Farmer, Philip Jose - Riverworld 5 - Gods of Riverworld

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A limited first edition of this book has been published by Phantasia Press.

The author gratefully acknowledges permission from Charles Scribner's Sons to reprint a line from "Luke Havergal" from The Children

of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897).

This Berkley book contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

GODS OF RIVERWORLD

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons

PRINTING HISTORY

G. P. Putnam's edition / October 1983 Berkley edition / January 1985

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-07448-X

A BERKLEY BOOK « TM 757,375 Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The name "BERKLEY" and the stylized "B" with design

are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.

PRINTED IN THK UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To those who won't knuckle under.

Author's Preface

Those who have not read the previous volumes of the River-world series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The

Fabulous Riverboat, The Dark Design, and The Magic Labyrinth, should go to the outline at the back of this

book. There the reader can acquaint himself or herself with some events and items only referred to en passant

in the book at hand. I have written the outline to avoid lengthy recapitulation. Those familiar with the series so

far might also want to read the outline to refresh their memories about certain matters.

I stated in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth, that it would be the final book in the series. I had intended

it to be so, but I did leave myself a tiny escape hatch in the final paragraph. My unconscious knew better than

my conscious, and it made me (the devil!) install that little door. Some time after the fourth volume appeared, I

got to thinking about the vast powers possessed by the people who had entered the tower and how tempting the

powers would be.

Also, as 1 knew and some readers pointed out, the truths revealed in the fourth volume might not be the final

truths after all.

The opinions and conclusions about economics, ideology, politics, sexuality, and other matters re Homo

sapiens vary according to the characters' knowledge or biases. They are not necessarily my own. I am

convinced that all races have an equal mental potential and that the same spectrum of stupidity, mediocre

intelligence, and genius runs through every race. All races, I'm convinced, have an equal potential for evil or

good, love or hate, and saintliness or sin. I'm also convinced from sixty years of wide reading and close

observation that human life has always been both savage and comically absurd but that we are not a totally

unredeemable species.

Dramatis Personae

Thirty-five billion people from every country and every age of Earth's history were resurrected along the great and

winding River of Riverworld. The reader will be relieved to hear that only a few of them will play a part in this story.

Logo: A grandson of King Priam of ancient Troy, born in the twelfth century B.C., slain at the age of four by a

Greek soldier during the fall of that city. Resurrected on the Garden-world by nonhuman extra-Terrestrials and

raised there. He became a member of the Ethical Council of Twelve, which was charged with creating

Riverworld and resurrecting there all human beings who had died between 99,000 B.C. and A.D. 1983. He

became a renegade and involved various Terrestrial resurrectees in his plot to overthrow the other Ethicals and

their Agents and to subvert the original plan for the destiny of those reborn in Riverworld.

Richard Francis Burton: An Englishman, born in 1821, died in 1890. During his lifetime a cause celebre and

bete noire. A famous explorer, linguist, anthropologist, translator, poet, author, and swordsman. He discovered

Lake Tanganyika; entered the Muslim sacred city of Mecca in disguise

(and from the experience wrote the best book ever written about Mecca); did the most famous translation of A

Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), full of footnotes and e'ssays derived from his vast knowledge

of the esoterics of African and Oriental life; was noted as one of the greatest swordsmen of his day; and was the

first European to enter the forbidden city of Harar, Ethiopia — and leave alive.

Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves: Born in England in 1852, died there in 1934. Daughter of Henry George

Liddell, domestic chaplain to the Prince Consort, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, dean of Christ

Church,'Oxford, and co-editor of the famous Scott-Liddell A Greek-English Lexicon, which is still today the

standard Classical Greek-English dictionary. When ten years old, Alice inspired Lewis Carroll to write his

Alice in Wonderland and to base his fictional Alice on her.

Peter Jairus Frigate: An American science fiction writer, born 1918, died 1983.

AphraBehn: An Englishwoman, born 1640, died 1689. She was a spy for Charles II in the Netherlands, and

later a famous—or infamous—novelist, poetess, and playwright. The first English woman to support herself

solely by writing.

Nured-Din el-Musafir: Born in Moorish Spain in 1164, died in Baghdad 1258. A Muslim, though not

orthodox, and a Sufi, a member of that mystical yet realistic discipline to which Omar Khayyam belonged.

Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcelln, Baron de Marbot: Born 1782 in France, died there in 1854. Like Nur, small

in stature but very strong and swift. He served very bravely under Napoleon and was wounded many times. His

Memoirs of His

Life and Campaigns so fascinated A. Conan Doyle that he modeled his stories of Brigadier Gerard, the dashing

French soldier, on de Marbot's exploits.

