The Merry Men of the Riverworld (3 page)

Verne sank back, face ashen. “Then perhaps we truly are lost,” he said. “Providence led us to that spot, and in our pride we failed to see the dangers we courted.”

“Providence may have brought us together for a reason. Don't you wonder at the convenience of it all?”

“What do you mean?”

Robin stood and began to pace. “You have been driven from your town by a thug and his men. After that you meet me, a man with a band of loyal followers who are looking to fix the wrongs of the world. Can you think of a more appropriate partnership?”

“Are you thinking what I am, sir?”

“If you're thinking we might be able to wrest control of New Chicago from Capone—then yes.”

“I must think on it,” Verne said. “Violence has never been the answer to the world's problems.”

“But sometimes it is the only solution,” Robin said.

Verne closed his eyes. “Find Claude,” he said. “I will have him bring your men aboard. We will talk again later.”

That afternoon Will Scarlet, who'd had spent a year training as a medic before dropping out of the program, went to see Jules Verne. Robin hoped he'd be able to help the technocrat. Will was the closest thing to a doctor on board.

While they waiting for the prognosis, Robin met with Little John in the salon. It was a beautifully decorated room; the tables all had floral designs inlaid with ivory taken from the bones of the giant fish that lived at the bottom of the River. Robin had only seen such fish twice ... once when a twenty foot long corpse had washed ashore; another time when a fisherman had been devoured whole while Robin and his men were passing through his town. Robin wondered how Verne had gotten so many of their bones that he could afford to waste them on decorations. Perhaps the riverfish were more numerous around New Chicago.

Robin and Little John drew up chairs and sat facing each other. The two always conferred on major decisions; the former President was a wise man, brilliant in many ways, and his advice carried a great deal of weight with Robin.

“I'm not sure I like the sound of this Capone fellow,” Little John said.

“We'll handle him easily enough.”

“Edmond—listen to what you're saying.”

“I heard myself.”

“You're an actor, not a hero. I admit it's been fun to play this game with you, to romp through the hills as Robin Hood and his men would have done. It's been grand, a chance to live out my childhood daydreams. But perhaps the time has come to end this charade. We aren't bandits from the greenwood, we're civilized men. And Capone will not be easy to scare off.”

“I don't want to scare him. I want him locked up—or, lacking that, dead and resurrected a million miles away.”

“I doubt we are capable of doing it.”

“Have you forgotten all we've accomplished?”

Lincoln's bushy brows knit together. “We've scared a few peasants into giving up grail-slavery. We've broken up a few drunken brawls. We've explored a thousand miles of this damned endless River. That's all. We aren't an avenging army, and we're not the fist of God. This man Capone is a dangerous criminal. He has surrounded himself with a private army, if what Verne told you is true. Twenty against two hundred is suicide.”

“So you're saying we should leave him there, building the biggest criminal empire in the history of mankind?”

“I'm not saying that, either. I'm saying we can't recapture a city by treating it like a romp. It will take planning, strategy, and a lot of patience.”

“What about luck?”

“You're impossible!”

“Little John—”

“Call me Abraham!”

“Little Abraham, then. I've always felt I should have a calling. My life was more or less forced on me—first by my parents, then by my acting troupe, then by a string of agents. I've always known I was meant for something greater. Since our resurrection, that feeling has come over me stronger than ever. My assuming the role of Robin Hood, our finding Verne and this riverboat, everything—it's all been leading up to this moment. It's destiny. The dice are rolling, and I can hear them.”

Lincoln stood. “It's time to put away your childish dreams,” he said. “If we are going to take New Chicago from Capone, we will need a man to lead us, not a character from storybooks.”

“Are you sure?”

“That I am.” Abraham Lincoln stalked from the room.

Robin Hood, né Edmond Bryor, sat alone for a long time, deep in thought.

Will Scarlet's prognosis was promising: he had cleaned and dressed Jules Verne's wound, then sewed it up properly, and now felt certain his patient would recover completely in time. “His problem was loss of blood and a bad infection,” he reported. “Luckily no vital organs were damaged.”

It was welcome news to Robin. “Is there anything else you can do?” he asked.

