When he was seventy-two years old, the brave soldier of Napoleon died in bed in Paris.
It was a measure of Clemens' affection for him that he had told him about the Mysterious Stranger, the renegade Ethical. Today the riverboat was docked while Clemens interviewed volunteers for a post aboard. The hideous events after the right-bank stones had failed were two months behind the crew, and The River was now free of the stench and jampack of rotting bodies.
De Marbot, clad in a duraluminum helmet topped by a roach of glue-stiffened fish-leather strips and a duraluminum cuirass, looking like the popular conception of a Trojan warrior, walked up and down the long line of candidates. His job was to preinterview them. In this way, he could sometimes eliminate the unfit and so save his captain time and work. .
Near the middle of the line he saw four men who seemed to know each other well. He stopped by the first, a tall muscular dark man with huge hands. His color and very wavy hair could only mean that he was a quadroon, and he was.
At de Marbot's polite inquiry, he said that his name was Thomas Million Turpin. He'd been born in Georgia sometime around 1873—he wasn't sure just when—but his parents had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, when he was young. His father operated the Silver Dollar, a tavern in the red-light district. In his youth Tom and his brother Charles had purchased a share of the Big Onion Mine near Searchlight, Nebraska, and worked it, but, failing to find gold after two years, had roamed the west for a while before returning to St. Louis.
Turpin had settled down in the District and worked as a bouncer and piano player, among other things. By 1899 he was the most important man in the area, controlling the music, liquor, and gambling. His Rosebud Cafe, the center of his little empire, was famous throughout the nation. Downstairs it was a tavern-restaurant and upstairs/a "hotel," a whorehouse.
Turpin, however, was more than a big-time political boss, he was, according to his own statement, a great piano player, though he admitted he wasn't quite as good as Louis Chauvin. A frontiersman in syncopated music, he'd been known as the father of ragtime in St. Louis, and his "Harlem Rag," published in 1897, was the first ragtime piece published by a Negro. He'd written the famous "St. Louis Rag" for the opening of the world fair there, but that had been postponed. He died in 1922, and since he'd been on the Riverworld had wandered up and down.
"I hear there's a piano on your boat," he said, grinning. "I'd sure like to get my hands on them ivories."
"There are ten pianos," de Marbot said. "Here. Take this." •
He handed Turpin a wand of wood six inches long and incised with the initials: M.T.
"When you get to the table, give this to the captain."
Sam would be happy. He loved ragtime, and he once had said that he couldn't get enough players of popular music on his boat. Moreover, Turpin looked big and capable. He had to be to have bossed the rough black red-light district.
The man behind him was a wild-looking Chinese named Tai-Peng. He was about five feet ten inches tall and had large glowing green eyes and a demonic face. His black hair hung to his waist, and three irontree blooms were stuck in its crown. He claimed in a loud shrill voice to have been a great swordsman, lover, and poet in his time, which was that of the T'ang dynasty in the eighth century A.D.
"I was one of the Six Idlers of the Bamboo Stream and also of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup. I can compose poetry on the spot in my native Turkish, in Chinese, in Korean, in English, in French, and in Esperanto. When it comes to sword-play, I am as quick as a hummingbird and as deadly as a viper."
De Marbot laughed and said he didn't choose the recruits. But he gave the Chinese a wand and moved on to the man behind Tai-Peng.
This was a short man, though still taller than de Marbot, dark-skinned, black-eyed, fat, and with a bulging Buddha's belly. His eyelids were slightly epicanthic, and his nose was aquiline. His clefted chin was massive. He, he said, was Ah Qaaq, and he came from the eastern coast of a land which de Marbot would call Mexico. His people had called the area in which they lived the Land of Rain. He didn't know exactly when he lived according to the Christian calendar, but from his talks with a scholarly man it must have been around 100 B.C. His native tongue was Mayan; he was a citizen of the people that later cultures had called Olmec.
"Ah, yes," de Marbot said. "I have heard talk of the Olmecs. We have some very learned men at the captain's table."
De Marbot understood that the "Olmecs" had founded the first civilization in Mesoamerica and that all others in pre-Columbian times had derived from it, the later Mayas, the Toltecs, the Aztecs, what have you. The man, if he was an ancient Mayan, did not have the artificially flattened head and the squint-eyes so favored by that people. But on reflection de Marbot realized that these, of course, would have been rectified by the Ethicals.
"You're that rarity, a fat man," de Marbot said. "We of the Not For Hire lead an extremely active life, no room for indolents and overeaters, and we also require that the candidate have something special to qualify him."
Ah Qaaq said in a high voice, though not as high as the Chinese's, "The fat cat may look soft, but it is very strong and very quick. Let me show you."
He took the handle of his flint-headed axe, a piece of oak eighteen inches long and two inches thick, and he snapped it as if it were a sugarstick. Then he picked up the head and let the Frenchman heft it.
"About ten pounds, that one, I'd say," de Marbot said.
"Watch!"
Ah Qaaq took the axehead and hurled it as if it were a baseball. Eyes wide, de Marbot watched it soar high and far before it struck the grass.
"Mon Dieu! No one but the mighty Joe Miller could throw that as far! I congratulate you, sinjoro. Here. Take this."
"I am also an excellent archer and axeman," Ah Qaaq said quietly. "You won't regret taking me aboard."
The man behind the Olmec was exactly his height and had a squat Herculean physique. He even looked like Ah Qaaq with his eaglish nose and rounded clefted chin. But he had no fat, and though he was almost as dark, he was no Amerindian. His name, he said, was Gilgamesh.
"I have arm-wrestled Ah Qaaq," Gilgamesh said. "Neither of us can defeat the other. I am also a great axeman and archer."
"Very good! Well, my captain will be pleased with your tales of Sumeria, of which I'm sure you have plenty. And he will also be pleased to have a king and a god aboard. Kings he's met, though he's not been too happy with most of them. Gods, well, that's a different story. The captain has never met a god before! Here. Take this!"
He moved on, and when he was out of sight and earshot of the Sumerian—if he was one—laughed until he rolled on the grass. After a while he got up, wiped off the tears, and resumed his interviewing.
The four were accepted with six others. When they marched up the gangplank onto the boiler deck, they saw Monat the extra-Terrestrial standing by the railing, his keen eyes sweeping over them. They were startled, but de Marbot told them to go on. He would explain all about the strange creature later on.
The recruits did not meet Monat that evening as planned. Two women quarreled about a man and started shooting at each other. Before the argument was settled, one woman was badly wounded and the other had jumped off the boat, her grail in one hand and a box of possessions in the other. The man decided to leave also since he preferred the woman who'd done the shooting. The boat was stopped, and he was let off. Sam was so upset that he called off the introductions in the grand salon until the next day.