GODS OF RIVERWORLD

by Philip José Farmer

  "Why not?" Burton said. "It seems the logical action to take."

  "They wouldn't be ready. They wouldn't have passed the test; the Computer would reject them. They'd be doomed."

  "You don't make sense," Frigate said. "What do you care about that? You'd be safe on some planet where they wouldn't find you for a thousand years, maybe never, and you'd have your family."

  Loga frowned, and sweat oozed on his forehead. "You don't understand. They shouldn't be living then. They would not have Gone On. I couldn't take them until they had attained the level that makes immortality bearable for them."

  The others looked at each other. Unspoken: he is crazy.

  Burton sighed and leaned forward, reached under the table, and withdrew from its shelf a beamer that had been there since the day the castle was built. His finger moved the dial on its side to stun-power. He brought the weapon out swiftly and pressed the sliding tongue that acted as the trigger. The very pale red line struck Loga in the chest, and the Ethical fell backwards.

  "I had to do it," Burton said. "He is hopelessly psychotic and he would have sent us back to The Valley. God knows what he would have done then."

  At Burton's orders, Frigate ran to get from a converter a hypodermic syringe containing the needed amount of somnium. Burton stood guard, waiting to stun Loga again if he showed signs of consciousness. The man was immensely powerful; a bolt that would knock most men out might make him only semiconscious.

  Burton paced for a few minutes while he thought of how he could solve the problem of Loga. He had to be kept alive. The moment he was dead, he would undoubtedly be resurrected in a hidden chamber. That would mean finit for the four tenants because Loga had prime control of the Computer. If he were put in a cryogenics cylinder, he would be dead as far as the wathan was concerned, and he would be resurrected in a secret room in the tower. Should he be awake but imprisoned, he could kill himself no matter what security arrangements his captors took. Even if the tiny black ball in his brain, the ball that could release a deadly poison with one mentally projected codeword, were surgically removed, Loga could swallow his tongue and choke to death. The tongue could be cut out, but Burton was not -tough enough to do that no matter how desperate he was.

  It was possible to keep Loga drugged. Burton, however, doubted that the Ethical could survive thirty-three years in that state. It was useless to ask the Computer to display Loga's memory so that Burton could locate Loga's hidden-body recordings. The Computer would have orders from Loga not to reveal these.

  Burton stopped, and he smiled. There was a way out.

  Working out the plan took two days, since he had to be very careful. One mistake, and Loga might win out after all.

  He ordered the Computer to make a modified android that looked exactly like Loga and had a voice exactly like his. Inside the skin, the android matched Loga except for the brain structure, which was much simpler than Loga's. If the android had been a one hundred percent duplicate, it would, in many respects, have been the Ethical and would have behaved as he would. The only difference, and it was a great difference, was that the android would have lacked self-consciousness.

  Burton verbally programmed it in the speech of the Ethicals and then had it transmit his orders to the Computer. The Computer matched the voiceprints, electric skin field, face and body shape, skin, hair and eye color, ear shape, and the chemical composition of the odors of perspiration with Loga's prints. It also scanned the finger, palm and foot prints.

  Unfortunately, despite everything else, the Computer refused to obey the android unless the proper codeword was given.

  "That's very frustrating," Burton told the others. "One word or perhaps a phrase is all that's blocking it. It might as well be a million words."

  No one said anything; all looked gloomy. Even Li Po was silent for once.

  After two minutes, Alice, who had been frowning and biting her lip, said, "I know that none of you believe in feminine intuition. I don't either, not as it's usually defined. I think it's a form of logic that doesn't follow the rules of logic, Aristotelian or symbolic. I don't think that feminine intuition, call it that or something else, is confined to women. Oh, what am I talking about?"

  "Yes, what are you talking about?" Burton said.

  "It's such a silly idea, so wild. I'd be making an utter ass of myself!"

  "Anything will be appreciated," Burton said. "I promise not to laugh."