Tom Million Turpin: Black American born in 1871 in Savannah, Georgia; died in 1922 in St. Louis. Turpin

was a piano player and composer of considerable talent; his Harlem Rag, published in 1897, was the first

published ragtime piece by a black composer. He was also the boss of the Tenderloin red-light district in St.

Louis.

Li Po: Born in 710 of Turkish-Chinese lineage in an outlying district of ancient China; died in 762 in China.

Considered by many to be China's greatest poet, he was also a famous swordsman, drunkard, lover, and

wanderer. In The Magic Labyrinth, his pseudonym was Tai-Peng.

Star Spoon: A female contemporary of Li Po, who suffered much both in China and on the Riverworld.

The Earthbred and their fates are Yours

In all their stations, Their multitudinous languages and many colors

Are Yours, and we whom from the many You made different, O Master of the Choice.

—ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HYMN

And hell is more than half of paradise.

X —EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, "LUKE HAVEKGAL"

When Moses struck the rock, he forgot to stand out of the way of the water and so barely escaped drowning.

—THE BOOK OF JASHAR

Loga had cracked like an egg.

At 10:02, his image had appeared on the wall-screens of the apartments of his eight fellow tenants. Their view was

somewhat above him, and they could see him only from his naked navel to a point a few inches above his head. The sides

of the desk almost met the edges of their field of vision, and some of the wall and floor behind him showed.

Loga looked like a red-haired, green-eyed Buddha who had lived for years in an ice cream factory and had been unable to

resist its product. Though he had lost twenty pounds in the last three weeks, he was still very fat.

He was, however, a very happy Buddha. Smiling, his pumpkin face seeming to glow, he spoke in Esperanto. "I've made

quite a discovery! It'll solve the problem of ..."

He glanced to his right.

"Sorry. Thought I heard something."

"You and Frigate," Burton said. "You're getting paranoid. We've searched every one of the thirty-five thousand, seven

hundred and ninety-three rooms in the tower, and ..."

The screens flickered. Loga's body and face shimmered, elongated, then dwarfed. The interruption lasted for perhaps five

seconds.' Burton was surprised. This was the first time that any screen had displayed interference or malfunction.

The image steadied and became clear.

"Yaas?" Burton drawled. "What's so exciting?"

The electronic vision blinked into enigma.

Burton started, and he clamped his hands on the arms of his chair. They were a hold on reality. What he was seeing

certainly seemed to be unreal.

Zigzag cracks had run from the corners of Loga's lips and

18 / Philip Jose Farmer

curved up over his cheeks and into his hair. They were deep and seemed to go through his skin and the flesh to the mouth

cavity and the bone.

Burton shot up from his chair.

"Loga! What is it?"

Cracks had now spread down across the Ethical's face, chest, bulging belly, arms and hands.

Blood spurted onto his crazing skin and the desk.

Still smiling, he fell apart like a shattered egg, and he toppled sideways to the right from the armless chair. Burton heard a

sound as of glass breaking. Now all he could see of Loga was the upper part of an arm, the fragments stained as if they

were pieces of a broken bottle of wine.

The flesh and the blood melted. Only bright pools were left.

Burton had become rigid, but, when he heard Loga cry out, he jumped.

"I tsab u!"

The cry was followed by a thump, as if a heavy body had struck the floor.

Burton voice-activated other viewers in Loga's room. There was no one there, unless the red puddles on the floor were

Loga's remains.

Burton sucked in his breath.

Seven screens sprang into light on Burton's wall. Each held the image of a tenant. Alice's big dark eyes were larger than

normal, and her face was pale.

"Dick? That couldn't have been Loga! But it sounded like him!"

"You saw him!" Burton said. "How could he have cried out? He was dead!"

The others spoke at once, so shaken that each had reverted to his or her native tongue. Even the unflappable Nur was

speaking in Arabic.

"Quiet!" Burton shouted, raising his hands. Immediately thereafter, he realized that he had spoken in English. That did not

matter; they understood him.

"I don't know what happened any more than you do. Some of it couldn't have happened, and so it didn't. I'll meet you all

outside Loga's apartment. At once. Bring your arms!"

Gods of Riverworld / 19

He removed from a cabinet two weapons that he had thought he would never need again. Each had a butt like a pistol's, a

barrel three inches in diameter and a foot long, and at the firing end, a sphere the size of a large apple.

Alice's voice came from her screen.

"Will the horrors never stop?"

"They never do for long," he said. "In this life or that."

Alice's triangular face and large dark eyes were set in that withdrawn expression he disliked so much.

He said harshly, "Snap out of it, Alice!"

"I'll be all right," Alice said. "You know that."

