wave, the Dreyrugr sped slantwise

down the mountain of water. It struck the broken forepart
of another vessel, shuddered, and Bloodaxe's grip was
torn loose by the impact. He spun along the railing, hit the
other railing on the edge of the poopdeck, shattered it, and
went on over the edge and below to the middeck.

3
Not until morning of the next day did Sam Clemens
thaw out of his shock. The Dreyrugr had somehow ridden
out the great waves long enough to go slanting across the
plains on the shallower but still rough waters. It had been
shot past hills and through a narrow pass into a small
canyon at the base of the mountain. And, as the waters
subsided from beneath it, the boat had settled with a
crash into the ground.
The crew lay in terror thick as cold mud while The
River and the wind raged and the sky remained the color
of chilling iron. Then the winds ceased. Rather, the
downRiver winds stopped, and the normal soothing wind
from upRiver resumed.
The five survivors on deck began to stir and to ask
questions. Sam felt as if he could barely force the words
out through a numbed mouth. Stammering, he told them
of the flash he had seen in the sky fifteen minutes before
the winds struck. Somewhere down the valley, maybe two
hundred miles away, a giant meteorite had struck. The
winds created by the heat of passage through the air and
by the displacement of air by the meteorite had generated
those giant waves. Terrible as they were, they must have
been pygmies compared to those nearer the point of im-
pact. Actually, the Dreyrugr was in the outer edge of the
fury.
"It had quit being mad and was getting downright jovial
when we met it," Sam said.
Some of the Norse got unsteadily to their feet and tot-
tered across the deck. Some stuck their heads out of the
hatches. Bloodaxe was hurting from his roll across the
deck, but he managed to roar, "Everybody belowdecks!
There will be many more great waves much worse than this
one, there's no telling how many!"
Sam did not like Bloodaxe, to put it mildly, yet he had
to admit that the Norwegian was bright enough when it

came to the ways of water. He himself had supposed that
the first waves would be the last.
The crew lay down in the hold wherever they could find
space and something stable to hang onto, and they waited,
but not for long. The earth rumbled and shook, and then
The River struck the pass with a hiss like a fifty-foot-high
cat, followed by a bellow. Borne upward by the flood
pouring through the pass, the Dreyrugr rocked and spun
around and around as it rocked. Sam turned cold. He was
sure that if there had been daylight, he and the others
would look as grayblue as corpses.
Up the boat went, occasionally scraping against the
Walls of the canyon. Just as Sam was about to swear that
the Dreyrugr had reached the top of the canyon and was
going to be carried over its front in a cataract, the boat
dropped. It sank swiftly, or so it seemed, while the waters
poured out through the pass almost as quickly as they had
entered. There was a crash, followed by the heavy
breathing of men and women, a groan here and there, the
dripping of water, and the far-away roar of the receding
river.
It was not over yet. There was more waiting in cold
numb terror until the great mass of water would rush back
to fill the spaces from which it had been displaced by the
blazing many hundreds of thousands of tons mass of the
meteorite. They shivered as if encased in ice, although the
air was far warmer than it had even been at this time of
night. And, for the first time in the twenty years on this
planet, it did not rain at night.
Before the waters struck again, they felt the shake and
grumble of earth. There was a vast hiss and a roar, and
again the boat rose up, spun, bumped against the walls of
the canyon and then sank. This time, the ship did not
strike the ground so hard, probably, Sam thought, because
the boat had hit a thick layer of mud.
"I don't believe in miracles," Sam whispered, "but this is one. We've no business being alive."
Joe Miller, who had recovered more swiftly than the
rest, went out on a half-hour scouting trip. He returned

with the naked body of a man. His burden was, however,
alive. He had blond hair under the mud-streaks, a
handsome face and blue-gray eyes. He said something in
German to Clemens and then managed to smile after he
had been deposited gently on the deck.
"I found him in hith glider," Joe said. "Vhat vath left of
it, that ith. There'th a number of corptheth outthide thith
canyon. Vhat you vant to do vith him?"
"Make friends with him," Clemens croaked. "His peo-
ple are gone; this area is cleaned out."
He shuddered. The image of Livy's body placed on the
deck like a mocking gift, the wet hair plastered over one
side of her smashed face, the one dark eye staring darkly
at him, was getting more vivid and more painful. He felt
like sobbing but could not and was glad of it. Weeping
would make him fall apart into a cone of ashes. Later,
when he had the strength to stand it, he would weep. So
near. ...
The blond man sat up on the deck. He shivered uncon-
trollably and said, in British English, "I'm cold."
Miller went belowdecks and brought up dried fish,
acorn bread, bamboo tips and cheese. The Vikings had
stored food to eat when they were in hostile areas where
they were forbidden to use their grails.
"That thtupid ath, Bloodakthe, ith thtill alive," Miller
said. "He'th got thome broken ribth and he'th a meth of
bruitheth and cutth. But hith big mouth ith in perfect
vorking order. Vouldn't you know it?"
Clemens began crying. Joe Miller wept with him and
blew his huge proboscis.
"There," he said, "I feel much better. I never been tho
thcared in all my life. Vhen I thaw that vater, like all the
mammothth in the vorld thtampeding towardth uth, I
thought, Good-bye Joe. Good-bye, Tham. I'll vake up
thomevhere along The River in a new body, but I'll never
thee you again, Tham. Only I vath too terrified to feel
thad about it. Yethuth, I vath thcared!"
The young stranger introduced himself. He was Lothar
von Richthofen, glider pilot, captain of the Luftwaffe of

his Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Alfred the First of New
Prussia.
"We've passed a hundred New Prussias in the last ten
thousand miles," Clemens said. "All so small you couldn't
stand in the middle of one and heave a brick without it
landing in the middle of the next. But most of them
weren't as belligerent as yours. They'd let us land and
charge our grails, especially after we'd shown them what
we had to trade for use of the stones."
"Trade?"
"Yes. We didn't trade goods, of course, but all the
freighters of old Earth couldn't carry enough to last out a
fraction of The River. We traded ideas. For one thing, we
show these people how to build pool tables and how to
make a hair-setting spray from fish glue, deodorized."
The Kaiser of this area had been, on Earth, a Count von
Waldersee, a German field marshal, born 1832, died
1904.
Clemens nodded, saying, "I remember reading about
his death in the papers and having great satisfaction be-
cause I had outlived another contemporary. That was one
of the few genuine and free pleasures of life. But, since
you know how to fly, you must be a twentieth-century
German, right?"
Lothar von Richthofen gave a brief summary of his life.
He had flown a fighter plane for Germany in the
Weltkrieg. His brother had been the greatest of aces on
either side during that war.
"World War I or II?" Clemens said. He had met enough
twentieth-centurians to know some facts—and fan-
cies—about events after his death in 1910.
Von Richthofen added more details. He had been in
World War I. He himself had fought under his brother and
had accounted for forty Allied planes. In 1922, while
flying an American film actress and her manager from
Hamburg to Berlin, the plane had crashed and he had
died.
"The luck of Lothar von Richthofen deserted me," he
said. "Or so I thought then."

He laughed.
"But here I am, twenty-five years old in body again, and
I missed the sad things about growing old, when women
no longer look at you, when wine makes you weep instead
of laugh and makes your mouth sour with the taste of
weakness and every day is one day nearer to death.
"And my luck held out again when that meteorite
struck. My glider lost its wings at the first blow of wind,
but instead of falling, I floated in my fuselage, turning
over and over, dropping, rising again, falling, until I was
deposited as lightly as a sheet of paper upon a hill. And
when the backflood came, the fuselage was borne by the
water and I was nuzzled gently against the foot of the
mountain. A miracle!"
 "A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring
one time in a billion," Clemens said. "You think a giant
meteor caused that flood?"
"I saw its flash, the trail of burning air. It must have
crashed far away, fortunately for us."
They climbed down from the ship and slogged through
the thick mud to the canyon entrance. Joe Miller heaved
logs that a team of draft horses would have strained to
pull. He shoved aside others, and the three went down
through the foothills and to the plains. Others followed
them.
They were silent now. The land had been scoured free
of trees except for the great irontrees. So deeply rooted
were these that most still stood upright. Moreover, where
the mud had not settled, there was grass. It was a testi-
mony to the toughness and steadfast-rootedness of the grass
that the millions of tons of water had not been able to rip
out the topsoil.
Here and there was the flotsam left by the backflood.
Corpses of men and women, broken timber, towels, grails,
a dugout, uprooted pines and oaks and yews.
The great mushroom-shaped grailstones, spaced a mile
apart along the banks on both sides, were also unbroken
and unbent, although many were almost buried in mud.
"The rains will eventually take care of the mud,"
Clemens said. "The land slopes toward The River." He

avoided the corpses. They filled him with a prickly loath-
ing. Besides, he was afraid that he might see Livy's body
again. He did not think he could stand it; he would go
mad.
"One thing sure," Clemens said. "There'll be nobody
between us and the meteorite. We'll have first claim on it,
and then it'll be up to us to defend all that treasure of iron
from the wolves that will come loping on its scent.
"Would you like to join up? If you stick with me, you'll
have an airplane some day, not just a glider."
Sam explained a little about his Dream. And he told a
little about Joe Miller's story of the Misty Tower.
"It's only possible with a great deal of iron," he said.
"And much hard work. These Vikings aren't capable of
helping me build a steamboat. I need technical knowledge
they don't have. But I was using them to get me to a possi-
ble source of iron. I had hoped that there might be enough
ore from which Erik's ax was made for my purpose. I used
their greed for the metal, and also Miller's story, to launch
them on this expedition.
"Now, we don't have to search. We know where there
must be more than enough. All we have to do is dig it up,
melt it, refine it, shape it into the forms we need. And pro-
tect it. I won't string you along with a tale of easy ac-
complishment. It may take years before we can complete
the boat, and it'll be damn hard work doing it."
Lothar's face blazed with a spark caught from Clemens'
few words. "It's a noble, magnificent dream!" he said.
"Yes, I'd like to join you, I'll pledge my honor to follow
you until we storm Misty Tower! On my word as a gen-
tleman and officer, on the blood of the barons of
Richthofen!"
"Just give me your word as a man," Sam said dryly.
"What a strange—indeed, unthinkable—trio we
make!" Lothar said. "A gigantic subhuman, who must
have died at least 100,000 years before civilization. A
twentieth-century Prussian baron and aviator. A great
American humorist born in 1835. And our crew—"
Clemens raised his thick eyebrows at the our—"tenth-

century Vikings!"
"A sorry lot now," Sam said, watching Bloodaxe and
the others plow through the mud. All were bruised from
head to foot and many limped. "I don't feel so well myself.
Have you ever watched a Japanese tenderize a dead oc-
topus? I know how the octopus feels now. By the way, I
was more than just a humorist, you know. I was a man of
letters."
"Ah, forgive me!" Lothar said. "I've hurt your feelings!
No offense! Let me salve your injuries, Mr. Clemens, by
telling you that when I was a boy, I laughed many times
reading your books. And I regard your Huckleberry Finn
as a great book. Although I must admit I did not care for
the way you ridiculed the aristocracy in your Connecticut
Yankee. Still, they were English, and you are an
American."
Erik Bloodaxe decided that they were too battered and
weary to start the job of getting the ship down to The
River that day. They would charge their grails at evening,
eat, sleep, eat breakfast and then begin the backbreaking
work.
They went back to the ship, took their grails from the
hold and set them on the depressions on the flat top of a
grailstone. As the sun touched the peaks of the mountains
to the west, the men awaited the roar and the hot, blue
flash from the stones. The electrical discharge would
power the energy-matter converters within the false bot-
toms of the grail and, on opening the lids, the men would
find cooked meats, vegetables, bread and butter, fruit,
tobacco, dreamgum, liquor or mead.
But as darkness settled over the valley, the grailstones
remained silent and cold. Across The River, fire sprang up
momentarily from the grailstones there, and a faint roar
reached them.
But the stones on the west bank, for the first time in the
twenty years since the day of Resurrection, did not func-
tion.

4
The men and women felt as if God had failed them. The
three-times-a-day offering of the stones had come to seem
as natural as the rising of the sun. It was some time before
they could ease the sickness in their stomachs to eat the
last of the fish, sprouts, and cheese.
Clemens was in a blue funk for a while. But von
Richthofen began talking of the necessity of ferrying the
grails to the other side so they could eat in the morning.
Presently Clemens got up and talked to Bloodaxe. The
Norwegian was in a mood even fouler than usual, but he
finally admitted that action must be taken. Joe Miller, the
German, and a big redheaded Swede named Toke
Kroksson trudged back up to the ship and then carried
some oars back down. These three, with Clemens, took
the grails across in the dugout; and Toke and Joe Miller
paddled the dugout back. Miller, Clemens and von
Richthofen settled down to sleep on top of a grailstone. It
was clean, since the electrical discharge had burned off all
the mud.
"We'll have to get under the stone when the rains
come," Clemens said. He lay on his back, his hands under
his head, and looked up at the night sky. It was no ter-
restrial sky, this blaze of twenty thousand stars greater
than Venus in her glory and shimmering filaments ten-
tacling out from glittering gas clouds. Some of the stars
were so bright that they could be seen as pale phantoms
even at noon.
"The meteorite must have smashed some of the
grailstones on the west bank," Sam Clemens said. "And so
it broke the circuit. My God, what a circuit! There must be
at least twenty million stones hooked together, if the cal-
culations of some are correct."
"There will be a terrible conflict raging up and down
The River," Lothar said. "The west bankers will attack
the east bankers so they can charge their grails. What a

war! There must be about thirty-five to thirty-seven billion
people in this Rivervalley. All battling to the death for
food."
"The hell of it ith," Joe Miller said, "that if half get kilt
and tho there'th enough room on the grailstoneth, it von't
do no good. Tventy-four hourth later, the dead vill all be
alive again, and it'll all thtart over again."
Sam said, "I'm not so sure. I think it's been established
that the stones have something to do with the resurrec-
tions. And if half of them are out of commission, there
may be a considerable cut in production on the Lazarus
line. This meteorite is a saboteur from the skies."
"I've thought for a long time that this world, and our
resurrection, are not the work of supernatural beings,"
von Richthofen said. "Have you heard the wild tale that's
been going up and down The River? There's a story that
one man woke up before Resurrection Day and found
himself in a very weird place. There were millions of
bodies around him, floating in the air, nude men, women
and children, their heads shaved, all slowly rotating un-
der some invisible force. This man, an Englishman named
Perkin, or Burton, some say, had died on Earth around
1890. He got loose but was intercepted by two be-
ings—human—who put him back to sleep. Then, he
awoke, like the rest of us, on the banks of The River.
"Whoever is behind all this isn't infallible. They made a
mistake with Burton. He got a glimpse into pre-
Resurrection, a stage somewhere between our death on
Earth and preparation for life on this world. It sounds fan-
tastic, like a wish-fulfillment story. But then again. . . ."
"I've heard it," Sam Clemens said. He thought of telling
about seeing Burton's face through the telescope just
before he spotted Livy's. But the pain of thinking about
her was too much for him.
He sat up and cursed and shook his fist at the stars and
then began to weep. Joe Miller, squatting behind him,
reached a gigantic hand out and touched him softly on
the shoulder. Von Richthofen, embarrassed, looked the

other way. Presently, he said, "I'll be glad when our grails
are charged. I'm itching for a smoke."
Clemens laughed and dried his tears and said, "I don't
cry easily. But I've gotten over being ashamed about it
when I do.
"It's a sad world, just as sad, in most ways, as the old
Earth. Yet we have our youthful bodies again, we don't
have to work for food or worry about paying bills, making
our women pregnant, catching diseases. And if we're
killed we rise up the following day, whole and hearty, al-
though thousands of miles from where we died.
"But it's nothing like what the preachers said it would
be. Which isn't, of course, surprising. And maybe it's just
as well. Who'd want to fly around on aerodynamically
unstable wings or stand around all day playing harps badly
and screeching out hosannas?"
Lothar laughed and said, "Ask any Chinese or Indian
coolie if this isn't a hell of a better world than the last
world. It's just us spoiled modern Westerners who
grumble and look for first and latest causes. We didn't
know much about the operation of our Earthly cosmos,
and we know less about this. But we're here, and we may
eventually find out who put us here and why. Meanwhile,
- as long as there are beautiful and willing women—and
there are—cigars, dreamgum, wine and a good fight, who
cares? I'll enjoy this valley of bright shadows until the
good things of life are once more taken from me. Lust to
lust until it's dust to dust."
They were silent after a while, and Clemens could not
get to sleep until just before the rains. He got down under
the mushroom until the downpour ceased. Back on top of
the stone, he shivered and turned for several hours, al-
though he was covered with long heavy towels. Dawn
came with Miller's ponderous hand shaking him. Hastily,
he climbed down off the stone and got a safe distance from
it. Five minutes later, the stone gave forth a blue flame
that leaped thirty feet into the air and roared like a lion.
At the same time, the stones across the river bellowed.

Clemens looked at Lothar. "Somebody repaired the
break."
Lothar said, "I've got goose pimples. Who is
somebody?" He was silent for a while, but before they had
reached the west bank, he was laughing and chattering like
a guest at a cocktail party. Too cheerful, Clemens thought.
"They've never shown their hand before, that I know
of," Sam said. "But this tune I guess they had to."

5
The next five days were occupied in getting the ship
down to the bank. Two weeks more were spent in repair-
ing the Dreyrugr. All that time a watch was kept, but no
one came into the area. When the ship was finally
launched, still minus masts and sails, and was rowed down
The River, there was not a live human in sight.
The crew, accustomed to seeing the plains thronged
with men and women, were uneasy. The silence was un-
nerving. There were no animals on this world except for
the fish in The River and earthworms in the soil, but the
humans had always made enough noise.
"The hyenas'll be here soon enough," Clemens said to
Bloodaxe. "That iron is far more precious than gold ever
was on Earth. You want battle? You'll get enough down
your throat to make you vomit."
The Norseman, swinging his ax, winced at the pain in
his ribs. "Let them come! They'll know they've been in a
fight to bring joy to the hearts of the Valkyrie!"
"Bull!" Joe Miller said. Sam smiled but walked to a
position behind the titanthrop. Bloodaxe was afraid of
only one being in the world, but he might lose his never
easily controlled temper and go berserk. However, he
needed Miller, who was worth twenty human warriors.
The ship traveled steadily for two days during the sunlit
hours. At night, one man steered and the crew slept. Early
in the evening of the third day, the titanthrop, Clemens
and von Richthofen were sitting on the foredeck, smoking
cigars and sipping at the whiskey their grails had given
them at the last stop.
"Why do you call him Joe Miller?" Lothar asked.
"His real name is a rattling jawbreaker, longer than any
technical term of a German philosopher," Clemens said.
"I couldn't pronounce it when I first met him, I never did.
After he learned enough English to tell me a joke—he was
so eager he could hardly wait—I decided to call him Joe

Miller. He told me a tale so hoary I couldn't believe it. I
knew it'd been around a long time; I first heard it, in a
slightly different form, when I was a boy in Hannibal,
Missouri. And I was still hearing it, much to my disgust,
for the hundred thousand'th time, when I was an old man.
But to have to listen to that story from the lips of a man
who'd died one hundred thousand years, maybe a million,
before I was born!"
"And the story?"
"Well, there was this traveling hunter who'd been track-
ing a wounded deer all day. Night came and with it a
violent storm. Seeing the light of a fire, the hunter stopped
off at a cave. He asked the old medicine man who lived in
it if he could spend the night there. And the old medicine
man said, 'Sure, but we're pretty crowded here. You'll
have to sleep with my daughter.' Need I go any further?"
"Tham didn't laugh," Joe rumbled. "Thometimeth I
think he ain't got a thenthe of humor."
Clemens tweaked Joe's projectile-shaped nose affec-
tionately. He said, "Thometimeth I think you're right. But
actually I'm the most humorous man in the world because
I'm the most sorrowful. Every laugh is rooted in pain."
He puffed on his cigar for a while and stared at the
shore. Just before dusk, the ship had entered the area
where the last of the intense heat from the meteorite had
struck. Aside from the few irontrees, everything had been
whistled off in a shock of searing flame. The irontrees had
given up their huge leaves to the flames, and even the
enormously resistant bark had burned off and the wood
beneath, harder than granite, had become charred.
Moreover, the blast had tilted or leveled many of these,
snapping them off at the base. The grailstones had been
blackened and were out of plumb but had retained their
shape.
Finally, he said, "Lothar, now is as good a time as any
for you to learn something of why we're on this quest. Joe
can tell it in his way; I'll explain anything you don't un-
derstand. It's a strange tale, but no stranger, actually, than
anything that's happened here since we all woke up from
the dead."

"I'm thirthty," Joe said. "Let me get a drink firtht."
The dark-blue eyes, shadowed in the bone rings,
focused upon the hollow of the cup. He seemed to peer
therein as if he were trying to conjure up the scenes he was
about to describe. Guttural, his tongue hitting certain con-
sonants harder than others, thus giving his English a
clanging quality, yet comical with its lisping, voice rising
up from a chest deep and resonant as the well of the Del-
phian oracle, he told of the Misty Tower.
"Thomevhere upon The River, I avoke, naked ath I am
now. I vath in a plathe that mutht be far north on thith
planet, because it vath colder and the light vath not ath
bright. There vere no humanth, yutht uth . . . uh, titan-
tropth, ath Tham callth uth. Ve had grailth, only they vere
much larcher than yourth, ath you can thee. And ve got
no beer and vithkey. Ve had never known about alcohol,
tho ve had none in our grailth. Ve drank The River vater.
"Ve thought ve vere in the plathe that you go to vhen
you die, that the . . . uh . .'. godth had given uth thith
plathe and all ve needed. Ve vere happy, ve mated and
ate and thlept and fought our enemieth. And I vould
have been happy there if it had not been for the thyip."
"He means ship," Sam said.
"That'th vhat I thaid. Thyip. Pleathe don't interrupt,
Tham. You've made me unhappy enough by telling me
that there are no godth. Even if I've theen the godth."
Lothar said, "Seen the gods?"
"Not egthactly. I thaw vhere they live. I did thee their
thyip."
Von Richthofen said, "What? What're you talking
about?"
Clemens waved his cigar. "Later. Let him talk. If you
interrupt him too much, he gets confused."
"Vhere I come from, you don't talk vhile another ith
talking. Othervithe, you get punched in the nothe."
Sam said, "With a nose as big as yours, Joe, that must
hurt."
Miller delicately stroked his proboscis.
"It ith the only vone I have, and I'm proud of it.
Novhere in thith part of the valley hath any pigmy got a

nothe like mine. Vhere I come from, your nothe indicateth
the thithe of your—vhat'th your vord for it, Tham?"
Sam choked and took the cigar from his lips.
"You were telling us of the ship, Joe."
"Yeth. No! I vath not! I hadn't gotten to it yet. But ath I
vath thaying, vun day I vath lying on the bank vatching the
fith play. I vath thinking about getting up and making a
hook and pole to catch thome. All of a thudden, I heard a
thyout. I looked up. There, coming around the bend of
The River vath thith terrible monthter.
"It vath awful. I jumped up, and I vath going to run
avay vhen I thaw it had men on itth back. They looked like
men, but vhen the monthter got clother, I thaw they were
thpindly little runtth vith the mange and no notheth to
thpeak of. I could have beat them all to death vith vone
hand, and yet they were riding thith monthter Riverthnake
like beeth on a bear'th back. Tho. . . ."
Clemens, listening, felt again as he had when he first
heard the story. He felt as if he were standing by the side
of this creature from the dawn of man. Despite the clang-
ing and lisping and halting and slow groping after words,
this Titan spoke impressively. Clemens could feel his
panic and his wonder and almost overpowering urge to
run away. Clemens could also feel the opposing urge, the
primate's curiosity, the thing that made him, if not wholly
a man, at least a near cousin. Behind the shelving brow lay
the gray pulse that would not be content just to exist but
must be fed on the shapes of unknown things, on patterns
never before seen.
So Joe Miller stayed upon the bank, though his hand
closed around the handle of the grail, ready to carry it with
him if he had to flee.
The monster floated closer. Joe began to think that it
might not be alive. But if it were not, why the great head
poised at its front as if to strike? Yet it did not look alive.
It gave a feeling of deadness. This did not mean much, of
course. Joe had seen a wounded bear pretend death con-
vincingly and then rise up and tear the arm off a fellow
hunter.

Moreover, though he had seen the hunter die, he had al-
so seen the hunter alive again, that day he awoke on the
banks with others of his kind. And if he, and Joe, too,
could come alive again, why couldn't this petrified
snakelike head lose its dead woodenness and seize him in
its teeth?
But he ignored his fears and, trembling, approached the
monster. He was a Titan, older brother to man, fresh with
the dawn and with the primate's have-to-know-what's-
going-on.
A pygmy, mangy as the others but wearing on his brow
a glass circlet with a stained-red flaming sun, beckoned to
Joe Miller. The others upon the wooden beast stood
behind the man with the glass circlet and held spears and
strange devices that Joe learned later were bows and ar-
rows. They did not seem frightened of the colossus, but
that may have been because they were so tired from their
seldom-ceasing rowing against the current that they did
not care what happened.
It took a long time for the pygmy chief to get Joe
aboard the ship. They came ashore to charge their grails
while Joe backed away from them. They ate, and Joe ate
also, but at a distance. His fellows had run for the hills,
having been also panicked by the ship. Presently seeing
that the Riversnake did not threaten Joe, they slowly ap-
proached it. The pygmies retreated to the ship.
And now the chief took a strange object from his grail
and held a glowing wire to its tip, and smoke came from it
and from the pygmy's mouth. Joe jumped at the first puff;
his fellows scattered for the foothills again. Joe wondered
if the noseless pygmies could be the brood of the dragon.
Perhaps her children took this larval form, but, like their
mother, they could breathe out fire and smoke?
"But I ain't a dummy," Joe said. "It didn't take me long
to figure out that the thmoke came from the obchect,
vhich in Englith ith a thigar. Their chief made it plain that
if I'd get on the thyip, I could thmoke the thigar. Now, I
mutht've been crathy to do tho, but I vanted to thmoke
that thigar. Maybe I thought I'd impreth my tribe, I don't
know."

He jumped on the ship, his weight causing it to tilt a lit-
tle on the port. He swung his grail to show them that if
they attacked him, he would bash their skulls in with it.
They took the hint and did not come close. The chief gave
Joe a cigar, and though Joe coughed a little and found the
taste of tobacco strange, he liked it. Moreover, when he
had drunk beer for the first time, he was entranced.
So Joe decided to go on the Riversnake's back up The
River with the pygmies. He was put to work on a mighty
sweep, and he was called Tehuti.
'Tehuti?" von Richthofen said.
"The Greek form is Thoth," Clemens said. "To the
Egyptians, he looked something like the long-beaked ibis-
god. I suppose he must also have reminded them of the ba-
boon-god, Bast, but that tremendous nose outweighed that
consideration. So, Thoth, or Tehuti, he became."
Days and nights flowed by like The River. Sometimes,
Joe became tired and wished to be put ashore. By now, he
could speak the pygmies' language, though haltingly. The
chief would agree to do as Joe wished since it was obvious
that any denial might result in the slaughter of his entire
crew. But he would speak sadly of Tehuti's education end-
ing there, just when he was doing so well. He had been a
brute, though with the face of the god of wisdom, and soon
he would be a man.
Brute? God? Man?
What were they?
The order was not quite right, the chief would say. The
correct sequence, ever upward, was brute, man and god.
Yet it was true you might see a god disguised as a beast,
and man merged insensibly from animal into deity,
balanced between the two, and now and then changed into
one or the other.
That was beyond the breadloaf-shaped brain of Tehuti.
He would squat and scowl at the nearing bank. There
would be no more cigars or beer. The people on the bank
were his kind, but they were also not his tribe, and they
might kill him. Moreover, he was beginning for the first
time to experience intellectual stimulation, and that would

cease once he was back among the titanthrops.
So he would look at the chief and blink, grin and shake
his head and tell him he was going to stay on the ship. He
took his turn at the sweep and resumed his study of the
most marvelous of all things: a tongue that knew philoso-
phy. He became fluent in their speech and began to grasp
the wonderful things the leader told him, although
sometimes it was as painful as grasping a handful of
thorns. If this or that idea eluded him, he pursued it,
caught it, swallowed it, perhaps vomited it up a score of
times. Eventually, he digested it and got some nourish-
ment from it.
The River flowed by. They rowed, always staying close
to the shore, where the current was weakest. Days and
nights, and now the sun did not climb so high in the
heavens but was a little lower at its zenith than it had been
the week before. And the air grew colder.
Sam said, "Joe and his party were getting close to the
north pole. The inclination of this planet's equator to the
plane of the ecliptic is zero. As you know, there are no
seasons; day and night are equal in length. But Joe was ap-
proaching the point where he would see the sun always
half below the horizon and half above. Or would have if it
hadn't been for the mountains."
"Yeth. It vath alvayth tvilight. I got cold, though not
ath cold ath the men. They vere thyivering their atheth
off."
"His big bulk radiates heat slower than our puny
bodies," Clemens said.
"Pleathe, pleathe! Thyould I talk or jutht keep my big
mouth thyut?"
Lothar and Sam grinned at him.
He continued. The wind grew stronger, and the air
became misty. He began to get uneasy. He wanted to turn
back, but by now he did not want to lose the respect of the
leader. He would go every inch of the way toward their
unknown goal with them.
"You didn't know where they were going?" Lothar said.
"Not egthactly. They vanted to get to the headvaterth of

The River. They thought maybe the godth lived there, and
there the godth vould admit them into the true aftervorld.
They thaid that thith vorld vathn't the true vorld. It vath a
thtage on the vay to the true vorld. Vhatever that ith."
One day, Joe heard a rumble that sounded as faintly but
yet as near as gas moving within his bowels. After a while,
as the noise became like thunder, he knew it was water
falling from immense heights.
The ship swung into a bay protected by a finger of land.
The grailstones no longer lined The River. The men would
have to catch fish and dry them. There was also a store of
bamboo tips on the ship; these had been collected in the
sunlit region for just such an eventuality.
The leader and his men prayed, and the party began
climbing a series of cataracts. Here the superhuman
strength of Tehuti-Joe Miller helped them in overcoming
obstacles. Other times, his great weight was a hindrance
and a danger.
Upward they went, wet because of the everpresent
spray. When they came to a cliff smooth as ice for a thou-
sand feet up, they despaired. Reconnoitering, they found a
rope dangling from the face of a cliff. It was formed to
towels tied together. Joe tested its strength and climbed
up, hand over hand, his feet braced against the cliff, until
he reached the top. There he turned to watch the others
follow him. The chief, first after Joe, tried much easier,
and halfway up to the top he could go no farther. Joe
pulled him and the extremely heavy weight of the rope to
the top. He did the same for each man in the party.
"Where in hell did the rope come from?" von
Richthofen said.
"Someone had prepared the way for them," Clemens
said. "Given the primitive technology of this planet, no
one could have found a way to get that rope up to the rock
around which one end of the rope was tied. Maybe a
balloon might have lifted a man up there. You could make
a balloon of Riverdragonskin or human skins, you know.
You could make hydrogen by passing steam over highly
heated charcoal in the presence of a suitable catalyst. But

in this world of scarce metal, where's the catalyst?
"Hydrogen could be made without a catalyst but at an
enormous cost in fuel. But there was no evidence of the
furnaces needed to make the hydrogen. Besides, why
would the towels be left behind, when they'd be needed
again? No, some unknown person, let's call him The
Mysterious Stranger, put that rope there for Joe and party.
Or for whoever might come along. Don't ask me who he
was or how he did it. Listen. There's more."
The party, carrying the rope, walked for several miles in
the mist-ridden twilight on a plateau. They came to
another cliff where The River broadened out above them
into a cataract. It was so wide, it seemed to Joe that there
was enough water to float the moon of Earth upon it. He
would not have been surprised to see that great silver-and-
black orb appear on the brink of the cataract far above
and hurtle down that thunder of waters and be smashed to
pieces on the rocks in the maelstrom foot.
The wind became stronger and louder; the mist, thicker.
Drops of water condensed on the towels they had now
fastened around themselves from head to foot. The cliff
before them was as mirror-smooth and perpendicular as
the one just ascended. Its top was lost in the fog; it could
be only fifty feet high or could be ten thousand. They
searched along the foot, hoping for some kind of fissured
And they found one. It was like a small door at the junc-
ture of plateau and cliff. It was so low, it forced them to
get down on hands and knees and crawl. Joe's shoulders
rubbed against the sides of the rock. But the rock was
smooth, as if the hole had been made by man and rubbed
until all roughness was gone.
The tunnel led at a slightly less than 45-degree angle
upward and through the mountain. There was no estimat-
ing its distance. When Joe came out at the other end,
however, his shoulders and hands and knees were rubbed
raw and bleeding even with the protection of towels.
"I don't understand," von Richthofen said. "It seems to
me that the mountains were shaped there to prevent men
from getting to the end of The River. Why was this tunnel
bored through solid rock to give intruders passage? And

why wasn't a tunnel placed in the first cliff?"
"A tunnel in the first cliff might have been visible to
whatever sentinels or patrols there are in that area,"
Clemens said. "But the second cliff was hidden in mist."
"That chain of white towels would be even more
outstanding," the German said.
"Maybe it was placed there not too long before Joe got
there," Clemens said.
Von Richthofen shivered.
"For Heaven'th thaketh, let me tell thith! After all, it ith
my tale."
"And a big one, too," Clemens said, looking at Joe's
huge buttocks.
"Thtickth and thotneth may break my boneth."

6
The party pushed on over another tableland for about
ten miles. They slept or tried to, ate, and began climbing.
Now, though the mountains were very steep and rough,
they were scalable. Their chief enemy was lack of oxygen.
They gasped for breath and had to halt often to rest.
By now Joe's feet were hurting him, and he was limp-
ing. He did not ask if he could rest. As long as the others
walked, so would he.
"Joe can't stay on his feet as long as a human,"
Clemens said. "All of his species suffer from flat feet.
Their weight is just too much for a biped that size. I
wouldn't be surprised if his kind became extinct on Earth
because of broken arches."
"I know one thpetthimen of Homo thapienth who'th
going to suffer from a broken nothe if he don't keep hith
nothe out of my buthineth, vhich ith telling thith thtory,"
Joe said.
They climbed until The River, broad as it was, was only
a thread below them. Much of the time they could not see
even that thread because of the clouds. Snow and ice made
climbing even more dangerous. Then they found a way
downward to another plateau and groped through the fog
against a wind that howled and beat at them.
They found themselves beside a tremendous hole in the
mountains. Out of the hole rushed The River, and on
every side except Riverward the mountain rose straight
and smooth. The hole was the only way to go. Out of it
blasted a roar so loud they could not hear each other, the
voice of a god who spoke as loud as death.
Joe Miller found a narrow ledge entering the cave high
above the waters. Joe noticed that the leader had now
dropped back behind him. After a while, the titanthrop
became aware that all of the pygmies were looking to him
as their guide and helper. When they shouted to make
themselves heard above the bellow, they called him

Tehuti. There was nothing unusual in that, but before this
he had detected overtones of jesting in their use of the
name, No more. Now he was truly their Tehuti.
Clemens interrupted again. "It was as if we called the
village idiot Jehovah or something like that. When men
have no need of gods, they mock them. But, when afraid,
they treat them with respect. Now, you might say, Thoth
was leading them into the opening into the Underworld.
"Of course, I'm only indulging in mankind's vice of
trying to make a symbol out of coincidence. If you scratch
any dog, you'll scare out a flea."
Joe Miller was breathing heavily through his grotesque
nose, and the vast chest rose and fell like a bellows.
Clearly, the reliving of that experience had aroused the old
terror, in him.
The ledge was not like the tunnel in the mountain. It
had not been prepared. It was rough, and there were gaps
in it, and sometimes it ran so high that Joe had to crawl to
squeeze between the ledge and the roof of the cavern. The
darkness blinded him as if his eyes had been plucked out.
His sense of hearing did not help him; the bellow filled his
ears. Only his touch was left to guide him, and he was so
agitated that he sometimes wondered if that were betray-
ing him. He would have quit except that, if he did, the men
behind him would not have been able to go on.
"Ve thtopped tvithe to eat and voneth to thleep," Joe
said. "Jutht vhen I vath beginning to think ve might crawl
until ve ran out of food, I thaw a grayneth ahead. It
vathn't a light. Jutht a leththening of the darkneth."
They were out of the cave, in the open air, on the side
of the mountain. Several thousand feet below them was a
sea of clouds. The sun was hidden behind the mountains,
but the sky above was not yet dark. The narrow ledge
continued, and they crawled on their bloodied hands and
knees downward now, since the ledge had narrowed to
nothing.
Trembling, they clung to the tiniest of fingerholes. A
man slipped and fell and clutched another man! Scream-
ing, both disappeared into the clouds.

The air became warmer.
"The River was giving up its heat," Clemens said. "It
not only originates at the north pole, it also empties there
after picking up heat in its serpentine wanderings over the
entire planet. The air at the north pole is cold but not
nearly as cold as that on Earth. This is all speculation, of
course."
The party came to another shelf on which they could
stand, facing the mountain, and proceed sidewise, Like
crabs. The shelf curved around the mountainside. Joe
halted. The narrow valley had widened into a great plain.
He could hear, far below, the dash of surf against rock.
Through the twilight, Joe could see the mountains
ringing the sea of the north pole. The cloud-covered
waters formed a body about sixty miles in diameter. The
clouds were thicker at the opposite end of the sea. He
didn't know why then, but Sam had explained that the
clouds hid the mouth of The River, where the warm
waters came into contact with the cold air.
Joe took a few more steps around the curve of the ledge.
And he saw the gray metal cylinder sitting on the path
before him.
For a moment, he did not understand what it was, it
looked so alien. It was so unexpected. Then it flowed into
familiar lines, and he knew it was a grail left by a man who
had come before him on this dangerous path. Some un-
known pilgrim had survived the same perils as he. Up to
that point, that is. He had put the grail down to eat. The
lid was open, and there was the stinking remnant of fish
and moldy bread within it. The pilgrim had used the grail
as a pack, perhaps hoping he might come across a
grailstone and recharge it.
Something had happened to him. He would not have
left the grail there unless he had been killed or had been so
frightened he had run away without it.
At this thought, Joe's skin chilled.
He went around the outcropping that was sitting at a
point where the ledge went around a shoulder of granite.
For a moment, his view of the sea was blocked.
He went around the outcropping—and he cried out.

The men called and asked what troubled him.
He could not tell them because the shock had taken
away his newly learned speech, and he spoke in his native
tongue.
The clouds in the middle of the sea had roiled away for
a few seconds. The top of a structure projected from the
clouds. It was cylindrical and gray, like the top of a
monster grail.
Mists rose and fell around it, now revealing, now
veiling.
Somewhere in the mountains ringing the" polar sea, a
break existed. At that moment, the low sun must have
passed this notch in the range. A ray of light fell through
the notch and struck the top of the tower.
Joe squinted his eyes and tried to see into the brightness
of the reflection.
Something round had appeared just above the top of the
tower and was settling down toward it. It was egg-shaped
and white, and it was from this that the sun was sparkling.
The next instant, as the sun passed by the notch, the
sparkle died. The tower and the object above it faded into
darkness and mist. Joe, crying out at the sight of the flying
object, stepped back. His leg struck the grail left by the
unknown pilgrim.
He swung his arms to regain his balance, but not even
his apelike agility could save him. He toppled backward,
bellowing horror as he turned over and over. Once he
glimpsed the faces of his companions, a row of dark
brown objects with the darker O's of mouths, watching his
descent to the clouds and waters beneath.
"I don't remember hitting the vater," Joe said. "I avoke
translated about tventy mileth from where Tham
Clementh vath. Thith vath a plathe vhere Northmen of the
tenth thentury A.D. lived. I had to thtart learning a new
language all over again. The little nothelethth people vere
thcared of me, but they vanted me to fight for them. Then
I met Tham, and ve became buddieth."
They were silent for a while. Joe lifted his glass to his
thin and chimpanzee-flexible lips and poured out the rest

of the liquor. Somber, the other two watched him. The
only sign of brightness about them was the glow of their
cigar ends.
Von Richthofen said, "This man who wore a glass
circlet with a sunburst. What did you say his name was?"
"I didn't."
"Well, then, what was it?"
"Ikhnaton. Tham knowth more about him than I do,
and I lived for four yearth with him. At leatht, that'th vhat
Tham thayth. But—" here Joe looked smug—"I know the
man and all Tham knowth ith a few hithtorical factth, tho-
called."

7
Von Richthofen said good night and went belowdecks.
Sam paced back and forth, stopping once to light a
cigarette for the helmsman. He wanted to sleep but could
not. Insomnia had been skewering him for years; it drove
through the middle of his brain, which spun on it like a
wild gear, disengaged from his body's need for rest.
Joe Miller sat hunched against the railing and waited
for his friend—the only man he trusted and loved—to go
belowdecks. Presently his head drooped, the bludgeon-
nose describing a weary arc, and he snored. The noise was
like that of trees being felled in the distance. Sequoias
split, screeched, cracked. Vast sighings and bubblings al-
ternated with the woodchoppers' activities.
"Thleep veil, little chum," Sam said, knowing that Joe
dreamed of that forever-lost Earth where mammoths and
giant bears and lions roamed and where beautiful—to
him—females of his own species lusted after him. Once he
groaned and then whimpered, and Sam knew that he was
dreaming again of being seized by a bear which was
chomping on his feet. Joe's feet hurt day and night. Like
all of his kind, he was too huge and heavy for bipedal
locomotion. Nature had experimented with a truly giant
subhuman ^species and then she had dismissed them as
failures.
"The Rise and Fall of the Flatfeet," Sam said. "An arti-
cle I shall never write."
Sam gave a groan, a weak echo of Joe's. He saw Livy's
half smashed body, given him briefly by the waves, then
taken away. Or had she really been Livy? Had he not seen
her at least a dozen times before while staring through the
telescope at the multitudes on the banks? Yet, when he
had been able to talk Bloodaxe into putting ashore just to
see if the face was Livy's, he had always been disap-
pointed. Now there was no reason to believe the corpse
had been his wife's.

