That made his case even sadder, because such talent had been tragically wasted.
About midnight, Sam accompanied Hacking and party to the big thirty-room, second-story, stone-and-bamboo building set aside for state guests. This was halfway between his quarters and John’s palace. Then he drove his jeep to his home, three hundred yards away. Joe sulked a little because he had wanted to drive, even though his legs were far too long for him to try this. They staggered up the ladder and barred the door. Joe went into the rear and flopped on his bed with a crash that shook the house on its stilts. Sam looked out the ports just in time to see Cyrano and Livy, their arms around each other, lurch into the door of their hut. To their left, set above them, was von Richthofen’s hut, where he and Gwenafra had already gone to bed.
He muttered, “Good night!” not knowing just whom he was addressing, and fell into his own bed. It had been a long, hard and trying day, ending up with a huge party at which everybody had drunk stupendous quantities, of purple passion or grain alcohol and water and chewed much dreamgum and smoked much tobacco and marihuana.
He awoke dreaming that he was caught in a California earthquake on the Fourth of July.
He leaped out of bed and ran on the trembling floor to the pilothouse. Even before he reached the ports, he knew that the explosions and the earth-shaking were caused by invaders. He never reached the ports, because a rocket, whistling, its tail flaming red, struck one of the stilts. The roar deafened him, smoke whirled in through the broken ports and he pitched forward. The house collapsed, and its front part fell down. History repeated itself.
25
He banged into the wood and broken glass and earth and lay with the wall under him while he tried to come up out of his stunned condition. A big hand picked him up. By the light of an explosion, he saw Joe’s great-nosed face. Joe had climbed down from the open end of his room and thrown aside the lumber until he had found Sam. He held the handles of his grail and Sam’s with his left hand.
“I don’t know how, it’s a miracle, but I’m not hurt bad,” Sam said. “Just bruised and cut by glass.”
“I didn’t have time to put on my armor,” Joe said. “But I got my akth. Here’th a thword for you and a pithtol and thome bulletin and powder chargeth.” “Who the hell can they be, Joe?” Sam said.
“I don’t know. Thee! They’re coming in through the holeth in the vallth vhere the dockth are.”
The starlight was bright. The clouds that sent the rains down every night at three o’clock had not yet come, but the mists over The River were heavy. Out of these, men were still pouring to add to the masses spreading over the plains. Behind the walls, in the mists, must be a fleet.
The only fleet that could get close without causing an alarm would be the Soul City fleet. Anybody else arriving at this hour would have had to have been within view of the spies that Sam and John Lackland had set up along The River, even in hostile territory. It couldn’t be Iyeyasu’s fleet; that was still sitting in the docks as of the report received just before midnight.
Joe peered over a pile of wood and said, “There’th a hell of a battle around John’th palathe. And the guetht houthe, vhere Hacking and hith boyth vath, ith on fire.”
The flames lit a number of bodies on the ground and showed the tiny figures struggling around the log stockade of John’s palace. Then, the cannon and its caisson was pushed before the stockade.
“That’s John’s jeep!” Sam said, pointing at the vehicle which had just driven up behind the cannon.
“Yeah, and it’th our cannon!” Joe said. “But it’th Hacking’th men that’re going to blatht John out of hith. little love netht.”
“Let’s get to hell out of here!” Sam said, and he scrambled over the lumber and in the opposite direction. He could not understand why the invaders had not sent men to his house yet. The rocket that had hit had come from the plains. And if Hacking and his men had sneaked out of the guesthouse to launch a surprise attack in conjunction with an attack from the supposed ore boats, then Sam should have been a primary target along with John Lackland.