“He’ll never Go On until that evil no longer exists in him,” Nur said. “I mean, its effects.”
What had been born on Earth had not necessarily died on the Riverworld. Yet as Nur said, humankind in general had made ethical and psychic progress.
“To put it in plain English,” Burton said, “you mean that many have become better human beings.”
“Yes. The Riverworld is a rough reshaper, but change seldom comes without pain.”
Nur was silent for a while, then said, “Tom has many good qualities. He’s usually cheerful, always courageous, easy to get along with if you don’t step on his toes, which is as it should be. But he has never said he regretted his whoremongering. A man who deals in whores is himself a whore, and he is in a violent and dirty business. He has to be rough and ruthless and bloody his hands from time to time. He lacks a certain empathy.’
There was another silence, broken when Frigate said, “Yes?”
“It’s not just Tom I’m thinking of. You have sealed yourself up in your little worlds. Can a person grow in a vacuum?”
“Of course we can,” Frigate said.
“We’ll see,” Nur said.
He alone had changed his mind about moving. He had decided to stay in his apartment. “Which is world enough for me.”
“And that means trouble,” Burton said. “Some among the newly resurrected are going to want those empty worlds for themselves and they’ll be shedding blood to get them.”
20
Burton, Frigate, and Behn were talking about the standards for resurrecting people in the tower.
“Don’t pick any actors, any stage, movie, or TV actors,” Frigate said. “They’re all swollen egotists, selfish, opportunistic, and untrustworthy. They may be amusing companions for a while, but they’re all self-centered.”
“All?” Burton said.
“All,” Behn said. “I should know. I wrote plays; I had a lot to do with them.”
“There might be some exceptions,” Frigate said. “However, there are no exceptions among the producers, and they are even more ruthless and cold-blooded than the actors. Don’t resurrect producers, especially the Hollywood kind. They’re not entirely human.”
“I would class them, then, with politicians,” Burton said.
“Oh, yes. No politicians or statesmen need apply. Liars, opportunists all.”
“All?” Behn said.
“You should know,” Burton said.
“I didn’t know all of them, so I can’t really judge them fairly.”
“Take my word for it,” Burton said. “No politicians here. What about priests?”
“Men of the cloth, priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, witch doctors, bones, whatever; they’re all brothers under the uniform. But … not all alike. There are some real human beings there, now and then, here and there,” Frigate said. “But you have to be suspicious of anyone who thinks well enough of himself to become a spiritual leader. What’s his real motive?”
“Popes are out,” Burton said. “They’re politicians, liars, cold-bloodedly manipulate people, pervert Christianity for the good of the Church. No popes.”
“No chief rabbis or chief mullahs or archbishops of Canterbury and their kind,” Frigate said. “What applies to the popes applies to them.”
“Mother superiors?”
“Out!” Burton said, jerking a thumb at the ceiling.
“Surely, there are exceptions?”
“Not enough to make it worthwhile to spend time on them,” Burton said.
“What about used-car salesmen? Used-car saleswomen, too?” Frigate said.
Burton and Behn looked blank.
“A twentieth-century phenomenon,” Frigate said. “Forget it. I’ll keep an eye out for them and warn you if I have to. I doubt that I’ll have to.”
“Doctors?”
“No blanket rule can be applied to them. But most are lost souls in this world where there is little need for them and they have no authority. Be careful.”
“Lawyers?”
“Some of them are the best people in the world; some, the worst. Be careful. Oh, by the way, I located Buddha,” Frigate said. “Siddhartha, the historical Buddha.”
“What’s that got to do with lawyers?” Burton said.
“Nothing. But Buddha … ah … he’s noted in the records, plenty of film on him, if you want to see the living Buddha, Gautama, just ask the Computer. That is, he was living on Earth. He was never resurrected on the Riverworld. When he died on Earth, he Went On.”
“Ah!” Burton said, as if he suddenly understood much that had been hidden before.
“Ah?”
“Yes. I located the file of the historical Jesus Christ several days ago,” Burton said.
“Me, too!” Frigate said.
“Then you know that he was resurrected on the River, died several times, the last time twenty years ago. And he, too, has Gone On now. But, apparently, Buddha was more ethically advanced than Jesus.”
“Buddha had a much longer life on Earth than Jesus,” Frigate said.
“I am attacking no one, only pointing out a fact.”
“I located St. Francis of Assisi,” Frigate said. “He was raised on the River, but when he died ten years ago, he Went On.”
“How many popes and cardinals, how many high churchmen of any faith have Gone On?” Aphra Behn said.
“None,” Frigate said. “None so far as I’ve determined, I mean. I haven’t located all. Rather, the Computer hasn’t. I put it on a scan. It’s located all but twelve of the popes…”
“Including the first one, St. Peter?” Burton said.
“He wasn’t the first pope, he was the first bishop of Rome. Technically speaking, that is.”
“Ah, then he really was in Rome?”
“Yes, he was executed by the Romans there. But … he’s still on The River. He’s died three times and still has not Gone On.”
“So,” Burton said, “we could resurrect him and get the truth about Jesus and Christianity. That is, the truth as he knows it, which may not be the objective truth.”
