"Then Kimon and the other survivors don't know about X and the agents?" Burton said.
"If they did, I vould have thaid tho."
Nur el-Musafir said, "It's possible that some of them may be agents, however."
"I'd like to talk to all of the people you mentioned," Burton said. He paused, then said, "If all of us who know about the Ethical are to go on the Bills, then others will have to step aside. They'll have to give up their berth on the launch. Is there much chance of that?"
"Thyure," the titanthrop said. He looked down his enormous nose at Burton, and he smiled. His teeth were huge dull-white blocks. "Thyure. There'th a chanthe. About ath much ath an ithecube in a bonfire."
"Then," Burton said, "we'll have to seize the launch. Hijack it."
"I thought tho," Miller said. "Vhy ith it that from the beginning ve've had to do tho many unethical thingth to help the Ethical?"
40
* * *
There were eleven in the group. of these, five had been recruited directly by the renegade Ethical. These were Richard Francis Burton, Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, Tai-Peng, Gilgamesh, and Ah Qaaq. At least, they claimed to have been visited by X. Burton, however, could be sure only of himself. One or more might be agents or even Ethicals.
Joe Miller had been told about X by Samuel Clemens. Alice knew about him from Burton. Aphra Behn hadn't been informed until yesterday, but she wanted very much to accompany them on their expedition. De Marbot had heard from Clemens about the Stranger, and he had told Behn about him. Since the Frenchman and the Englishwoman had once been lovers and were again, the others agreed that she could come with them.
Ely Parker, the Seneca, also knew about X from Clemens, and he had wished to go with them. But he'd changed his mind.
"To hell with the Ethicals and the tower and all that," he said to Burton. "I'm going to stay here and try to raise the Not For Hire. It's sunk in only about forty feet of water. Once it's up and repaired, I'll take it down-River. I'm not really interested in dying just to prove something that can't be proved. The Ethicals don't want us sticking our noses in their business. I think that the breakdowns came about because we interfered. Piscator may have screwed things up in the tower. And Podebrad told Sam that the people he left behind in Nova Bohemujo may have been responsible for the failure of the right-bank line. He said that before he left on the blimp some of his officers wanted to dig deep around a grailstone and see if they could tap into it to get a continuous source of power. He warned them not to, and before he took off he got them to promise they wouldn't monkey around with it. He said that what might have happened was that they broke their promise and somehow broke the circuit.
"If that happened, the area around it would've been blown up. There'd be a hole big enough to make a new lake on the right side of The River. The explosion could've wiped out Nova Bohemujo on that side. That's where the mineral deposits were, and if what Podebrad said was true, then that's the end of the mines and the New Bohemians.
"Anyway, I just don't like meddling around with the Ethicals. I'm no coward. Anyone who knows me'll tell you that. But I just don't think it's right to mess around with things we know nothing about."
In addition, Burton thought, you'd like to be captain of the riverboat and live the good and high life.
"You won't get much help from the locals," Burton said.
He gestured at the banks and the stream, which were crowded with people in boats or getting ready to shove off.
"This area will be near-emptied within a month. La Viro is sending almost everybody down-River to restore the faith of the Chancers, to correct deviations from their theology, and to make new converts. The breakdowns have shaken the faith of many."
"Yeah," Parker said, his broad brown face twisted with a sardonic smile. "Yeah. La Viro himself is shaken. I understand he's spending a lot of time on his knees praying. He doesn't look so sure of himself now."
Burton didn't try to argue the Seneca into going on with him. He did wish Parker luck before walking away, though he wasn't going to have any. The Not For Hire was going to stay where it was until the current nudged it off the ledge and it sank to the bottom, three thousand feet down.
When the Post No Bills sank or wore out, its end would be the end of the age of advanced technology on the Riverworld. What few metal tools and weapons existed would wear out. And then the Valleydwellers would be lucky if they had stone artifacts. The entire planet would be in the Wood Age.
