Sam opened the door fully (thank God it was well oiled!), leaned out, and rapped John over the side of the head with his pistol barrel. John grunted and fell. Sam stooped, dropped the pistol on the chest of the fallen man, gripped him by his long hair, and pulled him into the cabin. Once the feet were past the entrance, he shut the door and pressed the locking button. Outside, the explosions of gunfire were loud, but nothing struck the door. Apparently, the snatching of their leader had happened so swiftly and in such confusion and dark that they had not yet noticed his absence. Perhaps, when they did, they would assume that he had been downed in the corridor.
Sam quivered with delight. He was in great danger, but at the moment that meant nothing. By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out perfectly. Whatever he had suffered, it was worth it—well, almost worth it. To have his greatest enemy, the only person he had ever really hated, in his power! And in such strange circumstances! Even John, when he awoke, would not be more surprised than he. Truth was stranger than fiction, and he could go on quoting many more cliches.
He pressed the light switch plate with one hand, the pistol held in the other. The ceiling globes shed a flickering light. John groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Sam tapped him not too lightly on the head again. He did not want to kill him or to damage his brain overly much. John had to have all his senses operating one hundred percent. Otherwise, he wouldn’t appreciate to the fullest what had happened to him.
Sam opened the drawers of a chest attached to the bulkhead.
He withdrew some of the thin semitransparent cloths used as brassieres. With these he tied John’s hands together behind his back and then bound his feet together. Puffing and grunting, he dragged the unconscious man to a chair bolted to the deck. Managing to get the heavy body onto the chair, he tied John’s hands to the rungs of the back. Then he went into the head, drank two cups of water from the faucet, and filled a third cup. As this was done, the faucet rattled, and the flow thinned to a trickle. The water pump had suddenly quit.
Sam returned to the main cabin and threw the water in John’s face. John gasped, and his eyelids opened. For a minute, he did not seem to know where he was. Then, recognizing Samuel Clemens, his eyes opened fully, and he drew in his breath with a harsh noise as if he had been struck in the pit of his stomach. Where his skin was not covered with smoke, it became gray-blue.
“Yes, it’s me, John.”
Sam grinned widely.
“You can’t believe it, can you? But you’ll get used to the idea in a moment. Though you won’t like getting used to it.”
John croaked, “Water!”
Sam looked into the red-shot eyes. Despite his hatred, he felt sorry for John. Not sympathy, just pity. After all, he wouldn’t let a rabid dog suffer, would he?
He shook his head. “The water is all gone.”
“I’m dying of thirst,” John said hoarsely.
Sam snarled, “Is that all you can think about after what you’ve done to me? After all these years?”
John said, “Satisfy my thirst, and I’ll satisfy yours.”
His skin had recovered its normal color, and his eyes looked steadily into Sam’s. Knowing John, Sam could see what strategy the cunning fellow had already formulated. He would talk reasonably to his captor, would talk quietly and logically, would appeal to his humanity, and would, in the end, avoid execution.
The hell of it, Sam realized, was that John would succeed.
The anger was draining out of him now. The thirty-three years of vengeance fantasies were blown away like farts in a high wind.
What was left was a man who was basically Christian, though a howling atheist, to use a phrase applied to him by one of his Terrestrial enemies.
He should have shot John in the head the moment he had turned on the light. He should have known what would happen if he did not. But he could not kill a man who was unconscious. Not even King John, whose blood he had lusted for all these years and who had been tortured so ingeniously and so excruciatingly in his daydreams. Never in his night-time dreams. Then it was John who was about to do something to a paralyzed or hopelessly trapped Sam Clemens. Or, mostly, it was Erik Bloodaxe who was about to be revenged upon him.