The Merry Men of the Riverworld (2 page)

“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 stacks leaving twin gray 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 shore. The others followed. He arrived just as the boat reached the shallows and waded out to help pull them to shore.

"Bonjour,"
one of the men with swords said.
"Je m'appel Claude de Ves. Je suis—"

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?”

“Oui.”

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 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 maneuvered them around and began to row toward the riverboat with powerful strokes.

Once Robin glanced back and saw Little John standing 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 glass in the windows was cloudy and full of bubbles. The brass 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 labor.

“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 Loxley?” 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?”

“Touché.”

“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 a most 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 God 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 civilization would be modeled 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 late nineteenth century. Also among us were Russians from 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 circumvented the language barrier. The Russians, on the other hand, stayed with us. One among them, a fiery youth with an unpronounceable name who had us call him Lenin, began preaching socialism to the masses, 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 organizational system he outlined seemed workable, even practical in our current circumstances.

I combined his thoughts with my own. As I talked to my fellows, I found among my 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 sturdy 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 analysis 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.

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 both our neighbors and whatever marauding animals this world might harbor. Soon we were smelting bronze, then iron. Sand, with some refinement, proved suitable for the crude glass 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 ambassadors 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 fueled 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.

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 to 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 masses, but I understand his plan now. He wanted to isolate us from the population so he could control us. I'd heard of many 20th 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 no longer in control. In the space 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—us on the floor, him 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 it would bring.

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 assume 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 which 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 of their tobacco, marijuana, and dreamsticks. Anyone who didn't have a useful skill suddenly found himself drafted into a labor 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.

It took seconds for them to explain their mad plan. We would seize the riverboat and set off to start a new technocratic state. This time we would not repeat the mistakes that had brought Capone to power. This time we really would create a perfect world.

To make things short, Capone somehow found out about the rescue attempt. He sent the bulk of his men to stop us—to kill us, rather, since the riverboat was finished. If none of the scientists could be trusted, our usefulness to him was ended.

It came down to hand-to-hand fighting. I had written about it, had studied fisticuffs, but still found myself little prepared for true mortal combat. One of Capone's lieutenants slashed my belly open with a sword. I fell, unconscious.

I awakened here, aboard the
Belle Dame
. A handful of men had rallied around my fallen body, fought their way free to the riverboat, and launched. We were searching the river for another suitable site for our technocracy when you contacted us.

Robin sat in thought when Jules Verne finished his tale. Every word of it rang true; he had no doubts about its veracity.

“What you are looking for,” Robin said at last, “is a place like the last one, with abundant metals and wood, with easy access to the River, and a Provider—what we call a grail.”

“That is correct.” Verne leaned forward again, wincing a bit from pain. “Do you know of such a place?”

“We've travelled thousands of miles along the River, always heading upstream,” Robin said. “I've kept an eye out for metal along the way, and I know of places where lead and copper have been found. But iron ore? No, there's none.”