“Let him sleep. It's the best thing for him right now.”

“Good,” Robin said, nodding. “Stay with him. Let me know if you need anything.”

Two days later Jules Verne sent word that he wished to see Robin again. Verne looked vastly improved, Robin thought when he entered the cabin. The color had returned to his cheeks, and his voice was stronger and more authoritative.

“I have decided to agree to your plan,” Verne said with no preamble. “We will return and try to win back New Chicago. I will leave the details to you—I am a man of science, not violence, as recent events have shown. Whatever you need, I will arrange it. Now, what are your plans?”

“I have none as yet,” Robin said. “Little John and I must study the town, count our resources, and estimate the enemy's strength before committing to anything.”

“Very wise.” Verne nodded slowly. “I have instructed Claude de Ves to give you any help you need. Our diverse talents stand at your disposal, sir.”

“Thank you,” Robin said. “Your trust in me is not misplaced. You won't be disappointed.”

Robin held no false illusions about himself or the task at hand: he knew it would be difficult, that the fighting would probably be bloody and violent, that some of his men—perhaps even he himself—would die as a result. But he also knew Capone needed to be removed from power, and that he was the one man capable of carrying it off successfully.

The next day, Claude de Ves gave Robin and his men a tour of the riverboat. They saw the steam engines driving the paddlewheels and the huge bins where they kept wood for fuel; they saw the pilot house and the luxurious salons; they saw the cabins and the empty cargo holds.

The riverboat had tremendous potential, Robin decided, but they wouldn't be able to use it in their attack. It was too large and too obvious—Capone would have too much time to prepare for a fight if he saw it coming. Besides, Verne and his men would be easily overwhelmed by a Capone's superior forces. No, Robin decided, given the odds against them, they would have to rely on their wits to gain the upper hand.

The riverboat paddled upRiver for three weeks, crossing hundreds of miles, passing thousands of different cultures. Aztecs, Minoans, modern Japanese, 17th century Indians ... the sheer volume of people was staggering.

During that time Robin drilled his men and Verne's mercilessly in the art of the longbow. They made straw targets in the shape of men and shot them again and again behind the pilot house. The pilot house's back wall became filled with chips and holes from being hit by countless arrowheads. Slowly, though, their accuracy improved.

In the evenings Robin and his men worked on making more bows and arrows, aided by Verne's crew. Eventually every man and woman on board had two longbows and two dozen arrows. Robin felt certain—and Little John tended to agree—that they would need everyone aboard to retake New Chicago.

When they were a week's walk from New Chicago, the
Belle Dame
slowed and once again put in to shore. This time Robin was the only one to leave. The riverboat would return in three weeks’ time to pick him up; in the meantime it would wait far downRiver, where Little John and Will Scarlet and the others would continue to drill Verne's men in archery.

Robin's mission was simple: he would scout the land, see New Chicago, get an estimate of Capone's strength, and return.

The trip to New Chicago proved disappointingly uneventful. The native populations along the River were sparse—most, Robin learned, had migrated to New Chicago during its early days. Since Al Capone's rise to power, the remaining people had migrated downRiver ... rumors of slave camps, spread by a few escapees, did the trick.

As he walked, every possible plan for taking Chicago ran through Robin's head. Storming the walls ... poisoning Capone's food ... leading a slave revolt ... all seemed equally mad, and equally improbable.

One day out from the New Chicago, he blundered into a patrol of Capone's thugs: six men, all armed with swords and shields. They ringed Robin at once, weapons drawn.

“Throw down your weapons,” their leader said with a cruel sneer, “and we may let you live.”

Robin stood wish his back to a tree, his bow drawn, an arrow ready to fire.

“Not a chance,” Robin said. “Another step and you're a dead man.” His arrow targeted the man's chest. “An arrow will go through that shield you're holding like a hot knife through butter.”

The man shifted a bit uneasily. “Here now,” he began. “You can't—”

“I heard there's a city ahead where men with certain skills can find a good life,” Robin went on. “Is that true, or not?”

“What skills do you have?”

“I make weapons.”

“What sort?”

“Everything from bows to guns.”

