Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 19

The natives turned out to be surprisingly friendly, considering the language barrier. They were a shy people, quiet and simple in their ways, all living in gra.s.s240.huts around a grailstone. They allowed Robin and his men to fit their grails into the unused slots in the grailstone, then cl.u.s.tered at the far side of the village to keep a wary vigil.

Robin counted twenty-five men and thirty women. He noticed each man kept a long, bone-tipped spear close at hand, though none made a hostile move.

"Polynesian," Friar Tuck suggested, "or from another of the Pacific Islands." He had been a sociologist before being recruited into the merry men: one of the reasons he'd joined was to see more of the people resurrected along the River's banks. "Probably never saw a white man in their natural lives...."

Nodding, Robin collected his grail from the grailstone after the charge had come. "What do you think the chances are they'll attack?"

Tuck hesitated. "They were a friendly people. But I wouldn't want to press our luck."

"Come on, then," Robin told the rest of his men. "Back to the River. We shouldn't push our welcome by eating in front of them."

He led the way back to the cliff. Will Scarlet was standing guard, keeping an eye out for the riverboat.

"No sign of it," he reported.

Robin nodded slowly. "I'm sure they're on a scouting mission this time," he said. "They'll be back."

"In such a craft?" Little John said, his bushy black eyebrows coming together in a frown. "They could go to the ends of the River. Why shouldn't they return here?"

"Any of a dozen reasons." Robin hunkered down and opened his grail. There were thin crispy wafers, little packets of what looked like peanut b.u.t.ter, strips of some241.dried, cured meat, and a little flask of brandy... as well as the usual tobacco, marijuana, and dreamgum.

Robin took a chew of the meat and continued. ' 'First, that riverboat's one of the most valuable pieces of equipment on the River-but it burns wood. They'll have to put ash.o.r.e whenever they run low. I'm betting they only stop at prearranged safe bases, and if they're scouting new territory they won't stop at all. They'll head home when they start to run low on fuel. Maybe two days, maybe three. Second, they didn't have enough people on board for an extended journey. If it were my riverboat and I were going far, I'd pack it with armed men. Every petty tyrant on the River will try to steal it, given half a chance."

"Shades of Robert Fulton..." Little John murmured to himself.

"Unless you're wrong," Will Scarlet told Robin.

Robin flashed a dazzling grin. "Of course," he said. "If it hasn't returned in a week, we'll push on."

In the old days, before the Resurrection, Robin had been a cla.s.sically trained actor named Edmond Hope Bryor. He'd played minor parts on stage for twenty-two years, since the age of six, before his big move to Hollywood and the silver screen. After three tragic love stories, eight forgettable westerns (critics admired the horses more than his acting talent), and one gangster movie where a young Spencer Tracy shot him in the end, he made the great leap to the enfant terrible of acting: television.

Cast as Robin Hood for the fledgling Dupont Network's twice-a-week Robin Hood and His Merry Men would have made Edmond Bryor a hero to tens of thousands of242.

243.children. He'd known that when he signed onto the project. He'd also known he was going nowhere fast in movies, just as he'd gone nowhere fast on stage.

Only Diablo, the ill-tempered white stallion the producer insisted he ride, threw him on the first day of shooting Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Edmond had no real memories after that, just a vision of the soundstage floor rushing up to meet him. A broken neck, he a.s.sumed; instant death or close to it.

In three years of wandering the River's banks, he hadn't met anyone he'd known in the old life to verify his suspicions. It was just as well, he often thought; he'd given up his old life and a.s.sumed a new one: that of Robin Hood. It was the role he was born to play, a dream from the childhood he'd never truly outgrown.

As the only son of two thespians, he'd been moulded to their ideals, with elocution lessons, dance lessons, and music lessons instead of play time. He knew it had warped him in subtle ways. Awakening on the River, he'd decided to start over again, to live the sort of life he'd always wanted for himself, full of adventure and romance. And so his wanderings began.

He a.s.sumed the name Robin Hood and began journeying up the River, righting any wrongs he found, on the pretence of searching for King Richard the Lionhearted. Playacting, yes, but it was curiously satisfying. Along the way he'd found others willing to share that quest, and he'd filled his band of merry men from their numbers. It seemed his dream was contagious. He'd even talked a politics-weary Abraham Lincoln into abandoning a new political career and a.s.suming the role of Little John.