  "None of us will," Frigate said. "Anyway, what's the difference if we do?"

  "It's just that there's no rhyme or reason to it," she said. "Well, perhaps there is some reason to it. Loga is such a trickster, and he does like to play games, rather childish, I think, but there it is."

  "There is what?" Burton said.

  "It's such an improbability. The odds against it are fantastically high. But ... I don't know. It couldn't hurt to try. It wouldn't take much time."

  "For God's sake, what?" Burton said.

  "Well, do you remember what Loga cried out just before he cracked? Seemed to crack, I mean."

  " I tsab u,' " Burton said. "Ethical for 'Who are you?' "

  "Yes. Could Loga have been giving us a clue, the real codephrase? He would have been very amused doing that because there was no chance that we would ever use it. We just simply could not ever find out that it was the open-sesame, the most important identification. Yet he couldn't resist saying it. We'd think that he was addressing the person who had killed him, a person we now know didn't exist. And at the same time ..."

  "He'd have to be crazy to play with us like that," Burton said.

  "Well?"

  "It's nuts, but it'd only take a minute," Frigate said. "What do we have to lose? Besides, Alice may be rather quiet, but she does have a keen insight into individual psychology."

  "Thank you," Alice said. "I wasn't very good at reading people's characters when I came to the Riverworld, but I had to develop that talent to survive."

  They went into the room where the android was sleeping. Burton awoke it gently and gave it a cup of coffee. Then he slowly and carefully told the android what it must do. Once more, it stood in front of the screen on the wall, and it said, " I tsab u."

  The screen flashed the characters of the Ethical alphabet.

  "That means 'ready,' " Burton said.

  The android then told the Computer that it was transferring prime control to Burton. But the Computer refused to do that.

  "Now what?" Frigate muttered.

  Burton called the android to him and told him to go into the corridor with him. Though he did not know if that precaution was necessary, he could not afford to take chances. Having instructed the android what to say, he watched from the doorway as it relayed his commands. And the Computer obeyed.

  They cheered and hugged each other, and Li Po did a little dance.

  The android had ordered that all persons in the records, except for certain ones, whose names and record numbers it gave, be resurrected in The Valley. Henceforth, the process of resurrection would continue until the project was closed down.

  The android also said that it wanted its, that is, Loga's, security measures canceled. Immediately, the Computer replied that it had done so. And it displayed diagrams showing where Loga had hidden his body-records.

  "Very good," Burton said, smiling. "If we have to deal with the Computer through the android, so be it. I can endure that."

  It took them an hour to collect the thirty-nine records cached in rooms at different levels.

  "I'd be completely confident now that Loga can't be resurrected without our knowledge," Burton said, "if he wasn't so canny. What if he hid some records without telling the Computer where they were?"

  "In that case," Frigate said, "he couldn't be resurrected because the Computer would not be connected to it and so could not carry out the operation."

  "He might have put the record in a converter unconnected to the Computer except for the power source. An auxiliary computer could have performed the process."


  "Then we'll tell the Computer to notify us of any power demands that are unusual. Loga's orders to the Computer to suppress the indications resulting from his use of the power have been nulled."

  "We'll have to risk it. We can't just not act because of the very slight chance that Loga might get loose."

  The others agreed with Burton that they could start repopulating the tower. They would do this, though, after the three private worlds had been cleaned up. They unanimously supported his suggestion that the Valleydwellers be told the truth, in fact, the whole story from the beginning.

  "The Ethicals thought it necessary to spread half-truths through the Church of the Second Chance because of their belief in the strength of the religious impulse. But I believe that the whole truth, palatable or not, should be given. We'll resurrect some people in the tower, let them live here for a while, then transport them to The Valley in the aircraft. We'll give them photographs and powerpack-operated film projectors. That should convince the skeptics. The truth will spread very slowly because of the enormous population and the length of The Valley, but it will get to all eventually. Of course, some will refuse to believe. That'll be their misfortune."