He groaned again. How cruel if it had been Livy! How
like life! To have been so close and then to have her taken
away a few minutes before he would have been reunited
with her. And to have her cast upon the decks as if
God—or whatever sneering forces ran the universe—were
to laugh and to say, "See how close you came! Suffer, you
miserable conglomeration of atoms! Be in pain, wretch!
You must pay with tears and agony!"
"Pay for what?" Sam muttered, biting on his cigar.
"Pay for what crimes? Haven't I suffered enough on
Earth, suffered for what I did do and even more for what I
didn't do?"
Death had come to him on Earth, and he had been glad
because it meant the end forever to all sorrow. He would
no longer have to weep because of the sickness and
deaths of his beloved wife and daughters nor gloom be-
cause he felt responsible for the death of his only son,
the death caused by his negligence. Or was it careless-
ness that had made his son catch the disease that killed
him? Hadn't his unconscious mind permitted the robe to
slip from little Langdon, while taking him for a carriage
ride that cold winter day?" -
"No!" Sam said so loudly that Joe stirred and the
helmsman growled something in Norse.
He smacked his fist against his open palm, and Joe mut-
tered again.
"God, why do I have to ache now with guilt for any-
thing I've done?" Sam cried. "It doesn't matter now! It's
all been wiped out; we've started with clean souls."
But it did matter. It made no difference that all the dead
were once more alive and the sick were healthy and the
bad deeds were so remote in time and space that they
should be forgiven and forgotten. What a man had been
and had thought on Earth, he still was and thought here.
Suddenly, he wished he had a stick of dreamgum. That
might remove the clenching remorse and make him wildly
happy.
But then it might intensify the anguish. You never knew
if a horror so terrifying would come that you wanted to

die. The last time he had taken the gum, he had been so
menaced by monsters that he had not dared try the gum
again. But maybe this tune . . . no!
Little Langdon! He would never see him again, never!
His son had been only twenty-eight months old when he
had died, and this meant that he had not been resurrected
in the Rivervalley. No children who had died on Earth
before the age of five had been raised again. At least, not
here. It was to be presumed that they were alive
somewhere, probably on another planet. But for some
reason, whoever was responsible for this had chosen not to
place the infant dead here. And so Sam would never find
him and make amends.
Nor would he ever find Livy or his daughters, Sarah,
Jean, and Clara. Not on a River said to be possibly twenty
million miles long with possibly thirty-seven billion people
on its banks. Even if a man started at one end and walked
up one bank and looked at every person on that side and
then, on reaching the end, walked back down the other
side and did not miss a person, he would take—how long?
A square mile a day would mean a round trip of, say 365
into 40,000,000,—what was that? He wasn't any good at
doing sums in his head, but it must be over 109,000 years.
And even if a man could do this, could walk all those
weary miles and make sure he never missed a face, at the
end of over 100,000 years he still might not find the face.
The longed-for person might have died somewhere ahead
of the searcher and been translated back down The River,
behind the searcher. Or the searchee may have passed by
the searcher during the night, perhaps while the searchee
was looking for the searcher.
Yet there might be another way to do this. The beings
responsible for this Rivervalley and the resurrection might
have the power to locate anybody they wished to. They
must have a central file or some means of ascertaining the
identity and location of the valley dwellers.
Or, if they did not, they could at least be made to pay
for what they had done.

Joe Miller's story was no fantasy. It had some very puz-
zling aspects, but these hinted at something comforting.
That was, that some nameless person—or being—wanted
the valley dwellers to know about the tower in the mists of
the north polar sea. Why? Sam did not know, and he could
not guess. But that hole had been bored through the cliff
to enable human beings to find out about the tower. And
in that tower must be the light to scatter the darkness of
ignorance. Of that Sam was sure. And then there was the
widespread story of the Englishman, Burton or Perkin,
probably Burton, who had awakened prematurely in the
preresurrection phase. Was the awakening any more of an
accident than the hole bored through the polar cliff?
And so Samuel Clemens had had his first dream, had
nourished it until it had become The Great Dream. To
make it real, he needed iron, much iron. It was this that
had caused him to talk Erik Bloodaxe into launching the
expedition in search of the source of the steel ax. Sam had
not really expected that there would be enough of the
metal to build the giant boat, but at least the Norse were
taking him upRiver, closer to the polar sea.
Now, with a luck that he did not deserve—he really felt
he deserved nothing good—he was within reach of more
iron than he could possibly have hoped for. Not that that
had kept him from hoping.
He needed men with knowledge. Engineers who would
know how to treat the meteorite iron, get it out, melt it
down, reshape it. And engineers and technicians for the
hundred other things needed.
He toed Joe Miller's ribs and said, "Get up, Joe. It'll be
raining soon."
The titanthrop grunted and rose like a tower out of a
fog and stretched. Starlight glinted on his teeth. He
followed Sam across the deck, the bamboo planks creak-
ing under the eight hundred pounds. From below,
somebody cursed in Norse.
The mountains on both sides were covered with clouds
now, and the darkness was spreading over the valley and
shutting off the insane glitter of twenty thousand giant

stars and glowing gas sheets. Soon it would rain hard for
half an hour, and then the clouds would disappear.
Lightning streaked on the eastern bank; thunder
bellowed. Sam stopped. Lightning always made him
afraid, or, rather, the child in him afraid. Lightning
streaked through him and showed him the haunted and
haunting faces of those he had injured or insulted or dis-
honored and behind them were blurred faces reproaching
him for nameless crimes. Lightning twisted through him;
then he believed in an avenging God out to burn him alive,
to drown him in searing pain. Somewhere in the clouds
was the Wrathful Retributor, and He was looking for Sara
Clemens.
Joe said. "There'th thunder thomevhere farther down
The River. No! It ain't thunder! Lithen! Can't you hear it!
It'th thomething funny, like thunder but different."
Sam listened while his skin prickled with cold. There
was a very faint rumble downRiver. He got even colder as
he heard a louder rumble from upRiver.
"What the hell is it?"
"Don't get thcared, Tham," Joe said. "I'm vith you."
But he was shivering, too.
Lightning spread a filamented whiteness on the east
bank.
Sam jumped and said, "Jesus! I saw something flicker!"
Joe moved next to him and said, "I thaw it! It'th the
thyip! You know, the vun I thaw above the tower. But it'th
gone!"
Joe and Sam stood silent, peering into the darkness.
Lightning exploded again, and this tune there was no
white eggshape high above The River.
"It flickered out of nothing and went back to nothing.
Like a mirage," Sam said. "If you hadn't seen it, too, I'd
have thought it was an illusion."
Sam awoke on the deck. He was stiff, cold and con-
fused. He rolled over and squinted his eyes at the sun just
clearing the eastern range.
Joe was on his back beside him, and the helmsman was
sleeping beside the wheel.

But it was not this that brought him to his feet. The gold
of the sun had faded out as he brought his gaze down;
green was everywhere. The muddied plains and moun-
tains, with straws and stubs of debris, were gone. There
was short grass on the plains, tall grass and bamboo on the
hill, and the giant pine, oak, yew and irontree everywhere
on the hills.
"Business as usual," Sam muttered, wisecracking,
though unconsciously, even in his shock. Something had
put all aboard the Dreyrugr asleep, and while they were
unconscious, the incredible work of clearing off the mud
and replanting the vegetation had been done. This section
of The River was reborn!

8
He felt insignificant, as weak and helpless as a puppy.
What could he, or any human, do to combat beings with
powers so vast they could perform this miracle?
Yet there had to be an explanation, a physical explana-
tion. Science and the easy control of vast forces had done
this; there was nothing supernatural about it.
There was one comforting hope. One of the unknown
beings might be on the side of mankind. Why? In what
mystical battle?
By then the entire ship was aroused. Bloodaxe and von
Richthofen came up on deck at the same time. Bloodaxe
frowned at seeing the German there because he had not
authorized him to be on the poopdeck. But the sight of the
vegetation shook him so much that he forgot to order him
off.
The sun's rays struck down upon the gray mushroom
shapes of the grailstones. They sparkled upon hundreds of
little exhalations, mounds of seeming fog, that had sud-
denly appeared on the grass near the stones. The mounds
shimmered like heat waves and abruptly coalesced into
solidity. Hundreds of men and women lay upon the grass.
They were naked, and near each was a pile of towels and a
grail.
"It's a wholesale translation," Sam murmured to the
German. "Those who died as a result of the western grails
being shut off. People from everywhere. One good thing,
it'll be some tune before they can get organized, and they
won't know there's a source of iron under their feet."
Lothar von Richthofen said, "How will we find the
meteorite? All traces of it must be covered up."
"If it's still there," Sam said. He cursed. "Anybody who
can do this overnight shouldn't have any trouble removing
a meteorite, even of that size."
He groaned and said, "Or maybe it struck in the middle
of The River and is now drowned under a thousand feet of
water!"

"You look depressed, my friend," Lothar said. "Don't
In the first place, the meteorite may not have been
removed. In the second place, what if it is? You can't be
worse off than you were before. And there are still wine,
women, song."
"I can't be satisfied with that," Sam said. "Moreover, I
cannot conceive that we were raised from the dead so that
we might enjoy ourselves for eternity. There's no sense to
a belief like that."
"Why not?" Lothar said, grinning. "You don't know
what motives these mysterious beings have for creating all
this and placing us here. Maybe they feed upon feelings."
Sam was interested. He felt some of his depression lift.
A new idea, even though it was in itself depressing, ex-
hilarated him.
"You mean we might be emotional cattle? That our
herders might dine upon large juicy steaks of love, ribs of
hope, livers of despair, briskets of laughter, hearts of hate,
sweetbreads of orgasm?"
"It's only theory," Lothar said. "But it's as good as any
I've heard and better than most. I don't mind them feeding
off me. In fact, I may be one of their prize bulls, in a man-
ner of speaking. Speaking of which, look at that beauty
there. Let me at her!"
Briefly illuminated, Sam now plunged back into the
dark shadows. Perhaps the German was right. In which
case, a human being had as much chance against the un-
known as a prize cow had in outwitting her masters. Still, a
bull could gore, could kill before he met inevitable defeat.
He explained the situation to Bloodaxe. The Norwegian
looked doubtful. "How can we find this fallen star? We
can't dig up the ground everywhere looking for it. You
know how tough the grass is. It takes days to dig even a
small hole with stone tools. And the grass soon grows to
fill up the hole."
"There must be a way," Sam said. "If only we had a
lodestone or some kind of metal detector. But we don't."
Lothar had been busy waving at the statuesque blonde
on the shore, but he had been listening to Sam. He turned

and said, "Things look different from the air. Forty
generations of peasants can plow land over an ancient
building and never know it. But an airman can fly over
that land and see at once that something lies buried
there. There is a difference in coloration, of vegetation
sometimes, though that wouldn't apply here. But the earth
reveals subterranean things to him who flies high. The soil
is at a different level over the rums."
Sam became excited. "You mean that if we could build
a glider for you, you might be able to detect the site?"
"That would be very nice," Lothar said. "We can do
that some day. But it won't be necessary to fly. All we
have to do is climb high enough on the mountains to get a
good view of the valley."
Sam swore joyfully. "It was a stroke of luck, picking
you up! I never would have known about that!"
He frowned. "But we may not be able to climb high
enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up,
smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign
promise."
Bloodaxe asked impatiently what they were talking
about. Sam replied. Bloodaxe said, "This fellow may be of
some use after all. There is no great problem, no unsur-
mountable one, anyway, if we can find enough flint. We
can chop steps up for a thousand feet. It will take much
tune, but it will be worth it."
"And if there is no flint?" Sam said.
"We could blast our way up," Bloodaxe said. "Make
gunpowder."
"For that we need human excrement, of which there is
no dearth," Sam said. "And the bamboo and pine can give
us charcoal. But what about sulphur? There may be none
within a thousand miles or more."
"We know there's plenty about seven hundred miles
downRiver," Bloodaxe said. "But first things first. One,
we have to locate the meteorite. Two, having done that,
we must put off any digging for it until we have established
a fort to hold it. I tell you, we may be the first to it, "but we
won't be the only ones. The wolves will be coming from
upRiver and downRiver now, sniffing for it. There will be

many, and we will have to fight to hold the iron. So—first
we locate the star, then we dig in to keep it."
Sam swore again. "We might be going right past it right
now!" he said.
"Then we'll put in here," Bloodaxe said. "It's as good a
place as any to start. Besides, we have to have breakfast."
Three days later, the crew of the Dreyrugr had deter-
mined that there was no flint or chert in the immediate
area. Any that might have been there before must have
been burned away by the impact of the meteorite. And
when the new soil and vegetation had been laid down, it
had contained no stone.
Sometimes rock useful for making tools and weapons
could be found in the foothills, at the base of the moun-
tains. Or, if the mountains were broken at the base, as they
sometimes were, they yielded workable rock. This area
was barren.
"We're out of luck," Sam moaned one night while talk-
ing to von Richthofen. "We haven't any way to find the
meteorite. And even if we did, we would have no means
for digging down to it. And if we could do that, how would
we mine it? Nickel-iron is a very dense and hard
material."
"You were the world's greatest humorist," Lothar said.
"Have you changed a great deal since you were resur-
rected?"
"What's that got to do with it?" Sam said. "A humorist
is a man whose soul is black, black, but who turns his
curdles of darkness into explosions of light. But when the
light dies out, the black returns."
Sam stared into the bamboo fire for a while. There were
faces in there, compact, squeezed down, then elongating,
spreading out, soaring upward—as the sparks fly—and
thinning out until the night and the stars absorbed them.
Livy, mournful, spiraled up. His daughter Jean, her face
as still and cold as when she lay in the casket, on fire but
icy, her lids shut, wavered and passed up with the smoke.
His father in his casket. His brother Henry, his features
burned and blistered by the steam boiler explosion. And

then a smiling grinning face, that of Tom Blankenship, the
boy who was the model for Huckleberry Finn.
There had always been in Sam the child who wanted to
float forever on a raft down the Mississippi, having many
adventures but no responsibilities. Now he had the chance
to drift forever on a raft. He could have uncounted num-
bers of thrilling experiences, could meet enough dukes and
counts and kings to satisfy the most eager. He could be
lazy, could fish, could talk night and day, wouldn't ever
have to work for a living, could drift for a thousand years
doing exactly as he pleased.
The trouble was that he could not do exactly as he
wanted. There were too many areas where grail-slavery
was practiced. Evil men took captives and deprived their
prisoners of the luxuries given by their grails: the cigars,
liquor, dreamgum. They kept the prisoner half starved,
just alive enough so his grail could be used. They tied
the slaves' hands and feet together, like chickens on the
way to market, so they could not kill themselves. And if a
man did succeed in committing suicide, then he was
translated someplace else thousands of miles away and like
as not would find himself in the hands of grail-slavers
again.
Moreover, he was a grown man and just would not be as
happy as a boy on a raft. No, if he went journeying on The
River, he needed protection, comfort and, undeniable
desire, authority. Also, there was his other great ambition
to be pilot of a Riverboat. He had attained that for a while
on Earth. Now, he would be a captain of a Riverboat, the
largest, fastest, most powerful Riverboat that had ever ex-
isted, on the longest River in the world, a River that made
the Missouri-Mississippi and all its tributaries, and the
Nile, the Amazon, the Congo, the Ob, the Yellow River,
all strung together, look like a little Ozark creek. His boat
would be six decks high above the waterline, would have
two tremendous sidewheels, luxurious cabins for the many
passengers and crew, all of whom would be men and
women famous in their time. And he, Samuel Langhorne
Clemens, Mark Twain, would be the captain. And the

boat would never stop until it reached the headwaters of
The River, where the expedition would be launched
against the monsters who had created this place and
roused all of mankind again to its pain and disap-
pointments and frustrations and sorrows.
The voyage might take a hundred years, maybe two or
three centuries, but that was all right. This world did not
have much, but it had more than enough time.
Sam warmed himself in the glow of his images, the
mighty Riverboat, himself as captain in the wheelhouse,
his first mate perhaps Mr. Christopher Columbus or Mr.
Francis Drake, his Captain of Marines—no, not Captain,
Major, since there would be only one aboard with the title
of Captain—Sam Clemens, himself—his Major would
perhaps be Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or
Ulysses S. Grant.
A pinprick of a thought pierced the glorious balloon
sailing along in the wind of his dream. Those two ancient
bastards, Alexander and Caesar, would never submit long
to a subordinate position. They would plot from the very
beginning to seize the captainship of the paddle-wheeler.
And would that great man, U. S. Grant, take orders from
him, Sam Clemens, a mere humorist, a man of letters in a
world where letters did not exist?
The luminescent hydrogen of bis images whistled out.
He sagged. He thought of Livy again, so near but snatched
away by the very thing that had made his other dream
possible. She had been shown to him briefly, as if by a
cruel god, and then taken away again. And was that other
dream possible? He could not even find the vast store of
iron that must be somewhere around here.

9
"You look tired and pale, Sam," Lothar said.
Sam stood up and said, "I'm going to bed."
"What, and disappoint that seventeenth-century Vene-
tian beauty who's been making eyes at you all evening?"
Lothar said.
"You take care of her," Sam said. He walked away.
There had been some moments during the past few hours
when he had been tempted to take her off to his hut, espe-
cially when the whiskey from the grail had first wanned
him. Now he felt listless. Moreover, he knew that his guilt
would return if he did take Angela Sangeotti to bed. He
had suffered recurrent pangs during the twenty years here
with the ten women who had been his mates. And now,
strangely enough, he would feel guilt not only because of
Livy but because of Temah, his Indonesian companion for
the last five years.
"Ridiculous!" he had said to himself many times.
"There is no rational reason why I should feel guilty about
Livy. We've been separated for so long that we would be
strangers. Too much has happened to both of us since
Resurrection Day."
His logic made no difference. He suffered. And why
not? Rationality had nothing to do with true logic; man
was an irrational animal, acting strictly in accordance with
his natal temperament and the stimuli to which he was
peculiarly sensitive.
So why do I torture myself with things that cannot be
my fault because I cannot help my responses?
Because it is my nature to torture myself for things that
are not my fault. I am doubly damned. The first atom to
move on primeval Earth and to knock against another
atom started the chain of events that have led, inevitably,
mechanically, to my being here and walking through the
dark on a strange planet through a crowd of aged youths
from everywhere and everytime to a bamboo hut where

loneliness and guilt and self-recriminations, all rationally
unnecessary but nevertheless unavoidable, await me.
I could kill myself, but suicide is useless here. You wake
up twenty-four hours later, in a different place but still the
same man who jumped into The River. Knowing that
another jump won't solve a thing and probably will make
you even more unhappy.
"Stone-hearted relentless bastards!" he said and shook
his fist. Then he laughed sorrowfully and said, "But They
can't help their hard hearts and cruelty any more than I
can help what I am. We're all in it together."
This thought did not, however, make him wish any the
less to get his revenge. He would bite the hand that had
given him eternal life.
His bamboo hut was in the foothills under a large iron-
tree. Although only a shack, it represented genuine luxury
in this area, where stone tools to build houses were a
rarity. The translatees had had to settle for makeshift
housing, bamboo plants bent and tied together with grass
ropes at the top and sides and covered with huge elephant-
ear leaves from the irontrees. Of the five hundred varieties
of bamboo in the valley, some could be split and made in-
to knives, which, however, easily lost their edge.
Sam entered his hut, lay down on the cot, and covered
himself with several big towels. The faint sound of distant
revelry disturbed him. After tossing for a while, he gave in
to the temptation to chew a piece of dreamgum. There was
no predicting what its effect might be: ecstasy, bright
manycolored shifting shapes, a feeling that all was right
with the world, a desire to make love, or abysmal gloom
with monsters springing out of the darkness at him, re-
criminating ghosts from dead Earth, burning in the flames
of hell while faceless devils laughed at his screams.
He chewed and swallowed his saliva and knew at once
that he had made a mistake. It was too late then. He con-
tinued to chew while he saw before him that time when
he was a boy and had drowned, or at least was close to it,
and would have drowned if he had not been dragged from
the waters. That was the first tune I died, he thought, and

then, no, I died when I was born. That's strange, my
mother never told me about that
He could see his mother lying on the bed, hair tangled,
skin pale, eyelids half-opened, jaw dropped. The doctor
was working on the baby—himself, Sam—while he
smoked a cigar. He was saying out of the corner of his
mouth to Sam's father, "Hardly seems worth saving."
His father said, "You had a choice between saving that
and saving Jane?"
The doctor had a shock of bright red hair, a thick
drooping red moustache, and pale blue eyes. His face was
strange and brutal. He said, "I bury my mistakes. You
worry too much. I'll salvage this bit of flesh, though it's
really not worth doing, and save her, too."
The doctor wrapped him up and put him on the bed,
and then the doctor sat down and began writing in a little
black book. Sam's father said, "Must you write at a time
like this?"
The doctor said, "I must write, though I'd get more
writing done if I didn't talk so much. This is a log I keep
on all the souls I bring into the world. I intend some day to
write a big case history of the infants, find out if any ever
amounted to anything. If I can bring one genius, one, into
this vale of heavy tears, I will think my life worthwhile.
Otherwise, I've been wasting my time bringing thousands
of idiots, hypocrites, dogs in the mangers, etc. into this sad
place."
Little Sam wailed, and the doctor said, "Sounds as if
he's a lost soul before he's dead, don't he? As if he's bear-
ing the blame for all the sins of the world on his tiny shoul-
ders."
His father said, "You're a strange man. Evil, I think.
Certainly not God-fearing."
"I pay tribute to the Prince of Darkness, yes," the doc-
tor said.
The room was filled with the odor of blood, the doctor's
boozy breath and cigar and sweat.
"What're you going to call him? Samuel? That's my
name, too! It means 'name of God.' That's a joke. Two
Samuels, heh? Sickly little devil, I don't think he'll live. If

he does, he'll wish he hadn't"
His father roared, "Get out of my house, you devil's
spawn! What kind of a man are you? Get out! I'll call in
another doctor! I won't even let it be known that you at-
tended my wife or had anything to do with this or was
even in this bouse. I'll rid this house of your evil odor."
The doctor, swaying, threw his dirty instruments into
the bag and snapped it shut.
"Very well. But you have delayed my passage through
this miserable village of asses. I'm on my way to bigger
and better things, my provincial friend. It was only out of
the kindness of my heart that I took pity upon you because
the quacks that serve this mudhole were out of town. I left
the comforts of the tavern to come here and save an infant
who would be better off dead, infinitely better. Which re-
minds me, though I don't know why, that you must pay
my fee."
"I should throw you out of the house and pay you with
nothing but curses!" Sam's father said. "But a man has to
pay his debts no matter what the circumstances. Here's
your thirty pieces of silver."
"Looks more like paper to me," the doctor said. "Well
you can call in your dispenser of pills, folly and death, but
just remember that it was Doctor Ecks that dragged your
wife and baby from the jaws of death. Ecks, the unknown
quantity, the eternal passer-through, the mysterious
stranger, the devil dedicated to keeping other poor devils
alive, also dedicated to the demon whiskey, since I can't
abide rum."
"Out! Out!" Sam's father shouted. "Out before I kill
you!"
"There's no gratitude in this world," Doctor Ecks
mumbled. "Out of nothing I come, through a world
populated by asses I pass, and into nothing I go. Ecks
equals nothing."
Sweating, eyes open and rigid as those of a stone
Apollo, Sam watched the drama. The scene and the actors
were enclosed in a ball of pale yellow light through which
veins of red shot like lightning and then faded out. The

doctor turned his face once before he walked through the
door of the house in Florida, Missouri, on November 30,
1835. He took the cigar from his mouth and grinned
mockingly, revealing long yellow teeth with two ab-
normally white, abnormally long canines.
As if the scene were a film being shut off, it blinked out
Through the door which had been in Sam's birthplace and
now was the door of the bamboo hut, another figure en-
tered. It was momentarily silhouetted by the bright
starlight, then slid into the shadows. Sam closed his eyes
and steeled himself for another frightening experience. He
groaned and wished he had not taken the dreamgum. Yet
he knew that under the terror was a thread of delight. He
hated and enjoyed this. The birth-drama was a fantasy,
created by him to explain why he was the kind of man he
was. But what was this shadowy figure moving silently and
intently as death? From what deep cavern in his mind
came this creature?
A baritone voice spoke. "Sam Clemens! Do not be
alarmed! I am not here to harm you! I come to help you!"
"And what do you want in repayment for your help?"
Sam said.
The man chuckled and said, "You're the kind of human
being I like. I chose well."
"You mean I chose you to choose me," Sam replied.
There was a pause of several seconds, and then the man
said, "I see. You think I'm another fantasy inspired by the
gum. I'm not. Touch me."
"What for?" Sam said. "As a gum-inspired fantasy, you
should know that you can be felt as well as seen and
heard. State your business."
"Entirely? That would take too long. And I don't dare
take much time with you. There are others in this area
who might notice. That would be too bad for me, since
they are very suspicious. They know there is a traitor
among them, but they don't have the slightest idea who it
could be."
"Others? They?" Sam answered.
"They—we Ethicals—are doing field work in this area

now," the figure said. "This is a unique situation, the first
time that a completely unhomogenized assortment of
humans has been thrown together. It presents a rare
chance for study, and we are recording everything. I'm
here as chief administrator, since I'm one of The Twelve."
"I'll have to figure you out after I wake up," Sam
replied.
"You are awake, and I exist I have objective reality.
And, I repeat, I don't have much time."
Sam started to sit up but was pushed back by a hand
which somehow communicated a sense of great power,
muscular and mental. Sam shivered upon feeling it.
"You're one of Them," he whispered. "One of Them!"
He gave up his idea of seizing the man and calling for
help.
"Of them, but not with them," the man said. "I'm
with you human beings, and I intend to see that my people
do not complete their filthy project. I have a plan, but a
plan that will take much time, much patience, a slow and
careful, devious development. I have contacted three
humans now; you are the fourth. They are aware of parts
of the plan but not all of it. If any one of them should be
revealed and interrogated, he could tell the Ethicals only a
little. The plan must unfold slowly and everything must
appear accidental.
"Just as the meteorite must appear accidental."
Sam did start to sit up then but caught himself before
the hand touched him.
"It was no accident?"
"No. I have known for some time of your dream of
building a Riverboat and going to the end of The River. It
would be impossible without iron. So I deflected the
meteorite to bring its orbit within this planet's grip and
cause it to crash near you. Not too near you, of course,
otherwise you would have died and have been translated
far from this area. There are safeguards to prevent such
spatial matter from falling on the valley, but I managed to
trip them out just long enough for the meteor to get
through. Unfortunately, the guardians almost got to the

repulsion system in time. When the system went back into
action, its effect caused the meteorite to go off the course
I'd planned. As a result, we—I mean you—almost got
killed. It was just luck that you weren't. But then I've
found out that what you call luck is on my side."
"Then the falling star. . . ?"
"Is a deliberately felled star, yes."
Sam thought, if he knows so much about me, he must be
one of the crew of the Dreyrugr. Unless he's able to make
himself invisible. That isn't impossible. That egg-shaped
ship I saw in the air was invisible; I only saw it because it
was for some reason made visible very briefly. Maybe the
lightning interfered with the apparatus that makes the ship
invisible.
Then, What am I thinking? This is just another
dreamgum fantasy.
The man said, "One of their agents is nearby! Listen
carefully! The meteorite wasn't removed because we
didn't have time. At least, that was my decision. It's
buried under the plains and foothills ten miles from here.
Go ten grailstones downRiver.
"You'll be on the perimeter of the original crater, where
several large masses and many small pieces are buried.
Start digging. The rest is up to you. I'll help you when I
can, but I can't do anything obvious."
Sam's heart was beating so hard his own voice sounded
muted.
"Why do you want me to build a boat?"
"You'll find out in time. For the present, be happy that
you've been given what you need. Listen! There's a huge
deposit of bauxite only five miles farther up, under the
surface of the mountains, near the base. And near it is a
small lode of platinum and two miles up from it, cin-
nabar."
"Bauxite? Platinum?"
"You fool!"
There was the sound of hard breathing. Sam could al-
most hear the man's internal struggle to control his disgust
and fury. Then, calmly, "You'll need bauxite for
aluminum and platinum for a catalyst for the many things

you'll have in your boat. I haven't got time to explain.
There are several engineers in this area who'll tell you
what to do with the minerals. I must go. He's getting
closer! Just do what I say. And, oh, yes, there's flint thirty
miles upRiver!"
"But . . ." Sam said. The man was silhouetted briefly
and was gone. Sam rose unsteadily and went to the door.
Fires were still blazing on the banks, and small figures
were capering in front of them. The stranger was gone.
Sam went around to the back of the hut but there was no
one there. He looked up at the sky, pale with great gas
sheets and bright knots of white, blue, red and yellow
stars. He had hopes he might catch a glimpse of a vehicle
winking from visibility to invisibility. But there was
nothing.

10
On returning to the hut, he was startled by a huge figure
standing dark and immobile before his door. His heart
hammering, he said, "Joe?"
"Yeah," answered the bass drum voice. Joe advanced
to nun and said, "There'th been thomone not human
here. I can thmell him. He got a funny thtink, different
than you humanth got. You know, it remindth me ..."
He was silent for a while. Sam waited, knowing that the
ponderous stone wheels were grinding out the flour of
thought. Then Joe said, "Veil, I'll be damned!"
"What is it, Joe?"
"It'th been tho long ago, it happened on Earth, you
know, thometime before I got killed there. No, it couldn't
be. Jethuth Chritht, if vhat you thay ith true about how
long ago I lived, it mutht've been maybe a hundred thou-
thand yearth ago!"
"Come on, Joe, don't leave me hanging up in the air."
"Veil, you ain't going to believe thith. But you got to
remember that my nothe hath a memory, too."
"It ought to, it's bigger than your brain," Sam said.
"Out with it, or are you trying to kill me with frustrated
curiosity?"
"All right, Tham. I vath on the track of a vif-
thangkruilth tribethman, they lived about ten mileth from
uth on the other thide of a big hill that looked like ..."
"Never mind the details, Joe," Sam snapped.
"Veil, it vath late in the day and I knew I vath getting
clothe to my enemy becauthe hith printth were tho frethh.
And then I heard a noithe that made me think maybe the
guy I vath following had backtracked on me and I vath
going to get hith club thyoved all the vay up instead of
vithevertha. Tho I dropped to the ground and crawled
tvardth the noithe. And gueth vhat I thaw? Great Thcott,
vhy didn't I ever tell you thith before? Vat a dummy I
am!"

"I'll go along with that. So. . . ?"
"Veil, the guy I vath trailing had gotten vind of me,
though I don't know how, thinthe I'm ath thilent ath a
veathel thneaking up on a bird, big ath I am. Anyvay, he
had backtracked and might've come up behind me,
maybe. But he vath lying on the ground, out cold ath a
cavedigger'th ath. And there vere two humanth thtanding
by him. Now, I'm ath brave ath the nektht guy and maybe
braver, but thith vath the firtht time I ever thaw humanth,
and it vath poththible I vath thcared. Cauthyiouth, any-
vay.
"They vere dreththed up in clotheth, vat you've
dethcribed to me ath clotheth. They had thome funny
looking thingth in their handth, about a foot long, thick
black thtickth that veren't vood, looked more like the
thteel that Bloodakth'th akthe ith made of.
"I vath veil hidden but thothe bathtardth had thorne vay
of knowing I vath there. One of them pointed the thtick at
me, and I became unconthious. Paththed out. Vhen I
came to, the two humanth and the vif vere gone. I got to
hell out of there, but I never forgot that thmell."
Sam said, "That's the whole story?"
Joe nodded. Sam said, "I'll be damned! Does that mean
that these . . . these people . . . have been keeping an eye
on us for half a million years? Or more? Or are they the
same people?"
"Vhat do you mean?"
Sam told Joe that he must never tell anybody else what
he was going to hear. He knew that the titanthrop could be
trusted, yet when he explained he felt misgivings. X had
required him not to utter a word to anybody else.
Joe nodded so much that the silhouette of his nose was
like a log rising and falling in a heavy sea. "It all tieth in.
It'th quite a cointhidenthe, ain't it? Me theeing them on
Earth, then being taken along on Ikhnaton'th ekthpe-
dithion and theeing the tower and airthyip, and now you
being picked by thith Ekth to build the thteamboat. How
about that, huh?"

Sam was so excited that he could not fall asleep until
shortly before dawn. He managed to rouse himself for
breakfast, though he would have preferred to stay in bed.
While the Vikings, the German, Joe, and he were eating
the contents of their grails, he told them a heavily censored
version of his experience. But he told it as if it had been a
dream. If he had not had Joe's olfactory backing for the
mysterious stranger's presence, he would have thought it
was a dream.
Von Richthofen, of course, pooh-poohed it, but the
Norsemen believed in revelation via dream. Rather, most
of them did. Among the inevitable sceptics, unfortunately,
was Erik Bloodaxe.
"You want us to go traipsing ten miles and dig just be-
cause you had a wild nightmare?" he bellowed. "I've al-
ways thought you had a mind as weak as your courage,
Clemens, and now I know it! Forget about it!"
Sam had been sitting down while eating. He rose to his
feet and, glaring beneath the heavy brows, said, "Joe and I
will go our own way then. We'll organize the locals to help
us dig, and when we find the iron—as we surely will—you
won't be able to buy your way into the organization for
love or money. The first of which, by the way, you've
never had on Earth or here, and the second of which just
doesn't exist."
Bloodaxe, bread and steak spewing from his mouth,
shouted and swung his ax. "No miserable thrall speaks to
me like that! You'll dig nothing but your grave, wretch!"
Joe, who had already risen to stand by Clemens,
growled and pulled his huge stone ax from his belt sheath.
The Vikings stopped eating and walked away to arrange
themselves a little behind their chief. Von Richtofen had
been grinning while Clemens was describing his dream.
The grin remained frozen, and he was quivering. The
shaking was not from fright. Now he arose and without a
word stood by Clemens' right side.
He said to Bloodaxe, "You have sneered at the fighting
ability and courage of Germans, my Norse friend. Now
you will have that sneer shoved down your throat."
Bloodaxe laughed loudly. "Two gamecocks and an ape!

You won't die easy deaths; I'll see that it takes you days to
find the joy of death! Before I'm done, you'll be begging
me to end your pain!"
"Joe!" Clemens said. "Make sure you kill Bloodaxe
first. Then you can get up a little sweat knocking off the
rest."
Joe raised the 50-pound weight of the flint head above
his shoulder and rotated it through a 45-degree arc, back
and forth, as easily as if it weighed an ounce. He said, "I
can break hith breathtbone vith one throw and probably
knock down theveral behind him."
The Norsemen knew that he was not bragging; they had
seen him smash too many skulls. He was capable of killing
half of them before they killed him, maybe of smashing all
of them and still be standing. But they had sworn to de-
fend Bloodaxe to the death and, much as many of them
disliked him, they would not break their oath.
There should have been no cowards in the Rivervalley;
courage should have become universal. Death was not per-
manent; a man was killed only to rise again. But those
who had been brave on Earth were usually brave here, and
those cowardly on Earth were cowardly here. The mind
might know that death lasted only a day, but the cells of
the body, the unconscious, the configurations of emotion,
or whatever it was that made up a man's character, these
did not recognize the fact. Sam Clemens dodged violence
and the resultant pain—which he feared more than violent
death—as long as he could. He had fought with the Vik-
ings, swung an ax, wielded a spear, wounded and been
wounded and once even killed a man, though it had been
more by accident than skill. But he was an ineffectual war-
rior. In battle the valves of his heart were turned full open,
and his strength poured out.
Sam knew this well, but about this he had no self-
reproach or shame.
Erik Bloodaxe was furious and not at all afraid. But if
he died, and he probably would, he would never be able to
take part in Clemens' dream of the great riverboat or
storm the citadels of the north pole. And, though he had

scoffed at the dream, he still believed in a part of him that
dreams could be revelations sent by the gods. Perhaps he
was robbing himself of a glorious future.
Sam Clemens knew his man and was betting that his
ambitions would overcome his anger. So they did. The
king lowered the ax and forced a smile.
"It is not good to question what the gods send until you
look into it," he said. "I have known priests who were
given the truth in dreams by Odin and Heimdall, yet they
had no hearts for battle and spoke lies except when they
spoke for the gods. So we will dig for the iron. If there is
iron, good. If not . . . then we will take up the matter
where we left off."
Sam sighed with relief and wished he could quit shak-
ing. His bladder and bowels pained him with their urgency
to evacuate, but he did not dare to excuse himself at that
moment. He had to play the role of the man who had the
upper hand. Ten minutes later, unable to bear it any
longer, he walked off toward his hut.
X, the Mysterious Stranger, had said that digging could
take place anywhere near the tenth grailstone upRiver
from their present position. However, the would-be dig-
gers first had to straighten out the locals on who was run-
ning things. A Chicago gangster of the 20's and 30's, Al-
fonso Gilbretti, had allied himself with a Belgian coal-
mine and steel-mill magnate of the late nineteenth century
and a Turkish sultan of the mid-eighteenth. This trium-
virate had followed the by-now classical pattern of
organizing a nuclear gang from those who had been mer-
ciless exploiters of their fellow men in crime, business, and
other terrestrial activities. Those who objected to the
newly self-constituted rulers had been disposed of the day
before, and the gang had determined what share of the
grails' output each "citizen" would pay for "protection."
Gilbretti had picked out a harem of five women, of whom
two were willing and one had died already because she had
tried to break his head with a grail when he entered her hut
the night before.
Clemens knew all this because of the grapevine. He

realized that the Vikings would be faced with two hundred
toughs and at least a thousand of the so-called militia.
Against them would be forty men and twenty women. But
the locals were armed only with bamboo spears with fire-
hardened tips while the invaders had Riverdragon-armor,
flint axes and flint-tipped spears and arrows. And there
was Joe Miller.
Bloodaxe announced from the ship what the Norsemen
intended to do. If the locals wanted to participate, they
could do so under the rulership of the Norsemen.
However, no one would have to "contribute" any of his
grail output and no woman would be taken by force.
Gilbretti hurled a spear and a Sicilian oath at Erik. The
Norsemen escaped the effects of both and threw his ax. Its
edge buried itself in Gilbretti's chest, and Bloodaxe was
down off the ship and on the land and racing after his pre-
cious iron weapon, a flint-studded club in hand, before
anybody could move. After him came Joe Miller and thir-
ty men. The women shot arrows while a crew launched the
last rocket into the toughs. It struck exactly on target, near
the rear ranks of the closely arranged Gilbrettians. About
forty were either killed, wounded or stunned.
Within seventy seconds, the Belgian magnate and the
Turk were dead, their heads pulped by Joe's ax, and the
others were either casualties or running for their lives.
None got away. The militia saw their chance to get
revenge and either beat or stabbed most of them to death.
The ten left alive were spread-eagled, and burning bamboo
splints were thrust into them. Sam Clemens stood the
screaming as long as he was able. He did not want to make
himself unpopular by cutting the fun too short and so he
tried to ignore the spectacle. Lothar von Richthofen said
that he certainly understood the desire to hurt by those
who had been hurt. But he would not put up with this bar-
barity a moment longer. He strode up to the nearest suf-
ferer and silenced him with a single chop of his axe. He
then ordered the others done away with immediately. Erik
Bloodaxe might have interfered with this order, since he
thought it proper that one's enemies should be put through
some torture to teach them and others a lesson. But he had

been stunned by a piece of the rock-shrapnel thrown by
the rocket explosion and was out of the picture for a while.
Reluctantly, the militia obeyed, although in their own
fashion. They threw the nine survivors into The River,
where the fire was certainly put out but not the pain of the
splinters themselves. Some thrashed around for several
minutes before drowning. And this was strange, since they
could have killed the agony in their bowels by killing
themselves, knowing they would be alive again and whole
again in a short time. Such was the drive of their instincts
for survival, they fought to keep their heads above water
as long as possible.