They'd been fast friends ever since.

Two nights later, a light hand touched Robin's shoulder. He was awake instantly, gazing up into Mutch's stoic face.

"You were right," Mutch said. "It's come back."

Robin leaped to his feet and ran to the cliff, as close to the edge as he dared stand. The riverboat was easy to spot; its windows shone with a clear yellow light, like beacons in the darkness. What kind of lamps, he wondered, did they have on board? What kind of people could civilise a world so quickly?

"Build up the fire," he said.

The others obeyed, throwing wood onto the embers, fanning them until a huge bonfire blazed.

By the time the riverboat drew even with the cliffs, Robin had his bow strung and his special arrow nocked. He'd had two weeks of intense archery training for his television show; the producers had planned to bill him as the greatest archer of the twentieth century. To his surprise, he'd found he had a talent for it, and he'd honed that talent to perfection in three more years of practice along the River.

He aimed, then let his arrow fly. For an instant his eyes lost it in the darkness, then it hit the pilothouse's door with a thunk audible all the way across the water.

The door opened. A short, broad man was silhouetted for an instant. He saw the arrow and its note, grabbed them, and slammed the door closed. The riverboat's paddle wheels continued their steady chugging.

"They didn't stop," Tuck said.

"They will."

"What if they don't understand English?" he persisted.

Mutch said, "The riverboat is an American invention. They will speak English."244.

245.Little John asked, "What did you tell them, Sir Robin?" "I'm sure you'd approve-the truth." He inclined his large head. "Ah, but which one?" Robin smiled. "Mine."

The riverboat slowed, but did not stop. It almost seemed as if some debate raged within. Five minutes pa.s.sed, then ten, then fifteen. Finally it began to turn, the huge rear paddlewheel coming to a halt. It began to drift slowly down-River with the current, away from them.

"What does that mean?" Friar Tuck demanded.

"It means they don't want to meet us in the dark," Little John said. "They will float with the current until dawn, then paddle back up to see us."

"My thought exactly," Robin said. He sat, crossing his legs. "We wait."

The riverboat reappeared an hour after dawn, chugging faintly, smoke from its stack leaving twin grey smears in the air. Robin stood and began to wave his bow. His men did the same.

The riverboat slowed, its paddles turning just enough to keep abreast of Robin and his men. Sailors dressed in black and white swarmed across the deck. They broke out a small boat, lowered it, and two men began to row briskly toward the cliffs. Two more men aboard, armed with short curved swords, kept a vigilant watch on Robin and his men.

Robin began to make his way down to the rocky sh.o.r.e. The others followed. He arrived just as the boat reached the shallows and waded out to help pull them to sh.o.r.e.

"Bonjour," one of the men with swords said. "Je m'appelle Claude de Ves. Je suls-"

Robin shook his head, interrupting. "I don't speak French. Do you speak English?"

"A little," he said in a heavy accent. "I am Claude de Ves of the-how you say?-ah, the riverboat Belle Dame."

"Who is your captain?" Robin asked.

"Monsieur Jules Verne."

"The author?"

"Out."

The name meant nothing to Little John and most of the others, Robin saw. Quickly he explained about the famous French technologist and writer, who had foreseen the invention of everything from the submarine to atomic power.

"This is a man," Little John vowed, "that I would truly like to meet."

"Yes, he is a great man," Claude said. "Your letter-alors, I do not know the word-but the captain, he wishes to meet with you."

"Excellent!" Robin said. "It should not take more than four or five trips to get us all over-"

"You are the leader?" Claude asked.

"Yes."

"Monsieur Verne wishes only you to visit."

Robin looked at Little John. "What do you think?"

"If this Verne is as great a man as you say, you will have nothing to fear."

"My thought exactly." Robin looked at Claude de Ves. "Very well, your condition is acceptable." He clambered into the rowboat and sat. His men pushed them out into deeper water, and Verne's men manoeuvred them around and began to row toward the riverboat with powerful strokes.

Once Robin glanced back and saw Little John standing246.

247.there, staring back at him with an unreadable expression. Robin waved, and shouted, "I'll be back soon."

