As in most areas, the River was shallow for several yards beyond the banks, which were only a few inches above the River. Then the level bottom abruptly became a cliff. That plunged straight down at least a mile before reaching the cold and lightless bottom in which was a multitude of strange forms of fish.
Not only was the bank swarming with people, the River itself was jammed with boats small and large. And two gigantic wooden cranes on the bank were close to being completed.
The other side of the River showed a similar scene. Even as Faustroll watched, a huge stone block on that side slid on runners into the water and disappeared. A huge bubble formed above the roiling water and burst.
Suddenly, Faustroll caught up with Davis.
“We don’t leap to quick conclusions,” he said, “or even walk to them. But it seems to us that those workers are trying to fill the River. They’re not having much success at it.”
“Building a dam,” Davis said. He quickened his pace. “Ivar and that other fool across the River, King Arpad, plan to dam the stream with all those blocks of stone if it takes them a hundred years. Then they’ll be able to keep any boats from slipping through past the guards at night. They’d also tax the merchant boats going up and down the River past this point. Also, Ivar thinks that he’ll be able to cut through the mountains to the other side of the Valley. He’ll invade the state on the other side and rule it. And the tunnel will be a conduit for trade from the other side, Ivar also has this dream that the tunneling will reveal large deposits of iron.
“Pride goeth before a fall. He’ll suffer the fate of the arrogant Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel thinking that he could conquer the hosts of Heaven.”
“How can they cut granite with flint tools?” Faustroll said.
“They can’t. But this area was blessed—or cursed—with underground deposits of copper and tin. The only such for thousands of miles either way from here, Ivar and his army of Vikings and Franks grabbed this land three years ago, and that’s why he has bronze tools and weapons.”
Going up the hill, they heard a loud explosion as rock was blasted with black gunpowder. When they stopped at the top, they heard a loud clanging. Beyond the shallow valley below them was a higher hill on top of which was a large round tower of granite blocks. Circling it at its base was a moat.
Below the two in the valley were the smithies, the molds, and great chunks of tin- and copper-bearing ore and the round bamboo huts with cone-shaped and leaf-thatched roofs in which the workers lived. The din, heat, and stench rolled over the two men in a nauseating wave.
“Men have brought Hell from Earth to this fair place,” Faustroll said, “They should be seeking spiritual progress, not material gain and conquest. That, we believe, is why we were placed in this purgatory. Of course, without the science of pataphysics, they won’t get far in their quest.
“On the other hand, left or right, we don’t know, it may all be accidental. But accidental doesn’t necessarily mean meaningless.”
Davis snorted his contempt for this remark.
“And just what is pataphysics?” he said.
“Our friend and fellow doctor, let us charge through the breach created by our conversation and assault the definition of pataphysics. It is an almost impossible task since it can’t be explained in nonpataphysical terms.
“Pataphysics is the science of the realm beyond metaphysics. It lies as far beyond the metaphysics as metaphysics lies beyond physics—in one direction or another, or perhaps still another.
“Pataphysics is the science of the particular, of laws governing exceptions. You follow us so far?”
Davis only rolled his eyes.
“Pataphysics, pay attention, this may be the heart of the matter, pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. But only imaginary solutions are real.”
Davis grunted as if struck a soft blow in the stomach.
“For pataphysics, all things are equal,” Faustroll continued. “Pataphysics is, in aspect, imperturbable.
“And this, too, is the heart of the matter, one of them anyway. That is, all things are pataphysical. Yet few people practice pataphysics.”
“You expect me to understand that?” Davis said.
“Not at once. Perhaps never. Now, the last castle to be conquered. Beyond pataphysics lies nothing. It is the ultimate defense.”
“Which means?”
Faustroll ignored that question. He said, “It allows each man or woman to live his own life as an exception, proving no law but his own.”
“Anarchy? You’re an anarchist?”
“Look about you. This world was made for anarchy. We don’t need any government except self-government. Yet men won’t permit us to be anarchists—so far.”