11
Digging did not begin at once. First the locals had to be
organized and definite administrative, judicial and
legislative lines laid down and the military formed. The
area constituting the new state had to be defined. Clemens
and Bloodaxe argued about this for a while before decid-
ing that three miles each way up and down The River from
the site of the digging would make a manageable area. A
sort of Maginot line was built on the borders; this con-
sisted of a twenty-foot-wide strip of two-foot-long bamboo
stakes, pointing at various angles, protruding from the
ground. The line ran from the base of the mountains down
to the bank of The River. Huts were built by the chevaux-
de-frise, and spearmen and women lived in these as the
garrisons.
A third cheval-de-frise was built on the banks. When
this was finished, the dragonship was dispatched to the
point upRiver where there was a flint mine, if the
Mysterious Stranger was to be believed. Bloodaxe stayed
behind with about fifteen of his men. He put his
lieutenant, Snorri Ragnarsson, in charge of the expedition.
Snorri was to bargain with the locals for flint by promising
them a share of the iron when it was dug up. If the locals
refused to part with the flint, then he was to threaten them.
Bloodaxe thought that Joe Miller should go with the ship
because the titanthrop's huge size and grotesque features
would awe the locals.
Sam Clemens agreed with the Norseman's logic on this
point but he did not like the idea of being separated from
Joe. Yet he did not want to go on the ship with Joe, be-
cause of what Bloodaxe might do in his absence. The king
was bad-tempered and arrogant. If he affronted the newly
conquered people, he might cause a revolution which
could overwhelm the small number of Vikings.
Sam strode back and forth in front of his hut, while he
smoked and thought furiously. There was iron under the

grass, more than enough to realize The Dream, yet he
could not even start to dig for it until a multitude of pre-
parations were made. And every step he thought to take
was balked because a dozen other problems came up. He
was so frustrated, he almost bit through his cigar. The
people who were sitting on the flint mine needed some-
thing like the sight of Joe to be softened up for coopera-
tion. But if Joe were absent, Bloodaxe might take ad-
vantage of this to kill Sam. He would not do it openly, be-
cause he feared Joe, but he could easily arrange an ac-
cident.
Sam cursed and sweated. "If I die, I'll be resurrected
somewhere else, so far from this place it might take a
thousand years to get back on a canoe. Meanwhile, other
men will mine the iron and build my Riverboat. Mine!
Mine! Not theirs! Mine!"
At this moment, Lothar von Richthofen ran up to him.
"I've located two of the kind of men you're looking for.
Only one isn't a man! Imagine that, a female engineer!"
The man, John Wesley O'Brien, was a mid-twentieth-
century metallurgical engineer. The woman was half
Mongolian, half Russian, and had spent most of her Me in
mining communities in Siberia.
Sam Clemens shook hands with them and told them
briefly what he had to do now and what he expected to do
later.
O'Brien said, "If there is a big bauxite deposit near
here, then we can probably build the kind of ship you
want."
He was very excited, as any man would be who had
given up any hope of carrying on his Terrestrial profession
here. There were many like him, men and women who
wanted to work if for no other reason than to kill time.
There were doctors who had nothing to do but set an occa-
sional broken bone, printers who had no type to set or
paper to use, mailmen with no mail to deliver, smiths with
no horses to shoe, farmers with no crops to grow,
housewives with no children to raise, the food already
cooked, housecleaning done in fifteen minutes and no

marketing to do, salesmen with nothing to sell, preachers
whose religion was thoroughly discredited by the existence
of this world, bootleggers with no means of making grain
alcohol, buttonmakers with no buttons, pimps and whores
whose professions were ruined by an excess of amateurs,
mechanics with no autos, admen with no ads, carpet-
makers with only grass and bamboo fibers to work
with, cowboys without horses or cattle, painters with no
paint or canvas, pianists without pianos, railroad men with
no iron, stockbrokers with no stocks to deal in, and so on.
O'Brien continued, "However, you want a steamboat,
and that's not very realistic. You'd have to stop at least
once a day to chop wood for fuel, which would mean a
long delay even if the locals permitted you to take their
limited supply of bamboo and pine trees. Moreover, your
axes, the boilers and other parts would wear out long
before you reached the end of your journey, and you
wouldn't have enough space to carry enough iron for
replacements parts. No, what you need are electric
motors.
"Now, there's a man in this area I met shortly after
translation here. I don't know where he is just now but he
must be somewhere close. I'll find him for you. He's an
electrical wizard, a late twentieth-century engineer who
knows how to build the type of motors you'll need."
"Hold your horses!" Sam said. "Where would you get
all the tremendous amounts of electrical power you'd
need? Would we have to build our own Niagara Falls to
carry along with us?"
O'Brien was a short, slight youth with a plume of al-
most orange hair and a face with features so delicate he
looked effeminate. He had a crooked smile which
managed nevertheless to be charming. He said, "It's
available everywhere up and down The River."
He pointed at the mushroom shape of the nearest
grailstone. "Three times a day, those stones output an
enormous electrical power. What's to prevent us from
hooking up power lines to a number of them and storing
the discharges to run the boat's motors?"

Sam goggled for a moment, then said, "Strike me dumb!
No, that's a redundant phrase. I am dumb! Right before
my eyes, and I never thought of it! Of course!"
Then he slitted his eyes and lowered his thick tangled
eyebrows. "How in hell could you store all that energy? I
don't know much about electricity, but I do know that
you'd need a storage battery taller than the Eiffel Tower
or a capacitor the size of Pike's Peak."
O'Brien shook his head. "I thought so, too, but this
fellow, he's a mulatto, half Afrikaans, half Zulu,
Lobengula Van Boom, he said that if he had the materials,
he could build a storage device—a batacitor, he called
it—a ten-meter cube, that could hold ten megakilowatts
and feed it out a tenth of a volt per second or all at once.
"Now, if we can mine the bauxite and make aluminum
wire, and there are many problems in doing even that, we
can use the aluminum in circuits and electrical motors.
Aluminum isn't as efficient as copper, but we don't have
copper, and aluminum will do the job."
Sam's fury and frustration disappeared. He grinned,
snapped his fingers, and made a little leap into the air.
"Find van Boom! I want to talk to him!"
He puffed away, the end of his cigar as glowing as the
images in his mind. Already, the great white pad-
dle-wheeler was steaming (no, electrificating?) up The
River with Sam Clemens in the pilothouse, Sam Clemens
wearing a Riverboat captain's cap of Riverdragon leather
on his head, Sam Clemens, captain of the fabulous, the
unique paddle-wheeler, the great vessel churning on the
start of its million mile-plus journey. Never such a boat,
never such a River, never such a trip! Whistles blowing,
bells clanging, the crew made up of the great and near-
great men and women of all time. From mammoth sub-
human Joe Miller of 1,000,000 B.C. to the delicate-
bodied but vast-brained scientist of the late twentieth-
century.
Von Richthofen brought him back to the immediate
reality.
"I'm ready to start digging for the iron. But what do you
intend to do about Joe?"

Sam groaned and said, "I can't make up my mind what
to do. I'm as tense as a diamond cutter before he makes
the first tap. One wrong thing, and the Kohinoor shatters.
Okay, okay! I'll send Joe. I have to take a chance. But
being without him makes me feel as helpless as a hon-
eydipper without a bucket, a banker on Black Friday. I'll
tell Bloodaxe and Joe, and you can start your crew. Only
we ought to have a ceremony. We'll all have a snort, and
I'll dig the first shovelful."
A few minutes later, his stomach warmed by a big shot
of Bourbon, cigar in mouth, his speech finished, Sam
started to dig. The bamboo shovel had a sharp edge, but
the grass was so tough and thick that it was necessary to
use the shovel as a machete. Sweating, swearing, declaring
that he had always hated physical exertion and was not cut
out to be a ditch-digger, Sam chopped away the grass. On
driving the now-dulled shovel into the earth, Sam found he
could not bring up even a half shovelful. It would be
necessary to hack away at the grass and the dirt between.
"By the great horn spoon!" he said, flinging the shovel
down on the ground. "Let some peasant who's cut out for
this drudgery do it! I'm a brain-worker!"
The crowd laughed and set to work with flint and bam-
boo knives and flint axes. Sam said, "If that iron is ten feet
down, it'll take us ten years to find it. Joe, you'd better
bring back plenty of flint, otherwise we're done for."
"Do I have to go?" Joe Miller said. "I'll mithth you,
Tham."
"You gotta go, as all men do," Sam said. "Don't worry
about me."

12
During the next three days, a hole ten feet across and
one foot deep was made. Von Richthofen organized the
teams so that a new one replaced the previous crew every
fifteen minutes. There was no lack of fresh and strong dig-
gers, but delays were caused by the flaking of new flint
tools and the making of new bamboo tools. Bloodaxe
growled about the damage to the axes and knives, saying
that if they were to be attacked, the stone weapons could
not cut through the skin of a baby. Clemens begged him
for the dozenth time to be allowed to use the steel ax, and
Bloodaxe refused.
"If Joe were here, I'd have him take the ax away from
him," Clemens said to Lothar. "And where is Joe,
anyway? He should be back by now, empty-handed or
bearing gifts."
"I think we ought to send somebody in a dugout to find
out," von Richthofen said. "I'd go myself, but I think you
still need me around to protect you from Bloodaxe."
"If something's happened to Joe, we'll both need pro-
tection," Sam said. "All right, that Pathan, Abdul, can be
our spy. He could wriggle unnoticed through a basket of
rattlesnakes."
At dawn, two days later, Abdul paddled in. He woke
Sam and Lothar, who were sleeping in the same hut for
mutual protection. In broken English, he explained that
Joe Miller was tied up in a strongly built bamboo cage.
Abdul had tried to get a chance to free Joe, but the cage
had an around-the-clock guard.
The Vikings had been greeted with friendliness and
sympathy. The chief of the region had seemed surprised
that his flint for their iron would be a very good trade. He
had held a big party to celebrate the agreement and had
given his guests as much liquor and dreamgum as they
wished. The Norse had been overcome while they snored
drunkenly. Joe was asleep but had awakened while being

tied up. With bare hands only, he had killed twenty men
and injured fifteen before the chief had half stunned him
with a dub against the back of his neck. The blow would
have broken anybody else's neck; it just reduced his fight-
ing ability enough to permit men to swarm over him and
restrain him while the chief hit him twice over the head.
"The chief knows Joe is a mighty warrior," Abdul said.
"Greater than Rustam himself. I overheard some men
talking, and they said their chief plans to use Joe as a
hostage. He wants to become partners in the iron mine. If
refused, he will not kill Joe but will make a slave out of
him, although I doubt he can do that. He'll attack us, kill
us, get the iron for himself.
"He can do it. He's building a huge fleet, many small
ships carrying forty men each, hastily put together but ser-
viceable to transport his army. He'll make an all-out at-
tack with warriors armed with flint weapons, bows and
arrows and heavy war-boomerangs."
"And who is this would-be Napoleon?" Sam said.
"His men called him King John. They say that he ruled
over England when men wore armor and fought with
swords. In the time of Saladin. His brother was a very fa-
mous warrior, Richard the Lion-Hearted."
Sam cursed and said, "John Lackland! The black-
hearted pussyfooting Prince John! So rotten that the
English swore never again to have a king named John! I'd
sooner have a scoundrel like Leopold of Belgium or Jim
Fiske after my hide!"
Thirty minutes later, Sam was shoved into an even
deeper gloom. This time, the message came by word-of-
mouth grapevine. Thirty miles downRiver, a huge fleet
was sailing toward them. This consisted of sixty large
single-masters, each carrying forty warriors. The leader of
the armada was a king of an area which had been just out-
side the destruction caused by the meteorite. His name
was Joseph Maria von Radowitz.
"I read about him in school!" von Richthofen said.
"Let's see. He was born in 1797, died about 1853, I
believe. He was an artillery expert and a good friend of

Fredrick Wilhelm IV of Prussia. He was called "The
Warlike Monk' because he was a general who also had
strict religious views. He died when he was about fifty
years old, a disappointed man because he had been
dropped from favor. So now he's alive again, young,
and no doubt trying to impose his Puritanism upon
others, and killing those who don't agree with him."
An hour later, he got word that King John's fleet had set
sail.
"John's force will get here first," he told Bloodaxe.
"They'll be faster because the wind and current will be
helping them."
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Bloodaxe
snorted.
"So what do you plan to do?"
"Smash the Englishman first and then destroy the Ger-
man later," Bloodaxe replied. He swung his ax and said,
"By the shattered hymen of Thor's bride! My ribs still
hurt, but I will ignore the pain!"
Sam did not argue. When he was alone with Lothar, he
said, "Fighting against hopeless odds until you die is all
very admirable. But it doesn't pay off in preferred stock.
Now, I know you're going to think I'm as spineless as a
cockroach, Lothar, but I have a dream, a great dream, and
it transcends all ordinary ideas of faithfulness and
morality. I want that boat, Lothar, and I want to pilot it to
the end of The River, no matter what!
"If we had a fighting chance, I wouldn't suggest this.
But we don't. We're outnumbered and have inferior
weapons. So I'm going to suggest that we make a deal."
"With whom?" von Richthofen said. He was grim and
pale.
"With John. He may be the most treacherous king in
the world, although the competition is fierce, but he's the
one most likely to throw in with us. Radowitz's fleet is big-
ger than his, and even if John somehow managed to defeat
it, he'd be so weakened we could take him. But if we
ganged up with John, we could give Radowitz such a beat-
ing he'd take off like a hound dog, tail closed down like a
latch."

Van Richthofen laughed and said, "For a moment I
thought you were going to propose that we hide in the
mountains and then come out to offer our services to the
victor. I could not stand the idea of playing coward, of
leaving these people to fight alone."
"I'll be frank," Clemens said, "even if I am Sam. I'd do
that if I thought it was the only way. No, what I'm sug-
gesting is that we get rid, somehow, of Bloodaxe. He'll
never go along with taking John in as a partner."
"You'll have to watch John as if he were a poisonous
snake," the German said. "But I see no other way out.
Nor do I think it's treachery to kill Bloodaxe. It's just in-
surance. He'll get rid of you the first chance he gets."
"And we'll not really be killing him," Sam said. "Just
removing him from the picture."
Clemens wanted to talk more about what they should
do, but von Richthofen said that there had been enough
talk. Sam was putting off the taking of action—as usual.
Things had to be done right now.
Sam gave a sigh and said, "I suppose so."
"What's the matter?" Lothar said.
"I'm suffering from guilt before I've even incurred it,"
Sam replied. "I feel like a yellow dog, although there's no
reason I should. None at all! But I was born to feel guilty
about everything, even about being bom."
Lothar threw his hands up in disgust and strode off,
saying over his shoulder, "Follow me or hang back. But
you can't expect me to think of you as the captain of our
boat. Captains don't drag their feet."
Sam grimaced but went after him. Lothar talked to
twelve men he thought trustworthy enough for what he
proposed. The sun began to climb down from the zenith
while the details were arranged and then the men went to
arm themselves. They came back from their huts with
bamboo spears and knives. One had a bamboo bow with
six arrows, effective only at close range.
Lothar von Richthofen and Sam Clemens leading, the
group strode up to the Norse king's hut. Six Vikings stood
guard outside.

"We want to talk to Bloodaxe," Sam said, trying to
keep his voice from quavering.
"He's in there with a woman," Ve Grimarsson said.
Sam raised his hand. Lothar ran past him and clubbed
Grimarsson over the head. An arrow whistled past Sam's
shoulder and stopped in the throat of a guard. Within ten
seconds, the others had been killed or wounded too
severely to continue fighting. There were shouts from a
distance as a dozen other Vikings came running to protect
their chief. Bloodaxe, naked, bellowing, his steel ax held
high, rushed through the doorway. Von Richthofen lunged
with his spear and impaled the Norseman on it. Bloodaxe
dropped the ax and staggered back, driven by the Ger-
man's weight on the spear, until he slammed into the bam-
boo wall of the hut. He stared; his mouth worked; blood
ran from a corner of his lips; his skin was blue-gray.
The German then yanked the spear out of the Norse-
man's belly, and Bloodaxe crumpled.
There was a fight afterward with six of Clemens' men
killed and four wounded. The Vikings did not give up until
all were silenced and as dead as their king.
Sam Clemens, panting hoarsely, splashed with blood
from others and bleeding from a gash on his shoulder,
leaned on his spear. He had killed one man, Gunnlaugr
Thorrfinnsson, puncturing his kidney from behind while
the Viking was thrusting at von Richthofen. Too bad
about Gunnlaugr. Of all the Norsemen, he enjoyed Sam's
jokes the most. Now he was stabbed in the back by a good
friend.
I've fought in 38 battles, Sam thought, and I've slain
only two men. The other was a severely wounded Turk
struggling to get to his feet. Sam Clemens, the mighty war-
rior, great-hearted hero. Thinking thus, he gazed with the
horror and fascination that corpses had always had for
him and would have if he lived 10,000 years.
And then he squawked with fright and yanked his left
ankle away in a frantic effort to escape the hand gripping
it. Unable to do so, he lifted his spear to drive it into the
man who held him. He looked down into the pale blue

eyes of Erik Bloodaxe. Life had surged up in Bloodaxe for
a moment. The glaze was gone from his eyes and the skin
was not so gray-blue. His voice was weak but strong
enough for Sam, and others nearby, to hear him.
"Bikkja! Droppings of Ratatosk! Listen! I will not let
you go until I have spoken! The gods have given me the
powers of a voluspa. They want revenge for your
treachery. Listen! I know there is iron beneath this blood-
soaked grass. I feel the iron flowing in my veins. Its
grayness turns my blood thick and cold. There is iron
enough and more than enough for your great white boat.
You will dig up this iron, and you will build a boat to rival
Skithblathnir.
"You will be captain of it, Bitch Clemens, and your
boat will sail up The River for more miles than Sleipnir's
eight legs could cover in a day. You will go back and forth,
north and south, east and west, as the Rivervalley takes
you. You will go around the world many times.
"But the building of the boat and the sailing thereof will
be bitter and full of grief. And after years, two generations
as known on Earth, after great sufferings, and some joys,
when you think you are at long last near the end of the long
long journey, then you will find me!
"Rather, I will find you! I will be waiting on a distant
boat and I will kill you. And you will never get to the end
of The River nor storm the gates of Valhalla!"
Sam became cold and brittle. Even when he felt the
hand slacken its grip on his ankle, he did not move. He
heard the death rattle and did not move or look down.
Faintly, Bloodaxe spoke again. "I wait!"
There was another rattle, more drawn out, and the hand
fell away. Sam forced himself to step away, not sure that
he would not break into a dozen pieces. He looked at von
Richthofen and said, "Superstition! A man can't look into
the future!"
Von Richthofen said, "I don't think so. But if things are
as you believe, Sam, mechanical, automatic, then the
future is predetermined. If things are ready-made, why
can't the future open up for a minute, lights blaze in the
tunnel of time, and a man see down the track?"

Sam did not answer. Von Richthofen laughed to show
that he was joking and clapped Sam on the shoulder.
Sam said, "I need a drink. Badly." Then he said, "I
don't take any stock in that superstitious rot."
But he believed that those dying eyes had seen into the
years ahead, and he was thereafter to believe.

13
An hour before dusk, King John's fleet  arrived.  Sam
Clemens sent a man out to tell John that he wanted to
discuss a possible partnership. John, ever willing to talk
to you before knifing you, agreed to a powwow. Sam stood
on the edge of the bank while John Lackland leaned on the
railing of his galley. Sam, his terror unfrozen by a dozen
whiskeys, described the situation and spoke glowingly of
the great boat to be built.
John was a short, dark man with very broad shoulders,
tawny hair and blue eyes. He smiled frequently and spoke
in an English not so heavily accented it could not be easily
understood. Before coming to this area, he had lived for
ten years among late-eighteenth-century Virginians. A
fluent linguist, he had disburdened himself of much of the
speech patterns of his twelfth-century English and Nor-
man French.
He understood well why it would pay him to team up
with Clemens against von Radowitz. No doubt he had
mental reservations about what he would do after von
Radowitz was disposed of, but he came ashore to swear
eternal friendship and partnership. The details of the pact
were arranged over drinks, and then King John had Joe
Miller released from his cage on the flagship.
Sam did not shed tears easily, but several trickled down
his cheeks on seeing the titanthrop. Joe wept like a peram-
bulating Niagara Falls and almost broke Sam's ribs in his
embrace.
Von Richthofen, however, told Clemens later, "At
least, with Bloodaxe, you knew fairly well where you
stood. You've made a bad trade."
"I'm from Missouri," Sam replied, "but I never was
much of a mule trader. However, if you're running for
your life, a pack of wolves snapping at your heels, you'll
trade a foundered plug for a wild mustang, as long as he'll
carry you out of danger. You worry later about how to get

down off of him without breaking your neck."
The battle, which started at dawn the next day, was
long. Several times, disaster came close for Clemens and
King John. The Englishman's fleet had hidden near the
east bank in the early morning fog and then had come up
behind the German fleet. Flaming pine torches thrown by
John's sailors started fires on many of van Radowitz's
boats. But the invaders spoke a common language, were
well disciplined, had soldiered together a long time, and
were far better armed.
Their rockets sank many of John's boats and blasted
holes in the cheval-de-frise along the bank. The Germans
then stormed ashore under cover of a hail of arrows. Dur-
ing the landing, a rocket exploded in the hole dug to get to
the iron. Sam was knocked over by the blast. Half
stunned, he rose. And he became aware of a man he had
never seen before standing by him. Sam was sure that
the man had not been in this area until this moment.
The stranger was about five feet seven inches tall and
was stockily, even massively, built. Like an old red ram,
Sam thought, though the stranger looked, of course, as if
he were twenty-five years old. His curly auburn hair hung
down his back to his waist. His black eyebrows were as
thick as Sam's. His eyes were large, dark brown with chips
of pale green. His face was aquiline and jutting-chinned.
His ears were large and stood out at almost right angles
from his head.
The body of an old red ram, Sam thought, with the head
of a great horned owl.
His bow was made of a material that Sam had seen
before, though it was rare. It was made from two of the
curved horns that ring a Riverdragon-fish's mouth. The
two were joined together to make one double recurved
bow. This type was by far the most powerful and durable
bow in the valley but had one disadvantage. It took ex-
tremely powerful arms to bend it,
The stranger's leather quiver held twenty arrows, flint-
tipped, the shafts carved laboriously from the fin bones of
the Riverdragon and feathered with carved pieces of bone
so thin that the sun shone through them.

He spoke in a German with a thick, non-Germanic,
unidentifiable accent. "You look like Sam Clemens."
"I am," Clemens replied. "What's left of me. But how
did you. . . ?"
"You were described to me by—" the stranger
paused—"one of Them."
Sam did not understand for a moment. The part-
deafness caused by the explosion, the yells of men killing
each other only twenty yards away, other, more distant
rocket explosions, and the sudden appearance of this man
gave everything an unreal quality.
He said, "He sent ... the Mysterious Stranger ... he
sent you! You're one of the twelve!"
"He? Not he! She sent me!"
Sam did not have time to question him about this. He
checked the impulse to ask the man if he was any good
with the bow. He looked as if he could wrest from the bow
the last atom of potentiality. Instead, Sam climbed to the
top of the pile of dirt by the hole and pointed at the nearest
enemy ship, its prow against the bank. A man standing on
its poopdeck was bellowing orders.
"Von Radowitz, the leader of the enemy," Sam said,
"He's out of range of our feeble bows."
Smoothly, swiftly, pausing only to aim briefly, not
bothering to gauge the wind which blew always at this time
of day at a steady six miles an hour, the bowman loosed
his black arrow. Its trajectory ended in the solar plexus of
von Radowitz. The German staggered backward under the
impact, whirled to reveal the bloody tip sticking from his
back, and fell backward over the railing and into the
waters between boat and bank.
The second-in-command rallied his men, and the
bowman drove a shaft through him. Joe Miller, clad in
Riverdragon-leather armor, swinging his huge oaken club,
ravaged among the Germans in the center of the line of
battle. He was like an 800-pound lion with a human brain.
Death and panic went with him. He smashed twenty skulls
by the minute and occasionally picked up a man with his
free hand and threw him to knock down a half dozen or
so.

At different times, five men managed to slip behind Joe,
but the black bone arrows of the newcomer always in-
tercepted them.
The invaders broke and tried to get back to their boats.
Von Richthofen, naked, bloody, grinning, danced before
Sam. "We've won! We've won!"
"You'll get your flying machine yet," Sam said. He
turned to the archer. "What is your name?"
"I have had many names, but when my grandfather first
held me in his arms he called me Odysseus."
All Sam could think of to say was, "We've got a lot to
talk about."
Could this be the man of whom Homer sang? The real
Ulysses, that is, the historical Ulysses, who did fight
before the walls of Troy and about whom legends and
fairy tales were later collected? Why not? The shadowy
man who had talked in Sam's hut had said he had picked
twelve men out of the billions available. What his means
were for choosing, Sam did not know, but he presumed the
reasons were good. And the Mysterious Stranger had told
him of one choice: Richard Francis Burton. Was there
some kind of aura about the twelve that enabled the
renegade to know the man who could do the job? Some
tiger color of the soul?
Late that night, Sam, Joe, Lothar and the Achaean,
Odysseus, walked to their huts after the victory cele-
bration. Sam's throat was dry from all the talking. He had
tried to squeeze out of the Achaean all he knew about the
siege of Troy and his wanderings afterward. He had been
told enough to confuse, not enlighten, him.
The Troy that Odysseus knew was not the city near the
Hellespont, the ruins that Terrestrial archeologists called
Troy VIIa. The Troy that Odysseus, Agamemnon and
Diomedes besieged was farther south, opposite the island
of Lesbos but inland and north of the Kaikos River. It had
been inhabited by people related to the Etruscans, who
lived at that time in Asia Minor and later emigrated to
Italy because of the Hellenic invaders. Odysseus knew of
the city which later generations had thought was Troy.

Dardanians, barbarophones, lived there; they were related
to the true Trojans. Their city had fallen five years before
the Trojan war to other barbarians from the north.
Three years after the siege of the real Troy, which had
lasted for only two years, Odysseus had gone on the great
sea-raid of the Danaans, or Achaeans, against the Egypt
of Rameses III. The raid had ended in disaster. Odysseus
had fled for his life by sea and had indeed gone unwillingly
on a journey that took three years and resulted in his visit-
ing Malta, Sicily and parts of Italy, lands unknown then to
the Greeks. There had been no Laestrygonians, Aeolus,
Calypso, Circe, Polyphemus. His wife was named
Penelope, but there were no suitors for him to kill.
As for Achilles and Hector, Odysseus knew of them
only as the principals in a song. He supposed both of them
to have been Pelasgians, the people who lived in the
Hellenic peninsula before the Achaeans came down out of
the north to conquer it. The Achaeans had adapted the
Pelasgian song to suit their own purposes, and later bards
must have incorporated it in the Iliad. Odysseus knew The
Iliad and The Odyssey, because he had met a scholar who
could recite both epics from memory.
"What about the Wooden Horse?" Sam said, fully ex-
pecting to draw a blank with his question. To his surprise,
Odysseus not only knew of it but said that he had indeed
been responsible for it. It was a deception conceived in
desperation by madness and should have failed.
And this, to Sam, was the most startling of all. The
scholars had united in denying any reality to this story,
saying that it was patently impossible. They should have
been correct, since the idea did seem fantastic, nor was it
likely that the Achaeans would be stupid enough to build
the horse or the Trojans stupid enough to fall for it. But
the wooden horse had existed, and the Achaeans had got-
ten into the city by hiding inside the horse.
Von Richthofen and Joe listened to the two talk. Sam
had decided that, despite the Ethical's warning to tell no
one about him, Joe and Lothar should know of him.
Otherwise, Sam would be doing so many things that would

be inexplicable to anyone closely associated with him.
Besides, Sam felt that his taking others into the secret
would show the Ethical that Sam was really running
things. It was a childish gesture, but Sam made it
Sam said good night to all but Joe and lay down on the
cot, Although very tired, he could not get to sleep. The
snores issuing from Joe like a maelstrom through a
keyhole did not help soothe his insomnia. Also, his excite-
ment over tomorrow's doings made his nerves ripple and
brain pulse. Tomorrow would be a historic day, if this
world was to have a history. Eventually, there would be
paper, ink, pencils, even a printing press. The great River-
boat would have a weekly journal. There would be a book
which would tell of how the hole was deepened by explod-
ing rockets captured from von Radowitz's ships. Perhaps
the iron would be exposed tomorrow; it surely must.
And there was in addition his worries about King John,
the jesting slyboots. God knew what that insidious mind
was planning. It was doubtful that John would do any-
thing treacherous until the boat was built, and that would
be years from now. There was no need to worry yet, none
at all. Despite which, Sam worried.

14
Sam awoke with a start, Ms heart beating as if some
monster of his nightmares had kicked it. Wet air was blow-
ing in through the interstices of the bamboo walls and the
mat hanging over the entranceway. Rain crashed against
the leaf-covered roof, and thunder boomed from the
mountains. Joe was still snoring his private thunder.
Sam stretched, and then he cried out and sat up. His
hand had touched flesh. Lightning from far away paled the
darkness by two shades and gave vague shape to someone
squatting by the cot.
A familiar baritone spoke. "You needn't look for the
titanthrop to come to your aid. I've ensured that he'll not
wake until dawn."
By this, Sam knew that the Ethical could see where no
light was. Sam picked up a cigar from the little folding
table and said, "Mind if I smoke?"
The Mysterious Stranger took so long replying that Sam
wondered. The glow from the hot wire in Sam's lighter
would not be bright enough to reveal the man's features,
and probably he was wearing a mask or some device over
his face. Did he dislike the odor of cigars, perhaps of
tobacco in any form? Yet he hesitated to say so because
this characteristic might identify him? Identify whom? The
other Ethicals who knew that they had a renegade among
them? There were twelve, or so the Stranger had said. If
they ever learned that he, Sam Clemens, had been con-
tacted by an Ethical, and learned of the Ethical's dislike of
tobacco, would They know at once the renegade's iden-
tity?
Sam did not voice his suspicions. He would keep this to
himself for possible later use.
"Smoke," the Stranger said. Although Sam could not
see him or hear him move, he got the impression that he
backed off a little.
"What's the occasion for this unexpected visit?" Sam
said.

"To tell you I won't be able to see you again for a long
time. I didn't want you to think I'd deserted you. I'm being
called away on business you wouldn't understand even if I
were to explain it. You're on your own now for a long
time. If things should go badly for you, I won't be able to
interfere even in a subtle way.
"However, you have all you need at present to occupy
you for a decade. You'll have to use your own ingenuity to
solve the many technical problems that will arise. I can't
supply you with any more metals or materials you might
need or extricate you from difficulties with invaders. I
took enough chances in getting the meteorite down to you
and in telling you where the bauxite and platinum are.
"There will be other Ethicals—not the Twelve, but
second-order—to watch you, but they won't interfere.
They won't think the boat any danger to The Plan. They'd
rather you didn't have the iron and they'll be upset when
you 'discover' the platinum and bauxite. They want you
Terrestrials to be occupied with psychic development, not
technological. But they won't stick their noses in."
Sam felt a little panic. For the first time, he realized
that, though he hated the Ethical, he had come to depend
strongly on him for moral and material support.
"I hope nothing goes wrong," Sam said. "I almost lost
my chance at the iron today. If it hadn't been for Joe and
that fellow, Odysseus. . . ."
Then he said, "Hold it! Odysseus told me that the
Ethical who talked to him was a woman!"
The darkness chuckled. "What does that mean?"
"Either you're not the only renegade or else you can
change your voice. Or maybe, maybe you're not telling me
the truth at all! Maybe you're all in on this and feeding out
fine lies for some plan of your own! We're tools in your
hands!"
"I'm not lying! And I can't tell you about your other
guesses. If you, or the others I've chosen, are detected
and questioned, their stories will confuse my colleagues."
There was a rustic. "I must go now. You're on your
own. Good luck."
"Wait! What if I fail?"

"Somebody else will build the boat, but I have good
reasons for wanting you to do it."
"So I am just a tool. If the tool breaks, throw it away,
get another."
"I can't assure your success. I'm not a god."
"Damn you and all your kind!" Sam shouted. "Why
couldn't you have let things be as they were on Earth? We
had the peace of death forever. No more pain and grief.
No more never-ceasing toil and heartache. All that was
behind us. We were free, free of the chains of flesh. But
you gave us the chains again and fixed it so we couldn't
even kill ourselves. You set death beyond our reach. It's as
if you put us in hell forever!"
"It's not that bad," the Ethical said. "Most of you are
better off than you ever were. Or at least as well off. The
crippled, the blind, the grotesque, the diseased, the starved
are healthy and young. You don't have to sweat for or
worry about your daily bread, and most of you are eating
better by far than you did on Earth. However, I agree with
you in the larger sense. It was a crime, the greatest crime
of all, to resurrect you. So ..."
"I want my Livy back!" Sam cried. "And I want my
daughters! They might as well be dead as separated from
me, I mean from each other, forever! I'd rather they were
dead! At least, I wouldn't be in agony all the time because
they might be suffering, but in some terrible plight! How do
I know they're not being raped, beaten, tortured? There's
so much evil on this planet! There should be, since it has
the original population of Earth!"
"I could help you," the Ethical said. "But it might take
years for me to locate them. I won't explain the means be-
cause they're too complicated and I have to leave before
the rain is over."
Sam rose and walked forward, his hands out.
The Ethical said, "Stop! You touched me once!"
Sam halted. "Could you find Livy for me? My girls?"
"I'll do it. You have my word. Only . . . only what if it
does take years? Suppose you have the boat built by
then—in fact, are already a million miles up The River.
And then I tell you I've found your wife, but she's three

million miles downRiver? I can notify you of her location,
but I positively cannot bring her to you. You'll have to get
her yourself. What will you do then? Will you turn back
and spend twenty years backtracking? Would your crew
permit you to do so? I doubt it. Moreover, even if you did
this, there's no certainty that your woman would still be in
the original location. She may have been killed and
translated elsewhere, even farther out of reach."
"Damn you!" Sam yelled.
"And, of course," the Ethical said, "people change.
You may like her when you find her."
"I'll kill you!" Sam Clemens yelled. "So help me. . . !"
The bamboo mat was lifted. The Stranger was silhouet-
ted briefly, a batlike, cloaked shape with a dome covering
for the head. Sam clenched his fists and forced himself to
stand like a block of ice, waiting for his anger to melt
away. Then he began pacing back and forth until finally he
threw his cigar away. It had turned bitter; even the air he
breathed was harsh.
"Damn them! Damn him! I'll build the boat and I'll get
to the north pole and I'll find out what's going on! And I'll
kill him! Kill them!"
The rains stopped. There were shouts from a distance.
Sam went outside, alarmed because the Stranger might
have been caught, although it did not seem likely. And he
knew then that his boat meant more than anything else,
that he did not want anything to happen to interfere with
its building, even if he could take immediate revenge on
the Ethical. That would have to come later.
Torches were coming across the plain. Presently, the
bearers were close enough for Sam to make out the faces
of some guards and that of von Richthofen. There were
three unknowns with them.
An arrangement of large towels, held together by
magnetic clasps, fell shapelessly about their bodies. A
hood shadowed the face of the smallest stranger. The
tallest was a man with a long, lean, dark face and a huge
hooked nose.
"You're runner-up in the contest," Sam said. "There's

someone in my hut who has a nose that beats yours all
hollow."
"Norn d'un con! Va te fair foutre!" the tall man said.
"Must I always be insulted, no matter where I go? Is this
the hospitality you give strangers? Did I travel ten thou-
sand leagues under incredibly harsh conditions to find the
man who can put good steel in my hand once more, only
to have him verbally tweak my nose? Know, ignorant in-
solent lout, that Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac does
not turn the other cheek. Unless you apologize, imme-
diately, most sincerely, plead with the tongue of an angel,
I will stab you through with this nose that you so mock!"
Sam apologized abjectly, saying that his nerves had
been frayed by the battle. He looked in wonder at the
legendary figure, and he wondered if he could be one of
the chosen twelve.
The second man, a blond-haired and blue-eyed youth,
introduced himself as Herrman Goring. A spiral bone,
taken from one of the Riverfishes, hung from a cord
around his neck, and by this Sam knew that he was a
member of the Church of Second Chance. This meant
trouble, because the Second Chancers preached absolute
pacifism.
The third stranger threw the hood back and revealed a
pretty face with long black hair done in a Psyche knot.
Sam staggered and almost fainted. "Livy!"
The woman started. She stepped closer to him and,
silently, pale in the torchlight, looked at him. She was
weaving back and forth, as shocked as he.
"Sam," she said weakly.
He took a step toward her, but she turned and clung to
de Bergerac for support. The Frenchman put his arm
around her and glared at Sam Clemens. "Courage, my lit-
tle lamb! He will not harm you while I am here! What does
he mean to you?"
She looked up at him with an expression that Sam could
not mistake. He howled and shook his fist at the stars, just
coming out from the clouds.

15
The Riverboat moved through his dream like a glit-
tering, twenty-million-carat diamond.
There had never been a boat like it nor would there ever
be another.
It would be named the Not For Hire. No one would
ever be able to take it away from him, it would be so
strongly armored and weaponed. Nor would anyone be
able to buy or rent it from him.
The name glowed in great black letters against the white
hull. NOT FOR HIRE.
The fabulous Riverboat would have four decks: the
boiler deck, the main deck, the hurricane deck and the
landing deck for the aerial machine. Its overall length
would be four hundred and forty feet and six inches. The
beam over the paddle-wheel guards would be ninety-three
feet. Mean draft, loaded, twelve feet. The hull would be
made of magnalium or, perhaps, plastic. The great stacks
would spout smoke now and then, because there was a
steam boiler aboard. But this was only to propel the big
plastic bullets for the steam machine guns. The giant pad-
dle-wheels on the sides of the Riverboat would be turned
by enormous electrical motors.
The Not For Hire would be the only metal boat on The
River, the only boat not propelled by oars or wind, and it
would make anybody sit up and stare, whether he was
born in 2,000,000 B.C. or in A.D. 2000.
And he, Sam Clemens, would be The Captain, capital
T, capital C, because, aboard this vessel, carrying a crew
of one hundred and twenty, there would be only one Cap-
tain.
King John of England could call himself Admiral if he
wished, though if Sam Clemens had anything to do with it,
he'd be First Mate, not Admiral. And if Sam Clemens
really had anything to do with it, King John—John
Lackland, Rotten John, Dirty John, Lecher John, Pigsty
John—would not even be allowed on the boat. Sam

Clemens, smoking a big green cigar, wearing a white cap,
dressed in a white kilt with a white towel over his shoul-
ders for a cape, would lean out of the starboard port of the
great pilothouse and yell, Avast there, you lubbers! Grab
hold of that putrescent mass of immortality and treachery
and toss him off the gangplank. I don't care if he lands in
The River or on the bank! Get rid of that human garbage!
Over the railing of the boiler deck Prince John would
sail. Slyboots John, screaming, cursing in his French-
accented Middle English or in Anglo-Norman French or
in Esperanto. Then the gangplank would be drawn up,
bells would ring, whistles would blow, and Sam Clemens,
standing behind the pilot, would give the order to begin
the voyage.
The voyage! Up a River for maybe ten million miles or
maybe twenty million miles, for maybe forty years or a
hundred years. Such a Riverboat, such a River, such a
voyage had never been dreamed of on Earth, long dead
Earth! Up The River, the only one on this world, on the
only boat like this, with Sam Clemens as La Sipestro, The
Captain, and also addressed as La Estro, The Boss.
He was so happy!
And then, as they headed out toward the middle of The
River, just to test the current, which was strongest in the
center of the mighty stream, as the thousands along the
bank waved and cheered or wept after the boat, after him,
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain—The
Captain, The Boss—he saw a man with long yellow hair
and broad shoulders pushing through the crowd.
The man wore a towellike cloth, secured by magnetic
tabs under the material, as a kilt. His leather sandals were
made of the hide of the whale-sized Riverdragon-fish,
Around his thickly muscled neck he wore a string of
brilliantly colored hornfish vertebrae. In his huge powerful
hand he gripped the wooden shaft of a large war ax of
iron. His pale-blue eyes were fixed on Samuel Clemens
and that broad hawk-nosed face was grim.
Sam Clemens screamed to the pilot, "Faster! Faster!
Full speed ahead!"