"Nobody is ever all right."

He walked swiftly toward the door. Its sensory device would recognize him but would not open until he had spoken the

code phrase, "Open, O sesame!" in classical Arabic. Alice, in her apartment, would be saying in English, " 'Who are you?'

said the Caterpillar."

The door closed behind him. In the corridor was a large chair made of gray metal and a soft scarlet-dyed material. Burton

sat down on it. The seat and back flowed to fit the contour of his body. He pressed a finger on the black center of a white

disc on the massive left arm of the chair. A long thin metal rod slid up out of the white disc on the right arm. Burton pulled

the rod back, a white light spread out from under the chair, and it rose, stopping two feet above the floor when he eased the

rod into the dead center position. He turned the rod; the chair rotated to face the opposite direction. Using the rod to control

vertical movement, and pressing on the central black spot of the left disc to control speed, he moved the chair down the

corridor.

Presently, floating swiftly past walls displaying animated murals, he joined the others. They hovered in their chairs until

Burton had taken the lead, then followed him. Burton slowed the chair slightly when he entered a huge vertical shaft at the

end of the corridor. With the ease of much practice, he curved the path of the chair up the shaft to the next level and out

into another corridor. A hundred feet beyond the shaft, he halted the chair at the door to Loga's apartment. The chair sank

down onto the floor, and Burton got out. The others were only a few

20 / Philip Jose Fanner

seconds behind him. Babbling, though they were not easily upset, they got out of their chair-vehicles.

The wall extended for three hundred feet from the shaft to an intersecting corridor. Its entire surface displayed a moving

picture in what seemed to be three dimensions. The sky was clear. Far away was a dark mountain range. In the foreground

was a jungle clearing in which was a village of dried-mud huts. Dark Caucasians in the garments worn by Hindus circa 500

B.C. moved among the huts. A slim, dark young man clad only in a loincloth sat under a bo tree. Around him squatted a

dozen men and women, all intently listening to him. He was the historical Buddha, and the scene was not a reconstruction.

It had been filmed by a man or woman, an Ethical agent who had passed for one of them, and whose camera and sound

equipment were concealed in a ring on a finger. At the moment, their conversation was a slight murmur, but a codeword

from a viewer could make it audible. If the viewer did not understand Hindustani, he could use another codeword to switch

the language to Ethical.

Another codeword would make the picture emit the odors abounding near the photographer, though the viewer was usually

better off without these.

Directly in front of Burton was a treestump on which someone had painted a symbol, a green eye inside a pale yellow

pyramid. This had not been in the original film; it marked the entrance to Loga's apartment.

"If he's got the door set for his codeword only, we're screwed," Frigate said. "We'll never get in."

"Somebody got in," Burton said.

"Perhaps," Nur said.

Burton spoke loudly, too loudly, as if he could activate the opening mechanism by force of voice.

"Loga!"

A circular crack ten feet in diameter appeared in the wall. The section moved inward a trifle, then the section became a

wheel and rolled into the wall recess. The scene on it did not fade out but turned with the surface.

"It was set for anyone who wanted to enter!" Alice said.

"Which was not the right thing to do," Burton said.

Nur, the little, dark, and big-nosed Moor, said, "The intruder

Gods of Riverworld / 21

may have overridden the codeword and then reset the mechanism."

"How could he have done that?" Burton said. "And why?"

"How and why was any of this done?"

They went cautiously through the opening, Burton leading. The room was a forty-foot cube. The wall behind the desk was

a pale green, but the others displayed moving scenes, one from that planet called the Gardenworld, one of a tropical island

as seen from a great distance, and one, which Loga must have been facing, of a daytime thunderstorm at a high altitude.

Dark angry clouds roiled, and lightning spat brightly but silently from cloud to cloud.

Incongruous in the clouds, the active screens hung glowing, still displaying the rooms of the tenants.

Red pools glistened on the desk and the hardwood floor.

"Get a sample of the liquid," Burton said to Frigate. "The computer over there can analyze it."

Frigate grunted and went to a cabinet to look for something with which to take a specimen. Burton walked around the room

but saw nothing that looked like a clue. It was too bad that the other viewers had not been on. However, whoever had done

this must have made sure that they were not active.

Nur, Behn, and Turpin went to search nearby rooms. Burton activated the screens that would display these rooms.

Doubtless, none but the three would be in them, but he wanted to keep an eye on them. If one person could be turned into a

liquid, why not others?

He stooped and passed a finger through the wetness on the floor. When he straightened up, he held the tip of the finger a

few inches from his eyes.

"You aren't going to taste it?" Alice said.