The riverboat itself was a technological marvel, but up close Robin began to notice subtle details that marked it as the product of a more primitive technology than he had at first suspected. The gla.s.s in the windows was cloudy and full of bubbles. The bra.s.s had been beaten to shape the rails; mallet marks were clearly visible. As he climbed onto the lower deck, he noted the square-headed nails in the ladder. The riverboat had been built by hand, he was sure, and represented the product of a fantastic amount of sheer physical labour.

"Monsieur Verne is in his cabin," Claude said. He led Robin to a hatch, then rapped sharply on its frame.

A feeble voice answered.

Claude undogged the hatch and stood back so Robin could enter first. Robin ducked through.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom inside. When he could see, he discovered a pale man with short, wiry black hair propped up in bed. There was a sweet smell in the air, almost like meat left in the sun too long. Infection, Robin thought.

"Monsieur Verne?" he asked.

Jules Verne nodded. Despite his sickness, his blue eyes held a fire Robin could not deny. Verne held the note Robin had attached to the arrow.

"You claim to be Sir Robin of Locksley?" he asked in nearly unaccented English.

"I am he," Robin said. "I am delighted to meet you, sir."

"Draw up that chair and we will talk," Verne said.

Robin did so. "You have a nineteenth-century British accent, I would say. How do you explain that?"

Robin shrugged. "Would you understand Saxon?"

"Touche!"

"And it's a twentieth-century accent, by the way." Almost before he knew it, Robin found himself telling how he'd adopted the role of Robin Hood, of his adventures and misadventures along the River as he and his men sought to right the wrongs of this new world. Verne nodded now and then, an avid listener.

"Life is indeed mostly a series of curious events," he said. "I needed someone such as you a week ago. Indeed, I nearly died because of it."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked.

Verne sighed and sank back on his bed, closing his eyes. Suddenly he looked tired, frail. When he spoke again it was with the voice of an old man.

"When I awakened on the River and found myself young," he said, "it seemed almost as though G.o.d had created this world for me alone...."

Now (Verne said) I could do those things of which I had only dreamed throughout my life. All my research, all my books and writings, they had led me inexorably toward this moment.

I vowed to create a perfect society. This new civilisation would be modelled on mankind's old one, but with all its various flaws and imperfections cured. Mankind had been given a fresh chance here, I felt, and it would be up to us to make the best of it.

I was fortunate enough to be resurrected among a group consisting primarily of Frenchmen from the late nineteenth century. Also among us were Russians from248.some twenty or thirty years in our future, Chinese from yet another age (I could not pinpoint their place in history; alas, my schooling in matters Oriental was somewhat lacking), and a few others from what seemed random periods in our world's history.

The Chinese immediately banded together and left, seeking whatever it is Chinamen seek; to my regret, we never circ.u.mvented the language barrier. The Russians, on the other hand, stayed with us. One among them, a fiery youth with an unp.r.o.nounceable name who had us call him Lenin, began preaching socialism to the ma.s.ses, but his voice fell on deaf ears. Most people were content to live natural lives, eating food from the metal Providers; sunning themselves on the riverbanks, eating the dreamsticks, and fornicating in a hedonistic frenzy.

Lenin was murdered his second week there. But what he'd said interested me. The idea of all men being equal is, of course, ridiculous; but the organisational system he outlined seemed workable, even practical in our current circ.u.mstances.

I combined his thoughts with my own. As I talked to my fellows, I found among them a number of engineers who were sympathetic to my new ideas. Their names would be meaningless to you, for they were in no way famous, but they were st.u.r.dy men, well schooled in their fields and not afraid of hard work.

First we moved away from the general population, to a more remote Provider in the hills. Here we began a systematic a.n.a.lysis of the land and its raw potential. There were deposits of iron, tin, and copper within easy reach. Trees could provide wood for fires and tools. And, I must admit, we made use of whatever human corpses came our way-bones were our first tools.249.Over the next few months, we set about creating a community based on scientific planning. As we discussed matters, we reached a general consensus that our resurrection was a test of some kind, and that to prove our species worthy we must strive to create a more perfect society from the materials available.

