The Fabulous Riverboat Read Online Free PDF Page B

Joe Miller?" Lothar asked.
    "His real name is a rattling jawbreaker, longer than any technical term of a German philosopher," Clemens said. "I couldn't pronounce it when I first met him, I never did. After he learned enough English to tell me a joke—he was so eager he could hardly wait—I decided to call him Joe Miller. He told me a tale so hoary I couldn't believe it. I knew it'd been around a long time; I first heard it, in a slightly different form, when I was a boy in Hannibal, Missouri. And I was still hearing it, much to my disgust, for the hundred thousand'th time, when I was an old man. But to have to listen to that story from the lips of a man who'd died one hundred thousand years, maybe a million, before I was born!" "And the story?"
    "Well, there was this traveling hunter who'd been tracking a wounded deer all day. Night came and with it a violent storm. Seeing the light of a fire, the hunter stopped off at a cave. He asked the old medicine man who lived in it if he could spend the night there. And the old medicine man said, 'Sure, but we're pretty crowded here. You'll have to sleep with my daughter.' Need I go any further?"
    "Tham didn't laugh," Joe rumbled. "Thometimeth I think he ain't got a thenthe of humor."
    Clemens tweaked Joe's projectile-shaped nose affectionately. He said, "Thometimeth I think you're right. But actually I'm the most humorous man in the world because I'm the most sorrowful. Every laugh is rooted in pain."
    He puffed on his cigar for a while and stared at the shore. Just before dusk, the ship had entered the area where the last of the intense heat from the meteorite had struck. Aside from the few irontrees, everything had been whistled off in a shock of searing flame. The irontrees had given up their huge leaves to the flames, and even the enormously resistant bark had burned off and the wood beneath, harder than granite, had become charred. Moreover, the blast had tilted or leveled many of these, snapping them off at the base. The grailstones had been blackened and were out of plumb but had retained their shape.
    Finally, he said, "Lothar, now is as good a time as any for you to learn something of why we're on this quest. Joe can tell it in his way; I'll explain anything you don't understand. It's a strange tale, but no stranger, actually, than anything that's happened here since we all woke up from the dead."
    "I'm thirthty," Joe said. "Let me get a drink firtht."
    The dark-blue eyes, shadowed in the bone rings, focused upon the hollow of the cup. He seemed to peer therein as if he were trying to conjure up the scenes he was about to describe. Guttural, his tongue hitting certain consonants harder than others, thus giving his English a clanging quality, yet comical with its lisping, voice rising up from a chest deep and resonant as the well of the Delphian oracle, he told of the Misty Tower.
    "Thomevhere upon The River, I avoke, naked ath I am now. I vath in a plathe that mutht be far north on thith planet, because it vath colder and the light vath not ath bright. There vere no humanth, yutht uth... uh, titantropth, ath Tham callth uth. Ve had grailth, only they vere much larcher than yourth, ath you can thee. And ve got no beer and vithkey. Ve had never known about alcohol, tho ve had none in our grailth. Ve drank The River vater.
    "Ve thought ve vere in the plathe that you go to vhen you die, that the... uh . .'. godth had given uth thith plathe and all ve needed. Ve vere happy, ve mated and ate and thlept and fought our enemieth. And I vould have been happy there if it had not been for the thyip." "He means ship," Sam said.
    "That'th vhat I thaid. Thyip. Pleathe don't interrupt, Tham. You've made me unhappy enough by telling me that there are no godth. Even if I've theen the godth." Lothar said, "Seen the gods?"
    "Not egthactly. I thaw vhere they live. I did thee their thyip."
    Von Richthofen said, "What? What're you talking about?"
    Clemens waved his cigar. "Later. Let him talk. If