"I shouldn't. In some respects, Loga was rather poisonous. It'd be a strange form of cannibalism. Or of Christian

communion."

He licked the finger, made a face, and said, 'The mass of the Mass is inversely proportional to the faith of the square."

Alice should not have been shocked, not after what she had gone through on this world. She did look repulsed, though

whether it was by his act or his words he did not know.

"Tastes like blood, vintage human," he said.

22 / Philip Jose Farmer

Nur, Behn, and Li Po came into the room. "There is no one there," the Chinese said. "Not even his ghost."

Aphra Behn said, "Dick, what did Loga say?"

"I don't think he could have said anything. You saw him crack and melt. How could he have spoken after that?"

"It was his voice," Behn said. "Whoever said it, what did it mean?"

"/ tsab u. That's Ethical for 'Who are you?' "

"That's what the Caterpillar said," Alice murmured.

"And Alice in Wonderland couldn't tell him," Burton said. "The whole event is crazy."

Frigate called them to the console in the corner.

"I put the specimen in the slot and asked for identification. There you are. You couldn't identify an individual by his blood

in A.D. 1983, but now . . ."

The console screen displayed, in English, as Frigate had requested: INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFIED: LOGA.

Beneath that was the analysis. The liquid was composed of those elements which made up the human body, and they were

in the proper proportions. Flesh had indeed turned into liquid.

"Unless the Computer is lying," Nur said.

Burton swung around to face him. "What do you mean by that?"

"The Computer may have an override command. It could have been told to give this report."

"By whom? Only Loga could do that!"

Nur shrugged thin, brown, and bony shoulders.

"Perhaps. An unknown could be in the tower. Remember what Pete thought he heard when we were celebrating our

victory."

"Footsteps in the corridor outside the room!" Burton said. "Frigate said he thought it was his imagination!"

"Ah, but was it?"

It was not necessary to use the console. Burton asked the Computer—as distinguished from the small auxiliary

computers—a few questions. A circular section of the wall glowed, and words on it indicated that no unauthorized person

had entered Loga's room. It denied that Loga's commands had been overridden.

Gods of RivenoorId / 23

"Which it would, I must admit, if this mysterious stranger had told it to do so," Burton said. "If that's happened ... well, by

God, we are in trouble 1"

He asked for a rerun of the scene they had witnessed through their viewers. There was none. Loga had not directed the

Computer to record it.

"I thought everything was going to be clear, unmysterious, straightforward from now on," Frigate said. "I should have

known better. It never is."

He paused, then said softly, "He cracked open like Humpty Dumpty, except that Humpty Dumpty broke after he fell, not

before. And then he turned to water like the Wicked Witch of the West."

Burton, who had died in 1890, did not understand the last reference. He made a mental note to ask the American about it

when there was time.

Burton was going to ask the Computer to send in a robot to clean up the liquid. He decided, after some thought, to leave the

room as it had been found. He would lock the door to the apartment with a codeword that only he knew. And then, if

someone unlocked it ...

What could he do?

Nothing. But he would at least know that there was an intruder.

Nur said, "We've been assuming that what we thought we saw take place here actually did take place."

"You think that what we saw was computer-simulation?" Frigate said.

"It's possible."

"But what about the liquid?" Burton said. "That's not simulated."

"It could be synthetic, a false clue. Loga's voice could have been reproduced to deceive and confuse us."

Alice said, "Wouldn't it be more logical just to abduct Loga? We might have thought that Loga had just gone away for

some reason or another."

"Why in the world would he do that, Alice?" Burton said.

"We were to return to The Valley day after tomorrow," Li Po said. "If Loga wanted to get rid of us, he'd have it done in

24 / Philip Jose Farmer

two days. No, that liquid ... the whole thing ... there's someone else in the tower."

"That makes ten in the tower then," Nur said.

"Ten?" Burton said.

"The eight of us. Plus the unknown who did away with Loga, though more than one might have done that. Plus Fear. That

makes at least ten."

"In a sense, we're gods," Frigate said.

"Gods in a gaol," Burton said.

If they felt godlike, their faces did not show the vast assurance and happiness that must distinguish gods from humanity.

The first area they had gone to from Loga's apartment was the highest story in the tower. Here, in a huge chamber, was the

hangar of the Ethicals. There were two hundred aerial and spacecraft of various kinds there, in any of which they could

have flown to any place in The Valley. However, the hangar hatches had to be opened, and that the Computer refused to

do. Nor could they operate the hatch mechanisms manually.

The unknown who had liquefied Loga had inserted an override command in the Computer. Only he—or she—or they—

had the power to raise the hangar hatches.