The news about Podebrad's story was certainly interesting. Whether or not the Nova Bohemujo had brought about the line breakdown, Podebrad had been an agent or an Ethical. Only one of them could have known where the metal deposits were in that state. Only one of them could have known that trying to tap the power of the line could result in a catastrophe.
But Podebrad, or whatever his real name was, was dead.
Burton wondered if he could have been X.
Hearing a familiar voice hail him, he stopped and turned around. Hermann Göring, thinner than before, and he'd been very thin, approached him. His broad face was grave, and his eyes were rimmed with the darkness of fatigue.
"Sinjoro Burton! Mi dezirus akompani vin."
"You'd like to go with me? Why?"
"For the same reason that drives you. I want desperately to know what has gone wrong. I've always wanted to know, but I told myself that it was much more important to raise the ethical level of the kas. Now . . . I don't know. Yes, I do! If we are to have faith, we must also have knowledge. I mean . . . faith is the only thing to cling to if you can't know the truth. But now . . . now . . . it may be possible to know!"
"What does La Viro think of this?"
"We've quarreled, something I thought I'd never do. He insists that I go with him down-River. He intends to travel to the mouth of The River, even if it takes him three hundred years, preaching all the way. He wants to restore the faith of the people . . ."
"How does he know that it needs restoring?" Burton said.
"He knows what's been happening downstream for as far as a hundred thousand miles. What's happening there must also be happening elsewhere. Besides, didn't you notice that there's been much doubt, much falling away from the Church, while you were traveling on the boat?"
"I noticed some but didn't think much about it," Burton said. "It's to be expected, you know."
"Yes. Even some of the Virolanders have been troubled, and they have the presence of La Viro himself to strengthen them. However, I believe that the best course is to get into the tower and determine exactly what has happened. That will insure that the Church is right, and when that happens, all of the people will have no doubt and all will come to the Church."
"On the other hand," Burton drawled, "what you find there may blow your religion to bits."
Göring shuddered and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "Yes, I know. But my faith is so strong that I am willing to chance it."
"My middle name is Francis," Burton said, grinning. "So I'll be frank with you. I don't like you. I never have. You've changed character, true. But I can't forgive what you did to me and my friends. It's a case of forgiving but not forgetting. Though I suppose that fundamentally the two are the same."
Göring waved his hands imploringly.
"That is the burden I must carry. I deserve it, and I won't be able to put it down until every person who knows my evil deeds has truly forgiven me. But that is not the issue now. What is, is that I can be of great help. I am quick and strong and very determined and not unintelligent. Also . . ."
"Also, you're a Second Chancer, a pacifist," Burton said. "What use would you be if we have to fight?"
Göring said, fiercely, "I won't compromise my principles! I will not shed the blood of another human! But I doubt very much that you'll have to fight. The area upstream is thinly populated and becoming thinner every day. Haven't you seen the many boats coming through the strait? The news is out that the Virolanders are leaving. The people up-River are deserting th
eir cold land to settle down here."
"There may well be a fight," Burton said. "If we catch up with those agents, we'll try to make them talk. And when we get into the tower . . . who knows what we'll find there? We may have to battle for our lives."
"Will you take me?"
"No. That's final! I don't care to discuss this anymore. Ever!"
He strode away while Göring roared, "If you won't take me, I'll go alone!"
Burton glanced back then. The man's face was red, and he was shaking his fist. Burton smiled. Even the ethically advanced bishops of the Church could get angry.
When Burton looked back once more, he saw Göring walking swiftly toward the temple, his face set. Evidently, he was on his way to tell La Viro that he was not obeying his orders to go down-River.
That night, the eleven, headed by Burton, overpowered the guards on the Post No Bills. They came up from The Riverside, having swum silently to the railing, and boarded the port side. Two of the guards were sitting on the starboard railing and talking. These were grabbed from behind, and their noses and mouths were gripped until they passed out from lack of air. At the same time, Joe Miller entered the launch from the bankside. After a few words with the remaining sentinel, he seized him and carried him struggling to the bow and cast him into the water.