  Loga was placed in the cryogenics chamber.

  Li Po resurrected his companions; Alice, Monteith Maglenna and several others, including her sisters Edith and Rhoda; Frigate, Sophie Lefkowitz and twenty others; Burton, Loghu the blonde ancient-Tokharian, Cyrano de Bergerac, Joe Miller the titanthrop, Kazz the Neanderthal, Tom Turpin, Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot, and many others whom Loga had recruited in his war against the Ethicals.

  Six months passed, and Burton invited all the tenants, now numbering over two hundred, to his castle for a dinner party. After the tables had been cleared, he ordered an android to strike a huge bronze gong that hung behind his chair. He rose, raised a glass of wine, and said, "Citizens of the tower, your attention. I propose a toast. To us."

  They drank, and he said, "Another toast. To all those who hold dual citizenship, that of Earth and that of Riverworld."

  He put the glass down.

  "We all seem to be well situated and happy, and I pray that we will be so until the Gardenworlders arrive. And perhaps after that. When that time comes, though, we will, whether or not we like it, return to the restored Earth or go into oblivion. I hope, and I believe, that we here will be qualified to go to Earth where we should enjoy life until the Earth's core cools and we must move on to a young planet. That should be quite a few million years in the future, however, and who knows what will happen in that inconceivably long time?"

  He stopped, sipped wine, put the goblet down, and stared around at them.

  "As I understand it, Earth's core will be tapped for the use of e-m converters. But this power will be used only to raise those who die there, and with the type of people on Earth then, there should not be much need for resurrection power. There will be no grails or converters to furnish food. Food will be grown on the soil. Earth, if events work out as the Ethicals plan, will be a nice quiet place. Peace and harmony will reign, though I have doubts that the lion will lie down with the lamb. Not if it's hungry. Lions do not and never will find grass nourishing.

  "And, of course, even those who have Gone On will not be perfect. No human being, with perhaps a few exceptions, and these might be unendurable models for the rest of us, is perfect or will be."

  Many of his audience were looking at him as if they wondered what he was preparing to spring on them.

  "Some of you, I'm sure, anticipate life on Earth with great pleasure. You know you'll always have intellectual adventures because the opportunities for study and for artistic creation will be equal to what the tower provides. And you're happy with the idea that life will be serene, well-ordered, and secure. You luxuriate in that prospect."

  He stopped, and he frowned.

  "However, there is an alternative to the Earth I've described. I have investigated the spaceships in the hangar, and I have discovered that they do not require highly trained crews to navigate and operate them. They are complex in themselves, but an intelligent child of twelve, after some study, may get into one and have the ship carry him to whatever destination he wishes. Provided, of course, that the ship has enough fuel."

  Frigate smiled up at him and held up a thumb and a finger to form an O.

  "What if we reject the return to the near-Utopian Earth?" Burton said. "What if we prefer another kind of life or are not sure that, even if we would love Earth as I've depicted here, we will be chosen to be among her citizens?

  "Nothing can stop us from boarding a spaceship, all those in the hangar if we wish, choosing one of the virgin planets catalogued in the ship's navigation system, and then going there.

  "What would we do there, our motley group of near-immortals of many races, nations, languages, and times? We wouldn't have the rich, easy life we have here, or the more restricted but still easy life on the Earth-to-be. Though we can carry with us the science and technology of the Ethicals in records, we could use very little of it for centuries. It would take a long time before our population increased to the point where we would have enough hands to do all the dirty and hard labor needed to get the raw materials for processing.

