The Fabulous Riverboat by Phillip Jose Farmer

“Yeah! A temporary member and he’s only that because I demanded you send me a black ambassador!”

“The Arabs make up about a sixth of your state,” Sam said, “and yet there isn’t one Arab on your council.”

“They’re white, that’s why! And I’m getting rid of them! Don’t get me wrong! There’s lots of Arabs that’re good men, unprejudiced men! I met them when I was a fugitive in North Africa. But these Arabs here are religious fanatics, and they won’t stop making trouble! So out they go! What we blacks want is a solid black country, where we’re all soul brothers! Where we can live in peace and understanding! We’ll have our own kind of world, and you honkies can have yours! Segregation with a capital S, Charlie! Here, a big S segregation can work, cause we don’t have to depend on the white man for our jobs or food or clothing or protection or justice or anything! We got it made, whitey! All we have to do is tell you to go to hell, keep away from us, and we got it made!”

Firebrass sat at the table with his dark-red kinky head bent over, looking down, and his bronzed hands placed over his face. Sam had the feeling that he was trying to keep from laughing. But whether he was laughing inside himself at Hacking or at the ones who were being berated, Sam could not guess. Perhaps he was laughing at both.

John kept drinking the bourbon. The redness of his face came from more than the liquor. He looked as if he could explode at any time. It was difficult to swallow insults about your injustice to blacks when you were innocent, but then John was guilty of so many hideous crimes that he should suffer for some, even if none were his. And, as Hacking said, John would have been guilty if he had been allowed a chance to be.

Just what did Hacking expect to gain by this? Certainly, if he wanted a closer relationship with Parolando, he was taking a peculiar approach to it.

Perhaps he felt that he had to put any white, no matter who, in his place. He wanted to make it clear that he, Elwood Hacking, a black, was not the inferior of any white.

Hacking had been ruined by the same system that had ruined almost all Americans, black, white, red or yellow, in one form or another, to a greater or lesser degree.

Would it always be this way? Forever twisted, hating, while they lived for who knew how many thousands upon thousands of years along The River?

At that moment, but for that moment only, Sam wondered if the Second Chancers were not right.

If they knew the way out from this imprisonment of hate, they should be the only ones to be listened to. Not Hacking or John Lackland or Sam Clemens or anybody who suffered from lack of peace and love should have a word to say. Let the Second Chancers . . .

But he did not believe them, he reminded himself. They were just like the other faith dispensers of Earth. Wellintentioned, some of them, no doubt of that. But without the authority of truth, no matter how much they claimed it.

Hacking suddenly quit talking. Sam Clemens said, “Well, we didn’t plan on any afterdinner speeches, Sinjoro Hacking, but I thank you for your volunteering; we all thank you as long as you don’t charge us for it. Our exchequer is rather low at the moment.”

Hacking said, “You have to make a joke out of it, don’t you? Well, how about a tour? I’d love to see that big boat of yours.”

The rest of the day was passed rather pleasantly. Sam forgot his anger and his resentments in conducting Hacking through the factories, the shops and, finally, through the boat. Even half finished, it was magnificent. The most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Even, he thought, even . . . yes, even more beautiful than Livy’s face when she had first said she loved him.

Hacking did not become ecstatic, but he obviously was deeply impressed. He. could not, however, refrain from commenting on the stench and the desolation.