They stood close together in a corner of the immense room. The floor, walls, and ceilings were a monotonous,

overpowering gray, the color of prison cells. Their means of escape, the saucer-shaped, sausage-shaped and insect-shaped

machines, seemed to brood in the silence. They were waiting to be used. But by whom?

At the opposite wall, a thousand feet away, was a fat cigar-shaped vessel, the largest of the spaceships. It was five hundred

feet long and had a maximum diameter of two hundred feet. This could be used to travel to the Gardenworld, wherever that

planet was. Loga had said that it would take a hundred years, Earthtime, to arrive at its destination. Loga had also said that

the ship was so computerized-automatic that a person of average intelligence and little knowledge of science could operate

it.

26 / Philip Jose Farmer

Burton's voice broke the silence.

"We have some immediate pressing problems. We must find out who did that horrible thing to Loga. And we must find a

way to cancel the override inhibits in the Computer."

"True," Nur said. "But before we can do that, we must determine just how much control of the Computer we have. What

our limits are. When you fight, you must know your strengths and your weaknesses as well as you know your face in the

mirror. Only thus can we determine how to overcome the strengths and weaknesses of our enemy."

"If he is our enemy," Frigate said.

The others looked at him with surprise.

"That's very good," Nur said. "Don't think in old categories. You're learning."

"What else could he be?" Aphra Behn said.

"I don't know," Frigate said. "We've been so manipulated by Loga that I'm not one hundred percent convinced that he is on

our side or that he is right in what he's done. This unknown ... he may be doing this for the right reason. Still .. ."

"If Loga was his only obstacle, the unknown's removed it," Burton said. "Why doesn't he come forward now? What could

we do to oppose him? We're like children, really. We don't know how to use all the powers available. We don't even know

what they are."

"Not yet," Nur said. "Pete has proposed another way of looking at events. But, for the time being, it's not useful. We have

to assume that the unknown is our enemy until we find out otherwise. Does anyone disagree?"

It was evident that no one did.

Tom Turpin said, "What you say is OK. But I think that the very first thing we got to do is protect ourselves. We got to set

up some kind of defense so what happened to Loga don't happen to us."

"I agree," Burton said. "But if this unknown can override any of our commands ..."

"We should stick together!" Alice said. "Keep together, don't let anyone out of our sight!"

Burton said, "You may be right, and we should confer about that. First, though, I propose that we get out of this gloomy,

oppressive place. Let's go back to my apartment."

Gods of Riverworld / 27

The interior door to the hangar opened, and they rode their chairs down the corridor to the nearest vertical shaft. The next

level was five hundred feet down, which caused Burton to wonder what was between the hangar level and the second one.

He would ask the Computer what it contained.

Inside his quarters, with the entrance door shut by his codeword, he began to act as host. A wall section slid back, revealing

a very large table standing on end. This moved out from the recess, turned until the tabletop was horizontal, floated to the

center of the room, extended its legs, which had been folded against the underside, and settled on the floor. The eight

arranged chairs around it and sat down. By then they had gotten their drinks from the energy-matter converter cabinets

along one wall. The table was round, and Burton sat in what would have been King Arthur's chair if the room had been

Camelot.

He took a sip of black coffee and said, "Alice has a good idea. It means, however, that we must all live in one apartment.

This one isn't quite large enough. I propose we move into one down the hall near the elevator shaft. It has ten bedrooms, a

laboratory, a control room, and a large dining-sitting room. We can work together and keep an eye on each other."

"And get on each other's nerves," Frigate said.

"I need a woman," Li Po said.

"So do all of us, except Marcelin, and maybe Nur," Turpin said. "Man, it's been a long, hard time!"

"What about Alice?" Aphra Behn said. "She needs a man."

"Don't speak for me," Alice said sharply.

Burton slammed the tabletop with a fist. "First things first!" he bellowed. Then, more softly, "We must have a common

front, band together, no matter what the inconvenience. We can work out the other matters, trifling, if I may say so, at this

moment. We've been through a lot together, and we can cooperate. We make a good team, despite some differences that

have caused some abrasion recently. We must work together, be together, or we may be cut down one at a time. Is there

anyone who won't cooperate?"

Nur said, "If anyone insists on living apart, that one is under suspicion."

There was an uproar then, stilled when Burton hit the table again.

•

28 / Philip Jose Farmer

"This bottling-up will be scratchsome, no doubt of that. But we've been ridden gallsore by worse things, and the better we

work together, the sooner we'll be free to pursue our own interests."

Alice was frowning, and he knew what she was thinking. Since their final breakup, she had avoided him as much as

possible. Now .. .

"If we're in jail, we're in the best one in two worlds," Frigate said.