The great paddle-wheels began to dip into the water
more swiftly—Chunk—chunk. Even through the fiber-
glass-insulated deck the vibrations made the deck quiver.
Suddenly the blond man, Erik Bloodaxe, tenth-century
Viking King, was in the pilothouse.
He shouted at Sam Clemens in Old Norse. Traitor!
Droppings of Ratatosk! I told you I would wait along the
banks of The River! You betrayed me so you could get the
iron from the fallen star and build your great Riverboat!
Sam fled the pilot house and down the ladders from
deck to deck and down into the dark bowels of the hold,
but Erik Bloodaxe was always two steps behind.
Past the colossal rotating electric motors Sam Clemens
ran, and then he was in the chemistry room, where the
engineers were making potassium nitrate from human ex-
crement and mixing it with sulfur and charcoal to make
gunpowder. Sam grabbed hold of a lighter and a resin
torch, pressed the slide, and a white-hot glowing wire slid
out of the case.
Stop, or I'll blow up the whole boat! Sam screamed.
Erik had stopped, but he was swinging the big ax
around and around over his head. He grinned and said, Go
ahead! You haven't got the guts! You love the Riverboat
more than you love anything, even your faithless but pre-
cious Livy! You wouldn't blow her up! So I'm going to
split you down the middle with my ax and then take the
Riverboat for myself!
No! No! Sam screamed. You wouldn't dare! You can't!
You can't! This is my dream, my love, my passion, my
life, my world! You can't!
The Norseman stepped closer to him; the ax whistled
over his head.
I can't? Just stand there and see!
Over his shoulder Sam saw a shadow. It moved forward
and became a tall, faceless figure. It was X, the
Mysterious Stranger, the renegade Ethical who had sent
the meteorite crashing into the Rivervalley so that Sam
could have the iron and nickel to build his Riverboat on
this mineral-poor planet. And so he could sail up The
River to the North Polar Sea where the Misty Tower, the

Big Grail, call it what you would, was hidden in the cold
fog. And there Sam, with the eleven men chosen by X for
his as-yet-unrevealed plan, would storm the Tower, and
find—find what? Whatever was there.
Stranger! Sam called. Save me! Save me!
The laughter was like a wind from the polar sea, turning
his guts to crystal.
Save yourself, Sam!
No! No! You promised! Sam yelled. And then his eyes
were open and the last of his groans died away. Or had he
dreamed that he was groaning?
He sat up. His bed was made of bamboo. The mattress
was a bamboo fiber cloth stuffed with giant leaves of the
irontree. The blanket was made up of five towels secured
together by magnetic tabs. The bed was against the wall of
a room twenty feet square. It held a desk and a round
table and about a dozen chairs, all of bamboo or pine, and
a fired-clay chamber pot. There were also a bamboo
bucket half full of water, a tall broad case with many
pigeonholes for rolls of paper, a rack with bamboo and
pine spears with flint and iron tips, yew bows and arrows,
a war ax of nickel-iron and four long steel knives. On the
wall were a number of pegs from which white towels hung.
On one hatstand was a naval cap, an officer's, made of
leather covered with a thin white cloth.
On the table was his grail, a gray metallic cylinder with
a metal handle.
On the desk were glass bottles containing a soot-black
ink, a number of bone pens, and one nickel-iron pen. The
papers on the desk were of bamboo, though there were a
few sheets of vellum from the inner lining of the stomach
of the hornfish.
Glass windows (or ports, as he called them) looked out
all around the room. As far as Sam Clemens knew, this
was the only house with glass windows in the entire river-
valley. Certainly, it was the only one for 10,000 miles
either way from this area.
The sole light came from the sky. Though it was not yet
dawn, the light was a trifle brighter than that cast by the

full moon on Earth. Giant stars of many colors, some so
big they looked like chipped-off pieces of the moon, jam-
packed the heavens. Bright sheets and streamers hung be-
tween the stars, behind them, and even, seemingly, in
front of some of the brightest. These were cosmic gas
clouds, glories that never ceased to thrill the more sensi-
tive of humanity along The River.
Sam Clemens, smacking his lips at the sour taste of the
liquor he had drunk that evening and the even sourer taste
of the dream, stumbled across the floor. He opened his
eyes completely when he reached the desk, picked up a
lighter, and applied the extended hot wire to a fish-oil
lamp in a stone bracket.
He opened a port and looked out toward The River. A
year ago he would have seen only a flat plain about a mile
and a half wide and covered with short, tough, bright-
green grass. Now it was a hideous mass of piled-up earth,
deep pits and many buildings of bamboo and pine con-
taining brick furnaces. These were his steel mills (so-
called), his glass factory, his smelters, his cement mills, his
forges, his blacksmith shops, his armories, his
laboratories, and his nitric- and sulfuric-acid factories. A
half a mile away was a high wall of pine logs enclosing the
first metal boat he would build.
Torches flared to his left. Even at night the men were
digging out the siderite chunks, hauling up pieces of the
nickel-iron.
Behind him had been a forest of thousand-foot-high
irontrees, red pine, lodgepole pine, black oak, white oak,
yew trees and thick stands of bamboo. These had stood on
the foothills; the hills were mostly still there but the trees,
except for the irontrees, were all gone, along with the bam-
boo. Only the huge irontrees had withstood the steel axes
of Clemens' people. The tall grasses had been cut down
and their fibers chemically treated to make ropes and
paper, but their roots were so tough and so tangled that
there had not been enough reason to chop them out. The
labor and the materials used in chopping through the roots
of the short grass of the plains to get to the metal there had
been very expensive. Not in terms of money, because that

did not exist, but in terms of sweat, worn-out stone and
dulled steel.
Where this area had been beautiful with its many trees
and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that
covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been
necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat.
Sam shivered at the wet and chilly wind which always
came late at night from upRiver. He shivered also at the
thought of the desolation. He loved beauty and nature's
order and he loved the parklike arrangement of the valley,
whatever else he thought about this world. Now he had
made it hideous because he had a dream. And he would
have to extend that hideousness, because his mills and fac-
tories needed more wood for fuel, for paper, for charcoal.
All that his state possessed was used up and he had about
used up all that Cernskujo to the immediate north and
Publiujo to the immediate south would trade him. If he
wanted more he would have to war on his closest
neighbors or make arrangements for trading with the more
distant states or those just across The River. Or else con-
quer them and take their wood away from them. He did
not want to do that; he abhorred war in principle and
could barely stand it in practice.
But if he was to have his Riverboat he had to have
wood as fuel for his factories.
He also had to have bauxite and cryolite and platinum if
he was to have aluminum generators and motors.
The nearest source of all three was in Soul City, that na-
tion twenty-six miles downRiver dominated by Elwood
Hacking, who hated whites.
So far, Sam had been able to trade iron weapons for
bauxite, cryolite, cinnabar and platinum. Sam's own state,
Parolando, needed the weapons badly. Adding one burden
to the other, Hacking insisted that Parolando use its own
-men to mine and transport the ore.
Sam sighed deeply. Why in hell hadn't the Mysterious
Stranger directed the meteorite to fall right by the bauxite
deposits? Then, when Sam and Bloodaxe's Vikings had
sailed into this area immediately after the meteorite had
struck, they could have claimed the land that was now

Soul City for their own. When Hacking arrived, he would
have been forced to join Clemens or to leave.
Still, even with the Stranger's powers, it could not be
easy to deflect a hundred-thousand-ton iron-nickel siderite
from its course and make it fall only twenty-six miles from
the bauxite and other minerals. Actually the Stranger had
supposed that he had hit the target on the bull's eye. He
had told Sam, before he disappeared on some unknown
mission, that the minerals were upRiver, all within a
seven-mile range. But he had been mistaken. And that had
made Sam both glad and angry. He was angry because the
minerals were not all within his reach, but he was also
happy that the Ethicals could make a mistake.
That fact did not help the humans imprisoned forever
between sheer mountains 20,000 feet high in a valley
about 9.9 miles wide on the average. They would be im-
prisoned for thousands of years, if not forever, unless
Samuel Langhorne Clemens could build his Riverboat.
Sam went to the unpainted pine cabinet, opened a door
and pulled out an opaque glass bottle. It held about twenty
ounces of bourbon donated by people who did not drink.
He downed about three ounces, winced, snorted, slapped
his chest and put the bottle back. Hah! Nothing better to
start off the day with, especially when you woke up from a
nightmare that should have been rejected by the Great
Censor of Dreams. If, that is, the Great Censor had any
love and regard for one of his favorite dream-makers, Sam
Clemens. Maybe the Great Censor did not love him after
all. It seemed that very few did love Sam anymore. He had
to do things he did not want to do in order to get the boat
built.
And then there was Livy, his wife on Earth for thirty-
four years.
He swore, caressed a nonexistent moustache, reached
back into the cabinet, and pulled the bottle out again.
Another snort. Tears came, but whether engendered by
the bourbon or the-thought of Livy, he did not know.
Probably, in this world of complex forces and mysteri-
ous operations—and operators—the tears were caused by

both. Plus other things which his hindbrain did not care to
let him peep into at this moment. His hindbrain would
wait until his forebrain was bent over, tying its intellectual
shoestrings, and would then boot the posterior of said
forebrain.
He strode across the bamboo mats and looked through
the port window. Down there, about two hundred yards
away, under the branches of the irontree, was a round,
conical-roofed, two-room hut. Inside the bedroom would
be Olivia Langdon Clemens, his wife—his ex-wife—and
the long, lanky, tremendously beaked, weak-chinned Savi-
nien de Cyrano II de Bergerac, swordsman, libertine, and
man-of-letters.
"Livy, how could you?" Sam said. "How could you
break my heart, the heart of Your Youth?"
A year had passed since she had shown up with Cyrano
de Bergerac. He had been shocked, more shocked than he
had ever been in his seventy-four years on Earth and his
twenty-one years on the Riverworld. But he had recovered
from it. Or he would have recovered if he had not gotten
another shock, though a lesser one. Nothing could exceed
the impact of the first. After all, he could not expect Livy
to go without a man for twenty-one years. Not when she
was young and beautiful again and still passionate and had
no reasonable hope of ever seeing him again. He had lived
with a half dozen women himself, and he could not expect
chastity or faithfulness from her. But he had expected that
she would drop her mate as a monkey drops a heated pen-
ny when she found him again.
Not so. She loved de Bergerac.
He had seen her almost every day since the night she
had first come out of the mists of The River. They spoke
politely enough and sometimes they were able to crack
their reserve and laugh and joke just as they had on Earth.
Sometimes, briefly but undeniably, their eyes told each
other that the old love was vibrating between them. Then,
when he felt that he had broken out with longing, just like
the hives, so he told himself later, laughing while he felt
like crying, he had stepped toward her, despite himself,
and she had stepped back to Cyrano's side if he happened

to be there or looked around for him if he wasn't.
Every night she was with that dirty, uncouth, big-nosed,
weak-chinned, Adam's-appled, but colorful, strong-
minded, witty, vigorous, talented, scary Frenchman. The
virile frog, Sam muttered. He could imagine him leaping,
croaking with lust, toward the white, blackly outlined,
curving figure of Livy, leaping, croaking . . .
He shuddered. This was no good. Even when he
brought women up here secretly—though he did not have
to hide anything—he could not quite forget her. Even
when he chewed dreamgum he could not forget her. If
anything, she sailed into the drug-tossed sea of his mind
more strongly, blown by the winds of desire. The good
ship Livy, white sails bellying out, the trim cleancut curv-
ing hull ...
And he heard her laughter, that lovely laughter. That
was the hardest thing to endure.
He walked away and looked out through the fore ports.
He stood by the oak pedestal and the big-spoked River-
boat's wheel he had carved. This room was his
"pilothouse" and the two rooms behind made up the "tex-
as." The whole building was on the side of the hill nearest
to the plain. It was on thirty-foot stilts and could be en-
tered through a staircase or ladder (to use a nautical term)
on the starboard side or through a port directly from the
hill behind the rear chamber of the texas. On top of the
pilothouse was a large bell, the only metal bell in the
world, as far as he knew. As soon as the waterclock in the
corner struck six, he would clang the big bell. And the
dark valley would slowly come to life.

16
Mists still overhung The River and the edge of the
banks, but he could see the huge squat mushroom shape of
the grailstone a mile and a half down the slope of the plain
just by the water's edge. A moment later, he saw a boat,
toy-size, emerge from the mists. Two figures jumped out
and pulled the dugout onto the shore, then ran off to the
right. The light from the skies was bright enough for Sam
to see them, though he sometimes lost them when build-
ings intervened. After going around the two-story pottery
factory, they cut straight into the hills. He lost them then,
but it seemed that they were heading for John Plan-
tagenet's log "palace."
So much for the sentinel system of Parolando. Every
quarter mile on The River's front was guarded by a hut on
thirty-foot stilts with four men on duty. If they saw any-
thing suspicious, they were to beat on their drums, blow
their bone horns and light their torches.
Two men slipping out of the fog to carry news to King
John, ex-King John, of England?
Fifteen minutes later Sam saw a shadow running be-
tween shadows. The rope attached to the small bell just
inside the entrance rang. He looked through the star-
board port. A white face looked up at him. Sam's own
spy, William Grevel, famous wool merchant, citizen of
London, died in 1401 in the Year Of Our Lord. There
were no sheep or, in fact, any mammals other than man
along The River. But the ex-merchant had shown great ap-
titude for espionage, and he loved to stay up all night and
skulk around.
Sam beckoned to him; Grevel ran up the "ladder" and
entered after Sam had unbarred the thick oak door.
Sam said, in Esperanto, "Saluton, leutenanto Grevel.
Kio estas?"
(Translation: "Hello, Lieutenant Grevel. What's the
matter?")
Grevel   said,    "Bonan   matenon,   Estro.    Ciu   grasa

fripono, Rego Johano, estas jus akceptita duo spionoj."
(Translation: "Good morning, Boss. That fat rascal,
King John, has just received two spies.")
Neither Sam nor Grevel could understand each other's
English, but they got along very well in Esperanto, except
now and then.
Sam grinned. Bill Grevel had let himself down from the
limb of an irontree, passing directly over a sentry, and
down a rope onto the edge of the roof of the two-story
building. He had passed through the bedroom, where three
women slept, and then crawled to the top of the staircase.
John and his spies, a twentieth-century Italian and a sixth-
century Hungarian, were at a table below Grevel. The two
had reported the results of their trip upRiver. John was
furious and justly so, from his viewpoint.
Sam, hearing Grevel's report, also became furious.
"He tried to assassinate Arthur of New Brittany? What
is that man trying to do, ruin all of us?"
He paced back and forth, stopped, lit a big cigar and
began pacing again. Once he stopped to invite Grevel to a
bite of cheese and a glass of wine.
It was one of the ironies of Chance or, perhaps, of the
Ethicals, for who knew what things they arranged, that
King John of England and the nephew he had murdered
most foully should have been located within thirty-two
miles of each other. Arthur, Prince of Brittany of dead
Earth, had organized the peoples among whom he found
himself into a state he called New Brittany. There were
very few old Bretons in the ten-mile-long territory he
ruled, but that did not matter. New Brittany it was.
It had taken eight months before Arthur had discovered
that his uncle was his neighbor. He had traveled incognito
to Parolando to verify with his own eyes the identity of the
uncle who had slit his throat and dropped his weighted
body into the Seine. Arthur wanted to capture John and
keep him alive for as long as possible under exquisite tor-
ture. Killing John would only bar him, possibly forever,
from getting his revenge. John, murdered, would awake
the next day someplace thousands of miles away on The
River.

But Arthur had sent emissaries demanding that John be
given up to him. These demands had been rejected, of
course, though only Sam's sense of honor and his fear of
John kept him from agreeing to Arthur's demands.
Now John had sent four men to assassinate Arthur.
Two had been killed; the others had escaped with minor
wounds. This would mean invasion. Arthur not only had
wanted revenge on John, he would like to get possession of
the meteorite iron.
Between Parolando and New Brittany, a fourteen-mile
stretch of the right bank of The River was known as
Chernsky's Land, or in Esperanto, Cernskujo. Chernsky, a
sixteenth-century Ukrainian cavalry colonel, had refused
an alliance with Arthur. But the nation immediately to
New Brittany's north was governed by Iyeyasu. He was a
powerful and ambitious person, the man who had estab-
lished the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600 with its capital
at Yedo, later called Tokyo. Sam's spies said that the
Japanese and the Breton had met six times in a war con-
ference.
Moreover, just to the north of Iyeyasujo was
Kleomanujo. This was governed by Cleomenes, a king of
Sparta and half-brother to that Leonidas who held the
pass at Thermoplyae. Cleomenes had met three times with
Iyeyasu and Arthur.
Just south of Parolando was an eleven-mile stretch
called Publia, after its king, Publius Crassus. Publius had
been an officer in Caesar's cavalry during the Gallic cam-
paigns. He was inclined to be friendly, although he ex-
tracted a big price for letting Sam cut down his timber.
South of Publia was Tifonujo, ruled by Tai Fung, one of
Kublai Khan's captains, killed on Earth when he fell
drunk off a horse.
And south of Tifonujo was Soul City, headed by El-
wood Hacking and Milton Firebrass.
Sam stopped and glared from under bushy brows at
Grevel. "The hell of it, Bill, is there isn't much I can do. If
I tell John I know about his trying to murder Arthur, who
may deserve murder, for all I know, then John knows that

I've got spies inside the house. And he'll just deny every-
thing, ask that I bring his accusers forth—and you know
what would happen to them, to you."
Grevel paled.
Sam said, "Start your blood running again, I won't do
it. No. The only thing to do is to keep quiet and watch for
developments. But I'm choking up to here with keeping
quiet. That man is the most despicable I ever met—and if
you knew my vast range of acquaintances, including
publishers, you would feel the depth of my words."
"John could be a tax-collector," Grevel said, as if he
had plumbed the depths of insult. And he had, for him.
"It was a bad day when I had to agree to take John on
as a partner," Sam muttered, blowing out smoke as he
turned toward Grevel. "But if I hadn't taken him in, I'd
have been robbed of my chance at the iron."
He dismissed Grevel after thanking him. The skies just
above the mountains across The River were red. Soon
the entire vault would be rosy on the edges and blue
above, but it would be some tune before the sun cleared the
mountain. Before then, the grailstones would be discharg-
ing
He washed his face in a basin, combed his thick bush of
reddish hair straight back, applied the toothpaste with the
tip of his finger to his teeth and gums, and spat. Then he
fastened a belt with four sheaths and a bag dangling from
a strap and put it around his waist. He placed a long towel
around his shoulders as a cape, picked up a cane of oak
shod with iron and, with the other hand, picked up the
grail. He went down the stairs. The grass was still wet. It
rained every night at three o'clock for a half hour, and the
valley did not dry until after the sun came up. If it were
not for the absence of disease germs and viruses, half the
valley's humans would have died of pneumonia and flu
long ago.
Sam was young and vigorous again, but he still did not
like to exercise. As he walked, he thought of the little rail-
way he would like to build from his house to the edge of
The River. But that would be too restrictive. Why not

build an automobile with a motor that burned wood al-
cohol?
People began joining him: he was kept busy with
"Saluton!" and "Bonan Matenon!" At the end of his walk,
he gave his grail to a man to put on a depression on the top
of the gray granite mushrooms-shaped rock. About six
hundred of the gray cylinders were placed in the de-
pression, and the crowd retreated to a respectful distance.
Fifteen minutes later, the rock erupted with a roar. Blue
flames soared twenty-five feet high and thunder echoed
from the mountain. The appointed grail keepers for the
day got onto the rock and passed the cylinders around.
Sam took his back to the pilothouse, wondering on the
way why he did not delegate someone to carry his grail
down for him. The truth was, a man was so dependent on
the grail, he just could not trust it out of his sight.
Back in the house, he opened the lid. In six containers
in snapdown racks were breakfast and various goodies.
The grail had a false bottom in which was concealed an
energy-matter converter and programmed menus. This
morning he got bacon and eggs, toast with butter and jam,
a glass of milk, a slice of cantaloupe, ten cigarettes, a
marihuana stick, a cube of dreamgum, a cigar, and a cup
of some delicious liqueur.
He settled down to eat with gusto and got, instead, a.
bad taste. Looking out through the starboard port (so he
wouldn't see into Cyrano's door), he saw a youth on his
knees before his hut. The fellow was praying, his eyes
closed, his hands church-steepled. He wore only a kilt and
a spiral bone from a Riverfish suspended by a leather
string around his neck. His hair was dark blond, his face
was broad, and his body was muscular. But his ribs were
beginning to show.
The praying man was Hermann Goring.
Sam swore and reared up from his chair, knocking it
backward, picked it up and moved his breakfast from his
desk to the big round table in the center of the room. The
fellow had spoiled his appetite more than once. If there
was one thing Sam could not stand, it was an ex-sinner,
and Hermann Goring had sinned more than most and

was now, by way of compensation, holier than most. Or so
it seemed to Sam, though Goring claimed that he was
the lowliest of the low—in a sense.
Take your damned arrogant humility away, Sam had
said. Or at least take it downwind . . .
If it had not been for the Magna Carta which Sam had
drawn up (over King John's protests, thus repeating
history), Sam would have kicked Goring and his fol-
lowers out long ago. Well, at least a week ago. But the
Carta, the constitution of the state of Parolando, the most
democratic constitution in the history of mankind, gave
total religious freedom and total freedom of speech. Al-
most total, anyway. There had to be some limitations.
But his own document forbade Sam to stop the mis-
sionaries of the Church of the Second Chances from
preaching.
Yet if Goring continued to protest, to make speeches,
to convert more to his doctrine of pacifist resistance, Sam
Clemens would never get his Riverboat. Hermann
Goring had made a symbol of the boat; he said that it
represented man's vanity, greed, lust for violence, and
disregard of the Creator's designs for the world of man.
Man should not build riverboats. He should build more
stately mansions of the soul. All man needed now was a
roof over his head to keep off the rain and thin walls for a
little privacy now and then. Man no longer had to earn his
bread by the sweat of his brow. His food and drink were
given to him with nothing expected in return, not even
gratitude. Man had tune to determine his destiny. But man
must not transgress on others, not rob them of their
possessions, their love or their dignity. He must respect
others and himself. But he could not do this through
thievery, robbery, violence, contempt. He must . . .
Sam turned away. Goring had some fine sentiments
to which Sam subscribed. But Goring was wrong if he
thought that licking the boots of the people who had put
them here was going to lead to any Utopia or salvation for
their souls. Humanity had been tricked again; it was being
used, misused and abused. Everything, the resurrection,

the rejuvenation, freedom from disease, free food and
liquor and smokes, freedom from hard work or economic
necessity, everything was an illusion, a candy bar to lead
baby-mankind into some dark alley where . . . Where?
Sam did not know. But the Mysterious Stranger had said
that mankind was being tricked in the cruelest hoax of all,
even crueler than the first hoax, that of life on Earth. Man
had been resurrected and put on this planet as the subject
of a tremendous scholarly study. That was all. And when
the studies were completed, Man would go down into
darkness and oblivion once more. Cheated again.
But what did the Stranger have to gain by telling this to
certain selected men? Why had he chosen a small number
to help him defeat his fellow Ethicals? What was the
Stranger really after? Was he lying to Sam and Cyrano and
Odysseus and the others whom Sam had not yet met?
Sam Clemens did not know. He was as much in The
Great Dark as he had been on Earth. But he did know one
thing for certain. He wanted that Riverboat.
The mists had cleared away; breakfast time was over.
He checked the water clock and rang the big bell on the
pilothouse. As soon as it had ceased tolling, the wooden
whistles of the sergeants began shrilling. Up and down the
ten-mile stretch of the Rivervalley known as Parolando
the whistles shrilled. Then the drums began to beat, and
Parolando went to work.

17
There were 1,000 people in Parolando, but the River-
boat would be taking only one hundred and twenty. Twen-
ty of these already knew for sure they would be going.
Sam and Joe Miller, Lothar von Richthofen, Van Boom,
de Bergerac, Odysseus, three engineers, King John, and
their hutmates had been promised. The rest would know
whether or not they had worked for nothing a few days
before the boat sailed. At that time, the names would be
written on slips of paper and placed inside a big wire cage.
The cage would be whirled around and around, and then
Sam would stop it, and, blindfolded, would reach in and
pull out, one after the other, one hundred names. And
these lucky ones would be the crew of the Not For Hire.
The Not For Hire had about 5,000,000 miles to travel,
if the Stranger could be believed. Averaging about 335
miles every twenty-four hours, it would take over forty-
one years to reach the end of The River. But it would not
average that much, of course. The crew would have to put
into shore for extensive vacations on land and repairs
would have to be made. In fact, the Riverboat might wear
out, although Sam planned on taking many spare parts.
Once the boat was on its way it could not put back for
parts or pick them up anywhere else. There would be no
metal of any consequence from this place on.
It was strange to think that he would be about one hun-
dred and forty years old when he got to the headwaters of
The River.
But what was that when he had thousands of years of
youth to go?
He looked through the bow ports. The plain was full of
people streaming down from the hills to the factories.
Behind him the hills would be alive with others on their
way to the factories in the hills. A small army would be
working on the big dam to the northwest, near the base of

the mountains. A concrete wall was being constructed be-
tween two steep hills to dam up the water flowing from a
spring near the top of the mountain. When the lake behind
the dam was full, its overflow would drive electrical
generators to power the mills.
At present, the electrical energy needed came from a
grailstone. A giant stepdown transformer of aluminum
took the energy three times a day, sent it through brob-
dingnagian aluminum wires to a two-story device known
as the batacitor. This was a late-twentieth-century elec-
tronic discovery that could accept hundreds of kilovolts in
a hundredth of a microsecond and could discharge it at
any rate from a tenth of a volt to one hundred kilovolts. It
was the prototype of the batacitor that would be put on the
Riverboat. At present the energy was chiefly used in a cut-
ting device made by van Boom that sliced through the
pieces of nickel-iron dug up on the plain. The energy could
also be moderated to melt the metal. The aluminum for the
wires and the batacitor had been laboriously and expen-
sively made from aluminum silicate derived from the clay
under the grass along the base of the mountains. But that
supply had run out and now the only economically feasible
source was in Soul City.
Sam sat down at his desk, pulled out a drawer and
removed a tall book bound in fish-bladder leather and
with pages of bamboo-fiber paper. It was his diary, The
Memoirs of a Lazarus. For the time being he was using ink
made of water and tannic acid from oak bark and of car-
bon from finely ground charcoal-in-suspension to write
down day-by-day happenings and his reflections. When
the technology of Parolando was improved enough, he
would use the electronic recorder that van Boom had
promised him.
He had no sooner started writing than the drums began
beating. The big bass drums represented dashes; the small
soprano drums, dots. The code was Morse; the language,
Esperanto.
Von Richthofen would be landing in a few minutes.

Sam stood up to look out again. A half a mile away was
the bamboo catamaran on which Lothar von Richthofen
had sailed downRiver only ten days ago. Through the star-
board ports Sam saw a squat figure with tawny hair com-
ing out of the gateway of King John's log palace. Behind
him came bodyguards and sycophants.
King John was making sure that von Richthofen did not
give Sam Clemens any secret messages from Elwood
Hacking.
The ex-monarch of England, present coruler of
Parolando, wore a kilt with red and black checks, a
poncholike arrangement of towels, and knee-length, red-
leather Riverdragon boots. Around his thick waist was a
wide belt with a number of sheaths containing steel dag-
gers, a short sword, and a steel ax. One hand held a steel
rod coronet, one of many sources of contention between
Sam and King John. Sam did not want to waste metal on
such useless anachronisms, but John had insisted and Sam
had given in.
Sam found some satisfaction now in thinking about the
name of his little nation. Parolando in Esperanto meant
pair land and was so called because two men governed it.
But Sam had not mentioned to John that another transla-
tion could be Twain Land.
John followed a hard-dirt path around a long, low fac-
tory building, and then he was at the foot of the staircase
of Sam's quarters. His bodyguard, a big thug named
Sharkey, pulled the bell rope and the little bell tinkled.
Sam stuck his head out and shouted, "Come aboard,
John!"
John looked up at him from pale blue eyes and mo-
tioned to Sharkey to precede him. John was cautious
about assassins, and he had reason to be. He was also
resentful about having had to come to Sam, but he had
known that von Richthofen would report to Sam first.
Sharkey entered, inspected Sam's pilothouse and looked
through the three rooms of the texas. Sam heard a growl,
as low and powerful as a lion's, from the rear bedroom.
Sharkey came back swiftly and closed the door.
Sam smiled and said, "Joe Miller may be sick, but he

can still eat ten Polish prizefighters for breakfast and call
for a second helping."
Sharkey did not reply. He signaled through the port that
John could come up without fear of being ambushed.
The catamaran was beached now, and the tiny figure of
von Richthofen was coming across the plain, holding his
grail in one hand and the wooden winged ambassadorial
staff in the other. Through the other port Sam could see
the lanky figure of de Bergerac leading a platoon toward
the south wall. Livy was not in sight.
John entered.
Sam said, "Bonan matenon, Johano!"
It galled John that Sam refused to address him as Via
Rega Mosto—Your Majesty—in private. La Kon-
sulo—the Consul—was their correct title and even that
came reluctantly from Sam's lips. Sam encouraged others
to call him La Estro, The Boss, because that angered John
even more.
John grunted and sat down at the round table. Another
bodyguard, a big dark proto-Mongolian with massive
bones and immensely powerful muscles, Zaksksromb,
who presumably had died about 30,000 B.C., lit up a huge
brown cigar for John. Zak, as he was known, was the
strongest man in Parolando, with the exception of Joe
Miller. And it could be argued that Joe Miller was not a
man—or, at least, certainly not Homo sapiens.
Sam wished Joe would get out of bed. Zak made him
nervous. But Joe was sedating himself with dreamgum.
Two days ago a chunk of siderite had slipped from a
crane's tongs as Joe was passing beneath it. The operator
swore it had been an accident, but Sam had his suspicions.
Sam puffed on his cigar and said, "Hear anything about
your nephew lately?"
John did not start, but his eyes did widen a trifle. He
looked at Sam across the table.
"No, should I?"
"I just wondered. I've been thinking about asking Ar-
thur down for a conference. There's no reason why you
two should be trying to kill each other. This isn't Earth,

you know. Why can't we call off old feuds? What if you
did drop him off in a sack into the estuary? Let bygones be
bygones. We could use his wood, and we need more
limestone for calcium carbonate and magnesium. He's got
plenty."
John glared, then hooded his eyes and smiled.
Tricky John, Sam thought. Smooth John. Despicable
John.
"To get wood and limestone we'd have to pay with steel
arms." John said. "I'm not about to permit my dear
nephew to get his hands on more steel."
"Just thought I'd broach the subject to you," Sam
said, "because at noon—"
John stiffened. "Yes?"
"Well, I thought I'd bring up the subject to the Council.
We might have a vote on it."
John relaxed. "Oh?"
Sam thought, You think you're safe. You've got Pedro
Anseurez and Frederick Rolfe on your side and a jive-to-
three vote in the Council is a nay vote . . .
Once again he contemplated suspending the Magna
Carta so that things could be done that needed to be done.
But that might mean civil war and that could mean the end
of the dream.
He paced back and forth while John described in a loud
voice and sickening detail his latest conquest of his latest
blonde. Sam tried to ignore the words; he still got mad be-
cause the man boasted, although by now any woman who
accepted John had only herself to blame.
The little bell tinkled. Lothar von Richtofen entered.
He was now wearing his hair long and so, with his
handsome, somewhat Slavic, features, he looked like a less
stocky and better-looking Goring. The two had known
each other well during World War I, since both had served
'under Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Lothar's older
brother. Lothar was a wild, brash, and essentially likable
person, but this morning his smiles and his debonair bear-
ing were gone.
"What's the bad news?" Sam said.

Lothar took the cup of bourbon that Sam offered,
downed it, and said, "Sinjoro Hacking has just about fin-
ished putting up fortifications. Soul City has walls twelve
feet high and ten thick on all fronts. Hacking was nasty to
"me, very nasty. He called me an ofejo and a honkio, words
new to me. I did not care to ask him for an explanation."
"Ofejo might be from the English ofay," Sam said, "but
I never heard the other word. Honkio?"
"You'll hear those words a lot in the future," Lothar
said, "if you deal with Hacking. And you will. Hacking
finally got down to business after spewing out a torrent of
abuse, mostly about my Nazi ancestors. I never heard of
the Nazis on Earth, you know, since I died in a plane crash
in 1922. He seemed to be angry about something—maybe
his anger had nothing to do with me originally. But the
essence of his speech was that he might cut off the bauxite
and other minerals."
Sam leaned on the table until things came back into
focus. Then he said, "I'll take a shot of Kentucky courage
myself."
Von Richthofen continued, "It seems that Hacking isn't
too happy with the makeup of his state. It's one-fourth
Harlem blacks who died between 1960 and 1980, you
know, and one-eighth eighteenth-century Dahomeyan
blacks. But he has a one-fourth nonblack population of
fourteenth-century Wahhabi Arabs, fanatics who still
claim that Mohammed is their prophet and they're here
just for a short trial period. Then there is the one-fourth
composed of thirteenth-century, Asiatic-Indian, Dravid-
ian, black-skinned Caucasians, and one-eighth of people
from anywhere and anytime. A slight majority of the one-
eighth is twentieth-century."
Sam nodded. Though resurrected humanity consisted of
persons who lived from 2,000,000 B.C. to A.D. 2008,
one-fourth had been born after A.D. 1899—if estimates
were correct.
"Hacking wants his Soul City to be almost entirely
black. He said that he had believed that integration was
possible when he lived on Earth. The young whites of his
day were free of the racial prejudices of their elders and he

had known hope. But there aren't too many of his former
white contemporaries in his land. And the Wahhabi Arabs
are driving him out of his mind. Hacking became a
Moslem on Earth, did you know that? First, he was a
Black Muslim, an American home-grown variety. Then he
became a real Moslem, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and
was quite certain that the Arabs, even if they were white,
were not racists.
"But the massacre of the Sudanese blacks by the
Sudanese Arabs and the history of Arabic enslavement of
blacks disturbed him. Anyway, these nineteenth-century
Wahhabi are not racist—they're just religious fanatics and
too much trouble. He didn't say so, but I was there ten
days and I saw enough. The Wahhabis want to convert
Soul City to their brand of Moslemism, and if they can't
do it peacefully, they'll do it bloodily. Hacking wants to
get rid of them and the Dravidians, who seem to regard
themselves as superior to Africans of any color. Anyway,
Hacking will continue to furnish us bauxite if we will send
him all our black citizens in return for his Wahhabi and
Dravidian citizens. Plus an increased amount of steel
arms. Plus a larger share in the raw siderite."
Sam groaned. King John spat on the floor. Sam scowled
and said, "Merdo, Johano! Not even a Plantagenet gobs
on my floor! Use the spittoon or get out!"
He forced himself to push down his rage and frustration
as King John bristled. Now was not a time to bring about a
confrontation. The vainglorious ex-monarch would never
back down on the spitting issue, which was, in reality,
trifling.
Sam gestured self-deprecatingly and said, "Forget about
it, John. Spit all you want to!" But he could not resist
adding: "As long as I have the same privilege in your
house, of course."
John growled and popped a chocolate into his mouth.
He used the growling, grinding voice that indicated that
he, too, was very angry but was imposing great self-
control.
"This Saracen, Hacking, gets too much. I say we have

kissed his black hand long enough. His demands have
slowed down the building of the ship—"
"Boat, John," Sam said. "It's a boat, not a ship."
"Boato, smoato. I say, let us conquer Soul City, put the
citizens to the sword, and seize the minerals. Then we will
be able to make aluminum on the spot. In fact, we could
build the boat there. And, to make sure that we were not
interfered with, we should conquer all the states between
us and Soul City."
Powermad John.
Yet, Sam was inclined to think that he might, for once,
be right. In a month or so Parolando would have the
weapons that would enable it to do just what John was
proposing. Except that Publia was friendly and its bills
were not high, and Tifonujo, though it demanded much,
had permitted itself to be stripped of trees. It was,
however, possible that both states planned to use the
nickel-iron they got for their wood to make weapons so
that they could attack Parolando.
The savages across The River were probably planning
the same thing.
"I'm not through," von Richthofen said. "Hacking
made his demands about the trading of citizens on a one-
to-one basis. But he won't come to any agreement unless
we send a black to deal with him. He says he was insulted
when you sent me, since I'm a Prussian and a Junkers to
boot. "But he'll overlook that, since we don't know any bet-
ter, if we send him a member of the Council the next time.
One who's black."
Sam's cigar almost fell out.
"We don't have a black Councilman!"
"Exactly. What Hacking is saying is that we had better
elect one."
John passed both hands through his shoulder-length
tawny hair and then stood up. His pale blue eyes were
fiery under the lion-colored eyebrows.
"This Saracen thinks he can tell us how to conduct our
internal affairs. I say, War!"
Sam said, "Now, just a minute, Your Majesty. You
have good reason to be mad, as the old farmer said when

he fell in, but the truth is, we can defend ourselves quite
well—but we cannot invade and occupy any large ter-
ritory."
"Occupy?" John shouted. "We will slaughter half and
chain the other half!"
"The world changed much after you died, John—uh,
Your Majesty. Admittedly there are other forms of slavery
than the outright form, but I don't want to get into an
argument about definitions. There is no use making a fuss,
as the fox said to the hens. We just appoint another Coun-
cilman, pro tem. And we send him to Hacking."
"There is no provision in the Magna Carta for a pro tern
Councilman," Lothar said.
"We change the Carta," Sam said.
"That'll take a popular election."
John snorted disgust. He and Sam Clemens had gone
through too many blazing arguments about the rights of
the people.
"There's one other thing," Lothar said, still smiling but
with an exasperated note in his voice. "Hacking asks that
Firebrass be allowed to visit here for a tour of inspection.
Firebrass is especially interested in seeing our airplane."
John sputtered. "He asks if we care if he sends a spy!"
"I don't know," Sam said. "Firebrass is Hacking's chief
of staff. He might get a different idea of us. He's an
engineer—I think he had a PhD, too, in physics. I've
heard about him. What did you find out, Lothar?"
"He impressed me very much," von Richthofen said.
"He was born in 1974 in Syracuse, New York. His father
was black, and his mother was half Irish and half Iroquois
Indian. He was in the second party to land on Mars and
the first to orbit Jupiter—"
Sam was thinking, Men really did that! Landed on the
Moon and then Mars. Right out of Jules Verne and Frank
Reade, Jr. Fantastic, yet no more fantastic than this
world. Or, indeed, than the mundane world of 1910.
None of it could be explained in a manner to satisfy any
reasonable man. It was all incredible.
"We'll put it up to the Council today, John," Sam said,

"if you have no objection. We'll have a general election on
the pro tem Councilman. I personally favor Uzziah
Cawber."
"Cawber was a slave, wasn't he?" Lothar said. "I don't
know. Hacking said he didn't want any Uncle Toms."
Once a slave, always a slave, Sam thought. Even when
a slave revolts, kills, and is killed as a protest against his
slavery—resurrected, he still does not think of himself as a
free man. He was born and raised in a world soaked with
the rotten essence of slavedom and every thought he
thinks, every move he makes is stained with slavery, subtly
altered with slavery. Cawber was born in 1841 in
Montgomery, Alabama, he was taught to read and write,
he served in the house of his master as his secretary, he
killed his master's son in 1863, escaped, and went West
and became a cowboy, of all things, and then a miner. He
was killed with a Sioux spear in 1876; the ex-slave killed
by a man about to become a slave. Cawber is delighted
with this world—-or claims to be—because no man can
enslave him here or keep him enslaved. But he is the slave
of his own mind and of the reaction of his nerves. Even
when he holds his head high, he will jump if somebody
cracks a whip, and his head will bow before he can stop
it . . .
Why, oh, why had man been brought back to life? Men
and women were rained by what had happened on Earth,
and they would never be able to undo the damage. The
Second Chancers claimed a man could change, entirely
change. But the Second Chancers were a pack of
dreamgummers.
"If Hacking calls Cawber an Uncle Tom, Cawber will
kill him," Sam said. "I say, let's send him."
John's tawny eyebrows rose. Sam knew what he was
thinking. Perhaps he could use Cawber, one way or
another.
Sam looked at the waterclock. "Time for the inspection
tour. Care to come along, John? I'll be with you in a
minute," and he sat down at his desk to make a few more
entries in his diary.
That gave John the chance to leave first, as befitted the

ex-King of England and of a good part of France. Sam
thought it was ridiculous to worry about who preceded
whom, yet he disliked John so much he could not bear to
let him gain even this minor victory. Rather than argue
about it, or just walk out ahead of Mm, and so cause John
to throw a fit, he pretended he had work to do.
Sam caught up with the group, which included the six
Councilman, just outside the nitric-acid factory. They
went through the factories swiftly. The stinks emanating
from the nitric and sulfuric acids; from the destructive
distillation of wood to make alcohol, acetone, creosote,
turpentine and acetic acid; the formaldehyde vats and the
treatment of human excrement and lichen scraped off the
mountains to extract potassium nitrate—these, combined,
were enough to make a hyena lose its breakfast. The
Councillors were roasted and deafened in the steel mill
and the grinding mills and the forges and blacksmith
shops. They were covered with a white dust in the
limestone mills and magnesium factory. In the aluminum
factory they were again roasted, deafened, and stunk out.
The gunsmith shop up in the hills was not operating at
the moment. Except for distant noises, it was quiet. But it
was not beautiful. The earth had been dug up, the trees cut
down, and smoke from the factories up The River was
black and acrid along the mountains.
Van Boom, the late-twentieth-century, half Zulu, half
Afrikaans, chief engineer, met them. He was a handsome
man with a dark bronze skin and curly hair. He stood
about six-three and weighed about two hundred and fifty.
He had been born in a ditch during The Bloody Years.
He greeted them cordially enough (he liked Sam and
tolerated John), but he did not smile as usual.
"It's ready," he said, "but I want my objections
recorded. It's a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks
impressive and will kill a man. But it's wasteful and ineffi-
cient."
"You make it sound like a Congressman," Sam said.
Van Boom led them into the high doorway of the bam-
boo building, where a steel handgun lay on a table. Van

Boom picked it up. Even in his big hand, the gun was
huge. He strode past the others and out into the light of
the sun. Sam was exasperated. He had held out his hand
for the gun and the fellow had ignored him. If Van Boom
intended to demonstrate it outside, why hadn't he said
so in the first place?
"Engineers," Sam muttered. Then he shrugged. You
might as well hit a Missouri mule between the eyes with
your pinkie as try to change Van Boom's ways.
Van Boom held up the gun so that the sunshine
twinkled against the silvery gray metal. "This is the Mark
I pistol," he said. "Called so because The Boss invented
it."
Sam's anger melted like ice in a Mississippi River thaw,
"It's a breech-loading, single-shot, flintlock hand
weapon with a rifled barrel and a breakdown action."
He held the gun in his right hand and said, "You load it
so. You press forward the lock switch on the left side of
the barrel. This releases the breech lock. You then press
down the barrel with the left hand. This action forces the
trigger guard into the grip, where the guard acts as a lever
to cock the hammer."
He reached into a bag strapped to his belt and removed
a large brown hemispherical object. "This is a bakelite or
phenol-formaldehyde-resin bullet, sixty caliber. You press
the bullet, so, until it engages the lands of the barrel."
He removed from his bag a shiny package with black
contents.
"This is a charge of black gunpowder wrapped in
cellulose nitrate. Some time in the future, we'll have cor-
dite instead of gunpowder. If we use this gun, that is. Now,
I insert the load into the chamber with the primer end first.
The primer is a twist of nitrate paper impregnated with
gunpowder. Then I lift the barrel with my left hand, thus,
locking it into place. The Mark I is now ready to fire. But,
for emergency, if the primer does not ignite, you can pour
priming powder into the touchhole just forward of the rear
sight. In case of misfire, the gun may be cocked with the
right thumb. Note that this flash vent on the right side of
the action shield protects the shooter's face."

