The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page B

passed by the notch, the sparkle died. The tower and the object above it faded into darkness and mist. Joe, crying out at the sight of the flying object, stepped back. His leg struck the grail left by the unknown pilgrim.
    He swung his arms to regain his balance, but not even his apelike agility could save him. He toppled backward, bellowing horror as he turned over and over. Once he glimpsed the faces of his companions, a row of dark brown objects with the darker O's of mouths, watching his descent to the clouds and waters beneath.
    "I don't remember hitting the vater," Joe said. "I avoke translated about tventy mileth from where Tham Clementh vath. Thith vath a plathe vhere Northmen of the tenth thentury A.D. lived. I had to thtart learning a new language all over again. The little nothelethth people vere thcared of me, but they vanted me to fight for them. Then I met Tham, and ve became buddieth."
    They were silent for a while. Joe lifted his glass to his thin and chimpanzee-flexible lips and poured out the rest of the liquor. Somber, the other two watched him. The only sign of brightness about them was the glow of their cigar ends.
    Von Richthofen said, "This man who wore a glass circlet with a sunburst. What did you say his name was?" "I didn't." "Well, then, what was it?"
    "Ikhnaton. Tham knowth more about him than I do, and I lived for four yearth with him. At leatht, that'th vhat Tham thayth. But—" here Joe looked smug—"I know the man and all Tham knowth ith a few hithtorical factth, thocalled."
     

7
     
    Von Richthofen said good night and went belowdecks. Sam paced back and forth, stopping once to light a cigarette for the helmsman. He wanted to sleep but could not. Insomnia had been skewering him for years; it drove through the middle of his brain, which spun on it like a wild gear, disengaged from his body's need for rest.
    Joe Miller sat hunched against the railing and waited for his friend—the only man he trusted and loved—to go belowdecks. Presently his head drooped, the bludgeonnose describing a weary arc, and he snored. The noise was like that of trees being felled in the distance. Sequoias split, screeched, cracked. Vast sighings and bubblings alternated with the woodchoppers' activities.
    "Thleep veil, little chum," Sam said, knowing that Joe dreamed of that forever-lost Earth where mammoths and giant bears and lions roamed and where beautiful—to him—females of his own species lusted after him. Once he groaned and then whimpered, and Sam knew that he was dreaming again of being seized by a bear which was chomping on his feet. Joe's feet hurt day and night. Like all of his kind, he was too huge and heavy for bipedal locomotion. Nature had experimented with a truly giant subhuman ^species and then she had dismissed them as failures.
    "The Rise and Fall of the Flatfeet," Sam said. "An article I shall never write."
    Sam gave a groan, a weak echo of Joe's. He saw Livy's half smashed body, given him briefly by the waves, then taken away. Or had she really been Livy? Had he not seen her at least a dozen times before while staring through the telescope at the multitudes on the banks? Yet, when he had been able to talk Bloodaxe into putting ashore just to see if the face was Livy's, he had always been disappointed. Now there was no reason to believe the corpse had been his wife's.
    He groaned again. How cruel if it had been Livy! How like life! To have been so close and then to have her taken away a few minutes before he would have been reunited with her. And to have her cast upon the decks as if God—or whatever sneering forces ran the universe—were to laugh and to say, "See how close you came! Suffer, you miserable conglomeration of atoms! Be in pain, wretch! You must pay with tears and agony!"
    "Pay for what?" Sam muttered, biting on his cigar. "Pay for what crimes? Haven't I suffered enough on Earth, suffered for what I did do and even more for what I didn't do?"
    Death had come to him on Earth,