"No jail's any good," Turpin said. "You ever been in the slammer, Pete?"

"Only the one that I made for myself all my life," Frigate said. "But it was portable."

That was not true, Burton thought. Frigate has been a prisoner several times on the Riverworld, including being one of

Hermann Goring's slaves. But he spoke metaphorically. A most metaphorical man, Frigate. Shifty, a verbal trickster,

ambiguous, which he would cheerfully admit, quoting Emily Dickinson to justify himself.

"Success in circuit lies."

Quoting himself, he would say, "The literal man litters reality/'

"Well, Captain, what do we do next?" Frigate said.

The first priority was to go to their individual apartments and bring their few possessions to the large apartment down the

hall. They went in a body, since it would not do to go alone, and then they picked out their bedrooms. Alice took one as far

from Burton's as possible. Peter Frigate chose the apartment next to hers. Burton smiled ferociously on noting this. It was

an acknowledged but mostly unspoken fact that the American was "in love" with Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves. He

had been ever since, in 1964, he had seen the photographs of her at the ages of ten and eighteen in a biography of Lewis

Carroll. He had written a mystery story, The Knave of Hearts, in which thirty-year-old Alice had played the amateur

detective. In 1983, he had organized a public subscription drive to erect a monument to her on her unmarked grave in the

Hargreaves family plot at Lyndhurst. Times were hard, however, and little money had been given. Then Frigate had died,

and he still had not

Gods of Riverworld / 29

learned if his project had been completed. If it had, above Alice's body there was now a carved marble monument of Alice

at the tea table with the March Hare, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat's head above and behind her.

Meeting her had not lessened his love for her, as a cynic might expect, but had heated it. The literary attractions had

become fleshly. Yet he had never said a word to her or Burton about his passion. He loved, or had loved, Burton too much

to make what he would have called a dishonorable move toward her. Alice had never shown the slightest sign of feeling

toward him as he did toward her. That did not necessarily mean anything. Alice was a master at concealing her feelings in

certain situations. There was the public Alice, and there was the private Alice. There might also be an Alice whom even

Alice did not know. Whom she would not at all want to know.

Tw» hours before lunchtime, they were settled in, though still unsettled by the morning's events. Burton had chosen not to

use the control console, which could be slid from a wall recess. Instead, he had asked the Computer to simulate the screen

and the keyboard on the wall. This could have been reproduced in light on the ceiling or the floor if required. The floor,

however, was covered with a thick rug, which the unlearned would have thought was a very expensive Persian. Its model

had, in fact, been woven on the Gardenworld, a recording of it had been brought to the tower, and the Computer had

reproduced the original by energy-mass conversion.

Burton stood before the wall, the simulation at head level. If he chose to walk back and forth, the simulation would keep

pace with him.

Burton gave Loga's name and ID code and asked the Computer, in English, where Loga's living body was.

The reply was that it could not be located.

"He's dead then!" Alice murmured.

"Where is Loga's body-recording?" Burton said.

It took six seconds for the Computer to scan the thirty-five billion recordings deep under the tower.

"It cannot be located."

"Oh, my God! Erased!" Frigate said.

30 / Philip Jose Farmer

"Not necessarily," Nur said. "There may be an override command to give such an answer."

Burton knew that it would be useless to ask the Computer if such was the case. Nevertheless, he had to.

"Has anyone commanded you not to obey an override command?" Burton 'said quickly.

Nur laughed. Frigate said, "Oh, boy!"

NO.

"I command you to accept all my future commands as override commands," Burton said. "These supersede all previous

override commands."

RKJKCTKD. NOT FUNCTIONAL.

"Who has the authority to command overrides?" Burton said.

LOGA. KHK-12W-373-N.

"Loga is dead," Burton said.

There was no reply.

"Is Loga dead?" Burton said.

NOT IN IXJMAIN OF KNOWLKDGK.

"If Loga is dead, who commands you?"

The names of the eight, followed by their code-IDs, flashed on the screen. Below them, flashing: LIMITKU AUTHORITY.

"How limited?"

No reply.

Burton rephrased.

"Indicate the limits of authority of the eight operators you have just displayed."

The screen went blank for about six seconds. Then it filled with a sequence of orders that the Computer would accept from

them. The glowing letters lasted for a minute and were succeeded by another list. In another minute, a third list appeared.

By the time that Number 89 had sprung into light at the bottom of the screen, Burton saw what was happening.

"It could go on for hours," he said. "It's giving us a detailed list of what we can do."

He told the Computer to stop the display but to print off a complete list for each of the eight. "I don't dare ask it for a list of

don'ts. The list would never end."