A man had brought out a large wooden target and had
inserted it in a frame on four legs. The target was about
twenty yards away. Van Boom turned toward it, held out
the gun, clenched both hands and sighted along the front
and rear sights.
"Get behind me, gentlemen," he said. "The heat of the
passage through the air will burn off the surface of the
bullet and leave a thin trail of smoke which you may be
able to see. The plastic bullet has to be of such large
caliber because of its light weight. But this increases the
wind resistance. If we decide to use this gun—which I
definitely am against—we might increase the caliber to
seventy-five in the Mark II. The effective range is about
fifty yards, but the accuracy is not good beyond thirty
yards and nothing to brag about within that range."
The flint was in the hammer. When Van Boom would
pull the trigger, the hammer would fall and scrape along
the filelike surface of the frizzen. The frizzen covered the
priming pan and should be knocked forward by the flint,
uncovering the primer twist of the powder charge.
There was a click as the sear let the hammer go, a flash
as the primer twist burned, and a booming. The click-
flash-boom took up a tune equal to saying click-flash-
boom and Van Boom had had tune between the click and
the boom to bring the gun back into line after it had been
jarred away by the impact of the heavy hammer and flint.
The bullet did leave a very faint trail of smoke, quickly
dissipated by the fifteen-mile-an-hour wind. Sam, looking
past Van Boom's arm, could see the bullet curve out and
then back, carried by the wind. But Van Boom must have
been practicing, because the bullet struck near the bull's
eye. It went halfway into the soft pine, shattered and left a
large hole in the wood.
"The bullet won't penetrate deeply into a man," Van
Boom said, "but it will leave a large hole. And if it hits
near bone, the fragments should break the bone."
The next hour was spent busily and happily with the
Consuls and Councillors taking turns shooting. King John
was especially delighted, though perhaps a little awed, be-

cause he had never seen a gun before. His first experience
with gunpowder had come several years after he had been
resurrected and he had seen only bombs and wooden
rockets.
At last Van Boom said, "If you keep up, gentlemen,
you will exhaust our supply of bullets—and it takes a lot
of labor and materials to make these bullets. Which is one
reason why I object to making any more. My other
reasons are: one, the gun is accurate only at close range;
two, it takes so long to load and shoot that a good
bowman could drop three pistol handlers while they're
loading and stay outside the effective range of the guns.
Moreover, a plastic bullet isn't recoverable, whereas an ar-
row is."
Sam said, "That's a lot of nonsense! The mere fact that
we would have these guns would demonstrate our
technological and military superiority. We'd scare the
enemy half to death before the battle started. Also, you
forget that it takes a long time to train a good bowman,
but anyone can shoot one of these after a relatively short
lesson."
"True," Van Boom said. "But could they hit anyone?
Besides, I was thinking of making steel crossbows. They
can't be handled as fast as longbows, but they don't re-
quire any more training than guns do, and the bolts are
recoverable. And they're a hell of a lot more deadly than
these noisy, stinking gadgets."
"No, sir!" Sam said. "No, sir! I insist that we make at
least two hundred of these. We'll outfit a new group, the
Parolando Pistoleers. They'll be the terror of The
River—you watch them! You'll seel"

18
For a change King John was on Sam's side. He insisted
that the first two pistols should go to Sam and himself and
the next dozen to their bodyguards. Then the new group
could be organized and trained.
Sam was grateful for the backing, but he told himself to
check on the men who formed the Pistoleers. He did not
want it made up largely of men loyal to John.
Van Boom made no effort to hide his disgust. "I'll tell
you what! I'll take a good yew bow and twelve arrows and
stand fifty yards away. At a signal all eight of you can ad-
vance on me, firing at will with your Mark I's—and I'll
drop all eight of you before you get close enough to hit me!
Is it a deal? I'm willing to lay my life on the line!"
"Don't be childish," Sam said.
Van Boom rolled his eyes upward. "I'm childish,?
You're jeopardizing Parolando—and your boat—because
you want guns to play with!"
"Just as soon as the guns are made you can start making
all the bows you want," Sam said. "Look! We'll make ar-
mor, too, for the Pistoleers! That should dispose of your
objections! Why didn't I think of that before? Why, our
men will be dressed up in steel that'll repel the Stone Age
weapons of the enemy as if they were straws. Let the
enemy shoot his yew bows with his flint-tipped arrows.
They'll bounce off the steel and the Pistoleers can take
their time and blow the enemy into the next county!"
"You forget that we've had to barter our ore and even
metal weapons for wood and other materials we need."
Van Boom said. "The enemy will have arrows with steel
tips that can drive through armor. Don't forget Grecy and
Agincourt."
"There's just no dealing with you." Sam said. "You
must be half Dutch—you're so stubborn."
"If your thinking is representative of the thinking of

white men, then I'm glad I'm half Zulu," Van Boom said.
"Don't get huffy," Sam replied. "And congratulations
on the gun! Tell you what, we'll call it the Van Boom-
Mark I. How's that?"
"I'd just as soon not have my name attached to it," the
engineer said. "So be it. I'll make your two hundred guns.
But I'd like to make an improved version, the Mark II we
talked about."
"Let's make two hundred of these first, then we'll start
on the Mark II," Sam said. "We don't want to mess
around so long trying to get the perfect weapon that we
suddenly find we don't have any at all. Still—"
He talked for a while about the Mark II. He had a pas-
sion for mechanical gadgets. On Earth he had invented a
number of things, all of which were going to make nun a
fortune. And there was the Paige typesetting machine, into
which he had sunk—and it had sunk—all the wealth he
had made from his books.
Sam thought of the typesetting monster and how that
wonderful contraption had bankrupted him. For a second,
Paige and Van Boom were one and he felt guilty and a lit-
tle panicky.
Van Boom next complained about the materials and the
labor put into the AMP-1, their aerial machine prototype.
Sam ignored him. He went with the others to the hangar,
which was on the plains a mile north of Sam's quarters.
The craft was only partly finished but would look almost
as skeletal and frail when ready to fly as it did now.
"It's similar to some of the planes built in 1910," von
Richthofen said. "I'll be exposed from my waist up when I
sit in the cockpit. The whole machine looks more like a
metal dragonfly than anything else. The main object is to
test out the efficiency of the wood alcohol-burning motor
and our materials."
Von Richthofen promised that the first flight would be
made within three weeks. He showed Sam the plans for the
rocket launchers which would be attached under the
wings.
"The plane can carry about six small rockets, but it'll

mostly be good only for scouting. It won't go faster than
forty miles an hour against the wind. But it'll be fun flying
it."
Sam was disappointed that the plane wasn't a two-
seater. He looked forward to flying for the first time in his
life—his second life, that is. But von Richthofen said the
next prototype would be a two-seater and Sam would be
his first passenger.
"After you've tested it out," Sam said. He expected
John to protest about this and to insist that he be taken up
first. But evidently John was not too eager to leave the
ground.
The last stop was at the boatyard, located halfway be-
tween the hangar and Sam's house. The craft within the
pine-log enclosure would be completed within a week. The
Firedragon I was the amphibious prototype of the boat
that would be the launch for the big boat. It was a
beautiful machine, made of thick magnalium, about thirty-
two feet long, shaped like a U.S. Navy cruiser with wheels,
with three turrets on its sleek top deck. It was powered by
steam, burned wood alcohol, could operate in water or on
land, carried a crew of eleven and was, so Sam declared,
invincible.
He patted the cold gray hull and said, "Why should we
worry about having bowmen? Or having anything but this?
This juggernaut could crush a kingdom all by itself. It has
a steam-powered cannon the like of which the world,
Earth or this planet, has never seen. That is why it is
steam-driven and why it has such a huge boiler."
All in all, the tour had made him happy. It was true that
the plans for the great Riverboat had barely been started.
But those took time. It was vital that the state be well pro-
tected at first, and just making the preparations was fun.
He rubbed his hands and puffed on a new cigar, drawing
the green smoke deeply into his lungs.
And then he saw Livy.
His beloved Livy, sick for so many years, and dead,
finally, in Italy, in 1904.
Restored to life and youth and beauty, but not, alas, to
him.

She was walking toward him, carrying her grail by its
handle, wearing a white scarlet-edged kilt that came half-
way down her thighs and a thin white scarf for a bra. She
had a fine figure, good legs, handsome features. Her
forehead was broad and satiny white. Her eyes were large
and luminous. Her lips were full and shapely; her smile,
attractive; her teeth, small and very white. She customarily
wore her dark hair parted, combed down smooth in front
but twisted into a figure eight in the back. Behind an ear
she wore one of the giant crimson roselike blooms that
grew from the vines on the irontrees. Her necklace was
made of the convoluted red vertebrae of the hornfish.
Sam's heart felt as if it were being licked by a cat.
She swayed as she walked toward him, and her breasts
bounced beneath the semi-opaque fabric. Here was his
Livy, who had always been so modest, had worn heavy
clothes from the neck down to the ankle, and had never
undressed before him in the light. Now she reminded him
of the half-naked women of the Sandwich Islands. He felt
uneasy, and he knew why. His queasiness among the
natives had been as much due to their unwanted attraction
for him as repulsion, each feeling dependent on the other
and having nothing to do with the natives per se.
Livy had had a Puritanical upbringing, but she had not
been ruined by it. On Earth she had learned to drink and
to like beer, had even smoked a few times and had become
an infidel or, at least, a great doubter. She had even
tolerated his constant swearing and had let loose with a
few blisterers herself if the girls were not around. The ac-
cusations that she had censored his books and thus
emasculated them were off the target. He had done most
of the censoring himself.
Yes, Livy had always shown adaptability.
Too much. Now, after twenty years of absence from
him, she had fallen in love with Cyrano de Bergerac. And
Sam had the uneasy feeling that that wild Frenchman had
awakened in her something that Sam might have
awakened if he had not been so inhibited himself. But af-
ter these years on The River and the chewing of a certain

amount of dreamgum, he had lost many of his own inhibi-
tions.
It was too late for him.
Unless Cyrano left the scene . . .
"Hello, Sam," she said in English. "How are you on this
fine day?"
"Every day is fine here," he said. "You can't even talk
about the weather, let alone do anything about it!"
She had a beautiful laugh. "Come along with me to the
grailstone," she said. "It's almost time for lunch."
Every day he swore not to come near her because to do
so hurt too much. And every day he took advantage of the
smallest chance to get as close to her as he could.
"How's Cyrano?" he said.
"Oh, very happy because he's finally getting a rapier.
Bildron, the swordsmith, promised that he'd have the first
one—after yours and the other Councilmen's, of course.
Cyrano had taken so long to reconcile himself to the fact
that he would never hold a metal sword in his hand again.
Then he heard about the meteorite and came here—and
now the greatest swordsman in the world will have a
chance to show everybody that his reputation wasn't a lie,
which some liars say it was."
"Now, Livy," he said, "I didn't say people lied about
his reputation. I said that maybe they exaggerated some. I
still don't believe that story about his holding off two hun-
dred swordsmen all by himself."
"The fight at the Porte de Nesle was authentic! And it
wasn't two hundred! You're the one pumping it up, Sam,
just as you always do. There was a crowd of hired thugs
that could have been a hundred or might just as well have
been. Even if there had been only twenty-five, the fact is
that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed to save his
friend, the Chevalier de Lignieres.
He killed two and wounded seven and ran the rest of
them off. That is God's truth!"
"I don't want to get into an argument about the merits
of your man," he said. "Or about anything. Let's just talk
like we used to when we had so much fun—before you got
sick."

She stopped. Her face set grimly.
"I always knew you resented my illness, Sam."
"No, that wasn't it," he said. "I think I felt guilty that
you were sick, as if somehow I were to blame. But I never
hated you for it. I hated myself if I hated anyone."
"I didn't say you hated me," she said. "I said you
resented my illness and you showed it in many ways. Oh,
you may have thought you were always noble and gentle
and loving—and most of the time you were—you really
were. But there were enough tunes when you looked, you
spoke, you muttered, you gestured—how can I describe
exactly how you were? I can't, but I knew you resented
me, sometimes loathed me, because I was sick."
"I didn't!" he cried so loudly that a number of people
stared.
"Why argue about it? Whether you did or not doesn't
matter now. I loved you then and I still do, in. a way. But
not as I did."
He was silent during the rest of the walk across the
plain to the big mushroom-shaped stone. The cigar tasted
like burning skunk cabbage.
Cyrano was not present. He was superintending the
building of a section of the wall which would eventually
guard the shore of The River. Sam was glad. It was dif-
ficult enough for him to see Livy alone, but when she was
with the Frenchman, he could not endure his thoughts.
In silence, he and Livy parted.
A beautiful woman with lovely, honey-colored hair ap-
proached him, and he was able to set aside his feelings
about Livy for a while. The woman's name was Gwenafra.
She had died at about the age of seven in a country that
must have been Cornwall about the tune the Phoenicians
came there to exploit the tin mines. She had been resur-
rected among people of whom none spoke her ancient Cel-
tic language and had been adopted by a group that spoke
English. From her description, one of them had been that
Sir Richard Francis Burton whom Sam had thought he'd
seen on the shore just before the meteorite struck. Burton

and his friends had built a small sailboat and set out for
the headwaters of The River—as might have been ex-
pected of a man who had spent half his life exploring in
the wildernesses of Africa and the other continents. On
Earth Burton had sought the headwaters of the Nile and
had found, instead, Lake Tanganyika. But on this world
he had again been seeking the source of a river—the
greatest River of them all—undaunted by the prospect
that it might be ten million miles long or even twenty.
After little more than a year, his boat had been attacked
by evil men, and one had stuck a stone knife into little
Gwenafra and thrown her into The River, where she had
drowned. She had awakened the next day on the banks
somewhere far up in the northern hemisphere. The
weather was colder, the sun weaker and the people there
said that you did not have to go more than twenty thou-
sand grailstones before you were in an area where the sun
was always half above, half below the mountains. And
there lived hairy, ape-faced men ten feet tall and weighing
seven to eight hundred pounds.
(This was true, Joe Miller had been one of the titan-
throps there.)
The people upRiver who adopted her spoke Suomen-
kielta, which in English meant Finnish. DownRiver a little
way were Swedes, twentieth-century people who lived a
peaceful life. Gwenafra grew up relatively happy with her
loving foster parents. She learned Finnish, Swedish,
English, a Chinese dialect of the fourth century B.C., and
Esperanto.
She drowned again by accident one day and woke up
in this area. She still remembered Burton; she cherished
a childhood crush she had had for him. But, being a real-
ist, she was ready to love other men. And she had—and
had just split with one, Sam had heard. She wanted a man
who would be faithful to her, and these were not easy to
find in this world.
Sam was very much attracted to her. The only thing that
had kept him from asking her to move in with him had
been the fear of angering Livy. That fear was ridic-
ulous—she had no claim on him as long as she was

living with Cyrano. And she had made it plain that she did
not care what he did in his private life or his public life.
Nevertheless, against all logic, he was afraid to take
another woman as his hutmate. He did not want to snap
the last thin link.
He chatted with Gwenafra awhile and confirmed that
she was still unattached.

19
Lunch was upsetting. The "roulette wheel" concealed
somewhere in the false bottom of the grail, the wild caster
of dice, came up with a meal that only a Goshute Indian
could have swallowed and even he might have gagged a lit-
tle. Sam threw out all the food but was able to console
himself with two cigars, cigarettes and six ounces of an
unfamiliar but delicious liqueur. Just smelling it sent his
taste buds into a dance.
The meeting with John and the Council took three
hours. After much wrangling and a number of votes, it was
decided to put to the people the question of amending the
Carta so that a pro tem Councilman could be elected. John
held up things for an hour, arguing that a vote wasn't
needed. Why couldn't the Council simply say that the
amendment was passed and that would be the end of it?
No amount of explaining ever seemed to clarify such mat-
ters in John's head. It was not that he was unintelligent. It
was just that he was not emotionally able to comprehend
democracy.
The vote was unanimous to accept Firebrass as Hack-
ing's official visiting fireman. But he would have a close
eye kept on him.
After all this John rose and made a speech, occasionally
lapsing from Esperanto into Norman French when he was
overpowered by emotion. He thought that Parolando
should invade Soul City before Soul City invaded Parolan-
do. The invasion should be launched as soon as the
handguns and the armored amphibian, Firedragon I, were
ready. However, it might be best to test the mettle of their
iron and the troops on New Brittany first. His spies were
certain that Arthur planned to attack them soon.
John's two toadies backed him, but the others, includ-
ing Sam, voted them down. John's face became red, and
he swore and beat his fists on the oak table, but nobody
decided to change his mind.

After supper the drums relayed a message from Hack-
ing. Firebrass would be arriving tomorrow, some time
before noon.
Sam retired to his office. By the light of lamps burning
fish oil—soon they would have electricity—he and Van
Boom and Tanya Velitsky and John Wesley O'Brien, the
engineers, discussed their ideas about the Riverboat and
drew rough sketches on paper. Paper was still scarce, but
they would need enormous amounts for their blueprints.
Van Boom said that they should wait until they were able
to make a certain kind of plastic. Lines could be drawn on
this with magnetized "pens" and corrections could easily
be made by demagnetizing. Sam replied that that was fine.
But he wanted to start building the Riverboat the moment
the amphibian was completed. Van Boom said that he
could not agree to that. Too many things were in the way.
Before the meeting broke up Van Boom pulled a Mark
I gun out of a large bag. "We have ten of these now," he
said. "This one is yours, compliments of Parolando's
Engineering Corps. And here are twenty packages of
powder and twenty plastic bullets. You can sleep with
them under your pillow."
Sam thanked him, the engineers left and Sam barred the
door. Then he went into the back room to talk to Joe
Miller awhile. Joe was still awake, but he said he was tak-
ing no sedation that night. He would be getting up in the
morning. Sam bade the giant good night and went into
his bedroom, next to the pilothouse. He drank two shots
of bourbon and lay down. After a while he managed to
doze, though he was afraid that the three-o'clock rain
would wake him as usual and he would have trouble get-
ting back to sleep.
He awoke, but the rain was long past. Shouts came from
somewhere and then an explosion that rattled the
pilothouse. Sam leaped out of bed, wrapped a kilt around
his waist, seized an ax and ran into the pilothouse. He sud-
denly remembered his pistol, but he decided he would go
back for it when he found out what was going on.
The River was still smothered in fog, but hundreds of

dark figures were spilling out of it, and the tops of tall
masts were sticking out above it Torches were flaring all
over the plains and in the hills. Drums were beating.
There was another explosion. A brightness in the night
with bodies flying in all directions.
He looked through the starboard port. The gates of the
log wall around King John's palace were open, and men
were streaming out. Among them was the stocky figure of
John.
By then more men had appeared out of the mists over
the River. Bright starlight showed them lining up and
moving out, rank after rank. The first of the invaders were
by now in the great factories and advancing swiftly across
the plain toward the foothills. Some explosions occurred
inside factories as bombs were thrown to dislodge the
defenders. And then a red tail flared out, disappeared, and
something black shot toward him. Sam threw himself to
the floor. A roar came beneath him, the floor heaved, and
the glass ports blew in. A whiff of acrid smoke came to
him and was gone.
He should get up and run, but he couldn't. He was
deafened and frozen. Another rocket would be coming his
way, and that one might be closer.
A giant hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him up.
Another hand slid under his legs and he was being carried
out. The arms and the chest of the giant were very hairy
and as hard-muscled and as warm as a gorilla's. A voice as
deep as if it were at the end of a railroad tunnel rumbled.
"Take it eathy, Bothth."
"Put me down, Joe," Sam said. "I'm all right, except for
my shame. And that's all right, too, I ought to feel
ashamed."
His shock was fading, and a sense of relative calm
flowed in to fill the vacuum. The appearance of the
massive titanthrop had steadied him. Good old Joe—he
might be a dumb subhuman and sick at the moment, but
he was still worth a battalion.
Joe had put on his suit of leather armor. In one hand
was the haft of an enormous double-headed ax of steel.

"Who are they?" he rumbled. "They from Thoul
Thity?"
"I don't know," Sam said. "Do you feel up to fighting?
How's the head?"
"It hurtth. Yeah, I can fight okay. Vere do ve go from
here?"
Sam led him downhill toward the men collecting around
John. He heard his name called and turned to see the tall
lanky figure of de Bergerac, Livy by his side. She carried a
small round shield of leather-covered oak and a steel-
tipped spear. Cyrano held a long, dully shining blade.
Sam's eyes widened. It was a rapier.
Cyrano said, "Morbleu!" He switched to Esperanto.
"Your smith gave this to me just after supper—he said
there was no sense in waiting."
Cyrano whipped the rapier, cutting the air with a sharp
sound.
"I've come alive again. Steel—sharp steel!"
A nearby explosion made them all dive for the ground.
Sam waited until he was sure that another rocket was not
coming and then looked at his pilothouse. It had received a
direct hit; its front was blown open; a fire was racing
through it and would soon be in the texas. His diary was
gone, but he could retrieve his grail later. It was indestruc-
tible.
In the next few minutes the wooden missiles, tails flam-
ing, arched out, wobbling, from wooden bazookas held on
the shoulders of the Parolandoj rocketeers. The missiles
landed near and sometimes among the enemy and ex-
ploded with gouts of fire and much black smoke, quickly
carried away by the wind.
Three runners reported. The attack had been launched
from three places, all from The River. The main body was
concentrated here, apparently to seize the Parolandoj
leaders, the larger factories and the amphibian. The other
two armies were about a mile away on each side. The in-
vaders were composed of men from New Brittany and
Kleomanujo and the Ulmaks from across The River. The

Ulmaks were savages who had lived in Siberia circa
30,000 B.C. and whose descendants had migrated across
the Bering Straits to become Amerinds.
So much for King John's spy service, Sam thought. Un-
less—unless he is in on the attack. But if he were he
wouldn't be standing out here where he's likely to get
killed any moment . . .
Anyway, Arthur of New Brittany would never make a
deal with the uncle who had murdered him.
The rockets continued to arc down from both sides, the
five-pound warheads with their rock-fragment shrapnel
taking a toll. The Parolandoj had the advantage; they
could lie flat while their rockets exploded among upright
targets. The invaders had to keep moving, otherwise they
might just as well go home.
Nevertheless, it was frightening to lie on the ground and
wait for the next noisy blast and hope that it would not
come closer than the last one. There were screams from
the wounded that were not, however, as heartrending as
they would have been if Sam had not been so deafened
that he could barely hear them and if he also had not been
too worried about himself to think of others. Then, sud-
denly, the rockets had quit blowing up the world. A huge
hand shook Sam's shoulder. He looked up to see that
many around him were getting to their feet. The sergeants
were yelling into the stunned ears of their men to form a
battle array. The enemy was so close now that neither side
was using the missiles or else they had all been launched.
Ahead was a dark body, a sea of screaming whooping
fiends. They ran up the hill and the first, second and third
ranks fell, pierced by arrows. But those behind did not
break. They leaped over the fallen and kept on coming.
Suddenly, the archers were being hammered down or
thrust through or clubbed.
Sam kept close behind Joe Miller, who moved ahead
slowly, his ax rising and falling. And then the giant was
down, and the enemy were struggling on top of him like a
pack of jackals on a lion, Sam tried to get to him; his ax
smashed through a shield and a head and an uplifted arm

and then he felt a burning pain along his ribs. He was
pushed back and back, while he slashed away with the ax
and then it was gone, wedged in a skull. He stumbled over
a pile of wood. Above him was the burning floor of his
smashed house, still held up by three burning pylons.
He turned on his side, and there was the handgun, the
Mark I, that he had left by his bedside. Near it lay three
packages of powder with the nitrate-soaked twists and a
number of the plastic bullets. The explosion had hurled
them out of the house.
Two men whirled by him in a dance, their hands grip-
ping each other, straining, grunting with the strain, glaring
into each other's bloody faces. They stopped, and Sam
recognized King John—his opponent was taller but not as
thickly built. He had lost bis helmet, and he, too, had
tawny hair and eyes that were blue in the light of the
flames overhead.
Sam broke open the pistol, put in the bullet and the
charge as he had done that morning up in the hills, locked
the barrel and rose to his feet. The two men still struggled,
one slipping back a little, then the other, trying to throw
each other. John held a steel knife in his right hand; the
other man, a steel ax; each was grasping the weapon hand
of the other.
Sam looked around. No one was coming at him. He
stepped forward and extended the muzzle of the big pistol,
holding it steady with both hands. He pulled the trigger,
the click sounded, the gun was jarred to one side by the
heavy hammer, there was a flash, he had the gun back in
line, a boom, a cloud of smoke, and John's assailant fell to
one side, the entire right side of his skull blown away.
John fell gasping onto the ground. Then he raised him-
self, looking at Sam, who was reloading the gun. "Many
thanks, partner! That man was my nephew, Arthur!"
Sam did not reply. If he had been thinking more coolly
he would have waited until Arthur had killed John and
then blown Arthur's head off. It was ironic that he, Sam,
who had much to gain by John's death, should be respon-

sible for saving him. Moreover, he could not expect
gratitude from John. The man had no such thing in his
soul.
Sam completed reloading the pistol and strode away,
looking for Joe Miller. But he saw Livy reeling backward
as a big Ulmak, whose left arm dangled bloodily, drove
her back with blows of a stone ax on her shield. Her spear
had been broken and in a few seconds he would have
beaten her to her knees or shattered the shield. Sam
reversed the pistol and broke the Ulmak's skull from
behind with the butt of his gun. Livy fell exhausted and
weeping on the ground. He would have gotten down to
comfort her, but she seemed all right and he did not know
where Joe Miller was. He plunged into the embattled mass
and saw Joe on his feet again, demolishing heads, trunks
and arms with sweeps of his great ax.
Sam stopped a few paces from a man who was coming
up from behind Joe, a large ax in both hands. Sam fired,
and the bullet took part of the man's chest off.
A minute later, the invaders were running for their lives.
The sky was graying. By its light it was evident that
Parolandoj were coming in from north and south. The
other two columns, had been shattered, and the reinforce-
ments were outnumbering the invaders. Moreover, they
brought rockets which blew up the boats and canoes wait-
ing for the defeated.
Sam felt too exhilarated to be depressed by the losses
and the damage. For the first time he came out of the blue
funk that always seized him during a fight. He actually en-
joyed the battle during the last ten minutes.
A moment later his pleasure was gone. A wild-eyed and
naked Hermann Goring, his scalp caked with blood, ap-
peared on the battleground. His arms were raised straight
up, and he was shouting, "Oh, brothers and sisters!
Shame! Shame! You have killed, you have hated, you have
lusted for the blood and the ecstasy of murder! Why did
you not throw down your arms and take in your enemies
with love? Let them do with you what they would? You
wauld have died and suffered but final victory would have

been yours! The enemy would have felt your love—and
the next time he might have hesitated before again waging
war. And the time after that and the next time he might
have asked himself, 'What am I doing? Why am I doing
this? What good is this? I have gained nothing—' and your
love would have seeped through the stone over his heart
and—"
John, coming up behind Goring, struck him on the
back of the head with the hilt of his knife. Goring fell
forward and lay on his face without moving.
"So much for traitors!" John shouted. He stared around
wildly and then yelled, "Where are Trimalchio and Mor-
daunt, my ambassadors?"
Sam said, "They wouldn't be stupid enough to hang
around here. You'll never catch them. They'll know you
know they sold out to Arthur."
John's striking of Goring was illegal, since free
speech was every one's right in Parolando. But Sam did
not think that arresting John would be the right course at
that moment. He, too, had felt like hitting Goring.
Livy, still weeping, staggered past. Sam followed her to
where Cyrano sat on a pile of corpses. The Frenchman
was wounded in a dozen places, though not seriously, and
his rapier was bloody from tip to guard. He had given a
splendid account of himself.
Livy threw herself on Cyrano. Sam turned away. She
had not even thanked him for having saved her life.
There was a crash behind him. He turned. The rest of
his house had fallen in, bringing the pylons with it.
He felt drained of strength, but there would be little rest
for him today. The casualties and the damage had to be
assessed. The dead had to be taken to the rendering fac-
tory up in the hills, since their fat was used to make
glycerin. The practice was gruesome but necessary, and
the owners of the bodies did not mind. Tomorrow they
would be alive and well again somewhere far away along
The River.
In addition, the entire population would have to be kept
ready for a call to arms and the work of erecting the walls
along the Riveredge would have to be speeded up. Scouts

and messengers would have to be sent out to determine
just what the military situation was. The Ulmaks and the
Kleomenujoj and the New Bretons might launch a full-
scale attack.
A captain reported that Kleomenes, the leader of
Kleomenujo, had been found dead near the Riveredge,
where a piece of rock shrapnel had entered his skull. So
ended the half-brother of the great Spartan, Leonidas, who
defended the pass of Thermopylae. Or so he ended in this
area, at least.
Sam appointed some men to leave by boat immediately
for the two countries. They were to inform them that
Parolando did not intend to take vengeance if the new
leaders would guarantee friendship to Parolando. John
complained that he should have been consulted, and there
was a short but savage argument. Sam finally agreed that
John was right in principle, but there was no time to
discuss certain matters. John informed him that, under the
law, Sam had to take the time. Any decision had to be
agreed upon by both of them.
Sam hated to agree, but John was right. They couldn't
be giving contradictory orders.
They went together to inspect the factories. These were
not badly damaged. The invaders had not, of course,
wanted to wreck them since they had intended to use
them. The amphibian, the Firedragon 1, was untouched.
Sam shuddered when he thought of what might have hap-
pened if it had been completed and had fallen into the
hands of the enemy. With it, they could have crushed the
Parolandoj in the center and dug in to fight on the
perimeter until reinforcements came. He would set up a
large special guard around the vehicle.
He fell asleep after lunch in a Councilman's hut. It
seemed that he had just closed his eyes when he was
shaken awake. Joe was standing over him, breathing bour-
bon fumes from his tremendous proboscis.
"The delegathyon from Thou! Thity jutht landed."
"Firebrass!" Sam said, standing up from the chair. "I
forgot all about him! What a time for him to show up!"

He walked down to The River, where a catamaran was
beached near the grailstone. John was already there, greet-
ing the delegation, which consisted of six blacks, two
Arabs, and two Asiatic Indians. Firebrass was a short,
bronze-skinned, curly-haired man with big brown eyes
flecked with green. His huge forehead and shoulders and
thickly muscled arms contrasted with his skinny legs, mak-
ing him look all top. He spoke in Esperanto at first but
later used English. It was a very strange English, full of
terms and slang that Sam did not understand. But there
was a warmth and openness about Firebrass that made
Sam feel good just to have him around.
"We better go back to Esperanto," Sam said, smiling
and pouring three more slugs of scotch into Firebrass' cup.
"Is that spaceman's lingo or Soul City dialect?"
"Marsman's," Firebrass said. "Soul City English is
pretty wild, but the official language, of course, is Esper-
anto, though Hacking was considering Arabic. But he
isn't too happy about his Arabs anymore," he added in
a lower voice, looking at Abd ar-Rahman and AM
Fazghuli, the Arab members of his delegation.
"As you can see," Sam said, "we are in no condition to
have a long, leisurely conference. Not now. We have to
clean up, get information about what's going on outside
Parolando and set up our defenses. But you are welcome,
of course, and we'll get around to business within a few
days."
"I don't mind," Firebrass said. "I'd like to look around,
if you don't mind."
"I don't, but my co-Consul has to give his consent,
too."
John, smiling as if it hurt his teeth to be exposed to the
air—and it probably did this time—said that Firebrass
was welcome. But he would have to be accompanied by a
guard of honor every time he left the quarters that would
be assigned to him. Firebrass thanked him, but another
delegate, Abdullah X, protested loudly and occasionally
obscenely. Firebrass said nothing for a minute and then
told Abdullah to be polite, since they were guests. Sam
was grateful, though he wondered if the speech and Fire-

brass' command had not been prearranged.
It had not been easy to sit there and listen, though the
vitriolics had been hurled at the white race in general and
no one in particular. It troubled him, but Sam had to agree
with Abdullah. He was right about conditions as they had
been. But old Earth was dead; they were living in a new
world.
Sam personally conducted the delegates to three huts,
side by side, owned by men and women who had been
killed last night. Then he moved into a hut near the delega-
tion.
Drums boomed by the grailstone. After a minute, drums
from across. The River thundered back an answer. The
new chief of the Ulmaks wanted peace. The old chief,
Shrubgrain, had been put to death, and his head would be
delivered within the hour by canoe if peace could be ar-
ranged. Shrubgrain had failed his people by leading them
to defeat.
Sam gave orders to transmit a request for a conference
with the new chief, Threelburm.
Drums from Chernsky's Land said that Iyeyasu, who
ruled a twelve-mile stretch of land between New Brittany
and Kleomenujo, had invaded New Brittany. The news
meant that the New Bretons would not be bothering
Parolando, but it also worried Sam. Iyeyasu was a very
ambitious man. Once he had consolidated his state with
New Brittany he "might decide he was strong enough to
take Parolando.
More drums. Publius Crassus sent his congratulations
and wannest regards, and he would be visiting tomorrow
to see what he could do to aid Parolando.
And also to see how hard we've been hit and if we'd be
easy pickings, Sam thought. So far, Publius had been
cooperative, but a man who had served under Julius
Caesar could have his own brand of Caesarism.
Goring, his head wrapped in a bloody towel, stag-
gered by, supported by two of his followers. Sam hoped he
would take the hint and leave Parolando, but he didn't
have much faith in the German's perceptiveness.
He went  to sleep  that  night  while  torches  burned

everywhere over the land and guards peered into the
shadows and the mists. His sleep was troubled, despite his
intense fatigue. He tossed and rolled and once he awoke,
his heart beating, his skin cold, certain that there was a
third person in the hut. He fully expected to see the
shadowy figure of the Mysterious Stranger crouched by his
bed. But nobody was there except the monstrous form of
Joe stretched out on the huge bamboo bed near him.

20
The next morning he arose unrefreshed in a refreshed
world. The three-o'clock rain had washed away the blood
and the stink of gunpowder. The bodies were gone, and
the sky was clear and blue. Business as usual was resumed
but without about four hundred and fifty men and women.
Half of these were in the rendering factory; the rest, in the
hospital. Those who wanted to be put out of their misery
were given their wish. Time had been when an ax was the
only euthanasiast but now, thanks to Parolando's
technology, the work was done with a potassium cyanide
pill.
Some decided to stick it out. In time their limbs or eyes
would grow back in. Those who could not take the pain
boarded The Suicide Express, and the bodies they left
behind went to the rendering factory.
Sam's secretary had been killed. Sam asked Gwenafra if
she would like to take Millie's place. Gwenafra seemed
very pleased. The new position gave her a high status, and
she had made no secret of the fact that she liked to be near
Sam. Lothar von Richthofen, however, did not seem
pleased.
"Why shouldn't she be my secretary, regardless of her
relationship to you?" Sam said.
"There is no reason," Lothar said, "except that I might
have a very good chance with her if she isn't around you
much."
"Let the best man win."
"My sentiments, too, but I don't like your wasting her
time or leading her on. You know that you won't take
another hutmate as long as Livy is here."
"Livy has nothing to say about what I do," Sam said.
"And don't forget that."
Lothar smiled slightly and said, "Sure, Sam."
Gwenafra tagged along with him, taking notes, sending
messages, receiving them, arranging schedules and ap-

pointments. Though he was very busy, he found moments
when he could talk and joke with her and he felt a warmth
every time he looked at her. Gwenafra seemed to adore
him.
Two days passed. The twenty-four-hour shift on the
amphibian was showing results. The machine would be
completed in another two days. The Soul City delegation
strolled around with two of King John's men watching
them. Joe Miller, who had gone back to his bed after the
battle, said he was well again. Now Sam had both Gwen-
afra and the titanthrop with him, and his world seemed
much more comfortable, though it was a long way from
being Utopia. Word came via the drum telegraph that
Odysseus had loaded his ships with flints and would be
back in a month. He had gone as commander of a ten-boat
fleet to barter with the chieftainess of Selinujo. On Earth
she had been Countess Huntingdon, Selina Hastings, born
1707, died 1791. She was now a member of the Church of
the Second Chance and traded her flint with Parolando
only because Parolando permitted Goring's mission-
aries to preach at will in its territory. In return for the
flint, she had been promised a small metal steamboat in
which she proposed to go up and down The River and
preach. Sam thought she was fooling herself. The first
place she put into she was liable to have her throat cut for
the sake of the boat. But that was her business.
The Councilmen met with the Soul City delegation at a
round table in the largest room in John's palace. Sam
would have liked to put it off, since John was in a mood
even uglier than usual. One of his women had tried to kill
him, or so he claimed. He had been stabbed in the side
before he broke her jaw and knocked her head against the
corner of a table. The woman had died an hour later still
unconscious, and John's word that she had attacked him
first had to be accepted. Sam would have liked to have col-
lected some neutral eyewitness account, but that was im-
possible.
John was in pain from the stab wound, half drunk with
bourbon as an anesthetic, and smarting because the
woman had dared to defy him. He slumped in a large,

high-backed, ornately carved oak chair covered with red
hornfish leather. One hand was around a clay vessel full of
whiskey, a cigarette dangled from his lips, and he
glowered at everybody.
Firebrass was talking.
"Hacking once believed in total segregation of whites
and nonwhites. He believed, fiercely believed, that whites
could never accept, not soul-accept, nonwhite peoples-
that is, the blacks, Mongolians, Polynesians, and Amerin-
dians. The only way nonwhites could live with dignity, feel
beautiful, be a people with its own personality and pride,
was to follow the way of segregation. Equal but separate.
"Then his leader, Malcolm X, quit the Black Muslims.
Malcolm X saw that he was wrong. Not all whites were
devils, racist fiends, any more than all blacks had flat
noses. Hacking fled the states to live in Algeria and there
he found that it was the attitude that made racism, not the
color of the skin."
Hardly an original or surprising discovery, Sam
thought. But he had told himself that he would not inter-
rupt.
"And then the young whites of the Untied States, many
of them, anyway, rejected their parents' prejudices, and
they supported the blacks in their struggles. They got out
on the streets and demonstrated, rioted, laid down their
lives for the blacks. They genuinely seemed to like blacks,
not because they thought they ought to, but because blacks
were human beings and human beings can be liked or even
loved.
"Hacking, however, wasn't ever really at ease with an
American white, try though he did to think of them as
human beings. He was ruined, just as most whites, most
older whites, were ruined. But he tried to like those whites
who were on his side and he respected those young whites
that told their parents, their white racists society, to go to
hell.
"Then he died, as everybody did, black or white. He
found himself among ancient Chinese, and he wasn't very
happy with them because they regarded all peoples except
the Chinese as inferior."

Sam remembered the Chinese of Nevada and California
in the early '60's, the hard-working, thrifty, quiet, meek,
cheery little brown men and women. They had taken
abuse that most people would not give a mule, been spat
upon, cursed, tortured, stoned, robbed, raped, suffered
about every indignity and crime that a people could suffer.
They had had no rights whatsoever, no protector or pro-
tection. And they had never murmured, never revolted,
they just endured. What thoughts had those masklike faces
hidden? Had they, too, believed in the superiority of any
Chinese to any white devil? If so, why had they not struck
back, not once? They would have been massacred if they
had, but they would have stood up like men for a few mo-
ments.
But the Chinese believed in time; time was the Chinese
ally. If time did not raise a father to fortune, time would
raise his son. Or his grandson.
Firebrass said, "So Hacking left in a dugout, floated
downRiver, and after many thousands of miles settled
down among some blacks of seventeenth-century A.D.
Africa. Ancestors of the Zulus before they migrated to
southern Africa. After a while he left them. Their customs
were too repulsive, and they were too bloody-minded for
him.
"Then he lived in an area where the people were a mix-
ture of Dark Age Huns and dark whites of the New Stone
Age. They accepted him well enough, but he missed his
own people, the American blacks. So he took off again
and was captured by ancient Moabites and enslaved,
escaped, was captured by ancient Hebrews and put into
grail slavery, escaped again, found a little community of
blacks who'd been pre-Civil War slaves and was happy for
a while. But their Uncle Tom attitudes and their supersti-
tions got on his nerves and he took off, sailed downRiver,
and lived with several other peoples. Then, one day, some
big blond whites, Germans of some kind, raided the peo-
ple he was with and he fought and was killed.
"He was resurrected here. Hacking became convinced
that the only happy states on The River were going to be
made up of people with similar colors, similar tastes, and

of the same terrestrial period. Anything else just won't
work. People here aren't going to change. Back on Earth
he could believe in progress, because the young were flex-
ible-minded. The old ones would die off, and then the chil-
dren of the young whites would be even more free of racial
prejudice. But here that just isn't going to take place.
Every man's set in his ways. So, unless Hacking just hap-
pened to find a community of late-twentieth-century
whites, he would find no whites without racial hatreds or
prejudices. Of course, the ancient whites didn't have any
against blacks, but they're too strange for a civilized
man."
Sam asked, "What's all this leading up to, Sinjoro Fire-
brass?"
"We want a homogeneous nation. We can't get all late-
twentieth-century blacks, but we can get as black a nation
as possible. Now, we know that you have approximately
three thousand blacks in Parolando. We would like to ex-
change our Dravidians, Arabs, any nonblacks, for your
blacks. Hacking is making similar proposals to your
neighbors, but he doesn't have any lever with them."
King John sat up and said, loudly. "You mean he
doesn't have anything they want?"
Firebrass looked coolly at John and said, "That's about
it. But we'll have a lever some day."
"Do you mean when you have enough steel weapons?"
Sam said.
Firebrass shrugged.
John crashed his empty cup down on the table. "Well,
we don't want your Arabs or your Dravidians or any of
your Soul City dregs!" he shouted. "But I'll tell you what
we will do! For every ton of bauxite or cryolite or ounce of
platinum, we will give you one of our black citizens! You
can keep your Saracen infidels or send them packing
downRiver or drown them for all we care."
"Wait a minute," Sam said. "We can't give our citizens
away. If they want to volunteer, fine. But we don't just
give anybody away. This is a democracy."
Firebrass' expression had darkened at John's outburst.

