Free The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip José Farmer

down and began writing in a little black book. Sam's father said, "Must you write at a time like this?"
    The doctor said, "I must write, though I'd get more writing done if I didn't talk so much. This is a log I keep on all the souls I bring into the world. I intend some day to write a big case history of the infants, find out if any ever amounted to anything. If I can bring one genius, one, into this vale of heavy tears, I will think my life worthwhile. Otherwise, I've been wasting my time bringing thousands of idiots, hypocrites, dogs in the mangers, etc. into this sad place."
    Little Sam wailed, and the doctor said, "Sounds as if he's a lost soul before he's dead, don't he? As if he's bearing the blame for all the sins of the world on his tiny shoulders."
    His father said, "You're a strange man. Evil, I think. Certainly not God-fearing."
    "I pay tribute to the Prince of Darkness, yes," the doctor said.
    The room was filled with the odor of blood, the doctor's boozy breath and cigar and sweat.
    "What're you going to call him? Samuel? That's my name, too! It means 'name of God.' That's a joke. Two Samuels, heh? Sickly little devil, I don't think he'll live. If he does, he'll wish he hadn't"
    His father roared, "Get out of my house, you devil's spawn! What kind of a man are you? Get out! I'll call in another doctor! I won't even let it be known that you attended my wife or had anything to do with this or was even in this bouse. I'll rid this house of your evil odor."
    The doctor, swaying, threw his dirty instruments into the bag and snapped it shut.
    "Very well. But you have delayed my passage through this miserable village of asses. I'm on my way to bigger and better things, my provincial friend. It was only out of the kindness of my heart that I took pity upon you because the quacks that serve this mudhole were out of town. I left the comforts of the tavern to come here and save an infant who would be better off dead, infinitely better. Which reminds me, though I don't know why, that you must pay my fee."
    "I should throw you out of the house and pay you with nothing but curses!" Sam's father said. "But a man has to pay his debts no matter what the circumstances. Here's your thirty pieces of silver."
    "Looks more like paper to me," the doctor said. "Well you can call in your dispenser of pills, folly and death, but just remember that it was Doctor Ecks that dragged your wife and baby from the jaws of death. Ecks, the unknown quantity, the eternal passer-through, the mysterious stranger, the devil dedicated to keeping other poor devils alive, also dedicated to the demon whiskey, since I can't abide rum."
    "Out! Out!" Sam's father shouted. "Out before I kill you!"
    "There's no gratitude in this world," Doctor Ecks mumbled. "Out of nothing I come, through a world populated by asses I pass, and into nothing I go. Ecks equals nothing."
    Sweating, eyes open and rigid as those of a stone Apollo, Sam watched the drama. The scene and the actors were enclosed in a ball of pale yellow light through which veins of red shot like lightning and then faded out. The doctor turned his face once before he walked through the door of the house in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. He took the cigar from his mouth and grinned mockingly, revealing long yellow teeth with two abnormally white, abnormally long canines.
    As if the scene were a film being shut off, it blinked out Through the door which had been in Sam's birthplace and now was the door of the bamboo hut, another figure entered. It was momentarily silhouetted by the bright starlight, then slid into the shadows. Sam closed his eyes and steeled himself for another frightening experience. He groaned and wished he had not taken the dreamgum. Yet he knew that under the terror was a thread of delight. He hated and enjoyed this. The birth-drama was a fantasy, created by him to explain why he was the kind of man he was. But what was this shadowy figure moving silently and intently as