  "These planets have been seeded with wathan generators and catchers just as was done on ancient Earth. We can have children because they will be born with ivathans and will be self-conscious and free-willed. But—" he looked around him again "—if any of us or our children die, we will be dead for a long time. Perhaps forever. Should the Ethicals be able to track us down, we who went on the ship from the tower will be judged then and there, at once. We may have passed and so be allowed to live. Or we may not. In any event, if we should die early, we will have to stay dead for a long time, because the Ethicals may not get to our planet for many thousands of years. And if, during that time, our descendants do build resurrection machinery, how do we know they'll decide to raise us? We can't foresee the political or religious or economic situation of that time. Our descendants may think it best we not be raised.

  "That is by no means the worst thing that can happen. In the beginning, after we've landed and built homes with our own hands and tilled and planted and reaped and brought forth the first generation, we'll be a fairly harmonious society. But as the centuries, the millennia, go by, our common language, Esperanto, will become dialects, then language families as unintelligible to one another as French and Albanian. Though there will be much miscegenation, some groups will keep their racial characteristics, and our brave new world will have differing races.

  "Different languages and different races. Just as an old Earth. But it will have variety.

  "And, try though we will to bring up our children with love, in time, as generation succeeds generation, or perhaps in a very short time, we will have the same kind of people that we had on old Earth.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, after we have labored long and mightily, survived many hardships and dangers, and perhaps established a just and equitable society for all, we will nevertheless see the inevitable degeneration of our society. As on Earth, there will be multitudes of the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the pushers and the pushed, the brave and the cowardly, the dull and the bright, the open and the shut, the givers and the takers, the compassionate and the indifferent or cruel, the sensitive and the callous, the tender-and the brutal, the victimizers and the victims, the sane, the half-sane, and the mad.

  "There will be hate but love, despair but joy, defeat but triumph, misery but happiness, hopelessness but hope."

  He looked briefly at them, seeing all their faces as one. They knew the spirit if not the exact form of what he was going to say.

  "But... we will have immense variety, the richness and the full spectrum that a secure life cannot give.

  "And we will have adventure.

  "We will be rejecting the promised Heaven of Earth. But we will be taking some of Heaven with us, and, I'm sure, more than a bit of Hell. Can Heaven exist i
n a vacuum? Without Hell, how do you know that you are in Heaven?

  "I ask you, my friends, and even those who are perhaps not very fond of me, which shall it be? The new Earth? Or the unknown?"

  His audience was silent. Then Frigate called out, "Is all this rhetorical? Where are you going, Dick?"

  "You know where," Burton said.

  He waved his hand to indicate the stars.

  "Who's going with me?"

  Afterword

  While of course an author would like to believe that his every word remains engraved forever on the hearts of his readers, it may be that some of the events of the previous four Riverworld novels have grown dim in some memories. Here is a brief look at the adventures that have led up to Gods of Riverworld: Richard Francis Burton, the famous (or infamous) English explorer, linguist, author, poet, swordsman, and anthropologist, dies in a.d. 1890 at the age of sixty-nine. Contrary to his expectations, he awakes from death. He is in a vast chamber containing billions of bodies floating in the air. All those he sees are human except for one near him. This body is humanoid but definitely not that of a member of Homo sapiens. Before Burton can escape from the chamber, he is rendered unconscious by two men who appear in some kind of aerial craft.

  When Burton again awakes, he is lying naked on the bank of a wide river in a narrow valley surrounded by high, unscalable mountains. His body is like the one he had when he was twenty-five, minus its scars. He is only one of an estimated thirty-five billion who have been resurrected under an unfamiliar sky on the banks of a river ten million miles long.

  The resurrection is not, as events will show, caused by supernatural means. It has been effected by scientific devices invented by beings unknown during the early part of the first book, To four Scattered Bodies Go. The people responsible for this, the Ethicals, planted recording machines on Earth long before the first humans evolved from the apes. (Or so Burton and others are told during the course of the series.) These machines have recorded every human being from the time of his or her conception continuously to the moment of death. And, as is discovered in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth, the souls (called wathans by the Ethicals) are artificial. There is no such thing as a natural soul; these have been provided by the Ethicals.