“Tell this to Ivar,” Davis said. He laughed, then said, “I’d like to see his face when you tell him that.”
“Ah, but what about the brain behind that face? If he has a brain?”
“Oh, he has brains! But his motives, man, his motives!”
They descended the hill and then climbed to the top of the next hill, much steeper and higher than the previous ones. The tower drawbridge was down, but many soldiers were by its outer end. Most of them were playing board games or casting dice carved from fish bones. Some were watching wrestling matches and mock duels. Their conical bronze helmets were fitted with nose- and cheek-pieces. A few wore chain-mail armor made of bronze or interlocking wooden rings. All were armed with daggers and swords and many had spears. Their leather bronze-ringed shields were stacked close by them. The wooden racks by these held yew bows and quivers full of bronze-tipped arrows. Some spoke in Esperanto; others, in barbaric tongues.
The sentinels at each end of the drawbridge made no effort to stop the two. Davis said, “I’m the royal osteopath to King Ivar. Since you’re with me, they assume you’re not to be challenged.”
“I like to be challenged,” Faustroll said. “By the way, what is an osteopath?”
“You’ve never heard of osteopathy?” Davis said, raising his reddish eyebrows. “When did you die?”
“All Saints’ Day, though I’m no saint in the Catholic sense, in 1907. In Paris, which you may know is in France, who knows how many light-years away?”
Davis said only, “Ah!” That explained the man’s madness and decadence. He was French and probably had been a bohemian artist, one of those godless immoral wretches roistering in the dives of Montmartre or the Left Bank or wherever that kind of low life flourished. One of those Dadaists or Cubists or Surrealists, whatever they were called, whose crazed paintings, sculptures, and writings revealed that their makers were rotten with sin and syphilis.
There wasn’t any syphilis on this world, but there was plenty of sin.
“My question?” Faustroll said.
“Oh, yes! One, osteopathy is any form of bone disease. Two, it’s a system of treatment of ailments and is based on the valid belief that most ailments result from the pressure of displaced bones on nerves and so forth. Osteopaths relieve the traumatic pressure by applying corrective pressure. Of course, there’s much more to it than that. Actually, I seldom have to treat the king for anything serious, he’s in superb physical health. It could be said that he retains me—enslaves me would be a better term—as the royal masseur.”
Faustroll lifted his eyebrows and said, “Bitterness? Discontent? Your soul, it vomits bile?”
Davis did not reply. They had gone through the large foyer and up the stone steps of a narrow winding staircase to the second floor. After passing through a small room, they had stepped into a very large room, two stories high and very cool. Numerous wall slits gave enough light, but pine torches and fish-oil lamps made the room brighter. In the center, on a raised platform, was a long oaken table. Placed along it were high-backed oaken chairs carved with Norse symbols, gods, goddesses, serpents, trolls, monsters, and humans. Other smaller tables were set around the large one, and a huge fireplace was at the western wall. The walls were decorated with shield
s and weapons and many skulls.
A score or so of men and women were in a line leading to a large man seated in a chair. The oaken shaft of a huge bronze-headed ax leaned against the side of the chair.
“Petitioners and plaintiffs,” Davis said in a low voice to Faustroll. “And criminals.”
“Ah!” Faustroll murmured. “The Man With the Ax!” He added, “The title of one of our poems.”
He pointed at a beautiful bare-breasted blonde sitting in a high-backed chair a few feet from the king’s throne.
“She?”
“Queen Ann, the number-one mare in Ivar’s stable,” Davis said softly. “Don’t cross her. She has a hellish temper, the slut.”
Ivar the Boneless, son of the semilegendary Ragnar Hairybreeches, who was the premier superhero of the Viking Age, stood up from the chair then. He was at least six feet six inches tall. Since his only garment was a sea-blue towel, his massive arms, chest, legs, and flat corded belly were evident. Despite his bulk, his quick and graceful movements made him seem more pantherish than lionlike.