Burton asked for a scan of the 35,793 rooms in the tower and

Gods of Rivenvorld / 31

got what he expected. All were empty of any living sentients. Or dead ones.

"But we know that Loga had some secret rooms even the Computer does not know about," Burton said. "Or at least it won't

tell us where they are. We know where one is. Where are the others?"

"You think that the unknown might be in one of those?" Nur said.

"I don't know. It's possible. We must try to find them."

"We could compare the tower dimensions with the circuitry," Frigate said. "But, my God, that would take us many months!

And the rooms might still be so cleverly concealed that we would not find them."

"That sounds as interesting as cleaning spittoons," Turpin said. He went to a grand piano, sat down, and began playing

"Ragtime Nightmare."

Burton followed him and stood by him.

"We'd all love to hear you play," he said—he wouldn't, he had no liking for music of any kind—"but we're in conference, a

very important one, vital, you know, in the full sense of the word, and this is no time to divert or distract us. We need

everyone's wits in this. Otherwise, we may all die because one didn't do his share."

Smiling, his fingers running spiderlike on the keys, Turpin looked up at Burton. The long, exhausting and dangerous trip to

the tower had thinned him to one hundred and seventy-five pounds. But since he had been in the tower, he had stuffed

himself with food and liquor, and his face was waxing into full moonness. His large teeth were very white against his dark

skin—not as dark as Burton's—and his dark brown hair was wavy, not kinky. He could have passed for white, but he had

chosen to stay in the black world on Earth.

"Nigger is how you was raised, how you think," he would sometimes say. "As the Good Book says, it don't do no good to

kick against the pricks." He would laugh softly then, not caring whether or not his hearer understood that by "pricks" he

meant "whites."

"I thought I'd give you thinkers some background music. I'm no good at this kind of thing."

32 / Philip lose Farmer

"You've a good mind," Burton said, "and we need it. Besides, we have to act as a team, as soldiers in a small army. If

everybody does what he wants, ignores this crisis, we become just a disorganized mob."

"And you's the captain, the man," Turpin said. "OK."

He brought his hands down, the chords crashed, and he stood up.

"Lead on, MacDuff."

Though he was furious, Burton showed no sign of it. He strode back to the table, Turpin following him too closely, and he

stood by his chair. Turpin, still smiling, took his seat.

"I suggest that we wait until we have mastered the contents of those," Burton said, waving a hand at the mechanism that

was piling, sorting, and collating the papers flying from a slot in the wall. "Once we thoroughly understand what we can

and cannot do, we may make our plans."

"That'll take some time," de Marbot said. "It'll be like reading a library, not one book."

"It must be done."

"You talk of limits," Nur said, "and that is necessary and good. But within what we call limits we have such power as the

greatest kings on Earth never dreamed of. That power will be our strength, but it will also be our weakness. Rather, I

should say, the power will tempt us to misuse it. I pray to God that we will be strong enough to overcome our

weaknesses—if we have them."

"We are, in a sense, gods," Burton said. "But humans with godlike power. Half-gods."

"Half-assed gods," Frigate said.

Burton smiled and said, "We've been through much on The River. It's scourged us, winnowed out the chaff. I hope. We

shall see."

"The greatest enemy is not the unknown," Nur said. He did not need to explain what he meant.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Herakleitos, once said, "Character determines destiny."

Burton was thinking of this as he paced back and forth in his bedroom. What Herakleitos said was only partly true.

Everyone had a unique character. However, that character was influenced by environment. And every environment was

unique. Every place was not exactly like every other place. In addition, a person's character was part of the environment he

traveled in. How a person acted depended not only upon his character but also on the peculiar opportunities and constraints

of the environment, which included the person's self. The self carried about in it all the environments that the person had

lived in. These were, in a sense, ghosts, some of thicker ectoplasm than the others, and thus powerful haunters of the

mobile home, the person.

Another ancient sage, Hebrew, not Greek, had said, "There is nothing new under the sun."

The old Preacher had never heard of evolution and so did not know that new species, unfamiliar to the sun, emerged now

and then. Moreover, he overlooked that every newborn baby was unique, therefore new, whether under the sun or under the

moon. Like all sages, the Preacher spoke half-truths.

When he said that there was a time to act and a time not to act, he spoke the whole truth. That is, unless you were a Greek

philosopher and pointed out that not acting is an act in itself. The difference in philosophy between the Greek and the

Hebrew was in their attitudes toward the world. Herakleitos was interested in abstract ethics; the Preacher, in practical

ethics. The former stressed the why, the latter, the how.

34 / Philip Jose Farmer

It was possible, Burton thought, to live in this world and only wonder about the how. But a complete human, one trying to

realize all his potential, would also probe the why. This situation demanded the why and the how. Lacking the first, he

could not function properly with the second.