“Guns, you say?”

“That's right.”

Grinning, the man stepped back and sheathed his sword. “Why didn't you say so, friend? We've had problems with the natives around here, so we can't be too careful. You'll be welcome in New Chicago, all right—the boss always has a place for another man with useful skills.”

Robin lowered his bow. “I should think so,” he said.

That New Chicago was a pearl buried in a pig sty was Robin's first impression. The original town, surrounded by a stockade, was exactly as Verne had described it. The streets were wide, the houses laid out along tree-lined avenues radiating from a large central plaza. The huge council building—now Capone's palace— stood at the exact center of town.

Around the stockade, though, lay a huge slum. Gaunt-faced men and women stared as Robin and Capone's man strode past. Thousands of hovels, flimsy constructions of logs, clay from the River, and bamboo, had been built between New Chicago and the River with no concern for order or sanitation. The reek of human waste was nauseating.

Robin covered his mouth and nose with a bit of cloth.
Is there no degradation to which Man will not fall?
he wondered.

“Don't worry,” the man to his right whispered, as though in answer to his unspoken thought. “You can't smell Pisstown from the city most days.”

“Good,” Robin said.

At the stockade's gate, guards took Robin's longbow and quiver of arrows. Robin didn't protest; he knew it was a small price to pay for the information he would gain.

To his surprise, he was taken almost at once to a small whitewashed building fronting the central plaza. Two guards escorted him to an office. An engraved brass plaque beside the door said A. EICHMANN.

“Come in,” a young man with sandy hair said in a heavy German accent. “Please, sit.”

Robin lowered himself into a straight-backed wooden chair. It creaked faintly under his weight. He allowed his gaze to travel leisurely around the room—it was bare except for the desk—then back to Eichmann's thin, unsmiling face.

Eichmann had a paper in front of him. He dipped a pen into a clay inkwell, then asked, “Name?”

“Robin Huntington,” Robin said, and spelled it. Eichmann's pen made scritch-scratch sounds.

“Date of death?”

“The year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-six.”

Eichmann noted it down, then paused to study him. “Skills?”

“I was a master gunsmith.”

“Excellent, excellent.” Eichmann wrote that down, too, then deposited the form in a small tray on the corner of his desk. Opening a drawer, he removed a card. The paper looked thick and coarse, but words had been printed on it with a printing press of some sort. Eichmann wrote Robin's name on the card, along with a series of numbers.

“This is your identification card,” he explained. “Carry it with you at all times. You will need it to enter and leave buildings, use the Provider for your meals, and requisition tools and equipment for your work.” He smiled. “You're lucky you're a gunsmith—the boss is big on weapons. He wants pistols as quickly as possible, and if you work hard to keep him happy, you'll find the benefits and privileges are enormous. As it is, you'll be among the elite of the scientific teams.”

“That sounds good to me,” Robin said.

Eichmann gestured to the guards. “Find him a room in the dormitories,” he said.

The next morning, in the gunshop, Robin met the three other gunsmiths working for Capone. The head of the gun project, a Dutchman named Emile van Deskol who had died in 1865, gave Robin a tour of their shop. A dozen apprentices, varying in age from about seventeen to twenty or twenty-one, were hand-carving rifle stocks, pistol grips, and chipping flint for flintlocks. A few pistol barrels had been cast in iron, and their bores were being smoothed and polished.

“As you can see,” Emile said, “our progress is slow. The iron is poor, our casting methods worse, and the work is tedious and time-consuming. It will be months if not years before we have a single working pistol.”

Robin frowned. He was no expert, but progress on the weapons seemed far more rapid than that. He made no mention of his suspicions, though.

“This will be your area,” Emile said, indicating an empty table and bench at the back of the shop. “Each of us works on weapons of our own design. Any tools you need will be requisitioned, as well as assistants. Life is cheap; the more people we put to gainful employment, the better, if you understand me.”

“I believe I do.” Robin began to smile. Emile had a pretty good racket of his own going on ... as long as he looked busy and useful, he would be immune to Capone's bullying. In the meantime he'd pull as many people up from the slum of Pisstown as he could.