The Fabulous Riverboat by Phillip Jose Farmer

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 deciding 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 consisted 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 chevauxde-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, because 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 preparations 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 something like the sight of Joe to be softened up for cooperation. But if Joe were absent, Bloodaxe might take advantage of this to kill Sam. He would not do it openly, because he feared Joe, but he could easily arrange an accident.

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-twentiethcentury 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 occasional 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, carpetmakers 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.