The Fabulous Riverboat by Phillip Jose Farmer

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-tothree 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 because 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 bearing 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 finished 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, Dravidian, black-skinned Caucasians, and one-eighth of people from anywhere and anytime. A slight majority of the oneeighth 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.”