Needless to say, it was difficult. But as more people joined us, we found strength in numbers. Houses were erected; a stockade was built to protect us from our neighbours and whatever marauding animals this world might harbour. Soon we were smelting bronze, then iron. Sand, with some refinement, proved suitable for the crude gla.s.s you see in the Belle Dame's windows. In three months we had a prosperous town, with every man and woman working ten hours a day toward the common good. My dream was coming true, shaping itself before my very eyes.

Of course, our society was a technocracy. Our Technocrat Council of Engineers ruled, with me at its head. When it occurred to us that we should try to bring all the best elements of this new world together in one place, we sent out emissaries. Our scientific amba.s.sadors ranged for a thousand miles up and down the River, persuading whatever engineers and scientists they found to join our cause.

Again, the plan worked. People from all ages flocked to our incipient city. The vast laboratories we set up were something to see! We had mills, running water, and even a number of working clocks and watches within a year. Every success fuelled our drive forward. A railway was begun to link the Providers. Hot-air balloons scouted the air. Cartographers began to chart our new world. And, finally, we began to build this riverboat.250.No, don't interrupt-let me finish my tale. I am near the end now.

Perhaps we were too giddy with our successes. We allowed anyone to join us who wanted to-anyone. That was the mistake. We woke up one morning to find our little society drowning in an unskilled "proletariat," to borrow Lenin's word.

Among those who had joined us was a man called Capone. He came with a group of followers. He was small, quiet, a smooth talker. He offered to set up a bureaucracy to deal with our population as a whole. Indeed, we had already seen the need for administration and police... but none on the Council truly wanted to oversee such mundane matters. We were all scientists, visionaries, men looking toward the future. Each of us had pet projects to oversee. Letting Capone handle such matters seemed the ideal solution, as it would allow us to concentrate on our work.

Capone gave us all bodyguards. At the time it seemed like a good idea, since there were grumblings from the ma.s.ses, but I understood his plan now. He wanted to isolate us from the population so he could control us. I'd heard of many twentieth-century inventions by this point-men walking on the moon, satellites, computers, television-and I wanted all these scientific miracles and more. Perhaps that's what blinded me. I wanted to leap centuries in months, to claw my way to the highest point of mankind's technological achievement in the span of a few years.

Perhaps it truly was punishment for my hubris. Perhaps it was blind stupidity. I awakened one morning to find myself a prisoner. My bodyguards had become prison guards. I-and the other technocrats-were no251.longer in control. In the s.p.a.ce of a single night, our government fell in a bloodless coup. Al Capone had taken over.

He was a clever man, I admit. When we met with him in the Technocrat Council's chambers-we on the floor, he on a low throne-he made it clear who was in charge. When Leonardo da Vinci dared speak against him, Capone bludgeoned him to death with a wooden club. The blood, the blood! It was horrible... the most horrible moment of my life.

I longed to see Capone dead, but there was nothing any of us could do but agree to whatever he demanded. Perhaps we should have spoken against him, should have joined Leonardo in death. That would have been the proper thing to do. Even though I knew I would be resurrected somewhere else along the River, I could not stand up against him. I'm ashamed to say I was afraid of death, and of the pain he would administer before it.

Capone kept us on tight leashes after that. We never appeared alone in public, never spoke to anyone except on scientific projects, and then always under the close scrutiny of our guards. Capone wanted my pet project, the riverboat, completed as quickly as possible; I a.s.sume that's why I had what little freedom I did. Most of the other technocrats were locked in their rooms, forced to work on blueprints for machines that others would fully execute in their absence.

The greater body of engineers and working scientists, I found out later, had deduced most of what had happened. Capone was a greedy pig. He renamed our little city New Chicago and began taxing everyone on their tobacco, marijuana, and dreamgum. Anyone who didn't have a useful skill suddenly found himself drafted into a labour252.gang and sent into the hills to mine metal or cut lumber to fuel New Chicago's technological machinery.

The next year was, indeed, a grim one. But the riverboat was nearing completion, and though Capone had decided to turn it into a floating brothel and casino, its presence offered hope to many of our scientists.

On the night before the Belle Dame's test voyage, they staged a revolt. Using crossbows they had made in their spare time, they shot the guards on the building where I and the other technocrats were quartered and set us free.