"I wasn't suggesting that you give anybody away," he said.
"We're not slave dealers, you know. What we want is a
one-per-one voluntary exchange. The Wahhabi Arabs,
whom ar-Rahman and Fazghuli represent, feel they're un-
welcome at Soul City and they would like to go where they
could congregate in their own community, form a sort of
Kasbah, you might say."
Sam thought this sounded fishy. Why couldn't they do
that just as well in Soul City? Or why didn't they just get
up and leave? One of the beauties of this world was that
ties or property or dependence on income did not exist. A
man could carry everything he owned on his back—and
building another house was easy in a world where new
bamboo grew at a rate of two inches a day.
It was possible that Hacking wanted to get his people
into Parolando so that they could spy or revolt when
Hacking invaded.
Sam said, "We'll put your proposition about the ex-
change to each individual. That's all we can do. Now, does
Sinjoro Hacking plan to keep on supplying us with the
minerals and with wood?"
"As long as you keep on sending us raw ore and steel
weapons," Firebrass said. "But Hacking is thinking of up-
ping the price."
John's fist smashed into the tabletop again. "We will
not be robbed!" he shouted. "We are paying too much
now! Don't push us, Sinjoro Firebrass, or you may find
yourselves with nothing! Nothing at all—not even your
lives!"
"Take it easy, Your Majesty," Sam said quietly. To
Firebrass he said, "John isn't feeling well. Please forgive
him. However, he does have a point. We can be pushed
only so far."
Abdullah X, a very big and very black man, jumped up
and pointed a big finger at Sam. In English, he said, "You
honkies had better quit badmouthing us. We won't take
any crap from you, Mister Whitey! None! Especially from
a man that wrote a book like you did about Nigger Jim!
We don't like white racists and we only deal with them be-

cause there's nothing else we can do just now."
"Take it easy, Abdullah," Firebrass said. He was
smiling and Sam wondered if Abdullah's speech was the
second part of a well-prepared program. Probably, Fire-
brass was similarly wondering if John's explosions had
been rehearsed. Actors didn't have to be politicians, but
politicians had to be actors.
Sam groaned and said, "Did you read Huckleberry
Finn, Sinjoro X?"
Abdullah, sneering, said, "I don't read trash."
"Then you don't know what you're talking about, do
you?"
Abdullah's face darkened. Firebrass grinned.
"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 trium-
phant, 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

home—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. Ab-
dullah 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 be-
cause 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 Finn!"
Firebrass turned back. "Sure. I thought it was a great
book when I was a kid. I read it again when I was in col-
lege, 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 pur-
chased 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 semi-
feudal society of the Mississippi, of superstition—of
everything stupid of that time. So why should I be of-
fended 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 noth-
ing, 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 cen-
tury."
Firebrass laughed and said, "Yet you're living in a so-
ciety 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 ab-
solute nudity during the first days after resurrection en-
sured 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 in-
sisted 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 al-
most 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, af-
ter 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 Hermann Goring. His head was still wrapped
in a towel, but his skin was less pale, and his eyes did not
look odd.
Sam said, "How's your head?"
"It still hurts. But I can walk without driving hot spikes
in it every time I take a step."
"I don't like to see a man suffer," Sam said. "So I sug-
gest that you could avoid more suffering, if not downright
pain, by leaving Parolando."
"Are you threatening me?"
"Not with any action from me. But there are plenty who
may get so riled up they'll run you out on a rail. Or take
you down to The River and drown you. You're upsetting
everybody with your preachings. This state was founded
with one main goal, the building of the Riverboat. Now, a
man may say anything he wants to and not run foul of the
law here. But there are those who sometimes ignore the
law, and I wouldn't want to have to punish them because
you tempted them. I suggest that you do your Christian
duty and remove yourself from the premises. That way,
you won't be tempting good men and women to commit
violence."
"I'm not a Christian," Goring said.
"I admire a man who can admit that. I don't think I
ever met a preacher who came out and said so, in so many
words."
"Sinjoro Clemens," Goring said, "I read your books
when I was a young man in Germany, first in German and
then in English. But levity or mild irony aren't going to get
us any place. I am not a Christian, though I try to practice
the better Christian virtues. I am a missionary for the
Church of the Second Chance. All Terrestrial religions

have been discredited, even if some won't admit it. The
Church is the first religion to rise on the new world, the
only one which has any chance to survive. It—"
"Spare me the lecture," Sam said. "I've heard enough
from your predecessors and from you. What I'm saying, in
utter friendliness and a desire to save you from harm and
also, to be honest, to get you but of my craw, is that you
should take off. Right now. Or you'll be killed."
"Then I'll rise at dawn tomorrow somewhere else and
preach The Truth there, wherever I find myself. You see,
here, as on Earth, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the
Church. The man who kills one of us only ensures that
The Truth, the chance for eternal salvation, will be heard
by more people. Murder has spread our faith up and down
The River far faster than any conventional means of
travel."
"Congratulations," Sam said exasperatedly, dropping
into English, as he often did when angry. "But tell me,
doesn't the repeated killing of your missionaries bother
you? Aren't you afraid of running out of body?"
"What do you mean?"
"Tenets, anyone?"
Sam got no reaction except a puzzled look. Sam
resumed in Esperanto. "One of your major tenets, if I
remember correctly, is that Man wasn't resurrected so he
could enjoy life here forever. He is given only a limited
time, though it may look like a long time to most, espe-
cially if they don't happen to be enjoying life here. You
postulate something analogous to a soul, something you
call a psychomorph, right? Or sometimes a ka. You have
to, otherwise you can't claim a continuity of identity in a
man. Without it a man who dies is dead, even if his body is
reproduced exactly and made alive again. That second
body is only a reproduction. The lazarus has the mind and
the memories of the men who died, so he thinks he's the
man who died. But he isn't. He's just a living duplicate.
Death terminated the first man. He's through.
"But you solve this problem by postulating a soul—or a
psychomorph or a ka—call it what you will. This is an en-
tity which is born with the body, accompanies it, registers

and records everything the body does and, indeed, must be
an incorporeal incorporation of the body, if you'll excuse
that contradiction. So that, when the flesh dies, the ka still
exists. It exists in some fourth dimension or in some
polarization which protoplasmic eyes can't see or me-
chanical devices can't detect. Is that correct?"
"You're close enough," Goring said. "Crudely put
but satisfactory."
"So far," Sam said, expelling a big cloud of green
smoke, "we have—you have, not I—the postulated soul of
the Christians and the Moslems and others ad nauseam.
But you claim that the soul does not go to a hell or a
heaven. It flits around in some sort of fourth-dimensional
limbo. It would do so forever if it were not for the in-
terference of other beings. These are extra-Terrestrials
who came into existence long before humanity did. These
superbeings came to Earth when mankind did not yet ex-
ist—in fact, they visited every planet in the universe that
might have sentient life some day."
"You're not phrasing it exactly as we do," Goring
said. "We maintain that every Galaxy has one—or
perhaps many—ancient species inhabiting certain planets.
These beings may have arisen in our Galaxy or they may
have originated in an earlier, now dead, Galaxy or
universe. In any event, they are wise and knew long ago
that sentient life would arise on Earth, and they set up
devices which started recording these sentients from the
moment they appeared. These devices are undetectable by
the sentients.
"At some time which these Ancients, as we call them,
have determined, the recordings are sent to a special place.
There the dead are fleshed out from the recordings by
energy-matter converters, made whole and young again
and then recordings are made of these bodies—which are
destroyed and the dead are raised on a new world, such as
this, again through e-m conversion.
"The psychomorphs, or kas, have an affinity to their
protoplasmic twins. The moment a duplicate of the dead
body is made, the ka attaches itself and begins recording.

So that, if the body is killed and duplicated a hundred
times, the ka still retains the identity, the mind, and the
memories of all the bodies. So that it is not just one
duplicate after another being created. It is a matter of
preservation of the pristine individual with a recording of
everything that ever occurred in the immediate environ-
ment of all the protoplasmic bodies of the ka.
"But!" Sam said, waving his cigar and then stabbing its
glowing end close to Goring's cheek. "But! You main-
tain that a man cannot be killed an indefinite number of
times. You say that, after a couple of hundred times, death
does have a final effect. Continued dying weakens the link
between body and ka and eventually the duplication of the
body does not cause the ka to merge with it. The ka wan-
ders off, haunts the spooky corridors of the fourth dimen-
sion, or whatever. It becomes, in effect, a ghost, a lost
soul. It is done for."
"That is the essence of our faith," Goring said. "Or I
should say our knowledge, since we know this to be true."
Sam raised his bushy eyebrows. "Indeed? Know?"
"Yes. Our founder heard The Truth a year after Resur-
rection, a year to the day after all of humanity rose from
the dead. A man came to him at night as he prayed for a
revelation on a high ledge up in the mountains. This man
told him certain things, showed him certain things, that no
terrestrial mortal could tell or show. This man was an
agent of The Ancients and he revealed The Truth, and he
told our founder to go out and preach the doctrine of the
Second Chance.
"Actually, the term Second Chance is a misnomer. It is
really our First Chance, because we never had a chance
for salvation and eternal life while we were on Earth. But
life on Earth was a necessary prelude to this Riverworld.
The Creator made the universe and then The Ancients
preserved humankind—indeed, all sentients throughout
the universe. They preserved! But salvation is up to
mankind only!
"It is up to each man to save himself, now that he has
been given the chance!"

"Through the Church of the Second Chance and that
only, I suppose," Sam said. He did not want to sneer but
he could not help himself.
"That is what we believe," Goring said.
"What were the credentials of this mysterious
stranger?" Sam said. He thought of his Mysterious
Stranger, and he felt panic. Could the two be the same? Or
could both be from the same beings who called themselves
the Ethicals? His Stranger, tie man who sent the nickel-
iron meteorite here and who had enabled Joe Miller to
see the Tower in the far-off misty North Polar Sea, was a
renegade of the Ethicals. If he were to be believed.
"Credentials?" Goring said. "Papers from God?"
He laughed.
"The founder knew that his visitor could not be just a
man because he knew things that only a god, or a superior
being, could know about him. And he showed him some
things that he had to believe. And he told him how we
were brought back to life and why. He did not tell him
everything. Some things will be revealed later. Some things
we must find out for ourselves."
"What is the name of this founder?" Sam said. "Or
don't you know? Is that one of the hidden things?"
"No one knows," Goring said. "It is not necessary to
know. What is a name? He only called himself Viro. That
is, in Esperanto, a man. From the Latin vir. We call him
La Fondinto, The Founder, or La Viro, The Man."
"Did you ever meet him?"
"No, but I have met two who knew him well. One was
there when La Viro preached the first time, seven days af-
ter the Stranger had talked to him."
"La Viro is definitely male? Not a woman?"
"Oh, yes!"
Sam sighed deeply and said, "That's a great weight off
my mind. If the founder had turned out to be Mary Baker
Eddy, I would have curled up and died."
"What?"
"Never mind," Sam said, grinning. "I wrote a book
about her once. I wouldn't want to meet her; she'd scalp

me alive. But some of the wild mystical things you told me
reminded me of her."
"Except for the ka, everything in our explanation is
based on the physical. And the ka is physical, but at right
angles, you might say, to our reality. We believe that it is
science, the science of The Ancients, which has given us a
physical resurrection. There's nothing supernatural about
anything, except our belief in The Creator, of course. The
rest is all science."
"Like Mary Baker Eddy's religion?" Sam asked.
"I do not know of her."
"So how do we attain this salvation?"
"By becoming love. And that implies, of course, that we
do not offer violence, even in self-defence. We believe that
we can become love only by attaining a certain transcen-
dent state and that comes through self-knowledge. So far
most of mankind has not learned how to use dreamgum;
man has abused the drug, just as he abuses everything."
"And you think you have become love, whatever that
phrase means?"
"Not yet. But I am on the way."
"Through dreamgum?"
"Not just with it. It helps. But you have to act, too, you
have to preach and suffer for your belief. And learn not to
hate. Learn to love."
"So that is why you oppose my Riverboat? You think
that we are wasting our time by building it?"
"It's a goal that will bring no one any good. So far it has
resulted in the devastation of the land, in greed and pain
and bloodshed, in anxiety and treachery. In hate, hate,
hate! And for what? So you can have what nobody else
has, a giant boat of metal propelled by electricity, the apex
of the technology this planet offers, a ship of fools. So you
can journey to the headwaters of The River. When you get
there, then what? You should be journeying to the head-
waters of the soul!"
"There are some things you don't know," Sam said. His
smugness was soured by a vision. There was a devil,
crouching in the darkness, whispering in his ear. But
someone had crouched in the darkness and whispered in

the ear of the founder of the Church, too. Was the Church's
Stranger the devil? The being who had come to Samuel
Clemens had said that the others were the devils and he
wanted to save mankind.
The devil would say something like that, of course.
"Don't my words touch your heart at all?" Goring
said.
Sam rapped his chest with his fist and said, "Yes, I do
believe I have a touch of indigestion."
Goring made a fist and clamped Ms lips.
"Watch out, you'll lose your love," Sam said and
walked away. But he did not feel particularly triumphant.
It was a fact that he did have a little stomach upset. In-
vincible ignorance always upset him, even though he knew
he should just laugh at it.

21
The afternoon of the next day arrived. Sam Clemens and
John Lackland had been arguing all morning. Finally Sam,
exasperated past caution and reasonableness, said, "We
can't afford to have the bauxite cut off by Hacking! We
can't afford anything that will put a stop to building the
Riverboat! Maybe you're doing this to force a war be-
tween us and Soul City! It isn't going to work, Your
Majesty!"
Sam had been walking back and forth, waving a
panatela as he spoke. John sprawled before the oaken
round table in Sam's pilothouse. Joe Miller sat in a corner
on a big chair specially built for him. The massive
paleolithic Mongolian, Zaksksromb, stood behind John.
Suddenly, Sam whirled and planked both fists on the
table. Leaning on the table, his cigar in one corner of his
mouth, the reddish tangle of his eyebrows drawn down, he
snarled at John.
"You gave in once, at Runnymede, when you signed the
Magna Carta. It was about the only decent thing you ever
did during your reign—and there are some who say you
had your fingers crossed then. Well, this is another
showdown, John, Your Majesty. You apologize to Ab-
dullah, who has a right to an apology—or I'll call a special
session of the Council and we'll determine your fitness to
continue as co-Consul!"
John glowered at him for a full minute at the least. Then
he said, "Your threats don't scare me. But it's evident that
you would sooner plunge our land into civil war than go to
war with Soul City. I do not understand this madness, but
then a rational man always has trouble understanding irra-
tionality. So I will apologize. Why not? A king can afford
to be gracious to a commoner. It costs him nothing and
enhances his graciousness."
John rose and swaggered out, his huge bodyguard
behind him.

Ten minutes later, Sam heard that John had appeared at
the state guest house and offered his apology. Abdullah X
accepted it, though sullenly. It was evident that he had
been ordered to do so.
Just before the factory whistles announced the end of
lunch hour, Cawber entered. He sat down without waiting
for Sam to invite him. Sam raised his eyebrows, because
this was the first time that this had happened. There was
something indefinable in Cawber's attitude. Sam, watching
him carefully, listening to every inflection of his voice,
decided that his attitude was that of a slave who has
decided to be a slave no more.
Cawber knew that he would be the emissary to Soul
City. He sat leaning forward, huge black arms resting on
the oak, his hands spread out. He spoke in Esperanto and,
Like many people, mostly in the present tense, using an ad-
verb of time to indicate future or past if he wanted to
clarify.
Cawber's team had talked to every one of the approx-
imately three thousand undoubted Negroes (there was
some confusion of classification about some of the pre-
historics). A third of these was willing, though not eager,
to go to Soul City in exchange for Hacking's unwanted
citizens. Most were late-twentieth-century blacks. The
others maintained that they had work that gave them
prestige, that they Like being on an equal footing with the
whites, and that they did not want to give up their chance
to be on the Riverboat.
The latter was probably the biggest determinant, Sara
thought. He was not the only one who dreamed of the
Riverboat. It drove through the minds of many during
sleep, gleaming Like a jewel with a firefly trapped inside it.
Firebrass and his people were requested to come to the
conference room. Firebrass was late because he had been
inspecting the airplane. He was laughing about its
quaintness, fragility and slowness, and yet he was envious
that von Richthofen would be the one to fly it.
"You'll certainly get a chance to fly it, too," Sam said.
"Provided that you are still here, of course, when—"

Firebrass became serious. "What is your decision,
gentlemen, regarding my government's proposal?"
Sam looked at John, who gestured that Sam had the
floor. John intended that any possible ill feelings should
first be directed at Sam.
"This is a democracy," Sam said. "And we can't tell our
citizens to get out unless they've been guilty of illegal
behavior. So, as I see it—as we see it—any citizen of
Parolando may go to Soul City if he wishes. I think we ac-
tually reached .basic agreement on this when we last met.
It will be up to your government to negotiate with each
citizen. As for taking in your Arabs and Dravidians
and so forth—we'll give them a chance to come with us if
they want to. But we reserve the right to get rid of them if
they don't work out. Where they'll go then is up to them."
"Well," Firebrass said, "I don't suppose Hacking wants
anybody who isn't willing to live in Soul City, no matter
how black that person is."
"What about the shipments of minerals?" Sam said.
"Will those be discontinued during the negotiations?"
"I really couldn't say," Firebrass replied. "I doubt it,
but I'd have to confer with Hacking. Of course, you'll
have to keep up your present rate of ore and weapons to us
before the price is raised."
"I notice you said is, not might be," Sam said.
"Anything I say is subject to confirmation or negation
from Soul City," Firebrass said, smiling.
It was then agreed that Cawber would go to Soul City
as Parolando's ambassador of the Carta could be changed
to arrange it. Everything else was still up in the air. Sam
Clemens received the impression that Firebrass did not in-
tend to speed things up. Quite the contrary. He was willing
to let things drag on or even to put his own foot on the
brake if things showed signs of accelerating. He wanted to
remain in Parolando, and Sam could only think that he
wished to do so in order to spy. Perhaps, he also wanted
to stir up trouble.
Later, he discussed the meeting with John. John agreed
that Firebrass was a spy, but he could not see why Fire-
brass would stir up trouble.

"He would want the boat to be built as swiftly as possi-
ble. The sooner it's completed, the sooner Hacking will try
to seize it. Do you think for one moment that Hacking
doesn't intend to get the boat? Do you think for one mo-
ment that we have a single neighbor who doesn't intend to
try for the boat? Arthur made the abortive attempt to take
us over because of his hatred for me. He should have
waited until the boat was nearly completed and then, with
Kleomenes and the Ulmaks, launched all the force they
could mount in an all-out attack. As things worked out, he
and Kleomenes were killed and Iyeyasu has invaded their
countries while their successors are fighting among them-
selves."
"According to our spies, he's winning, too," Sam said.
"If he consolidates his state with the other two, then
he'll be a very formidable enemy."
And so will you be John Lackland, Sam thought. Of all
the people I'll have to watch after the boat is built, you'll
bear the closest watching ...
Firebrass announced that he and his delegation would
remain as Soul City's embassy while the negotiations went
on.
"It's nice to have you," Sam said. "But Soul City has its
own industries. I know it's been using our ore to make
weapons and several things our spies can't find out
about."
Firebrass looked surprised and then he laughed
uproariously. "You twist my stick, stymate!" he said in
English. Then, in Esperanto, "Well, why shouldn't we be
frank? I like that. Yes, we know you have spies among
us—just as you know we have ours here. Who doesn't
have his spies in his neighbors' lands? But what are you
getting at?"
"You're the most technically trained man Hacking has.
You're a PhD. You're in charge of the factories and of
research and development. So why does Hacking send you
here when he needs you there?"
"I've set everything up to run smoothly. Soul City

doesn't need me right now, and I was bored. I wanted to
come here, where it's at."
"So you can see what we've got, like our Mark I
handguns and our airplane and the amphibian and its
steam cannon?"
Firebrass grinned and nodded. "Yes. Why not? If I
don't see these things, someone else will."
Sam relaxed. He said, "Have a cigar. You can look all
you want. We're not doing anything you wouldn't have
figured out for yourself, except for the steam cannon
maybe. That, by the way, is my invention. Come along with
me. I'm very proud of it and want you to see it. It's almost
finished."
Firedragon I rested inside its supporting framework of
timbers. It was silvery gray and shaped like a flat-
bottomed boat but had seven huge metal wheels with
plastic tires on each side. Twin screws protected by a
screen protruded from its rear. Its length was thirty feet,
its beam was ten feet, and its height was twelve feet. Three
turrets stuck out from the upper deck. One held the pilot,
captain and radio operator, though at the moment
Parolando had no radios. The center turret was higher
than the others, and the barrel of a short stubby weapon
encased in wood projected from it. The rear turret was
designed for gunners who would be armed with Mark I
handguns and perhaps rifles.
"The amphibian burns wood alcohol to generate
steam," Sam said. "Let's go inside, through this hatch in
the side here. You'll notice that the boiler takes up about a
third of the interior. There's a good reason for that, as
you'll see."
They climbed up a ladder into the interior of the cen-
ter turret, which was lit by a single light bulb. Firebrass
exclaimed at this. It was the only electric light bulb he
had ever seen on The River. Sam explained that it was
powered by a fuel cell.
"And here is the Superdooper Steam Machine Can-
non," he said. He pointed at the cylinder sticking out of
the gray bulkhead of the turret. Underneath it were a

pistollike butt and a trigger. Firebrass got behind it, put
his finger on the trigger and looked out through the open-
ing above the barrel. He raised and lowered the weapon.
"There'll be a chair for the operator to sit in," Sam said.
"He'll be able to rotate the turret any way he wants by
pushing pedals. He can depress the gun about twenty de-
grees up or down. The steam from the boiler is the motive
power for the eighty-caliber plastic bullets. The gun is fired
from an open breech—that is, there's no bullet in the barrel
when the trigger is pulled. Pulling the trigger releases a
catch which permits the breech block to move forward,
impelled by a spring. During its forward travel, the breech
block picks up a plastic bullet from the clip and pushes it
into the breech. Just before the block reaches the breech,
the camming lugs on either side engage in their slots and
turn the breech block a quarter turn to the right, thus lock-
ing the breech. You follow me?"
Firebrass nodded.
"Good. As soon as the quarter turn is completed, the
inlet channel in the breech block comes into line with the
feed channel from the high-pressure steam line. This
allows hot, say approximately four-hundred-degree F.,
steam to enter the chamber in the breech block. The
plastic cartridge is forced through the barrel by the expan-
sion of steam. At the same time the steam pressure, acting
against the rear of the chamber, begins to force the breech
block back. Because of the greater weight of the block,
however, the block doesn't begin to move until the bullet
has already cleared the muzzle of the rifle.
"As the block begins to move backward, the camming
lugs move in the camming slots and turn the bolt a quarter
turn to the left, thus shutting off the steam. Then the
breech block returns to its original position. If the trigger
is still held back, the operation is repeated indefinitely."
Firebrass said, "I'm impressed, but won't the gun
operate most efficiently if its temperature is the same as
the incoming high-pressure steam? That way, less of the
steam's energy would be used to heat the gun and this
means more steam to propel the bullet. Ah, I see! You do
have a hollow jacket around the barrel. The steam travels

through that before it enters the weapon itself, right?"
"Yes. There's an insulating jacket of plaster encased in
wood. Note that bleeder valve. It permits the gun to be
heated up before use—a few seconds before it's fired. If
that isn't done, the gun might jam. And since the gun's
maximum temperature is the same as the steam in the
boiler, there's no danger of burning up the barrel. You can
use the gun like a fire hose. In fact, that'll be about the
only way it'll be effective. The accuracy of a light plastic
bullet with such comparatively low muzzle velocity isn't
high."
Firebrass was far from being depressed because of the
military superiority the amphibian would give Parolando.
This probably was because he was planning on building
one for Soul City. Or, if Parolando had one, then perhaps
he might build two. In which case, Parolando would have
to build three.
Soul City could not outbuild Parolando. But Parolando
could not cut the supplies off, because then Soul City
would cut off the bauxite, cryolite, platinum and indium.
The exhilaration from showing off his deadly invention
whistled out almost audibly from Sam. The only solution
to the problem, if Soul City did start a weapons race,
would be to smash Soul City and take direct control of the
minerals. This meant putting off the building of the River-
boat. And it also meant offending the two states, Publiujo
and Tifonujo, that lay between Parolando and Soul City.
And if those two states got together, they would be for-
midable, what with the weapons that Parolando had to
give them in exchange for their wood.
Sam had thought that that potentiality was bad enough.
But a few days later Iyeyasu completed his conquest of his
neighboring states and sent a mission to Parolando. He
made no demands that could not be met. In fact, in one
way his proposals were helpful. He said that his nation
had lost enough trees, and he would like to give them a
chance to grow again—but for an increase in the number
of weapons from Parolando, he was willing to provide a
large quantity of wood and of excrement for their gun-

powder industry. He would invade the territories across
The River and take their wood from them.
What it amounted to was that Parolando would be pay-
ing Iyeyasu to collect the wood forcibly from its
neighbors. It would be cheaper and also a lot less painful
for Parolandoj, who would not have to do their own
killing, enslaving or raiding.
And Sam Clemens would have one more thing to rob
him of sleep.
John Lackland thought the proposal excellent. "Our
factories are turning out weapons efficiently," he said.
"We can afford to export more. And we must build a fleet
of Firedragons so that the swords we give these people will
be easily overpowered by our machines."
"When are we going to start building the Riverboat?"
Sam asked.
No one gave him an answer, but the next day Van
Boom, Velitsky, and O'Brien, his chief engineers, brought
him the first rough overall sketches. They were drawn in
black on white plastic boards with a pencil connected to a
fuel cell. The magnetic field at the tip of the pencil rear-
ranged the loose and very thin covering of particles within
its range. The lines remained polarized until a reverse field
was passed over them. Thus, the demand for paper for
drawings was greatly cut down, and the plans could be
changed as desired.
Firebrass said he would like to help build the boat. Per-
mission was given, though John objected at first. Sam
replied that the more help they had, the faster the work
would move. And he did not see how any amount of
knowledge on Firebrass' part would enable him to steal
the boat. Though Sam did not tell John, he had an idea
about Firebrass. That was to get him so involved, so "het
up" about the boat that he would take an offer of a berth
on the vessel.
The machinery necessary to roll out the first plates for
the hull was almost finished. The dam had been finished a
week ago, and the water from the cataract was filling it
up. The aluminum wires of the generators, which would be

turned by the waterfall from the dam, were being wound.
The prototype batacitor, which would be four stories high,
would be finished in a month, if enough materials were
available.
Five hundred missionaries of the Church of the Second
Chance asked for sanctuary in Parolando a few days later,
Iyeyasu had kicked them out of his new state, promising
various exquisite tortures if they tried to sneak back. Sam
did not hear about them immediately because he was up at
the dam.
The Chancers refused to go when John sent word to
them to leave immediately. John Lackland, hearing this,
smiled grimly, tugged at his lion-colored hair, and swore
his favorite oath, "By the teeth of God!"
Sam was at the dam to supervise the installation of
tons of dynamite inside the hollow walls. This was to be
one more trick up his sleeve, a last-ditch operation—and
perhaps a suicidal one—if ever an enemy were about to
make a successful invasion.
Von Richthofen, red-faced and blowing hard from his
run up the hill, told him of the arrival of the Chancers and
their refusal to move. He did not mention John.
Sam told Lothar to tell the Chancers that he would be
down in the evening. They could wait for him but were not
to move outside a radius of twenty yards from the
grailstone near which they had landed. For a moment, he
considered ordering them to leave at once and telling the
soldiers that they could pound them a little with the flats
of their swords if they wished. He was hot and sweating
and covered with cement dust, and he felt an especial
animosity toward the Chancers. Here was a world blessed
by the absence of flies and mosquitoes—and humans, the
Chancers, were trying to fill the gap.
The rumbling and splash of giant mortars pouring out
concrete, the yells of the straw bosses and the scraping of
shovels and clatter of iron wooden-wheeled barrows kept
Sam from hearing the explosions that came a half hour
later. He knew nothing of what had happened until von
Richthofen came running toward him again.
Sam felt as if he would come loose at the joints and

slump into a puddle. John had tested out the new guns on
the Chancers. A hundred Mark I flintlocks had killed al-
most five hundred men and women in three minutes. John
himself had fired and loaded ten times, using the last five
bullets to finish off the wounded.
About thirty women, the most beautiful, had been
spared. These had been taken to John's palace.
Long before he reached the water's edge, Sam saw the
big crowd gathered around the grailstone. He sent Lothar
ahead of him to clear the way. The crowd parted before
them, like the Red Sea before Moses, he thought, but the
Red Sea was before him after he got through the parting.
The bodies were piled against each other, covered with
blood, their flesh torn, bones shattered by the big-caliber
bullets. In his ninety-seven years of life Sam had never
grown accustomed to the silence of the dead. It seemed to
hang over them like an invisible and chilling cloud. The
mouth that would not speak again, the brain that could not
think . . .
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! Un-
justified! 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 or-
der.
Nevertheless, he had to take some strong and imme-
diate 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 Car-
ta, 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 af-
ter 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 in-
valuable. 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 con-
verts, 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 sup-
porters 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 thou-
sand 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 in-
tercept 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 Parolan-
do.

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 topsyturvy 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 bat-
tleship 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 pur-
poses! 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 ex-

pectations were realities. The Councilmen voted an offi-
cial 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
Parolando 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 Coun-
cillors 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 any-
thing 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 con-
vince them that Parolando needed them very much. Go-
ring was building several large huts for them. Sam sent
word down that this should stop. Parolando was already
short of wood. Goring 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 pneumo-
nia 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 hap-
pened to him. He was just gone. The second message in-
formed 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 ac-
cuse 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 nun 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 Misty Tower," 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 wor-
ry? 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 per-
son 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, be-
cause 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 . . ."
"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 won-
dered 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 cannot start thus and then shy

away from similar, or even worse, acts. Not if you want
your boat. Good night, my friend."
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 hun-
dred 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 tex-
as. 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 is-
sue. His chief engineers were far from agreeing on every-
thing, and this alone disturbed Sam. He had thought
engineering was a cut-and-dried thing. You had a prob-
lem, 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 ag-
gravating 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 Ul-
mak territory. Then he sent a fleet down to the three-mile-
long 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 fourteen-
mile-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 drop-
ping.
"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."
"And what did you say about his fine offer? After all,
you can't lose, either way."
"I told him not to etch a pseudocircuit. Come out and
say it. He wouldn't, though he grinned, and I told him I
hadn't sworn any oath of loyalty to you, but I had ac-
cepted your offer and that was as good. I wasn't going to
betray you, and if Soul City invaded Parolando, I'd defend
it to the death."
"That's fine, superb!" Sam said. "Here, have a snort of
bourbon! And a cigar! I'm proud of you and proud of
myself, to command such loyalty. But I wish ... I wish
..."
Van Boom looked over the cup. "Yes?"
"I wish you'd strung him along. We could have found
out a lot with you feeding us information."
Van Boom put the cup down and stood up. His
handsome brown features were ugly. "I am not a dirty
spy!"
"Come back!" Sam said, but Van Boom ignored him.
Sam buried his head in his arms for a minute and then
picked up Van Boom's cup. Never let it be said that

Samuel Langhorne Clemens wasted good whiskey. Or
even bad, for that matter. Although the grail never yielded
any but the best.
The man's lack of realism irritated him. At the same
time, he had a counterfeeling of warm pleasure. It was
good to know that incorruptible men existed.
At least, Sam did not have to worry about Van Boom.

23
In the middle of the night, he awoke wondering if he did
have to worry after all. What if Van Boom was not as
upright as he said? What if the clever Firebrass had told
Van Boom to go to Clemens with his story? What better
way to put a man off his guard? But then it would have
been better if Van Boom had pretended to Sam that he
was pretending to go along with Firebrass.
"I'm beginning to think like King John!" Sam said
aloud.
He finally decided that he had to trust Van Boom. He
was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what
you'd expect from an engineer, but he had a moral
backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur's.
The work on the great Riverboat went on day and night.
The plates of the hull were bonded, and the beams were
welded on. The batacitor and the giant electric motors
were built, and the work of the transportation system of the
cranes and engines was ended. The cranes themselves were
enormous structures on huge rails, powered by electricity
from the prototype batacitor. People came from thousands
of miles up and down The River, in catamarans, big
galleys, dugouts and canoes, to see the fabulous works.
Sam and King John agreed that so many people wander-
ing about would get in the way of the work and would
enable spies to function more efficiently.
"Also, it'll put the temptation to steal before them, and
we don't want to be responsible for tempting people. They
have enough trouble as it is," Sam said.
John did not smile. He signed the order that expelled all
noncitizens, except for ambassadors and messengers, and
that kept any more from coming in. This still did not pre-
vent 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 their own uses
only.
Parolando's representatives made treaties with more
distant states, trading iron ore and weapons for wood.
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 de-
mand 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 con-
nected 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 ac-
cept 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 con-
tent 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 Goring. 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 change
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 me-
chanically 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 very 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 logic,
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, me-
chanically, 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 ex-
ist."
"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 in-
vinthible ignoranthe, Tham. Yet you're full of it, your-
thelf."
"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 alter him. He was nettled. Joe looked so dumb_
with that low forehead and the bone-ringed eyes and com-
ical dill pickle nose and gorilla build and his hairiness. But
behind those little blue eyes and the lisping was an un-
deniable 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 be-
cause 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 right. 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 al-
cohol mixed with fruit juice.
Two months before, Firebrass had said he could not un-
derstand 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 or Chernsky's Land.
Iyeyasu replied that he had not 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 Cernskujo. Coming back, a half
mile upwind of the factories, Sam almost gagged. He had
been living so long in the acid-bath-cum-smoke at-
mosphere that he had gotten used to it, but any vacation
from it cleansed his lungs. It was like stepping into a glue-
and-sulphur 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 that 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 tur-
bulence, 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 hot-footing 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 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
hankypanky 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 quart 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 im-
pression 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 cer-
tainly 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 ones 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!"
"But people bring their attitudes along with them,"
Firebrass said. "Their hates and loves, dislikes and likes,
prejudices, reactions, everything."
"But they can change!"
Firebrass grinned. "Not according to your philosophy.
Rather, not unless mechanical forces change them. So,
Hacking isn't determined by anything to change his at-
titude. Why should he? He's experienced the same ex-
ploitation and contempt here as he did on Earth."
"I don't want to argue about that," Sam said. "I'll tell
you what I think we should do!"
He stopped and stared out the port. The whitish-gray
hull and upper works gleamed in the sun. How beautiful!
And she was, in a sense, all his! She was worth everything
he was being put through!
"I'll tell you what," he said more slowly. "Why doesn't
Hacking come up here? Pay a little visit? He can look
around, see for himself what we're doing. See our prob-
lems. Maybe he'll appreciate our problems, see we're not
blue-eyed devils who want to enslave him. In fact, the
more he helps us, the sooner hell be rid of us."
"I'll give him your message," Firebrass said. "Maybe
he'll want to do that."
"We'll greet him in style," Sam said. "A twenty-one gun
salute, big reception, food, liquor, gifts. He'll see we aren't
such bad fellows after all."
John spat. "Pah!" but he said no more. He knew that
Sam's proposal was best.
Three days later, Firebrass brought a message. Hacking
would come, after Parolando and Selinujo had agreed on
the disposition of the metals.
Sam felt like a rusty old boiler in a Mississippi steam-
boat. A few more pounds of pressure, and he would blow
sky-high.
"Sometimes, I think you're right!" he shouted at John.

"Maybe we should just take over these countries and get
done with!"
"Of course," John said smoothly. "Now, it is obvious
that that ex-Countess Huntingdon—she must be de-
cended from my old enemy, the Earl of Huntingdon
—is not going to give in. She is a religious fanatic, a
nut, as you say. And Soul City will fight us if we invade
Selinujo. Hacking can't go back on his word. And he's
stronger now that we've given him the Firedragon III. But
I say nothing about that; I do not reproach you. I have
been thinking much about this mess."
Sam stopped pacing and looked at John. John had been
thinking. Shadows would be moving inside shadows; dag-
gers would be unsheathed; the air would get gray and chill
with stealth and intrigue; blood would spurt. And the
sleeping would do well to stir.
"I do not say that I have been in contact with Iyeyasu,
our powerful neighbor to the north," John said. He was
slumped down in the tall-backed red leather-covered chair
and staring into the purple passion in the tilted stem.
"But I have information, or means of getting it. I am
certain that Iyeyasu, who feels very strong indeed, would
like to acquire even more territory. And he would like to
do us a favor. In return for certain payments, of course.
Say, an amphibian and a flying machine? He is wild to fly
one of those himself, you know? Or didn't you?
"If he attacked Selinujo, Hacking could not blame us.
And if Soul City and Iyeyasujo fought, and Soul City was
destroyed and Iyeyasujo weakened, how could that fail to
benefit us? Moreover, I happen to have learned that
Chernsky has made a secret compact with Soul City and
Tifonujo to fight if any of them are invaded by Iyeyasu.
Certainly, the resultant carnage would find them
weakened and us strengthened. We could then take them
over or at least do what we wished without interference. In
any case, we would ensure that we had uncontrolled ac-
cess to the bauxite and the tungsten."
That skull under that mass of tawny hair must hold a
thundermugful of worms. Worms that fed on corruption

and intrigue and deviousness. He was so crooked, he was
admirable.
"Did you ever meet yourself coming around a corner?"
Sam said.
"What?" John said, looking up. "Is this another of your
unintelligible insults?"
"Believe me, it's as close to a compliment as you'll ever
get—from me. Of course, it's all hypothetical. But if
lyeyasu did attack Selinujo, what excuse would he have?
They've never offended him, and they're sixty miles away
from him on our side of The River."
"When did one nation ever need a reasonable excuse for
invasion?" John said. "But the fact is that Selinujo keeps
sending missionaries into lyeyasujo, though he has kicked
out all Chancers. Since Selinujo won't stop doing this, then
...	"
"Well," Sam said, "I couldn't let Parolando get in-
volved in a deal like this. But if lyeyasu decides on Ms
own to fight, there's nothing we can do about it."
"And you call me dishonest!"
"There's nothing I could do about it!" Sam said, clamp-
ing down on his cigar. "Nothing! And if something
develops that's good for the boat,. then we'll take ad-
vantage of it."
"The shipments from Soul City would be held up while
the fighting was going on," John said.
"We've got enough stock to keep going for a week. The
big worry would be wood. Maybe lyeyasu would be able
to keep that coming even with a war going on, since the
fighting will be south of us. We could handle the chopping
and transportation ourselves. If he didn't intend to invade
for a couple of weeks, we could lay in extra stocks of ore
from Soul City by offering them increased payments.
Maybe promise them an airplane, the APM-1. That's just
a toy, now that we've almost got our first amphibian
airplane finished. All this is hypothetical, you un-
derstand?"
"I understand," John said. He was not trying to mask
his contempt.

Sam felt like shouting at him that he had no right to be
contemptuous. Whose idea had it been, anyway?
It was the next day that the three chief engineers were
killed.
Sam was there when it happened. He was standing on
the scaffolding by the starboard side of the boat, looking
down into the open hull. The colossal steam crane was lift-
ing the immense electric motor which would be driving the
port paddle-wheel. The motor had been moved during the
night from the big building where it had been built The
moving had taken over eight hours and had been effected
by the crane, which also had a gigantic winch. The winch,
plus hundreds of men pulling on cables, had pulled the
motor on its big car, which moved on steel rails.
Sam got up at dawn to watch the final work, the lifting
and then the lowering of the motor into the hull and its at-
tachment to the paddle-wheel axle. The three engineers
were standing down in the bottom of the hull. Sam called
down to them to get away, that they were too vulnerable if
the motor should drop. But the engineers were stationed in
three different places so that they could transmit signals to
the men on the port scaffolding, who, in turn, were
signaling the crane operator.
Van Boom turned to look up at Sam, and his teeth
flashed whitely in his dark face. His skin looked purplish in
the light of the big electric lamps.
And then it happened. A cable snapped, and another
cable snapped, and the motor swung out to one side. The
engineers froze for a second and then they ran, but they
were too late. The motor fell to one side and crushed all
three of them.
The impact shook the great hull and the vibrations
made the scaffolding on which Sam stood quiver as if a
quake were passing through the land.
Blood ran out from under the motor.

