“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 worry? Or is that your nature? For all we know, Odysseus is not dead. He may have been contacted by this Mysterious Stranger—who, by the way, Odysseus claims is a woman and so his Stranger is not the one that you and I met—mordioux!—I digress! As I said, Odysseus may have been called away suddenly by this so-mysterious person and we will find out in time what did happen! Let that shadowy angel—or fiend—take care of the matter. We must concentrate on getting this fabulous boat constructed and skewering anybody who gets in our way.”
“That maketh thenthe,” Joe said. “If Tham had a hair for every time he vorried, he’d look like a porcupine. Vhich, now that I come to think of it. . .”
“Out of the mouths of babes . . . and of tailless monkeys,” Sam said. “Or is it the other end? Anyway, if everything goes well—and so far it hasn’t—we’ll start bonding the magnalium plates for the hull in thirty days. That’ll be my happiest day, until we actually launch the boat. I’ll be happier even than when Livy said yes …”
He could have cut himself off sooner, but he wanted to antagonize Cyrano. The Frenchman, however, did not react. Why should he? He had Livy; she was saying yes to him all the time.
“Me, I do not like the idea,” Cyrano said, “since I am a peaceful man. I would like to have the leisure to indulge myself with the good things of Life. I would like to have an end to wars, and if there is to be any bloodshed, let it be between gentlemen who know how to wield their swords. But we cannot build the boat without interference, because those who do not have iron desire it and will not stop until they get it. So, me, I think that John Lackland may be right in one particular. Perhaps we should wage an all-out war as soon as we have enough weapons, and clear The River, on both sides, of all opposition for thirty miles both ways. We can then have unlimited access to the wood and the bauxite and platinum . . .”
“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 wondered 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.”