"La Viro still hopes that you and John will be able to forgive each other. He says that after this long a time, it doesn't matter whose fault it was in the beginning. He says..."
Clemens' face was red and grim.
"It's easy enough for him to talk of forgiveness!" he said loudly. "Well, let him talk from now until doomsday about forgiveness, and I won't stop him! A sermon never hurt anybody, and it's often beneficial—if you need a nap.
"But I haven't come this far after all the hardships and heartaches and treacheries and griefs just to pat John on the head and tell him what a good boy he is beneath all that rottenness and then kiss and make up.
" ‘Here, John, you worked hard to get my boat and to keep it from all those thieving rascals that tried to take your hard-earned Riverboat away from you. What the hell, John, I loathed, despised, and detested you, but that was a long time ago. I don't carry a grudge long; I'm a good-hearted sap.'
"The hell I am!" Clemens roared. "I'm going to sink his boat, the boat I once loved so much! I wouldn't have it now! He's dishonored it, made it into crap, stunk it up! I'll sink it, get it out of sight. And one way or another, I'm ridding this world of John Lackland. When I'm done with him, his name'll be John Lacklife!"
"We were hoping," Hermann said, "that after all these years, two generations as they used to be counted, that your hatred had cooled, perhaps entirely died. That..."
"Well, sure, it did," Clemens said, with a sarcastic tone. "There were minutes, days, weeks, even months, even a year now and then, that I didn't think of John. But when I tired of this eternal travel on The River, when I longed to go ashore and stay ashore and get the racket of the paddlewheels out of my ears and the never-ending routine, the three-times-a-day stop to recharge grails and batacitor, the always-going-on arguments to settle and the ever-recurring administrative details to manage and my heart stopping every once in a while when I saw a face that looked like my beloved Livy or Susy or Jean or Clara only to find out that she was none of them.... Well, then when I tired and almost gave up, almost said, ‘Here, Cyrano, you take over the captainship. I'm going ashore and get some rest and have a good time, and forget about this monstrous beauty and you take it on up The River and don't bring it back,' then I remembered John and what he'd done to me and what I was going to do to him. And then I'd gather my forces together, and I'd cry, ‘Forward, onward, excelsior! Keep going until we've caught up with Evil John and sent him to the bottom of The River!' And that, the thought of my duty and my dearest desire, to make John squeal before I wrung his neck, is what's kept me going for, as you describe it, two generations!"
Hermann could only say, "It grieves me to hear that."
It was useless to say any more about that subject.
25
BURTON, SUFFERING AGAIN FROM HIS CURSED INSOMNIA, LEFT his cabin quietly. Alice slept undisturbed. He went down the dimly lit corridor, out of the texas, and onto the landing deck of the Rex. The fog was building up below the railing of the B deck. The A deck was entirely shrouded. Directly above, the sky blazed brightly, but to the west clouds were swiftly moving toward the boat. On both sides of The Valley the mountains cut off much of the sky. Though the Rex was anchored in a small bay two miles up from the strait, The Valley had broadened only a little here. It was a cold place, gloomy, despondency-making. John had had a difficult time keeping up morale here.
Burton yawned, stretched, and thought about lighting up a cigarette or perhaps a cigar. Damn his sleeplessness! In sixty years on this world, he should have learned how to overcome the affliction which had lasted fifty years on Earth. (He'd been nineteen when the terrible affliction had struck him.)
Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he'd tried a score or more. Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more efficacious than any he'd ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For some time, he'd been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.
Nur had said, "You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You could strike at the source."
"Yaas," Burton had replied. "If I knew what and where the source was, I could get my hands on it. I'd be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer the world."
"First, you'd have to conquer yourself," the Moor had said. "But when you did that, you'd find out that it wasn't worthwhile ruling the world."
The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walking in the semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, marching to the middle of the deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other's, wheeling, then striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.
During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton didn't hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens' men, John had set up night sentinels all over the boat.
Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amerind, in his own tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterward Burton said he'd heard a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed that he'd heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have been about 30,000 B.C.
Burton told the two he'd be going on to check the other guards. He walked down the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.
Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upward into the fog. Sirens were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat. People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice.
She cried out, "What happened?"
"I don't know," he said, "except that someone coshed me."
He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand against the wall.
"Here," she said, "I'll help you get to the sick bay."
"Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king."
"You're crazy," she said. "You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You shouldn't even be walking. You should be on a stretcher."
He growled, "Nonsense," and started to walk. She made him put his arm around her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow. He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They passed people manning the steam machine guns and the rocket tubes.
Alice called out to a man, "What happened?"
"I don't know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up The River."
Burton thought that if that was true, he'd been slugged by someone posted to insure that the thieves weren't surprised.
The "thieves," he was sure, had been crew members. He didn't think that anybody could slip aboard unnoticed. The sonars, radar, and infrared detectors were operating at night and had been ever since the raid. Their operators dared not fall asleep. The last one who'd done that, ten years ago, had been thrown off the boat into The River two minutes after being caught.