“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 certainly 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 attitude. Why should he? He’s experienced the same exploitation 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 problems. 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 steamboat. 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 decended 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.”
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