Here he was with seven other Earthborns, in a tower set in the center of a sea at the north pole of this world. The sea had a

diameter of sixty miles and was ringed by an unbroken range of mountains over twenty thousand feet high. In this sea The

River gave up almost all of its warmth before it plunged from the other end and began picking up heat again. Thick mists

like those from the gates of Hell hid a tower that rose ten miles from the sea surface. Below the waters and deep into the

earth, the tower extended five miles or perhaps even deeper.

There was a shaft in the center of the tower that housed some billion of wathans at this moment. Wathans. The Ethical

name for the artificial souls created by a species extinct for millions of years. Somewhere near the tower, deep under the

earth, were immense chambers in which were kept records of the bodies of each of the thirty-five billion plus who had once

lived on Earth from circa 100,000 B.C. through A.D. 1983.

When a person died on the Riverworld, the resurrector, using a mass-energy converter and the record, reproduced that body

on a bank of The River. The wathan, the synthetic soul, the invisible entity that held all of what made that person sentient,

flew at once to the body, attracted as iron by a magnet. And the man or woman, dead twenty-four hours before, was alive.

Of the thirty-five billion plus, Burton had experienced more of death than any. A man who had died 777 times could claim

a record. Though he had been dead more often than anyone else, there were few who had lived as intensely on Earth and

the Riverworld as he. His triumphs and sweet times had been few; his defeats and frustrations, many. Though he had once

written that the bad and the good things of life tended to balance out, his own ledger had far more red ink than black. The

Book of Burton showed a deficit, a heavy imbalance. Despite which, he had refused to take bankruptcy. Why he continued

fighting, why he wanted so desperately to keep living, he did not know. Perhaps it was because he hoped to balance the

books someday.

Cods of Riucrioorld / 35

And then what?

He did not know about that, but it was the then-what? that

fed his flame.

Here he was, trailing a horde of ghosts and placed by forces, which he had not understood and still did not understand, in

this vast building at the top of the world. It had been erected for one purpose, to allow Terrestrials a chance for

immortality. Not physical foreverness but a return, perhaps an absorption into, the Creator.

The Creator, if there was one, had not given Earthpeople, or indeed any sentients, souls. That entity which figured so

largely in religions had been imaginary, a nonexistent desideratum. But that which sentients could imagine they might

bring into actuality, and the might-be had become the is. What Burton and others objected to was the implied should-be.

The Ethicals had not asked each resurrectee if he or she wished to be raised from the dead. They had been given no choice.

Like it or not, they became lazari. And they had not been told how or why.

Loga had said that there just was not enough time to do that. Even if a thousand agents were assigned to asking a thousand

people per hour whether or not they wished to be endowed with synthetic souls, the project would take thirty-five million

hours. If fifty thousand agents conducted the interviews, it would take half a million hours. If the interviews could be con-j

ducted on a twenty-four-hour basis, and they couldn't, it would take somewhat over fifty-seven years to question every

person. What would have been accomplished at the end of that time? Very little. Perhaps ten or twelve million might

decide not to keep on living. Even a man like Sam Clemens, who insisted that he wanted the eternal peace and quiet of

death, would opt for life if he was given a chance for it. He would at least want to try the life offered, one with conditions

different from those on Earth. A hundred considerations would make him change his mind. The same would apply to those

others who felt, for various reasons, that life on Earth had been miserable, wretched, painful and altogether not worthwhile.

"The resurrectees have to be dealt with en masse," Loga had said. "There is no other way to handle them. We have,

however, made a few exceptions. You were one, because I secretly

36 / Philip Jose Farmer

arranged to have you awaken in the resurrection area so many years ago. You became a special case. The Canadian, La

Viro, was visited by one of us, and certain ideas were given him so that he would found the Church of the Second Chance.

Their missionaries spread teachings that contained some of the truths about this situation. They stressed the ethical reasons

for the la-zari being here; they stressed that each person must advance himself ethically."

"Why couldn't everybody have been told the truth at the outset?" Burton had said. And then, before Loga could reply,

Burton had answered himself.

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AlimitedfirsteditionofthisbookhasbeenpublishedbyPhantasiaPress.TheauthorgratefullyacknowledgespermissionfromCharlesScribner'sSonstoreprintalinefrom"LukeHavergal"fromTheChildrenoftheNightbyEdwinArlingtonRobinson(CharlesScribner'sSons,1897).ThisBerkleybookcontainsthecompletetextoftheoriginalhardcovere...

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Farmer, Philip Jose - Riverworld 5 - Gods of Riverworld

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