24
It took five hours to put in new cables on the crane,
secure these to the motor and lift the motor. The bodies
were removed, the hull washed out and then the motor
was lowered again. A close inspection had determined that
the damage to the motor casing would not affect the
operation of the motor.
Sam was so depressed that he would have liked to have
gone to bed and remained there for a week. But he could
not do so. The work had to go on, and while there were
good men who would see to it that it did go on, Sam did
not want them to know how shaken he was.
Sam had many engineers, but Van Boom and Velitsky
were the only ones from the twentieth century. Though he
had advertised by word of mouth and through the drum
systems for more, he had gotten none.
The third day, he asked Firebrass into his pilothouse for
a private conference. After giving him a cigar and scotch,
he asked him if he would be his chief engineer.
Firebrass' cigar almost dropped out of his mouth.
"Steer me, stymate! Do I read you unfrosted? You want
me as your number one dillion?"
"Maybe we should talk in Esperanto," Sam said.
"Okay," Firebrass said. "I'll bring it down to dirt. Just
what do you want?"
"I'd like you to get permission to work for me on a tem-
porary basis, supposedly."
"Supposedly?"
"If you want it, the position is permanently yours. The
day the boat sets out on the long journey, you can be its
chief engineer."
Firebrass sat silent for a long time. Sam got up and
paced back and forth. Occasionally, he looked out the
ports. The crane had put in the starboard motor, and now
it was lowering parts of the batacitor into the hull. This
would be thirty-six feet high when all the parts were

secured together. After it was installed, a trial run would
check the operation of the batacitor and the motors. A
double cable, six inches thick, would be run out for two
hundred feet and its free end, attached to a large shallow
hemisphere, would be slipped onto the top of the nearest
grailstone. When the stone delivered its tremendous elec-
trical energy, the energy would be transmitted by the
cables into the batacitor, which would store it And then
the energy would be drawn out at a controlled rate to
power the electrical motors.
Sam turned away from the port. "It's not as if I were
asking you to betray your country," he said. "In the first
place, all you have to do now is to request permission
from Hacking to work for me on the building of the boat.
Later, you can make up your mind about going with us.
Which would you rather do? Stay in Soul City where there
is actually little to do except indulge yourself? Or go with
us on the greatest adventure of all?"
Firebrass said, slowly, "Now, if I accepted your offer,
if, I say, I would not want to go as chief engineer. I would
prefer to be the chief of your air force."
"That's not as important a position as chief engineer!"
"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 un-
der 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

engineer! You'd have thirty-five people under your com-
mand! 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 con-
sidered by Firebrass, he might be planning to remove von
Richthofen before the boat was ready for launching. Fire-
brass did not seem like a cold-blooded murderer but looks
meant nothing, as anyone with intelligence finds out if he
has lived a few years among the human race.
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 con-
ferences 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 occu-
pied 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 understand-
ing. 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 well-
muscled 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 some-
thing 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 sym-
bol 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 cannon boomed twenty-one
times. This was set on top of a hill at the edge of the plain.
It was intended not only to honor Hacking but to impress
him. Only Parolando had artillery, even if it consisted of
only one .75 millimeter cannon.
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 in-
dictments 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 Finn
and Pudd'nhead Wilson and A Connecticut Yankee.
It did no good to try to tell Hacking that. Hacking paid
him no attention.
That  high-pitched  voice  went  on   and  on,   mixing

obscenities 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 in-
justices?"
"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.
"Yeah! A temporary member and he's only that be-
cause I demanded you send me a black ambassador!"
"The Arabs make up about a sixth of your state," Sam
said, "and yet there isn't one Arab on your council."
"They're white, that's why! And I'm getting rid of them!
Don't get me wrong! There's lots of Arabs that're good
men, unprejudiced men! I met them when I was a fugitive
in North Africa. But these Arabs here are religious
fanatics, and they won't stop making trouble! So out they
go! What we blacks want is a solid black country, where
we're all soul brothers! Where we can live in peace and un-
derstanding! We'll have our own kind of world, and you
honkies can have yours! Segregation with a capital S,
Charlie! Here, a big S segregation can work, cause we
don't have to depend on the white man for our jobs or

food or clothing or protection or justice or anything! We
got it made, whitey! All we have to do is tell you to go to
hell, keep away from us, and we got it made!"
Firebrass sat at the table with his dark-red kinky head
bent over, looking down, and his bronzed hands placed
over his face. Sam had the feeling that he was trying to
keep from laughing. But whether he was laughing inside
himself at Hacking or at the ones who were being be-
rated, Sam could not guess. Perhaps he was laughing at
both.
John kept drinking the bourbon. The redness of his face
came from more than the liquor. He looked as if he could
explode at any time. It was difficult to swallow insults
about your injustice to blacks when you were innocent,
but then John was guilty of so many hideous crimes that
he should suffer for some, even if none were his. And, as
Hacking said, John would have been guilty if he had been
allowed a chance to be.
Just what did Hacking expect to gain by this? Certainly,
if he wanted a closer relationship with Parolando, he was
taking a peculiar approach to it.
Perhaps he felt that he had to put any white, no matter
who, in his place. He wanted to make it clear that he, El-
wood Hacking, a black, was not the inferior of any white.
Hacking had been ruined by the same system that had
ruined almost all Americans, black, white, red or yellow,
in one form or another, to a greater or lesser degree.
Would it always be this way? Forever twisted, hating,
while they lived for who knew how many thousands upon
thousands of years along The River?
At that moment, but for that moment only, Sam won-
dered if the Second Chancers were not right.
If they knew the way out from this imprisonment of
hate, they should be the only ones to be listened to. Not
Hacking or John Lackland or Sam Clemens or anybody
who suffered from lack of peace and love should have a
word to say. Let the Second Chancers . . .
But he did not believe them, he reminded himself. They
were just like the other faith dispensers of Earth. Well-
intentioned, some of them, no doubt of that. But without

the authority of truth, no matter how much they claimed
it.
Hacking suddenly quit talking. Sam Clemens said,
"Well, we didn't plan on any afterdinner speeches, Sinjoro
Hacking, but I thank you for your volunteering; we all
thank you as long as you don't charge us for it. Our ex-
chequer is rather low at the moment."
Hacking said, "You have to make a joke out of it, don't
you? Well, how about a tour? I'd love to see that big boat
of yours."
The rest of the day was passed rather pleasantly. Sam
forgot his anger and his resentments in conducting Hack-
ing through the factories, the shops and, finally, through
the boat. Even half finished, it was magnificent. The most
beautiful sight he had ever seen. Even, he thought, even
. . . yes, even more beautiful than Livy's face when she
had first said she loved him.
Hacking did not become ecstatic, but he obviously was
deeply impressed. He. could not, however, refrain from
commenting on the stench and the desolation.
Shortly before supper time, Sam was called away. A
man who had landed from a small boat had demanded to
see the ruler of the land. Since it was a Clemens man who
took him in, Sam got the report. He went off at once in
one of the two alcohol-burning "jeeps" that had been fin-
ished only a week before. The slender, good-looking
blond youth at the guardhouse rose and introduced him-
self, in Esperanto, as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Sam questioned him in German, noting that, whatever
the youth's identity, he did speak the soft Austrian version
of High German. His vocabulary contained words which
Sam did not understand, but whether this was because
they were just Austrian vocabulary items or eighteenth-
century items, he did not know.
The man calling himself Mozart said that he had been
living about twenty thousand miles up The River. He
heard about the boat, but what set him off on his journey
was a tale that the boat would carry an orchestra to make
music for the amusement of the passengers. Mozart had
suffered for twenty-three years in this world of limited

materials, where the only musical instruments were
drums, whistles, wooden flutes and pan pipes and a crude
sort of harp made of bone and the guts of a Riverfish.
Then he had heard about the mining of the siderite and the
great Riverboat and its orchestra with piano, violin, flute,
horns, and all the other beautiful instruments that he had
known on Earth, plus others that had been invented since
his death in 1791. And here he was. Was there a place for
him in the music-making ranks of the boat?
Sam was an appreciator, though not a passionate lover,
of some classical music. But he was thrilled at meeting the
great Mozart face to face. That is, if this man was Mozart.
There were so many phonies on The River, claiming to be
everybody from the original one-and-only Jesus H. Christ
down to P. T. Barnum, that he took no man's word for his
identity. He had even met three men who claimed to be
Mark Twain.
"It just so happens that the former archbishop of
Salzburg is a citizen of Parolando," Sam said. "Even
though you and he parted on bad terms, if I remember cor-
rectly, he'll be glad to see you."
Mozart did not turn pale or red. He said, "At last,
somebody I knew during my lifetime! Would you be-
lieve . . ."
Sam would believe that Mozart had not met anybody
he'd known on Earth. So far, he himself had met only
three people he'd known, and his acquaintanceship had
been extensive during his long life and worldwide travels.
That his wife Livy was one of the three was a coincidence
exceeding the bounds of probability. He suspected that the
Mysterious Stranger had arranged that. But even Mozart's
eagerness in seeing the archbishop did not confirm that he
was indeed Mozart. In the first place, the impostors that
Sam had met had frequently insisted that those who were
supposed to be their old friends were either mistaken or
else impostors themselves. They had more gall than
France. In the second place, the archbishop of Salzburg
did not live in Parolando. Sam had no idea where he was.
He had sprung him just to test Mozart's reaction.
Sam agreed that Sinjoro Mozart could apply for citizen-

ship. First, he straightened him out about the musical in-
struments. These had not been made yet. Nor would they
be wood or brass. They would be electronic devices which
could reproduce exactly the sounds of various instru-
ments. But if Sinjoro Mozart was indeed the man he
claimed to be, he had a good chance of being the con-
ductor of the orchestra. And he could have all the time he
wanted to compose new works.
Sam did not promise him that he would have the con-
ductorship. He had learned his lesson about making
promises.
A big party was held in John's palace in honor of Hack-
ing, who seemed to have discharged his venom for the day
at the first meeting. Sam talked with him for an hour and
found that Hacking was very intelligent and literate, a self-
educated man with a flak for the imaginative and the
poetic.
That made his case even sadder, because such talent
had been tragically wasted.
About midnight, Sam accompanied Hacking and party
to the big thirty-room, second-story, stone-and-bamboo
building set aside for state guests. This was halfway be-
tween his quarters and John's palace. Then he drove his
jeep to his home, three hundred yards away. Joe sulked a
little because he had wanted to drive, even though his legs
were far too long for him to try this. They staggered up
the ladder and barred the door. Joe went into the rear
and flopped on his bed with a crash that shook the house
on its stilts. Sam looked out the ports just in time to see
Cyrano and Livy, their arms around each other, lurch into
the door of their hut. To their left, set above them, was von
Richthofen's hut, where he and Gwenafra had already gone
to bed.
He muttered, "Good night!" not knowing just whom he
was addressing, and fell into his own bed. It had been a
long, hard and trying day, ending up with a huge party at
which everybody had drunk stupendous quantities, of
purple passion or grain alcohol and water and chewed
much dreamgum and smoked much tobacco and
marihuana.

He awoke dreaming that he was caught in a California
earthquake on the Fourth of July.
He leaped out of bed and ran on the trembling floor to
the pilothouse. Even before he reached the ports, he knew
that the explosions and the earth-shaking were caused by
invaders. He never reached the ports, because a rocket,
whistling, its tail flaming red, struck one of the stilts. The
roar deafened him, smoke whirled in through the broken
ports and he pitched forward. The house collapsed, and its
front part fell down. History repeated itself.

25
He banged into the wood and broken glass and earth
and lay with the wall under him while he tried to come up
out of his stunned condition. A big hand picked him up.
By the light of an explosion, he saw Joe's great-nosed face.
Joe had climbed down from the open end of his room and
thrown aside the lumber until he had found Sam. He held
the handles of his grail and Sam's with his left hand.
"I don't know how, it's a miracle, but I'm not hurt
bad," Sam said. "Just bruised and cut by glass."
"I didn't have time to put on my armor," Joe said. "But
I got my akth. Here'th a thword for you and a pithtol and
thome bulletin and powder chargeth."
"Who the hell can they be, Joe?" Sam said.
"I don't know. Thee! They're coming in through the
holeth in the vallth vhere the dockth are."
The starlight was bright. The clouds that sent the rains
down every night at three o'clock had not yet come, but
the mists over The River were heavy. Out of these, men
were still pouring to add to the masses spreading over the
plains. Behind the walls, in the mists, must be a fleet.
The only fleet that could get close without causing an
alarm would be the Soul City fleet. Anybody else arriving
at this hour would have had to have been within view of
the spies that Sam and John Lackland had set up along
The River, even in hostile territory. It couldn't be
Iyeyasu's fleet; that was still sitting in the docks as of the
report received just before midnight.
Joe peered over a pile of wood and said, "There'th a
hell of a battle around John'th palathe. And the guetht
houthe, vhere Hacking and hith boyth vath, ith on fire."
The flames lit a number of bodies on the ground and
showed the tiny figures struggling around the log stockade
of John's palace. Then, the cannon and its caisson was
pushed before the stockade.

"That's John's jeep!" Sam said, pointing at the vehicle
which had just driven up behind the cannon.
"Yeah, and it'th our cannon!" Joe said. "But it'th
Hacking'th men that're going to blatht John out of hith.
little love netht."
"Let's get to hell out of here!" Sam said, and he scram-
bled over the lumber and in the opposite direction. He
could not understand why the invaders had not sent men
to his house yet. The rocket that had hit had come from
the plains. And if Hacking and his men had sneaked out of
the guesthouse to launch a surprise attack in conjunction
with an attack from the supposed ore boats, then Sam
should have been a primary target along with John
Lackland.
He'd find out later what it was all about—if there was a
later.
That Hacking's men had gotten hold of the cannon was
ill news for Parolando. Even as he thought this, he heard
the big gun boom, one, two, three. He whirled in his flight
and saw pieces of wood flying out from the smoke. John's
walls were wide open, and the next few shells should
reduce his log palace to rubble.
There was only one good thing about the invaders hav-
ing their hands on the cannon. The supply of shells was
limited to fifty. Even with the many tons of nickel-iron
still in the ground, metal was not so common that it could
be wasted to any extent on explosive shells.
Ahead was Cyrano and Livy's hut. The door was open,
and the place was empty. He looked up the hill. Lothar
von Richthofen, clad only in a kilt, carrying a rapier in one
hand and a pistol in the other, was running toward him. A
few paces behind was Gwenafra with a. pistol and a bag of
bullets and gunpowder packages.
There were other men and women coming toward him.
Among them were a few crossbowmen.
He shouted at Lothar to organize them, and he turned
to look down on the plains. The docks were still black with
men. If only the cannon could have been turned to catch
them packed together and unable to retreat. But the can-
non had been wheeled around from John's palace, which

was flaming, and was being trained on Parolandanoj hur-
rying up the hill.
Then a big dark machine came through a wide breach in
the wall. Sam cried out with dismay. It was the Firedragon
III given to Hacking. But where were the three amphib-
ians of Parolando?
Presently he saw two coming toward the hills. Of a sud-
den, the steam machine guns in the turrets began to stutter
hissingly, and his men—to men!—were falling.
The Soul Citizens had captured the amphibians!
Everywhere he looked, he saw a battle raging. There
were men fighting around the Riverboat. He cried out
again, because he could not endure the thought of its being
damaged. But no cannon shells were delivered near it. Ap-
parently the enemy was as concerned about it as he was.
Rockets from the hills behind them were soaring over
their heads and blowing up among the army below. Enemy
rockets rose in reply; scores of red flames streaked above
them; some came so close they could see the blur of the
cylindrical body, the long bamboo stick protruding from
the rear, and a whoosh as an exceptionally large one shot
about ten feet above their heads. It just missed the top of
the hill and blew up with a tremendous blast on the other
side. Leaves from a nearby irontree fluttered down.
The next half hour—or was it two hours?—was a
shrieking, yelling, shouting, gunpowder-stinking, blood-
stinking, sweating, bowel-churning chaos. Tune after time,
the Soul Citizens charged up the hill, and tune after time
they were repelled by rockets, by sixty-nine-caliber plastic
bullets, by crossbow bolts and longbow arrows. Then a
charge carried them through to the defenders, and it was
rapier, broadsword, ax, club, spear and dagger that drove
them back.
Joe Miller, ten feet high, eight hundred pounds heavy,
his hairy hide drenched with blood—his own and
others—swung his ax with its eighty-pound nickel-steel
head at the end of an oak shaft three niches thick and six
feet long. It crashed through oak shield and leather armor,
brushed aside rapiers and spears and axes, split
breastbones, took off arms and necks, halved skulls. When

his enemies refused to come near him, he charged them.
Time and again, he broke up charges that might otherwise
have succeeded.
Many flintlock Mark I pistols were fired at him, but
their shooters were so unnerved by him that they fired
from too far away, and the big plastic bullets wobbled off
to one side.
Then an arrow went through his left arm, and a man
braver, or more foolhardy, than the rest stepped under bis
ax and thrust a rapier into his thigh. The butt end of the
shaft came back and broke his jaw and then the reversed
ax severed his head. Joe could still walk, but he was losing
blood fast. Sam ordered him to retreat to the other side of
the hill, where the badly wounded were being treated.
Joe said, "No! I ain't going!" and he fell to his knees
with a groan.
"Get back there! That's an order!" Sam screamed, and
he ducked, though it was too late, as a bullet whistled by
his ear and smashed to bits against the side of an irontree.
Some of the plastic must have ricocheted; he felt a stinging
in his arm and calf.
Joe managed to heave himself up, like a sick elephant,
and shambled off. Cyrano de Bergerac appeared from the
darkness; he was covered with gunpowder smoke and
streaked with blood. He held the basket hilt of a long, thin,
bloody rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Behind
him, equally dirty and bloody, her long dark hair loose
behind her, was Livy, She carried a pistol and a bag of am-
munition, and her function was to reload the pistols.
Seeing Sam, she smiled, her teeth white in the powder-
blackened face.
"My God, Sam! I thought you were dead! That rocket
against your house. . . !"
"I wish you were behind me in this," he said.
That was all he had time to say, though he would not
have said anything more, whatever the case. The enemy
came back in another charge, slipping and sliding up over
the piles of the fallen or leaping over them. The bowmen
by then were out of ammunition, and the pistoleers had
only a few more charges. But the enemy had about ex-

pended its powder too, though it had more arrows.
Joe Miller was gone, but Cyrano de Bergerac tried to
make up for it and came close to doing so. The man was a
demon, seemingly as thin and as flexible and as swift as
the rapier he wielded. From time to time, he shot the pistol
with his left hand into an opponent's face and then lunged
with the rapier, thrusting into another. He would toss the
gun behind him, and Livy would stoop and pick it up and
reload. Sam thought, briefly, of what a change had come
about in Livy. He had never suspected her potentiality for
action under conditions like these. That frail, often sickly,
violence-loathing woman was coolly performing duties
that many men would have run from.
Among them me, he thought, if I had any time to think
about it.
And especially now that Joe Miller was not by his side
to protect him physically and to give him moral support,
both of which he needed badly.
Cyrano thrust beneath a shield which a shrieking
Wahhabi Arab lifted too high in his frenzy, and then Livy,
seeing that she had to do it, that Cyrano could not, held
the pistol in both hands and fired. The hammer made the
barrel swerve, she brought it back into line, smoke and
flame spurted out, and an Arab fell back with his shoulder
torn off.
A massively built Negro leaped over the body with his
ax raised in both hands and Cyrano, withdrawing the
blade from the first man before he hit the ground, ran the
axman through the adam's apple.
Then the enemy retreated down the hill again. But now
they waited while the big dark-gray amphibian, like a Mer-
rimac on wheels, huffed toward them. Lothar von
Richthofen pushed against Sam who stepped aside when
he saw the aluminum-alloy tube and the rocket with its
ten-pound warhead. A man knelt while Lothar loaded the
rocket into the bazooka and then aimed it. Lothar was
very good at this, and the rocket sailed down, its fiery arc
ending against the front of the amphibian, its bull's eye the
single beam of light in its nose. Smoke covered it, and then

the wind carried that away. The amphibian had stopped,
but it came on now, its turrets turning and the steam guns
lifting.
"Well, that was the last one," Lothar said. "We might
as well get to hell out of here. We can't fight that. Who
should know better than we, heh?"
The enemy was re-forming behind the armored vehicle.
Many of them were uttering the ululating cries which the
Ulmaks, the pre-Amerinds across The River, made during
charges. Apparently, Hacking had enlisted those Ulmaks
not yet conquered by Iyeyasu.
Suddenly, Sam could not see as well. Only the fires from
the burning houses and from the open hearths and smel-
ters, which were still operating, enabled him to see any-
thing at all. The rain clouds had come as swiftly as they
always did, like wolves chasing the stars, and within a
few minutes it would rain savagely.
He looked around him. Every attack had thinned them
out. He doubted that they could have withstood the next
one, even if the amphibian had not come.
There was still fighting going on to the north and the
south on the plains and the hills along the plains. But the
shooting and the cries had lessened.
The plains seemed to be darker than ever with the
enemy.
He wondered if Publiujo and Tifonujo had joined the
invasion.
He took a last look at the giant hull of the Riverboat
with its two paddle-wheels, half hidden beneath the scaf-
folding and behind the colossal cranes. Then he turned.
He felt like weeping, but he was too numbed. It would be
some time before the tears would come.
It was more likely that his blood would run out before
then, after which there would be no tears. Not in this
body, anyway.
Guided by the fires of a dozen scattered huts, he
stumbled down the other side. Then the rains smashed
down. And, at the same tune, a tentacle of the enemy ran
toward them from the left. Sam turned and pulled the trig-

ger of his flintlock, and the rain, of course, drowned out
the spark. But the enemy's pistols were also rendered
useless, except as clubs.
They came at the Parolandanoj with their swords and
spears and axes. Joe Miller lunged forward, growling with
a voice as deep as a cave bear's. Though wounded, he was
still a formidable and terrifying fighter. By the flashes of
lightning and the rumbling of thunder, his ax cut them
down. The others jumped in to help him, and in a few
seconds the Soul Citizen survivors decided they had had
enough. They would run off and wait for reinforcements.
Why get killed now when victory was theirs?
Sam climbed two more hills. The enemy attacked from
the right. A wing had broken through and raced on ahead
to cut down the men and take the women captive. Joe
Miller and Cyrano met them, and the attackers ran away,
slipping and sliding through the wet roots of the cutaway
grass.
Sam counted the survivors. He was shaken. There were
about fifteen. Where had they all gone? He would have
sworn that at least a hundred had been with him when he
ordered them to cut and run for it.
Livy was still close behind Cyrano. Since the guns were
no good now, she kept at Cyrano's back and helped him
with a spear thrust when she could.
Sam was cold and wet. And he was as miserable as
Napoleon must have been on the retreat from Russia. All,
all gone! His proud little nation and its nickel-iron mines
and its factories and its invulnerable amphibians with their
steam guns and its two airplanes and the fabulous River-
boat! All gone! The technological triumphs and marvels
and the Magna Carta with the most democratic constitu-
tion any country had ever known and the goal of the
greatest journey ever to be made! All gone!
And how? Through treachery, base treachery!
At least, King John had not been part of the betrayal.
His palace had been demolished and he along with it, in all
probability. The Great Betrayer had been betrayed.
Sam quit grieving then. He was still too frozen with the
terror of battle to think much about anything except sur-

vival. When they got to the base of the mountain, he led
them north along it until they were opposite the dam. A
lake about a quarter of a mile long and a half a mile wide
was before them. They cut down along it, coming after a
while to a thick concrete wall across the top of which they
walked. Then they were on top of the dam itself.
Sam walked back and forth a few paces until he found a
sunken symbol, a diagonal cross, in the concrete. He
called, "Here it is! Now, if only nobody squeals on us or
some spy hasn't found out about it!"
He let himself down into the cold water while the light-
ning streaked and the thunder bellowed far away. He
shivered but he kept on going down, and when the water
was up to his armpits his foot struck the first rung. He
took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank down, his
hand running along the concrete until it encountered the
first rung. After that he pulled himself down by other
rungs and at the sixth knew that the entrance was a few
inches below it. He went under it and then up, and his
head popped up into air and light. A platform a few
inches higher than the water was in front of him. Over-
head was a dome the highest point of which was ten feet.
Beyond the platform was an entrance. Six big electric light
bulbs lit the chamber harshly.
Shivering, gasping, he climbed onto the platform and
went to the entranceway. Joe followed him a moment
later. He called weakly, and Sam had to turn back and
help him crawl onto the platform. He was bleeding from a
dozen places.
The others came after him, one by one. They helped
him get the titanthrop through the entrance and down an
incline into a large chamber. There were beds, towels,
food, liquor, weapons and medicine. Sam had prepared
this place for just such an emergency, but he had thought
he was being foolishly cautious. Only the heads of the
state and the workers who had built this place knew about
it.
Another entrance, at the bottom of the dam, was hidden
beneath the flow which powered the wheels connected to
the generators. This led to a shaft up which a man could

climb only to come to a seemingly blank wall. But the man
who knew how could open that wall.
The whole project was, he knew, a product of the
romantic foolishness of which he had not entirely rid him-
self. The idea of secret doors under a waterfall and under
the lake and of hidden apartments where he could rest and
plan his revenge while his enemies hunted in vain for him
was irresistible. He had laughed at himself at times for
having built the refuge. Now he was glad. Romanticism
did have its uses.
Also hidden was a detonator. To set off the tons of
dynamite inside the base of the dam he had only to con-
nect two wires, and the dam would go up and the water of
the lake would roar out and carry the central part of
Parolando out into The River.
Sam Clemens and his Riverboat would also be
destroyed, but that was the price to be paid.
The wounded were treated and put under the sedation
of dreamgum or liquor. Sometimes, chewing the gum
deadened the pain and other times it seemed to increase it.
The only way to neutralize the pain-expanding effects then
was to pour liquor down the patient.
They ate and slept while the guard watched at both en-
trances. Joe Miller was half unconscious most of the time,
and Sam sat beside him and nursed him as best he could.
Cyrano came back from bis vigil at the door under the
waterfall to report that it was night again outside. That
was all he knew about the conditions outside. He had seen
or heard no one through the waterfall.
Lothar and Sam were the least wounded. Sam decided
that they should sneak out past the waterfall exit and spy.
Cyrano protested that he should go, too, but Sam refused.
Livy did not say anything, but she looked gratefully at
Sam. He turned away; he did not want any thanks for
sparing her mate.
He wondered if Gwenafra was dead or if she had been
captured. Lothar said that she had disappeared during the
last attack and that he had tried to get to her but had been
driven back. He now felt ashamed of himself for not hav-
ing done more, even though it had not been possible.

The two applied a dark stain all over their bodies and
then went down the steel rungs of the shaft. The walls
were damp here, and the rungs were slippery with
moisture. Electric lights illuminated the shaft.
They went out behind the waterfall, which roared and
splashed at them. The ledge curved around, following the
lower half of the dam, until it ran out about twenty yards
from the end. Here they climbed down steel rungs to the
junction of the dam wall and the earth. From there, they
walked cautiously along the channel which had been cut
out of the earth. The roots of the grass still stuck out of the
walls of the channel. The roots went deeper than any cuts
made so far; it seemed impossible to kill the grass.
The sky was bright with the jampack of huge stars and
the extensive glowing gas clouds. They were able to pro-
ceed swiftly in the pale darkness. After a half a mile, they
went at right angles to the canal, heading toward John's
ruined palace. Crouching in the shadows beneath the
outflung branches of an irontree, they looked down on the
plains below. There were men and women in the huts
around them. The men were the victors, and the women
were the victims. Sam quivered when he heard some of the
screams and the calls for help, but he tried to push them
out of his mind. To rush into any hut and try to rescue one
women was to throw away their chances of doing any
good for Parolando. And it would certainly result in their
being captured or killed.
Yet, if he heard Gwenafra's voice, he knew that he
would go to her rescue. Or would he?
The fires in the open hearths and the smelters were still
blazing, and men and women were working in them.
Evidently, Hacking had already put his slaves to work.
Many guards stood around the buildings, but they were
drinking liquor and ethyl alcohol.
The plains were well lit for as far as he could see with
huge bonfires. Around them were many men and women,
drinking and laughing. Occasionally a struggling and
screaming woman was carried off into the shadows.
Sometimes, she was not taken away.
Sam and Lothar walked down the hill as if they owned

it, but they did not go near the buildings or the fires.
Nobody had challenged them, though they had come
within twenty yards of a number of patrols. Most of the
enemy seemed to be celebrating the victory with purple
passion or any other liquor they had been able to get from
the supplies of their prisoners. The exceptions were the
Wahhabi Arabs, whose religion forbade drinking alcohol.
And there were a few blacks who were not on duty but
who were abstemious. These were disciples of Hacking,
who did not drink.
Whatever the laxity now, discipline had been main-
tained during the day. The corpses had been taken away,
and a big stockade of poles removed from other buildings
had been set up on the plain just beside the first of the
hills. Though Sam could not see within it, he surmised
from the guard towers around it that prisoners were within
it.
The two strolled along, staggering now and then as if
they were drunk. They passed within twenty feet of three
short dark men who spoke a strange language. Sam could
not identify it, though it sounded "African." He wondered
if these were not eighteenth-century Dahomeyans.
They walked boldly between a nitric acid factory and an
excrement-treatment building and out onto the plain. And
they stopped. Twenty yards ahead, Firebrass was in a
bamboo cage so narrow that he could not sit down in it.
His hands were tied behind him.
On a big X-frame of wood, upside down, his legs tied to
the upper part of the X and his arms to the lower mem-
bers, was Goring.
Sam looked around. A number of men, talking and
drinking, stood in the big doorway of the excrement plant.
Sam decided not to go any closer or to try to talk to Fire-
brass. He longed to know why he was in the cage, but he
did not dare to ask him. It was necessary to find out all he
could and then get back to the hideout inside the dam. So
far, the situation looked hopeless. It was best to sneak out
during the rains and leave the country. He could blow up
the dam and wash out everything, including the forces of
Soul City, but he did not want to lose the boat. As long as

he had a chance to get that back, he would let the dam
alone.
They went on by Firebrass' cage, hoping he would
not see them and call to them. But he stood bent over,
leaning his head against the bamboo bars. Goring
groaned once. They kept on going and soon were around
the corner of the building.
Their slow and seemingly drunken wanderings took
them near a big building that had been occupied by Fred
Rolfe, King John's supporter on the Council. The number
of armed men on guard around it convinced Sam that
Hacking was inside it.
It was a one-story house of lodgepole-pine logs and
bamboo. Its windows were unblinded, and the light from
within showed people inside. Suddenly, Lothar gripped
Sam's arm and said, "There she is! Gwenafra!"
The torch light shone on her long honey-colored hair
and very white skin. She was standing by the window and
talking to someone. After a minute, she moved away, and
the bushy hair and black face of Elwood Hacking moved
across the bright square. Sam felt sick. Hacking had taken
her for his woman for the night.
Gwenafra had not looked frightened. She had seemed
relaxed, but Gwenafra, though volatile and uninhibited
most of the time, could be self-restrained when the occa-
sion demanded.
He pulled Lothar away.
"There's nothing we can do now, and you'd be throwing
away any chance she might have at all."
They drifted around for a while, observing the other
factories and noting that the bonfires stretched both ways
along the walls as far as their eye could detect. In addition
to the Soul Citizens, there were the Ulmaks and a number
of Orientals. Sam wondered if these could be the Burmese,
Thai, and Ceylonese New Stone Age peoples living across
The River from Selinujo.
To get out of Parolando, they would have to go over the
wall. And they would have to steal several small boats if
they were to get down The River to Selinujo. They had no
idea about what had happened to Publiujo or Tifonujo,

but they suspected that these countries would be next on
Hacking's list. To escape just to the north to Chernsky's
Land was foolish. Iyeyasu would be moving on that as
soon as he found out about the invasion here, if he had not
already done that.
It was ironic that they would flee to the very country the
citizens of which had been forbidden entrance to Parolan-
do.
They decided they would return to the dam now, tell
what they had seen and make plans. The best chance to
get away would be when it rained.
They rose and started to walk about, skirting the huts
which housed the enemy and the captive women.
They had just passed into the shade of a gigantic iron-
tree when Sam felt something tighten around his neck
from behind. He tried to yell, to turn around, to struggle,
but the big hand squeezed, and he became unconscious.

26
He awoke gasping and coughing, still under the irontree.
He started to get up, but a deep voice growled, "None o'
that! Sit still, or I'll split yer skull with this ax!"
Sam looked around. Lothar, his hands tied behind him
and a gag in his mouth, was sitting propped up under a
half-grown fir tree sixty feet away. The man who had
spoken was a very big man with excessively broad shoul-
ders, a deep chest and brawny arms. He wore a black kilt
and black cape, and he held the handle of a medium-sized
ax. Sheaths at his belt held a steel tomahawk and a steel
knife, and a Mark I pistol was stuck in his belt.
He said, "You be Sam Clemens?"
"That's right," Sam said, his voice low, also. "What
does this mean? Who are you?"
The big man jerked a head full of thick hair at Lothar.
"I moved him away so he couldn't hear what we have to
say. A man we both know sent me."
Sam was silent for a minute and then he said, "The
Mysterious Stranger?"
The big man grunted. "Yes. That's what he said you
called him. Stranger's good enough. I guess you know
what it's all about, so there's not much use us jawing too
long about it. You satisfied that I've talked with him?"
"I'd have to be," Sam said. "It's obvious that you've
met him. You're one of the Twelve he's picked. It was a
he, wasn't it?"
"I didn't jump him to find out," the man said. "I tell
you, this child ain't ever run up against a human, red,
black, or white, that ever threw a scare-fit into me. But
that Stranger, he's the one that'd make a grizzly scoot just
by looking at him. Not that I'm afraid of him, you under-
stand, it's just that he makes me feel . . . strange. Like I
was a feather-plucked bluejay."
"Enough of that. My handle's Johnston. Mought as well
give you my history, since it'll save a lot of jawing later.

John Johnston. I was born in New Jersey about 1827, I
reckon, and died in Los Angeles in the veterans' hospital
in 1900. Between times, I was a trapper in the Rocky
Mountains. Up to when I came to this River, I killed me
hundreds of Injuns, but I ain't never had to kill a white
man, not even a Frenchman. Not till I got here. Since then,
well, I collected quite a few white scalps."
The man stood up and moved out into the starlight. His
hair was dark but looked as if it would be a bright red in
the noonday sun.
"I talk a hell of a lot more'n I used to," he said. "You
can't get away from people in this valley. People give a
child bad habits."
They walked over to Lothar. On the way, Sam said,
"How'd you happen to get here? And at this time?"
"The Stranger told me where to find you, told me about
you and your big boat, the Misty Tower, and all that. Why
hash it all over? You know. I agreed to find you and go
with you on your boat. Why not? I don't like being set
down here. There ain't no elbow room; you can't turn
around without knocking noses. I was about thirty thou-
sand miles upRiver when I wake up one night, and there's
that man sitting in the shadows. We had a long talk with
him doing most of it. Then I got up and set out. I heard
about some of what was going on here way up The River.
I snuck into here while the fighting was still going on, and
I been looking for you ever since. I listened to them blacks
talking; they said they couldn't find your body. So I been
skulking around, seeing what I could see. Once, I had to
kill me one a those Ayrabs cause he stumbled across me. I
was hungry, anyway."
They had reached Lothar, but Sam straightened up at
the last words. "Hungry?" he said. "You mean. . . ?"
The man did not reply. Sam said, "Say, uh, you . . . you
wouldn't be that Johnston called 'Liver Eating' Johnston,
would you? The Crow Killer?"
The voice rumbled, "I made me peace with the Crows
and became their brother. And I quit eating human liver
some time after. But a man has to eat."

Sam shivered. He stooped down and untied Lothar's
bonds and removed the gag. Lothar was furious, but he
was also curious. And, like Sam, he seemed to find
Johnston a little awing. The man exuded a peculiar savage
force. Without even half trying, Sam thought I'd hate to
see him in action.
They walked back to the dam. Johnston did not say
anything for a long time. Once, he disappeared, leaving
Sam feeling strange and cold. Johnston was about six and
a half feet tall and looked as if he weighed two hundred
and eighty pounds, all bone and muscle. But he moved as
silently as a tiger's shadow..
Sam jumped. Johnston was back. Sam said, "What hap-
pened?"
Johnston said, "Never mind. You say you didn't get
around much. I been all over this place; I know the sit-
chyation passing well. Lots a your people to the north and
the south got away over the walls. If they'd a stood up,
they might've licked the blacks. But the blacks ain't won
by a long shot. Iyeyasu is getting ready to move against
them. I wouldn't be surprised none if he invades tonight. I
scouted around his place some before I came here. He
ain't going to put up with the blacks owning all this iron
and the boat. He will take it away from them or know
why."
Sam groaned. It made no difference whether Hacking or
Iyeyasu had the boat, if he couldn't get it. But by the time
they were inside the dam, he felt better. Maybe the two
forces would destroy each other, and the Parolandanoj
who'd fled could come back and take over. All wasn't lost
yet.
Moreover, the appearance of the Herculean Liver Eat-
ing Johnston heartened him. The Mysterious Stranger had
not entirely abandoned him. He was still planning, and he
had sent a damn good man for fighting, if the stories about
him could be believed. Johnston was the sixth man the
Stranger had chosen. The other six would show up
sometime. But then one had been lost. Odysseus had
disappeared.

Still he could show up again. The River was a great
place for bad pennies, if you could call the Twelve that.
They were bad for somebody. For the Stranger's people,
the Ethicals, Sam hoped.
In the dam, Johnston had to be introduced and the
situation explained. Joe Miller, wrapped in towels, sat up
and shook hands with Johnston. And Johnston, awe in his
voice, said, "Night and day, this man-child seed many
queer things. But I ain't never seed one like you. You
didn't have to crush my hand, friend."
"I didn't try," Joe said. "You look pretty big and
thtrong to me. Bethideth, I been thick."
About half an hour before the rains, they moved out.
The land was relatively quiet by then. The celebrators had
gone to bed, and everybody had cleared away from the
fires in expectation of the rain. But the guard towers and
the factories were full of enemy guards, and these had
stopped drinking. Apparently, Hacking had called a halt
to it.
Johnston, like a giant ghost, drifted away while they
leaned against the side of the sulfuric acid factory. Ten
minutes later, he was suddenly beside them.
"I been giving those blacks the ear," he said. "That
Hacking is shore one smart nigger. All that drinking and
whooping it up and staggering around, why, that's all put
on! That's fer the benefit of spies from Iyeyasujo. Hacking
knows the Jap is going to attack tonight, and he's making
it look like it's gonna be easy. But his men are worried.
They're short of gunpowder."
Sam was startled by the news. He asked Johnston if he
had overheard anything else.
"Yeah, I heard a couple of them Citizens talking about
why Hacking decided he had to attack us. He knew
Iyeyasu was going to do it, so he decided he had to jump
the gun. If he didn't, the Jap would have control of the
metal and the amphibians and everything, and he'd just
conquer Soul City next and then have everything. Them
jackasses was laughing fit to kill. They said it was King
John arranged with Hacking to take over. And then Hack-

ing blew up King John in his own house because he didn't
trust John. Said John was a traitor and even if he wasn't,
he was a whitey and couldn't be trusted."
Sam said, "But why in hell would John do that to us?
What did he have to gain?"
"Hacking and John was gonna conquer all the land for
a hundred miles along The River and then split it. John
was gonna rule the white half, and Hacking was gonna
rule the black half. Half and half, with the two sharing
everything equal. They was gonna build two boats, two of
everything."
"What about Firebrass? Why's he in the cage?"
"Dunno, but somebody did call him a traitor. And that
kraut, what's his name, Herring . . ."
"Goring."
"Yeah. Well, it wasn't Hacking was to blame for his
being tortured. Some a them Wahhabi Ayrabs did it.
They's got it in for the Second Chancers, you know, and
they got him and tortured him, with the help a some a
them African niggers, the Dahomeyans, who used to tor-
ture a dozen people before breakfast every day, according
to what I heard. By the time Hacking heard of it and
stopped it, Goring was dying. But he talked to
Hacking, called him his soul brother and said he forgave
him. Said he'd see him later along The River. Hacking was
pretty shook up about it, from what his men said."
Sam digested the news, which set the teeth of his
stomach even more on edge. He was so upset he couldn't
even get any amusement from Hacking's double cross of
the champion double-crosser, King John. He did have to
admire Hacking's statesmanship and perception, however.
Hacking had realized there was only one way to deal with
John, and he had taken that way. But then Hacking did
not have Sam Clemens' conscience.
The news changed everything. Apparently, Iyeyasu was
on the way now, which meant that Sam's plans to sneak
out during the rains would not work. The Soul Citizens
were too alert.
"What's the matter, Sam?" Livy said. She was sitting

near him and looking sadly at him.
"I think it's all up with us."
"Oh, Sam!" she replied. "Where's your manhood? It
isn't all up with us! You get depressed so easily if things
don't go your way all the time! Why, this is the greatest
opportunity you could ask for to get your boat back! Let
Hacking and Iyeyasu destroy each other and then take
over. Just sit back up in the hills until they have clawed
each other to death and then jump on them while they're
gasping out their last!"
Sam said angrily, "What are you talking about? Jump
on them with fifteen men and women?"
"No, you stupe! You have at least five hundred
prisoners in that stockade and God knows how many more
in other stockades. And you have thousands who ran away
to Cernskujo and Publiujo!"
"How can I get hold of them now?" Sam said. "It's too
late! The attack will be launched in a few hours, you can
bet on that! Besides, the refugees were probably put in
stockades, too! For all I know, Chernsky and Publius
Crassus may be in cahoots with Hacking!"
"You're still the same paralyzed pessimist I knew on
Earth," she said. "Oh, Sam, I still love you, in a way, that
is. I still like you as a friend, and . . ."
"Friend!" he said so loudly that the others jumped.
Cyrano said, "Morbleu!" and Johnston hissed, "Shet up,
you want them black Injuns to get us?"
"We were lovers for years," he said.
"Not always, by a long shot," she said. "But this is no
place for a discussion of our failures. I don't intend to
thrash those out, anyway. It's too late. The point is, do
you or do you not want your boat?"
"Of course, I do," he said fiercely. "What do you
think . . . ?"
"Then get off your dead ass, Sam!" she said.
From anybody else, the remark would have been
unremarkable. But from her, his fragile, soft-voiced,
clean-speeched Livy, it was unthinkable. But she had said
it, and now that he thought back on it, there had been

times on Earth, which he had suppressed in his memory,
when . . .
"The lady makes a powerful lot a sense!" Johnston
rumbled.
He had far more important things to think about. But
the really important things were best recognized by the un-
conscious, and it, must have been this that sent the
thought. For the first time, he understood, really under-
stood, with the cells of his body, from the brain on
down, that Livy had changed. She was no longer his Livy.
She had not been for a long tune, perhaps had not been for
some years on Earth before her death.
"What do you say, Mr. Clemens?" the mountain
man rumbled.
Sam gave a deep sigh, as if he were breathing out the
last fragments of Olivia Langdon Clemens de Bergerac,
and said, "Here's what we do."
The rains lashed down; thunder and lightning made the
skies and the land hideous for a half hour. Johnston ap-
peared out of the rain with two bazookas and four rockets
tied together on his broad back. Then he disappeared
again and a half hour later was back with some throwing
knives and tomahawks, all of steel, and some new blood,
not his, splashed on his arms and chest.
The rain clouds went away. The land was brightly silver
under the magnificent stars, as big as apples, as numerous
as cherries on a tree in season, as luminous as jewels
before electric lights. Then it got colder, and they shivered
under the irontree. A thin mist formed over The River;
within fifteen minutes, it was so thick that the waters and
the grailstones and the high walls along the banks could
not be seen. A half hour later, Iyeyasu struck. The big
boats and the small boats, crammed with men and
weapons, came from across The River, where the Sacs and
Foxes had once ruled, from the northern part of the ex-
Ulmak territory, from the land where the Hottentots and
Bushmen had once lived in peace. And the main bulk came
from the right bank of The River, from the three lands
where Iyeyasu was now lord.