“Jesus’ records are still on tap,” Frigate said. “His wathan is gone, but his life is still there to be run off.”
“St. Paul?”
“Ah, St. Paul!” Frigate cried, smiling. “First, he was a fanatical Orthodox Judaist, then a fanatical Christian, probably did more to pervert the course of the founder’s teachings than anyone, and now he is a fanatical member of the Church of the Second Chance. Rather, I should say, he was. The Church wants zealots but not fanatics, and so it recently kicked him out. He is now interested in the teachings of the Dowists.”
“The Dowists?”
“Tell you about them some other time. Paul is alive on The River. I located him and I watched him for a while. Ugly little fellow, but a powerful speaker. He’s no longer celibate; he decided that he is burning and wants a woman to quench the flame.”
Frigate showed them three men he had located because of their undeniable evil and vast prominence in his time. Burton had heard of them while in The Valley but had known little about them until now. Adolf Hitler was born the year before Burton had died, Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, was born eleven years before Burton’s death, and Mao Tsetung was born three years after 1890.
“They’re locked up in the files now,” Frigate said. “I’ve not had much time to look at their post-Earth lives, but I’ve seen enough to be sure that they did not change for the better. Their natures are still essentially like Ivan the Terrible’s. Whom, by the way, I’ve also located.”
Nur said, “You believe that there is no hope for them, that they will never change for the better?”
“Yes. It looks that way, anyway. They were and are evil, sadistic, and cold-blooded killers, mass butchers, without love. Psychopathic.”
“But Loga said that there were no true psychopaths on the Riverworld. He said that true psychopaths were so because of chemical imbalances in their bodies. These
imbalances, these deficiencies, were eliminated when the bodies were resurrected.”
Frigate shrugged and said, “Yes, I know. So … what is their excuse now? They have none; they have chosen their attitudes through their own free will. They and they alone are responsible.”
“That may be,” Nur said, “but it is not up to you to destroy them, to cut their alloted time short. Who knows? They might, at the very last moment, undergo a radical change of character. See the light, as it were. Remember Göring.”
“Göring started suffering remorse and guilt years ago. These … creatures … Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ivan the Terrible … are still ready … eager, in fact … to kill anyone who stands in their way. Which way, by the way, is a steady advancement toward power, supreme power, the power to dominate and control others and crush all who oppose them. Or who they think oppose them. They’re all genuinely paranoiac, you know. Though they strive to shape reality, and often do, they’re not connected with reality. I mean that they don’t truly perceive things as they are. They’re driven by their lust to shape reality into what they think it is or should be.”
“Most people are driven by the same desire.”
“There are great evils and little evils.”
“Great evildoers and little evildoers, you mean. There is no such thing as abstract evil. Evil always consists of concrete acts and concrete actors.”
Burton, who had been listening, became impatient.
“The true philosophy is not in talk, which most philosophers think is philosophy, but in action. Pete, you’re doing a lot of talking about what you’d like to do. Why? Because you’re afraid to act, and your fear comes from your feeling not self-justified?”
“I keep thinking, Judge not lest ye be judged.”
“Do you think for one moment that you won’t be judged even if you refrain from judging others?” Burton said scornfully. “Besides, it’s impossible for anybody not to judge others. Even saints can’t keep from judging, try though they might not to. It’s automatic and takes place in both the conscious and unconscious mind. So, I say, judge right and left, fore and aft, up and down, in and out!”
Nur laughed and said, “But don’t pass sentence.”
“Why not?” Burton said, grinning fiendishly. “Why not?”
“I’ve located a real judge, I mean a judge in the legal sense,” Frigate said. “A man who sat in the circuit court of my hometown, Peoria, during the Prohibition era. I remember reading about him when I was a kid; I also remember what my father and his friends said about him. He was part of the very corrupt municipal system then, he sent many a bootlegger to prison or fined those found with booze in their homes or in speakeasies. Yet he had a cellar full of whiskey and gin he purchased from bootleggers. Some of whom, by the way, he let off because they were his direct suppliers.”
“You’ve been very busy,” Nur said.
“I can’t resist it,” Frigate said.
Burton understood Frigate’s fascination, or, at least, thought he could. Evil people did have a certain magnetism that drew everybody, evil or good or gray-shaded, toward them. First, attraction, then repulsion. In fact, paradoxically, it was the repulsion that caused the attraction.
“The curious thing is,” Frigate said suddenly, as if he had been thinking about it for a long time but had thrust it back down, “the curious thing is that none of these, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tsar Ivan, the Peoria judge, and the baby-rapist I told you about, none of these thinks of himself as evil.”
“Göring did, and that was his first step away from his evil,” Nur said. “These men … Hitler, Stalin, and others … what do you intend to do about them?”
“I’ve put them On Hold,” Frigate said.
“You haven’t made up your mind yet what to do with them?”
“No. But if the Computer starts releasing the eighteen billion people back into The Valley, it won’t do it for those men. Look! I’ve seen what they’ve done. Seen it through their own eyes, seen it through the eyes of the people they did it to!”
Frigate’s eyes were large and wild, and his face was red.
