Sam digested the news, which set the teeth of his stomach even more on edge. He was so upset he couldn’t even get any amusement from Hacking’s double cross of the champion double-crosser, King John. He did have to admire Hacking’s statesmanship and perception, however. Hacking had realized there was only one way to deal with John, and he had taken that way. But then Hacking did not have Sam Clemens’ conscience.
The news changed everything. Apparently, Iyeyasu was on the way now, which meant that Sam’s plans to sneak out during the rains would not work. The Soul Citizens were too alert. “What’s the matter, Sam?” Livy said. She was sitting
ear him and looking sadly at him. “I think it’s all up with us.”
“Oh, Sam!” she replied. “Where’s your manhood? It isn’t all up with us! You get depressed so easily if things don’t go your way all the time! Why, this is the greatest opportunity you could ask for to get your boat back! Let Hacking and Iyeyasu destroy each other and then take over. Just sit back up in the hills until they have clawed each other to death and then jump on them while they’re gasping out their last!”
Sam said angrily, “What are you talking about? Jump on them with fifteen men and women?”
“No, you stupe! You have at least five hundred prisoners in that stockade and God knows how many more in other stockades. And you have thousands who ran away to Cernskujo and Publiujo!”
“How can I get hold of them now?” Sam said. “It’s too late! The attack will be launched in a few hours, you can bet on that! Besides, the refugees were probably put in stockades, too! For all I know, Chernsky and Publius Crassus may be in cahoots with Hacking!”
“You’re still the same paralyzed pessimist I knew on Earth,” she said. “Oh, Sam, I still love you, in a way, that is. I still like you as a friend, and . . .”
“Friend!” he said so loudly that the others jumped. Cyrano said, “Morbleu!” and Johnston hissed, “Shet up, you want them black Injuns to get us?” “We were lovers for years,” he said.
“Not always, by a long shot,” she said. “But this is no place for a discussion of our failures. I don’t intend to thrash those out, anyway. It’s too late. The point is, do you or do you not want your boat?”
“Of course, I do,” he said fiercely. “What do you think . . . ?” “Then get off your dead ass, Sam!” she said.
From anybody else, the remark would have been unremarkable. But from her, his fragile, soft-voiced, clean-speeched Livy, it was unthinkable. But she had said it, and now that he thought back on it, there had been times on Earth, which he had suppressed in his memory, when . . .
“The lady makes a powerful lot a sense!” Johnston rumbled.
He had far more important things to think about. But the really important things were best recognized by the unconscious, and it, must have been this that sent the thought. For the first time, he understood, really understood, with the cells of his body, from the brain on down, that Livy had changed. She was no longer his Livy. She had not been for a long tune, perhaps had not been for some years on Earth before her death.
“What do you say, Mr. Clemens?” the mountain man rumbled.
Sam gave a deep sigh, as if he were breathing out the last fragments of Olivia Langdon Clemens de Bergerac, and said, “Here’s what we do.”
The rains lashed down; thunder and lightning made the skies and the land hideous for a half hour. Johnston appeared out of the rain with two bazookas and four rockets tied together on his broad back. Then he disappeared again and a half hour later was back with some throwing knives and tomahawks, all of steel, and some new blood, not his, splashed on his arms and chest.
The rain clouds went away. The land was brightly silver under the magnificent stars, as big as apples, as numerous as cherries on a tree in season, as luminous as jewels before electric lights. Then it got colder, and they shivered under the irontree. A thin mist formed over The River; within fifteen minutes, it was so thick that the waters and the grailstones and the high walls along the banks could not be seen. A half hour later, Iyeyasu struck. The big boats and the small boats, crammed with men and weapons, came from across The River, where the Sacs and Foxes had once ruled, from the northern part of the exUlmak territory, from the land where the Hottentots and Bushmen had once lived in peace. And the main bulk came from the right bank of The River, from the three lands where Iyeyasu was now lord.