The Fabulous Riverboat (32 page)

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 coordination 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 maneuverability. While the port wheel backed, the starboard 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. Firebrass 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 entertained 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 machine guns. These were .80 caliber and shot aluminum bullets from aluminum cartridges. There were one hundred 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-decamp, and he had been picked up by John during his sojourn in Iyeyasujo after Hacking's invasion. He had been born in 1971 in San Diego, California, had been an AllAmerican 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 almost 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 excellent 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 bullet 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 electrically 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 leaving 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, firing, 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 control 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 instrument 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 surprise, 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.