“I don’t want them to keep on doing those evil things! Why should they escape justice now! They did it on Earth, but things are different here! There is some reason why they’re locked in the files and why we are in a position to judge. And to convict and execute if need be!”
“It’s not divine intervention or intention that caused the lockup,” Nur said. “It’s an accident.”
“Is it?” Frigate said.
Nur smiled and shrugged. “Perhaps not. All the more reason for us to act discreetly, reasonably, and carefully.”
“Why should we?” Burton roared. “Who cares?”
“Ah,” the Moor said, holding up his index finger and looking at its tip as if it held the answer. “Who knows? Have you perhaps had the feeling, now and then, that we are still being watched? I do not mean by the Computer but by someone who is using the Computer.”
“And just whom could that be?”
“I don’t know. But have you had that feeling?”
“No.”
“I have,” Frigate said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve always had the feeling … all my life … that someone was watching me.”
“Who then is watching the watcher? Who then judges the judge?”
“You Sufis…” Burton said disgustedly.
“The thing is,” Frigate said, “these men, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible, and so on had immense power in their lifetime on Earth. They were exceedingly important historical figures. And now…”
“Now you, the insignificant, have them in your power,” Nur said.
“I wish I could have had them in my power when they were just beginning their criminal careers,” Frigate said.
“Would you have pushed the Destroy button then?”
“Jesus! I don’t know! I should have! But…”
“What if someone could have pushed a button to destroy you?” Nur said.
“My sins were not that great,” Frigate said.
“Their size would depend on the attitude of the button pusher,” Nur said. “Or in the minds of those injured by your sins.”
Burton left then, though he paused a moment to say goodnight to Li Po and his woman, Star Spoon, and his cronies. Li Po had located and resurrected seven of the poets and painters who had been his special friends.
As Burton turned toward the door, Star Spoon said, softly, “We must see each other again. Soon.”
“Quite,” Burton said. “Of course.”
“I mean alone,” she said, and she walked away before the others noticed that she had spoken to him.
Burton did not believe that she just wished to talk to him. Under other circumstances, he would have been delighted. But Li Po was a friend and was very jealous, even if he had had no right to be so possessive. It would not be honorable to meet her alone.
But she is a free agent, he told himself. Li Po gave her life again, but he does not own her. Not unless she thinks he does. If she wishes to see me and will do so openly, Li knowing all about it, ah, well …
The very egotistic Chinese would find it hard to believe that she could prefer another man. There would be a scene, much shouting and bombast and perhaps Li Po would challenge him to a duel. That challenge and his acceptance would both be stupid. Li Po had been born in A.D. 701 and he in A.D. 1821, but neither were any longer bound by the codes of those times and, in fact, never had been entirely creatures of their ages. To fight over a woman was ridiculous. Li Po would realize that. Surely. But Li Po would no longer be his friend. And Burton valued his friendship.
On the other hand, Star Spoon was not a robot, and Li Po must have known when he resurrected her that he could not control her. She was no longer a slave girl.
The swaying of her hips was the tolling of a fleshly bell. Ding, dong! Ding, dong! He sighed and tried to think of something besides his rigid and aching flesh. No use. It had been too long.
/> But, if he came to know her well, not in the Biblical sense, would he even like her? She was probably not worth the trouble she’d cause, and he was sure that she would.
Being an old man in a young man’s body causes conflict, he thought. My hormones rage upstream against my long experience. ’Tis true a stiff prick has no conscience. ’Tis also true it has no brains.
However, Star Spoon was not the only woman in the world. He had available, theoretically, anyway, about 9.5 billion. Unfortunately, at that moment, Star Spoon was the woman he wanted. He was not “in love” with her, he did not think that he would ever be “in love” again, no one who was 136 years old and was intelligent could be swept away by romantic love. Should not be, anyway.
Of the 8.5 billion plus males locked in the files, perhaps a sixteenth were as old as he. Of these, a sixteenth might be said to be intelligent enough to have slipped the moorings of romantic love. He did not have much company.
At the moment, his only companion was the memory-view-screen on the wall alongside his flying chair. The Computer had skipped to the age of thirty-nine and selected a very painful scene. He was in London then, getting ready for the secret journey to Mecca. Since there would be many times when his penis would be exposed before his Moslem fellow-travelers, he had to be circumcised. Otherwise, one look at his foreskin would show them that he was an infidel dog, and he would be killed, probably literally torn apart, on the spot. Though the Muslim men usually squatted to urinate, and their robes usually covered their penises, there would be times when he could not escape their view. Thus, he was being circumcised, and his only anesthetic was a half-quart of whiskey.
Burton stopped the chair. The scene stopped with him. Burton, not knowing why he was doing so, told the Computer to project the neural-emotional field.
At once, he felt a searing pain as the doctor’s knife rounded the foreskin.
He clamped down on his teeth to keep from screaming, as he had clamped down on his cigar during the actual operation.
At the same time, he felt dizzy and sluggish. The field was enveloping him with his sensations as they had been at that time, and he had been drunk. Not as drunk as he should have been.
The Gods of Riverworld Page 17