His only adornment was a wide bronze band around the upper right arm. It bore in alto-relief a valknut, three hunting horns meeting at the mouthpieces to form a triskelion, a three-legged figure. The valknut, the knot of the slain, was the sacred symbol of the greatest of the Norse gods, Odin.
His long, wavy, and red-bronze hair fell to his very broad shoulders. His face would have been called, in Davis’s time on Earth, “ruggedly handsome.” There was, however, something vulpine about it. Though Davis could not put a verbal finger on the lineaments that made him think of Brer Fox, he always envisioned that character when he saw the king.
Ivar was not the only general in the ninth century A.D. Danish invasion of England. Many native kings ruled there, but the king of Wessex would be the only one whose name would be familiar to twentieth-century English speakers. That was Alfred, whom later generations would call The Great, though his son and grandson were as deserving of that title. Though Alfred had saved Wessex from conquest, he had not kept the Danes from conquering much of the rest of England. Ivar had been the master strategist of the early Dane armies. Later, he had been co-king of Dublin with the great Norwegian conqueror, Olaf the White. But: Ivar’s dynasty had ruled Dublin for many generations.
As Davis and Faustroll approached the king, Davis said softly, “Don’t call him Boneless. Nobody does that to his lace without regretting it. You can call him Ivar, though, from what he’s told me, it was Yngwaer in the Norse of his time. Languages change; Yngwaer became Ivar. His nickname in Old Norse was The Merciless, but it was close in sound to a word meaning “boneless.” Later generations mistranslated the nickname. But don’t call him Merciless either.
“If you do, you’ll find out why he was called that.”
3
Doctor Davis was surprised.
He had been sure that the king would hustle the grotesquely painted and nonsense-talking Frenchman to the slave stockade at once. Instead, Ivar had told Davis to get quarters in the tower for Faustroll, good quarters, not some tiny and miserable room.
“He’s been touched by the gods and thus is sacred. And I find him interesting. See that good care is taken of him, and bring him to the feast tonight.”
Though this duty was properly the province of the king’s steward, Davis did not argue. Nor did he ask Ivar what he meant by referring to the gods. On Earth, Ivar had been a high priest of the Norse god Odin until a few years before he died. Then he had been baptized into the Christian faith. Probably, Davis thought, because the foxlike Dane figured that it couldn’t hurt to do that. Ivar was one to make use of all loopholes. But, after being resurrected along the River, the Viking had rejected both religions. However, he was still influenced by both, though far more by his lifelong faith.
Ivar gave his command in his native language, instead of Esperanto. Ivar referred to it as “that monotonously regular, grating, and unsubtle tongue.” Davis had learned Old Norse well enough to get by. Two-thirds of its speakers in the kingdom came from Dublin, where Ivar had been king of the Viking stronghold when he had died in 873. But most of these were half-Irish, equally fluent in the Germanic Norse and Keltic Gaelic. Davis could speak the latter, though not as well as he could Norse.
Since the Franks made up one-fourth of the population of Ivar’s kingdom, having been resurrected in the same area as the Dane, Davis had some knowledge of that tongue. The Franks came from the time of Chlodowech (died A.D. 511 in Paris), known to later generations as Clovis I. He had been king of the western, or Salian, Franks and conqueror of the northern part of the Roman province of Gaul.
Andrew Davis and Ivar’s queen, Ann Pullen, were the only English speakers, except for some slaves, in the kingdom. Davis only talked to her when he could not avoid it. That was not often, because she liked him to give her frequent treatments, during which she did her best to upset him with detailed stories of her many sexual encounters and perversions. And she brazenly insisted that he massage her breasts. Davis had refused to do this and had been backed by Ivar, who seemed amused by the situation.
Ann Pullen had never told Davis that she was aware that he disliked her intensely. Both, however, knew well how each felt about the other. The only barrier keeping her from making him a quarry slave was Ivar. He was fond, though slightly contemptuous, of Davis. On the other hand, he respected the American for his knowledge, especially his medical lore, and he loved to hear Davis’s stories of the wonders of his time, the steam iron horses and sailless ships, the telegraph and radio, the automobile, the airplane, the vast fortunes made by American robber barons, and the fantastic plumbing.