Iyeyasu attacked at ten points along the Riverfront
walls. Mines blew up the walls, and men poured through
the breaches. The number of rockets shot in the first ten
minutes was awesome. Iyeyasu must have been saving
them for a long time. The three amphibians of the de-
fenders lumbered up, their steam machine guns chuffing
and expelling the plastic bullets in garden hose fashion.
The carnage they made was great, but Iyeyasu launched a
surprise. Rockets with wooden warheads containing jellied
alcohol (made from soap plus wood alcohol) struck all
around the three armored vehicles and made direct hits on
each at least twice. The crude napalm spread fierily over
the vehicles, and if the burning stuff did not get inside the
vehicles, it seared the lungs of the men inside.
Sam was shaken by the sight, but not so much that he
did not tell Lothar to remind him of this when it was all
over, if either of them was still around.
"They have to be made more airtight, and we'll have to
install a closed-circuit air system, like Firebrass
described," he said.
Johnston appeared as unexpectedly as if he had stepped
out of a door in the night, and behind him was Firebrass.
The man looked exhausted and as if he were in pain, but
he still managed to grin at Sam. He was, however,
trembling.
"Hacking was told that I was betraying him," Firebrass
said. "And he believed his informant. Who was, by the
way, our esteemed and always reliable King John. John
told him that I was selling him down The River, that I had
revealed everything to you so I could become chief of your
air force. Hacking would not believe that I was dickering
with you just to string you along. I can't blame him too
much. I should have sent word through our spies what I
was doing. That I didn't convince him that I wasn't
double-crossing him didn't surprise me."
"Were you?" Sam said.
Firebrass grinned. "No, I wasn't, though I was mightily
tempted. But why should I betray him when I'd been
promised I could be head flier after Hacking took over
the boat? The truth is, Hacking was eager to believe John.

He doesn't like me because I'm not his idea of what a
soul brother should be. And I had too easy a life accord-
ing to him. He resented it because I never lived in a ghetto
and I had every advantage he didn't have."
"The job of chief engineer can still be yours," Sam said.
"I'll admit that I'm relieved about not having to promise
you the captaincy of the air force. But you can still fly, if
you want to."
"That's the best offer I've had since I died," Firebrass
said. "I'll take it."
He moved closer to Sam and whispered in his ear. "You
would have had to "take me along in some capacity
anyway. I'm one of The Twelve!"

27
Sam felt as if a cold rod had been plunged through him
from the top of his head down.
"The Ethical? The Stranger?"
"Yes. He said you called him the Mysterious Stranger."
"Then you were betraying Hacking?"
"That little speech I just made was for public consump-
tion," Firebrass said. "Yes, I did betray Hacking, if you
insist on using that word. But I regard myself as an es-
pionage agent for a higher authority. I have no intention of
worrying about all-black or all-white states on The River,
when I can find out how and why we, the whole human
race, were put here. I want answers to my questions, as
Karamazov once said. All this white-black turmoil is triv-
ial on this planet, no matter how important it was on
Earth. Hacking must have sensed that I thought that,
though I tried to conceal it."
Sam did not recover from the shock for some time.
Meanwhile, the battle raged on the plain with the Soul
Citizens getting the worst of it. Though they cost the in-
vaders three men for one, they were pushed back within a
half an hour. Sam decided that it was time for them to act,
and they trotted off toward the stockade where the
Parolando prisoners were kept. Lothar fired two rockets
into the gates of the stockade, and before the smoke had
cleared, the fifteen charged through the blasted gates.
Cyrano and Johnston did most of the work in killing the
fifteen guards. Cyrano was a demon with lightning for a
sword, and Johnston downed four men with thrown
tomahawks and three with thrown knives. He broke two
legs and a chest with a foot like iron. The prisoners were
directed to the armory, where bows and arrows and
swords were still in supply.
Sam sent two men each to the north and the south to go
over the walls and try to contact the Parolandanoj there.

Then he led the rest back up into the hills. They would
camp by the dam until they saw how the battle was going.
Sam did not have the slightest idea of what they should do.
He told Cyrano he would have to play it by ear. He had to
repress the impulse to remark that he was doing this even
though Cyrano was tone deaf.
Afterward, Sam thanked whoever there was to thank
that he had not camped on top of the dam itself. Instead,
he had sat down on a knoll above and to the left side of the
dam, facing outward. He had a better view of the hills and
the plains, where the rockets were still exploding but were
not as numerous as in the beginning. The starlight glim-
mered on the waters of the big lake behind the dam as if
all was peace and quiet in the world.
Suddenly, Johnston leaped up and said, "Looky there!
Yonder! Atop a the dam!"
Three dark figures had emerged from the water onto the
dam. They ran toward the land. Sam told the others to
withdraw behind the great trunk of the irontree. Joe Miller
and Johnston seized the three as they raced up to the tree.
One tried to stab Joe, and Joe squeezed the neck and the
blood spurted out from broken veins and arteries. The
others were knocked out. By the time they regained con-
sciousness, they did not have to tell Sam what they had
done. And he guessed that they had done so at the order of
King John.
The earth shook under their feet, and the irontree leaves
rattled like dishes in a pantry. The white wall of the dam
flew outward with a gigantic cloud of smoke and a roar
that pushed in on their eardrums. The enormous chunks of
concrete flew through the smoke like white birds above a
factory chimney. They tumbled over and over and struck
the ground far ahead of the waters. The lake was no longer
the peaceful and quiet glimmer of a wonderful world to
come. It seemed to hurl itself forward. The roar as it raced
down the canyon which Sam's men had dug with so much
sweat and time deafened the watchers again.
The water, hundreds of thousands of tons, funneled by
the canyon, rammed through the earthen walls, tearing out
great chunks of it. The sudden withdrawal also removed a

great amount of earth around the lake's shores, so much
so that the watchers had to scramble for even higher
ground. And the thousand-foot-high irontree, its two-
hundred-feet-deep roots abruptly exposed, its foundation
partly dug away, toppled over. It seemed to take a long
time falling, and the explosions of enormous roots break-
ing and the whistling of air through the huge leaves and
the vines covering it terrified the humans. They had
thought they were far enough away, but even though the
giant tree was falling away from them, they were
threatened by eruptions of roots from the earth.
The tree struck with a crash on the other side of the lake
and tore out the overhanging dirt and continued on down
into the emptying lake. It slid out entirely from the root
anchors on the bank and went on top first into the waters.
These were whirling around and around, and, picking up
the enormous tree as if it were a toothpick, the waters car-
ried it down the canyon for a half a mile before it became
wedged between the two walls of the canyon.
The waters roared out in a wall at least a hundred feet,
high by the time it had hit the plains. Its front must have
borne a tangle of half-grown trees and bamboo plants,
huts, people, and debris. It flashed across the mile and a
half of plain, spreading out but channeled, for a few
minutes, by the cyclopean secondary walls that Sam had
built to defend the factories and the Riverboat, but which
had proved useless in two attacks.
Everything was picked up and carried on out into The
River. The factories crumbled as if they were made of
cookies. The gigantic Riverboat was lifted up like a toy
boat cast into the ocean surf. It rode out into The River,
pitching, and then was sunk in darkness and turmoil. Sam
threw himself on the ground and clawed at the grass. His
boat was lost! Everything was lost, factories, mines, am-
phibians, airplanes, smithies, armories, and his crew. But
worst of all, the Riverboat was lost. The dream was shat-
tered, the great shining jewel of his dream had been
smashed.
The grass was cold and wet in his face. His fingers felt

as if they were fastened in the flesh of the earth and would
never come free again. But Joe's huge hand lifted him up
and sat him down, as if he were a dummy. Joe's monstrous
hairy body was pressed close to bis, warming him. And
Joe's grotesque face with the shelving brows and the ab-
surdly long nose was by him.
"They're all gone!" Joe said. "Jethuth! Vhat a thight!
There ain't nothing left, Tham!"
The plain was buried under a whirl and toss of waters,
but in fifteen minutes the waters had drained off. The
River had resumed its normal appearance along the shores
of   Parolando,   though   it   must   have   been   swollen
downstream.
The great buildings and the boat in its scaffoldings were
gone. The cyclopean walls on the sides, a mile apart, were
gone. There were little lakes here and there where the
mines and the basements of the factories had been. The
vast weight of water had gouged out part of the plain
where it had been dug up. But the roots of the grasses were
so deep, so tough, and so thickly intertwined that even
the scrape of hundreds of thousands of tons of water had
not ripped the earth out. The stone and earth walls along
the banks had been swept away as if they were sand.
The skies paled, and the starlit darkness became gray.
The great fleet of the invaders was gone, somewhere far
down The River, or under it, broken, smashed, fragments
floating or half hulls upside down. The two armies on the
plain and the sailors were all dead, crushed by the weight
of the water, drowned, rubbed into nothing or squeezed
out like toothpaste.
But Parolando extended for ten miles along The River,
and the lake had, after all, only raged across a two-mile-
broad area. Its main damage had been in the middle of
Parolando, where it had carried everything out that stood
within a half-mile-wide area. Those on the edges had been
drowned and the buildings smashed or only submerged
briefly.
Dawn brought with it a thousand men in boats or over
the walls of Chernsky's Land from the north.

At their head was King John.
Sam drew up his men in battle formation with Joe
Miller in the center, but King John limped forward, his
hand held out in sign of peace. Sam went forward to talk
to him. Even after John had explained what he had done,
Sam expected to be killed. But later he realized that John
needed him and Firebrass and others if he was going to get
the boat rebuilt. Also, he would be taking a perverted
pleasure in keeping Sam alive while Sam wondered when
the dagger in the night would come.
As it turned out, not everything had to be started from
scratch again. The boat, almost entirely undamaged, was
found beached on a hill across The River a mile down. It
had been deposited as gently as a cat's footstep by the
withdrawing waters. The work of getting the great hull
back was not easy; but it took much less time than making
another one.
John explained more than once to Sam what he had
done, but the deviousnesses and the two times two double
crosses were so complicated that Sam could never see the
picture as a whole. John had made a deal to betray Sam,
knowing full well that Hacking would betray him also.
John would have been disappointed if Hacking had not
tried to stab him in the back. He would have lost all his
faith in human nature.
John had made a deal with Iyeyasu to help him invade
after Hacking's invasion. Iyeyasu liked the idea that Hack-
rag would weaken his forces while taking Parolando. At
the last moment, John had made a deal with Publius
Crassus, Tai Fung and Chernsky that they would help him
mop up on Iyeyasu's forces, which would be shattered by
the waters released by the blown-up dam.
John had sent the three men to set off the explosives in
the dam when the greatest number of invaders and de-
fenders would be concentrated between the tunneling sec-
ondary-defense walls. Beofre that happened, John had
fled in his boat, hidden by the fog.
"Then you weren't in your palace when the cannons
opened up on it?" Sam said.

"No," John replied, smiling his cat's smile. "I was miles
to the north, traveling to meet Iyeyasu. You have never
thought much of me, Samuel, but you should get down on
your knees now and kiss my hand in gratitude. Without
me, you would have lost all."
"If you had told me Hacking was going to invade, I
could have kept everything," Sam said. "We could have
ambushed Hacking."
The sun came up and struck the tawniness of John's
hair and the peculiar gray-blue of his eyes. "Ah, yes, but
Iyeyasu would still have been a formidable problem. Now
he's gone, and there is little to keep us from ruling all the
land we need, including the bauxite and platinum of Soul
City and the iridium and tungsten of Selinujo. I presume
you have no objections to conquering those two states?"
There was a bonanza in the aftermath. Hacking was
taken prisoner, and Gwenafra was found alive. Both had
been pushed during the fighting into the hills to the west.
Hacking was getting ready to lead a charge back down the
hills, when the edge of the waters deluged his part. Gwena-
fra escaped, though she almost drowned. Hacking had
been hurled against a tree. Both his legs and one arm were
broken, and he was bleeding internally.
Sam and John hastened to where Hacking lay under an
irontree. Gwenafra cried when she saw them and em-
braced Sam and Lothar. She seemed to have given Sam a
much longer embrace than she did Lothar, which was not
entirely unexpected, since she and Lothar had been quar-
reling violently for the last few months.
John wanted to finish Hacking off with some refined
tortures, preferably as soon after breakfast as possible.
Sam objected strongly. He knew that John could have his
way if he insisted, since his men outnumbered Sam's by
fifty to one. But Sam was past being cautious, at that mo-
ment, anyway. And John backed away. He needed Sam
and the men whose loyalty he commanded.
"You had a dream, White Sam," Hacking said in a
weak voice. "Well, I had one, too. A land where brothers
and sisters could loaf and invite their souls. Where we'd be

all black. You wouldn't know what that means. No white
devils, no white eyes. Just black soul brothers. It would
have been as near heaven as you can get in this hell of a
world. Not that we wouldn't have had trouble, no place
without trouble, man. But there wouldn't have been any
white-man trouble. It'd be all ours. But that isn't to be."
"You could have had your dream," Sam said. "If you'd
waited. After the boat was built, we'd have left the iron to
whomever could take it. And then . . ."
Hacking grimaced. Sweat covered his black skin and his
face was tight with pain. "Man, you must be out of your
skull! You really think I believed that story about you
sailing off on this quest for the Big Grail? I knew you was
going to use that big boat to conquer us blacks and lock
those chains around us again. An Old South whitey like
you . . ."
He closed his eyes. Sam said, "You are wrong! If you
knew me, if you'd taken the trouble to know me instead of
stereotyping me . . ."
Hacking opened his eyes and said, "You'd lie to a nig-
ger even when he was on his deathbed, wouldn't you?
Listen! That Nazi, Goring, he really shook me up. I
didn't tell them to torture him, just kill him, but those
fanatical Arabs, you know them. Anyway, Goring gives
me a message. Hail and farewell, soul brother, or some-
thing like that. I forgive you, because you know not what
you do. Something like that. Ain't that a crock? A message
of love from a damn Nazi! But you know, he had changed!
And he could be right. Maybe all them Second Chancers
are right. Who knows? Sure seems stupid to bring us up
from the dead, give us our youth back, just so some can
kick and some can hurt all over again. Stupid, isn't it?"
He stared up at Sam and then said, "Shoot me, will you?
Put me out of my pain? I'm really suffering."
Lothar stepped up beside Sam and said, "After what
you did to Gwenafra, I'll be glad to."
He pointed the muzzle of the big flintlock at Hacking's
head.
Hacking grinned painfully and muttered, "Rape on
principle, mother! I swore off that on Earth, but that

woman just brought out the devil in me! Besides, so what?
What about all those black slave women you white
mothers raped?"
As Sam walked away, the pistol boomed. He jumped,
but he kept on walking. It was the kindest thing that
Lothar could have done for Hacking. Tomorrow, he
would be walking along the banks of The River
somewhere far away. He and Sam might even see each
other again, although Sam was not looking forward to
that.
Lothar, stinking of gunpowder, caught up with him.
"I should have let him suffer. But old habits are hard to
break. I wanted to kill him, so I did. That black devil just
smiled at me. Then I spread his smile all over him."
"Don't say any more," Sam replied. "I'm sick enough.
I'm about to chuck the whole thing and settle down with a
steady job of missionarying. The only one whose suffering
meant anything today were the Second Chancers."
"You'll get over that," Lothar said, and he was right.
But it took three years.
The land was again like a shell-pocked battlefield,
stinking with fumes and black with smoke. But the great
Riverboat was completed. There was nothing to do to it
now except to try it out. Even the last touch, the painting
on the Riverboat's name in big black letters on the white
hull, had been done. On both sides of the hull, ten feet
above the water line, were the letters NOT FOR HIRE.
"What does that mean, Sam?" he had been asked by
many.
"It means just what it says, contrary to most words in
print or speech," Sam said. "The boat is no man's to hire.
It's a free boat and its crew are free souls. No man's."
"And why is the boat's launch called Post No Bills?"
"That comes from a dream I had," Sam would say.
"Somebody was trying to put up advertising on it, and I
told him that the launch was built for no mercenary pur-
pose. What do you think I am, advance agent for P. T.
Barnum? I said."
There was more to the dream, but Sam told no one ex-
cept Joe about this.

"But the man who was pasting up those garish posters,
advertising the coming of the greatest Riverboat of them
all and the greatest Riverboat show of them all was I!"
Sam said. "I was both men in the dream!"
"I don't get it, Tham," Joe said.
Sam gave up on him.

28
The twenty-sixth anniversary of Resurrection Day was
the day that the sidewheeler Not for Hire first turned its
paddles. It was about an hour after the grailstones flamed
to charge the breakfast grails. The cables and cap con-
nected to the grailstone had been removed and the cables
wound up within the hold through a port in the forward
section on the starboard side. The grails had been
removed from the stone a mile north and rushed to the big
boat in the amphibious, armored, steam-driven launch, the
Post no Bills. The fabulous Riverboat, gleaming white
with red and black and green trimmings, moved out from
the canal and into The River behind a huge breakwater on
its starboard side. This deflected the current so that the
boat would not be swung to the south as it emerged from
the canal and so carried into the edge of the canal's mouth.
Whistles blowing, iron bells clanging, the passengers
cheering as they leaned over the railings, the people on the
banks shouting, the magnificent paddle-wheels churning,
the Not for Hire moved with stately grace out into The
River.
The Riverboat had an overall length of four hundred
and forty feet and six inches. The beam over the paddle-
wheel guards was ninety-three feet. The mean draft loaded
was twelve feet. The giant electric motors driving the pad-
dle-wheels delivered ten thousand shaft horsepower and
enough power left over to take care of all the boat's elec-
trical needs, which were many. Top speed, theoretically,
was forty-five miles an hour in still water. Going upstream
against the fifteen-mile-an-hour current, it would be thirty.
Going downstream, it would be sixty. The boat would be
going up The River most of the time and cruising at fifteen
miles an hour relative to the ground.
There were four decks; the so-called boiler deck, the
main deck, the hurricane deck and the landing deck. The
pilothouse was at the fore edge of the hurricane deck, and
the long texas, containing the captain's and chief officers'

quarters, was behind the pilothouse. However, the
pilothouse was itself double-decked. It was set forward of
the two tall but thin smokestacks which rose thirty feet
high. Firebrass had advised against the stacks, because the
smoke from the big boilers (used only to heat water and to
drive the machine guns) could be piped out on the side.
But Sam had snorted and said, "What do I care about air
resistance? I want beauty! And beauty is what we'll get!
Whoever heard of a Riverboat without tall, graceful, im-
pressive smokestacks! Have you no soul, brother?"
There were sixty-five cabins, each about twelve by
twelve with snap-up beds and tables and folding chairs.
Each cabin had a toilet and a washbasin with hot and cold
running water, and there was a shower for every six
cabins.
There were three big lounges, one in the texas, one on
the hurricane deck and one on the main deck. These held
pool tables, dart games, gymnastic equipment, card tables,
a movie screen and a stage for dramas or musicals, and the
main deck lounge held a podium for the orchestra.
The upper deck of the pilothouse was luxuriously fur-
nished with carved oaken chairs and tables covered with
red and white and black Riverdragon fish leather. The
pilot sat in a large and comfortable swivel chair before
the instrument board. On this was a bank of small closed-
circuit TV screens, giving him views of the control centers
of the boat. Before him was a microphone which enabled
him to speak to anybody on the boat. He controlled the
boat with two levers on a small movable board before him.
The left stick controlled the port wheel; the right, the star-
board. A screen before him was a radar indicator used at
night. Another screen showed him the depth of the water
from the bottom of the boat as measured by sonar. A toggle
on the instrument board could switch the piloting to
automatic, though the rule was that a pilot had to be on
duty at all times.
Sam was dressed in bleached fish-leather sandals, a
white kilt, a white cape and a white officer's cap of plastic
and leather. He wore a bleached leather belt with a
bleached holster containing a ponderous Mark II .69

four-shooter pistol and a bleached sheath with a ten-inch
knife.
He paced back and forth, a big green cigar in his mouth,
his hands held straight down except when he removed the
cigar. He watched the pilot, Robert Styles, steering the
boat for the first time. Styles was an old Mississippi pilot,
a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts.
When he had appeared about two years before, Sam had
been overcome with joy. For one of the few tunes in his
life, he had wept. He had known Rob Styles when they
were both Mississippi pilots.
Styles was nervous, as anybody would be the first time,
even the steel-nerved Captain Isaiah Sellers of ancient
Mississippi fame. There was nothing to piloting the boat
A one-eyed Sunday school teacher with a hangover could
do it, his six-year-old child could do it, once he got the
hang of the two sticks. Push forward for increased speed,
put in the middle position to stop the wheels, pull back to
reverse the wheels. To steer the boat to port, pull back a
little on the port stick and forward a little on the starboard
stick. To steer to starboard, do the reverse.
But it took some practice before the proper coordina-
tion was achieved.
Luckily, there was no memory work involved in piloting
a boat on this River. There were no islands, no sandbars,
and there would be few logs with snags. If the boat got too
close to shallow water, sonar activated an alarm bell. If a
boat was ahead at night, or a log hidden in the water, the
radar or sonar would indicate it and a red light would
flash.
Sam watched Styles for half an hour while the banks
floated by and the thousands of people on them waved and
cheered. Or cursed, since many were disappointed because
they had. been eliminated from the crew by the lottery. But
he couldn't hear the curses.
Then Sam took over the piloting, and, after another half
hour, asked John if he would like to try. John was dressed
entirely in black, as if he were determined to do just the
opposite of whatever Sam did. But he took the sticks and
did well for an ex-king who had never done a lick of work

in his life and had always let inferiors do whatever steering
was necessary.
The boat sailed up past the dead Iyeyasu's kingdom,
now split into three states again, and then Sam ordered the
vessel turned back. Rob Styles got fancy and pivoted her
"on a dime" as he said, demonstrating her maneu-
verability. While the port wheel backed, the star-
board raced at full speed and the boat rotated as if stuck
on a pin. Then she headed downstream. With the current
and wind behind her, and the paddle-wheels turning at
maximum speed, the Not for Hire raced along at sixty
miles an hour. But not for too long. Sam had Styles bring
her in close to the shore, where the sonar indicated about
one foot of clearance between hull and bottom on the port
side. Even above the slapping of the wheels and the
splashing of water and the whistling and clanging of bells,
they could hear the crowds. The faces whizzed by as if
in a dream.
Sam opened the fore ports of the pilothouse so they
could feel the wind and increase their impression of speed.
The Not for Hire raced all the way downstream to
Selinujo, and then it turned again. Sam wished, almost,
that there was another boat that he could race against. But
it was being in heaven to have the only metal, electrically
powered Riverboat in existence. A man couldn't have
everything, not even in the after-Earthlife.
During the return trip, the huge hatch in the stern was
lowered, and the launch slipped out through the entrance
into The River. It cut back and forth at top speed and
raced ahead of the mother boat. Its steam machine guns
traced lines along the water, and the thirty steam guns on
the Not for Hire shot back, though not at the launch.
The big three-place amphibian monoplane came out of
the opening in the stern, too, and its wings were
straightened out and locked, and then it took off. Fire-
brass was at the controls with his woman and Gwenafra as
passengers.
A moment later, the tiny, one-seater, open-cockpit
scout-fighter was shot off the top of the texas by a steam
catapult. Lothar von Richthofen took it up, the wood-

alcohol-burning motor buzzing, and raced ahead until he
was out of sight. Then he returned, climbed and enter-
tained with the first aerial acrobatics that the Riverworld
had ever seen—to the best of Sam's knowledge.
Lothar concluded with a dive at the end of which he
fired four rockets into the water and then the twin ma-
chine guns. These were .80 caliber and shot aluminum
bullets from aluminum cartridges. There were one hun-
dred thousand of these stored on the boat, and when they
were all gone, they would not be replaced.
Lothar landed the tiny monoplane on the landing deck,
the top of the texas, and the devices caught the hook
trailed out by the plane. Even so, the whirling propeller
stopped only ten feet from the smokestacks. Lothar took
the plane up again and again landed. Then Firebrass
returned in the amphibian, and he later took the wheeled
plane up for one flight.
Sam looked down through the port front at the marines
drilling on the fore part of the broad boiler deck. Under
the midnoon sun, which heated the air to an estimated
eighty degrees Fahrenheit, they marched back and forth
and performed intricate maneuvers under Cyrano's orders.
Their silvery duralumin plumed helmets were like those of
the ancient Romans. They wore gray-and-red-striped
chainmail shirts which fell halfway down their thighs.
Their legs were cased in leather boots. They carried
rapiers and long knives and the Mark II pistols. They were
the pistoleers only, however. The main part of the marines
were watching the show; these were the bowmen and the
rocketeers.
Seeing Gwenafra's honey-colored head in the crowd on
the main deck made him happy.
He saw Livy's dark head near her, and he was unhappy.
Gwenafra, after another six months of a jealousy-ridden
life with von Richthofen, had accepted Sam's offer and
moved in with him. But Sam still could not see Livy
without some pain of loss.
If it were not for Livy, and for John's presence, he
would have been as happy as he could be. But she would
be with them throughout the possibly forty years of the

journey. And John, well, John made him uneasy and
prowled through his nightmares.
John had been so willing to let Sam be the captain and
so unhesitant about accepting the first mate's position that
Sam knew he was up to no good. But when would The
Mutiny, as Sam thought of it, take place? It was inevitable
that John would try to take over the full command of the
Riverboat, and any intelligent man, knowing this, would
have dumped him, one way or the other.
But Sam had been too conscience-stricken by his killing
of Bloodaxe. He could not commit another assassination,
not even if he knew that John would not be permanently
dead. A corpse was a corpse, and a double cross was a
double cross.
The question was, when would John strike? At the
beginning, or much later during the voyage, when Sam's
suspicions had been lulled?
Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was
surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.
A yellow-haired, near-giant entered the pilothouse. His
name was Augustus Strubewell, he was John's aide-de-
camp, and he had been picked up by John during his so-
journ in Iyeyasujo after Hacking's invasion. He had been
born in 1971 in San Diego, California, had been an All-
American fullback, a captain of the U.S. Marines,
decorated for bravery in the Middle East and South
America and had made a career in the movies and TV. He
seemed a pleasant enough fellow, except that, like John,
he bragged of his conquests among women. Sam did not
trust him. Anybody who worked for John Lackland had to
have something wrong with him.
Sam shrugged. He might as well enjoy himself for the
moment. Why let anything rob him of the joy of the
greatest day of his life?
He leaned out of the port and watched the marine drill
team and the crowd. The sun sparkled on waves, and the
breeze was cooling. If it became too warm, he could shut
the ports and turn on the air conditioning. From the tall
pole on the bow the flag of the Not for Hire flapped in the
wind. It was square and bore a scarlet phoenix on a light-

blue field. The phoenix symbolized the rebirth of
mankind.
He waved at the people massed along the bank and
pressed a button which set off a series of steam whistles
and clanging of bells.
He drew in smoke from his fine cigar and stuck his
chest out and paraded back and forth. Strubewell handed
John a glass full of bourbon, and then he offered Sam
another. Everybody in the pilothouse—Styles, the six
other pilots, Joe Miller, von Richthofen, Firebrass,
Publius Crassus, Mozart, John Lackland, Strubewell, and
three other of John's aides—took a glass.
"A toast, gentlemen," John said in Esperanto. "To a
long and happy journey and may we all get what we
deserve."
Joe Miller, standing near Sam, the top of his head al-
most touching the ceiling, held a glass containing about
half a quart of bourbon. He sniffed at the amber liquor
with his monstrous proboscis and then tasted it with the
top of his tongue.
Sam was just about to toss the four-ounce drink down
when he saw Joe's apish face grimace.
"What's the matter, Joe?" he said.
"Thith thtuff hath thomething in it!"
Sam sniffed and could detect nothing but the most ex-
cellent of Kentucky's best.
But when John and Strubewell and the others reached
for their weapons, he threw the liquor in John's face.
Yelling, "It's poison!" he dived for the floor.
Strubewell's Mark II pistol boomed. The plastic bul-
let shattered against the bulletproof plastic of the port
above Sam's head.
Joe roared—he sounded like a lion suddenly released
from its cage—and he threw his liquor into Strubewell's
face.
The other aides fired once and then they fired again.
The Mark II pistols were four-shot revolvers which elec-
trically ignited the powder in the aluminum cartridges.
They were even larger and heavier than the Mark I's, but
they could be fired much more swiftly, and cordite, not

black gunpowder, propelled the plastic bullets.
The pilothouse became a fury of booming, deafening
explosives, the scream of shattered plastic ricocheting, the
shouts and screams of men and the bellowing of Joe.
Sam rolled over, reached up and flicked the automatic
pilot switch. Rob Styles was on the floor, Ms arm almost
torn off. One of John's aides was dying in front of him.
Strubewell went flying over him and banged against the
glass and then fell on him. John was gone, fled down the
ladder.
Sam crawled out from under Strubewell. Four of his
pilots were dead. All of the aides, except for Strubewell,
who was only unconscious, were dead. Their necks had
been broken or their jaws shattered by Joe. Mozart was
crouched quivering in a corner. Firebrass was bleeding
from the many plastic fragments, and Lothar was bleeding
from a gash in his arm. One of the aides had struck him
with a knife just before Joe twisted his head 180 degrees.
Sam arose shakily and looked out the port. The crowd
watching the marines had dispersed, but not without leav-
ing a dozen bodies behind. The Marines on the boiler deck
were firing at men shooting at them from around the sides
of the main deck. Some of the fire seemed to be coming
from cabin ports in the main deck.
Cyrano stood with his rapidly dwindling crew of
Marines, shouting orders. Then John's men charged, fir-
ing, and Cyrano went down. But he was up again, his
sword silvery and then red. The enemy broke and ran
away, and Cyrano ran after them. Sam shouted, "You
fool! Go back!" but he was not heard, of course.
He tried to struggle up out of his shock. John had
slipped something into their drinks, poison or a sedative,
and only Joe's subhumanly sensitive nose had saved them
from drinking and then keeling over and allowing John to
take over the pilothouse with little trouble.
He looked out the starboard port. Only a half mile
ahead was the huge breakwater behind which the boat was
to anchor for the night. Tomorrow, the long journey
would officially begin. Would have begun, he thought.
He flicked off the automatic pilot toggle switch and

took the control sticks in his hands.
"Joe," he said, "I'm going to run this right up alongside
the bank. I may even ground us. Get out the bullhorn. I'll
tell the people ashore what's happened, and we'll get
help."
He pulled back on the starboard stick and advanced the
port stick.
"What's wrong?" he yelled.
The boat was proceeding straight on its course up The
River, holding to a distance of about a hundred yards off
the shore.
He moved the sticks back and forth, frantically, but the
boat did not deviate.
John's voice came from the intercom.
"It's no use, Samuel, Boss, Captain, swine! I have con-
trol of the boat. My engineer, the man who will be chief
engineer, put in a duplicate set of controls . . . never mind
where. I have cut off your controls, and the boat will go
where I want it to. So you don't have any advantage at all.
Now my men will storm the pilothouse and take you. But I
would prefer that there be as little damage as possible. So,
if you will just get off the boat, I will let you go unharmed.
Provided, that is, that you can swim a hundred yards."
Sam raged and swore and pounded his fists on the in-
strument panel. But the boat continued on past the dock,
while the crowds gathered there waved and cheered and
wondered why the boat did not stop.
Lothar, looking out of the stern port, said, "They're
trying to sneak up on us!" and he fired at a man who had
appeared around the far end of the texas on the hurricane
deck.
"We can't hold out long!" Firebrass said. "We don't
have much ammunition!"
Sam looked at the fore ports. Some men and women
had run out onto the boiler deck and then turned for a
stand.
Livy was among them.
There was another charge. A man thrust at Cyrano,
who was engaged in running his rapier through the man
next to him. Livy tried to knock the blade aside with her

pistol, which must have been empty, but the sword went
into her stomach. She fell backward with the sword still
sticking out of her. The man who had killed her died a
second later, when Cyrano's rapier went through his throat.
Sam cried, "Livy! Livy!" and he was out through the
door of the pilothouse and running down the ladder.
Bullets screamed by him and smashed against the
bulkheads and the ladder. He felt a stinging and then
heard a shouting behind him, but he did not stop. He was
vaguely aware that Joe Miller and the others had run out
after him. Perhaps they were trying to rescue him or
perhaps they knew that they might as well get out now
before they were overwhelmed in the trap of the
pilothouse.
There were corpses and wounded everywhere. John's
men had not been numerous; he had depended upon sur-
prise, and it had not failed him. Dozens had been shot
down in the first volleys, and dozens more had been shot
during the panic. Many more had jumped into the water,
seeing that there was no way to escape, no place to hide,
and they were not armed.
Now the boat was turning into shore, its paddle-wheels
operating at full speed, the water flying, the wheels chuff-
chuffing, the deck trembling. John was turning the boat in-
to shore, where a number of heavily armed men and
women awaited him.
These would be the disaffected, the people who were
angered because the lottery had cut them out of a place on
the crew. Once they got aboard, they would sweep away
the few left in Sam's party.
Sam had run along the hurricane deck after leaving the
pilothouse ladder. He held a pistol with two ^hots left in it
and his rapier in the other hand. He did not know how
they had gotten into his hands; he had no memory of hav-
ing removed them from his holster and sheath.
A face appeared at the edge of the deck on the ladder
just ahead. He fired at it, and the face dropped back. He
was on the edge of the deck then and shooting even as he
leaned over to look down the ladder. The plastic bullet did

not miss this time. The man's chest erupted red, and he fell
back down the ladder, taking two men with him. But
others on the deck below raised their pistols, and he had to
jump back. The volley missed him, though some bullets
striking the edge blew apart and the fragments stung him
on the legs.
Joe Miller, behind him, said, '"Tham! Tham! There'th
nothing to do but jump for it! They got uth thur-
rounded!"
Below, Cyrano, still wielding his rapier, holding off
three men at one time, backed to the railing. Then his
blade pierced a throat, the man fell, and Cyrano whirled
and leaped over the railing. When he came up he began to
swim strongly to get away from the starboard paddle-
wheel thrashing toward him.
Bullets struck the sides of the cabins behind Sam, and
Lothar cried, "Jump, Sam! Jump!"
But they could not jump yet. They could not have
cleared the main deck below, let alone the boiler deck.
Joe had already turned and was running with his great
ax toward the men firing from behind the rear of the
cabins along the hurricane deck. The bullets streaked
toward him, wobbling, leaving a thin trail of smoke, but he
was too far away to worry about their accuracy. And he
was depending upon his terrifying aspect and his prowess,
which they well knew, to panic them.
The others ran behind him until they came to the great
paddle-wheel housing. This was about ten feet from the
edge of the hurricane deck, and if they stood up on the
railing and leaped out, they could grab hold of the big iron
eyes through which cables had been secured when the
housing had been lifted and then placed over the wheel by
the crane.
They jumped, one after the other, while bullets
screamed by. They grabbed the eye, their bodies banging
into the side of the hard metal housing. But they pulled
themselves up and onto the top of the housing and crawled
over, stood up and jumped out. The water was thirty feet
below, a height which would have made Sam hesitate un-

der different conditions. This time, he went out, fell
straight, holding his nose, and plunged into the water feet
first.
He came up in time to see Joe jump off, not from the
housing but from the main deck. He had fought down the
ladder and out across the deck, scattering the pygmies
before him. Even so, his hairy skin was splotched with
blood. He went over the side in a dive with pistols boom-
ing and arrows streaking after him.
Sam dived then, because several of the steam machine
guns had been depressed and the .75 caliber bullets were
probing for him.
The boat turned back about two minutes later. John
must have discovered that his chief enemy had escaped.
By then, Sam was ashore and running, though he thought
his legs would fold under him. The firing was not renewed.
Perhaps John had changed his mind about killing him. He
would want Sam to suffer, and Sam would suffer most if
he were still at the site of his defeat.
John's voice boomed out from a bullhorn. "Farewell,
Samuel! You fool! Thanks for building the Riverboat for
me! And I will change its name to one which will suit me
better! I go now to enjoy the fruits of your labors! Think
of me as much as you please! Farewell!"
His bullhorn-amplified laughter blasted Sam's ears.
Sam came out of his hiding place in a hut and climbed
the wall on the edge of the water. The boat had stopped
and let down a long gangplank on cables to permit the
traitors to come aboard. He heard a voice below him and
looked down. There was Joe, his reddish hairs black with
water except where the blood was starting to appear again.
"Lothar and Firebrath and Thyrano and Johnthton
made it," he said. "How you feel, Tham?"
Sam sat down on the hard-packed dirt and said, "If it
would do any good, I'd kill myself. But this world is hell,
Joe, genuine hell. You can't even commit a decent suicide.
You wake up the next day, and there you are with your
problems stuck on you with glue or stuck . . . well, never
mind."
"Vhat do ve do now, Tham?"

Sam did not reply for a long time. If he couldn't have
Livy, Cyrano could not have her, either. He could endure
the thought of having lost her if she was not where he
could see her.
Later, the shame at exulting in Cyrano's loss would
come.
Not now. He was too stunned. The loss of the boat had
been even a greater shock than seeing Livy killed.
After all these years of hard work, of grief, of betrayal,
of planning, of hurting, of ... of ...
It was too much to bear.
Joe was grieved to see him cry, but he sat patiently by
until Sam's tears had quit flowing. Then he said, "Do ve
thtart building another boat, Tham?"
Sam Clemens rose to his feet. The gangplank was being
drawn up by the electromechanical machinery of his
fabulous Riverboat. Whistles were shrilling exultantly, and
bells were clanging, John would still be laughing. He might
even be watching Sam through a telescope.
Sam shook his fist, hoping that John was watching him.
"I'll get you yet, traitor John!" he howled. "I'll build
another boat, and I'll catch up with you! I don't care what
obstacles I encounter or who gets in my way! I'll run you
down, John, and I'll blast your stolen boat out of The
River with my boat! Nobody, absolutely nobody, the
Stranger, the Devil, God, nobody, no matter what his
powers, is going to stop me!
"Some day, John! Some day!"

EPILOGUE
Volume III of the Riverworld series will take Sam
Clemens all the way up The River with Richard Francis
Burton and the rest of The Twelve to the Misty Tower and
the secret of the Ethicals.
Technological Note: Potassium nitrate is prepared on the
Riverworld by feeding a certain type of earthworm human
excrement. The end product of this diet is crystallized
potassium nitrate, which, mixed with charcoal and sulfur,
makes black gunpowder.