What Davis did not tell Ivar was what the late-twentieth century doctors he had met had told him—to his chagrin. That was that much of his treatment of his patients on Earth had been based on false medical information. However, Davis was still convinced that his neuropathic treatments, which involved no drugs, had enormously benefited his patients. Certainly, their recovery rate had been higher than the rate of those who went to conventional M.D.’s. On the other hand, the physicians had admitted that, in the field of psychiatry, the recovery rate of the mentally disturbed patients of African witch doctors was the same as that of psychiatrists’ patients. That admission, he thought, either down-valued twentieth-century medicine or up-valued witch doctors.
A few of his informants had admitted that a large number of physically sick people recovered without the help of medical doctors or would have done so without such help.
He explained this to the painted madman on the way to the room, though he was irked because he felt compelled to justify himself. Faustroll did not seem very interested. He only muttered, “Quacks. All quacks. We pataphysicians are the only true healers.”
“I still don’t know what a pataphysician is,” Davis said.
“No verbal explanation is needed. Just observe us, translate our physical motion and verbal expressions into the light of truth, vectors of four-dimensional rotations into photons of veracity.”
“Man, you must have a reasonable basis for your theory, and you should be able to express it in clear and logical terms!”
“Red is your face, yet cool is the room.”
Davis lifted his hands high above his head. “I give up! I don’t know why I pay any attention to what you say! I should know better! Yet…”
“Yet you apprehend, however dimly, that truth flows from us. You do not want to acknowledge that, but you can’t help it. That’s good. Most of the hairless bipedal apes don’t have an inkling, don’t respond at all. They’re like cockroaches who have lost their antennae and, therefore, can’t feel anything until they ram their chitinous heads into the wall. But the shock of the impact numbs even more the feeble organ with which they assumedly think.”
Faustroll waved his bamboo fishing pole at Davis, forcing him to step back to keep from being hit on the nose by the bone hook.
“I go now to probe the major liquid body for those who breat
he through gills.”
Faustroll left the room. Davis muttered, “I hope it’s a long time before I see you again.”
But Faustroll was like a bad thought that can’t be kept out of the mind. Two seconds later, he popped back into the room.
“We don’t know what the royal osteopath’s history on Earth was,” Faustroll said, “or what your quest, your shining grail, was. Our permanent grail is The Truth. But the temporary one, and it may turn out to be that the permanent (if, truly, anything is permanent) grail or desideratum or golden apple is the answer to the question: Who resurrected us, placed us here, and why? Pardon. Nor a question but questions. Of course, the answer may be that it doesn’t matter at all. Even so, we would like to know.”
“And just how will you be able to get answers to those questions here when you couldn’t get them on Earth?”
“Perhaps the beings who are responsible for the Riverworld also knew the answers we so desperately sought on Earth. We are convinced that these beings are of flesh and blood, though the flesh may not be protein and the blood may lack hemoglobin. Unlike God, who, if it does exist, is a spirit and thus lacks organs to make sound waves, though It seems to be quite capable of making thunder and lightning and catastrophes and thus should be able to form its own temporary oral parts for talking, these beings must have mouths and tongues and teeth and hands of a sort. Therefore, they can tell us what we wish to know. If we can find them. If they wish to reveal themselves.
“It’s our theory, and we’ve never theorized invalidly, that the River in its twistings and windings forms a colossal hieroglyph. Or ideogram. Thus, if we can follow the entirely of the River and map it, we will have before us that hieroglyph or ideogram. Unlike the ancient Mayan or Egyptian hieroglyphs, it will be instantly understandable. Revelation will come with the light of comprehension, not with the falling of the stars and the moon turning blood-red and the planet cracking in half and the coming of the Beast whose number is 666 and all those delicious images evoked by St. John the Divine.”
Riverworld Short Stories Page 15