"Jethuth!" he called out to the yelling guard. "I hate to do thith, Thmith, but I got a higher duty! Give my regretth to Kimon!"
After the guards had been thrown off, Burton's group carried aboard their grails and other possessions and some long ropes and tools which had been brought up by divers from the Not For Hire. Aphra Behn turned on the electricity. As soon as the last of the supplies had been thrown onto the deck and the tie lines loosed, she took the boat away. It was shortly going at its top speed while behind them torches flared and men and women yelled.
It was not until the launch had gotten through the strait that Burton felt they had really begun the next-to-last stage of the long, long journey.
Burton thought briefly about X. According to Cyrano's story of X's visit to him, X had told him to relay to the recruits that they should wait a year for X at Virolando. Burton didn't want to do this and neither did his colleagues. They were going on now.
Traveling against the shoreline current at thirty miles per hour and only stopping for two hours each day, the Post No Bills averaged 660 miles every twenty-four hours. When they had to abandon the boat, they still had some distance to go, the most difficult part of the journey. Before that, they'd have to stop and catch fish to smoke and make acorn bread and collect bamboo tips. These would not be all they'd have to eat, though. They carried twenty "free grails" some of which they'd owned and some of which they'd stolen. They planned to fill these before getting to the final grailstone in order to have extra provisions. The food which would decay swiftly would be kept in the launch's refrigerator or dragged behind in a cask in the cold water.
As they went north, The Valley became broader. Apparently the Ethicals had made it wider so that it might receive more of the weak sunlight. The temperature was tolerable during the day, which was longer than those in the regions behind them, reaching as high as sixty-two Fahrenheit. But it would get ever colder the farther north they went. The fogs lasted longer, too.
Göring had been right about the scarcity of people. There were only approximately a hundred per square mile. This number was being cut down daily, as the many boats going down-River showed.
Joe Miller, standing in the bow, looked longingly at the titanthrops they passed. When the launch landed for recharging, he went ashore to talk to any he could find. The conversations were in Esperanto, since none knew his native tongue.
"Jutht ath vell," Joe said. "I've forgotten motht of it anyvay. Jethuth H. Chritht! Ain't I ever going to find my parentth and my friends, my own tribethpeople?"
Fortunately, the titanthrops were amiable. They were by now far outnumbered by the "pygmies," and most of them had been converted to the Chancer faith. Burton and Joe tried to recruit some, but failed. The giants wanted nothing to do with the beings in the tower.
"They all dread the far north," Burton said. "You must have shared their fear. Why did you go with the Egyptians?"
Joe swelled his gorillalike chest. "I'm braver than thothe otherth. Thmarter, too. Though, to tell the truth, I came near thyitting down my leg vhen I thaw the tower. But any man vould. You jutht vait until you thee it."
The tenth day, they stopped for a shore leave of several days. The locals were a few titanthrops with a majority of Scandinavians, ancient, medieval, and, modern. Among them were, however, people from any different times and places. The men who had no cabinmates immediately started looking for overnight stands. Burton walked around inquiring if anybody had seen the men and women who'd been forced to abandon the launch from the Rex. There were plenty, and all said that these had gone up-River in boats, all of them stolen.
"Have any others come along who've said they were on the Not For Hire?" Burton said. "That's the giant metal riverboat like the Rex, propelled by paddlewheels and driven by electric motors."
"No, I've not seen or heard of anybody like that."
Burton didn't expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.
Nor would the agents who'd left Clemens' vessel before the battle be any more open.
However, getting descriptions of those who had gone northward during the past few weeks, he recognized those who'd fled the Rex. De Marbot, who was also questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who'd deserted the Not For Hire.
"We'll catch up with them soon," Burton said.
"If we're lucky," the Frenchman said. "We may pass them at night. Or they might get word of our coming and hide while we go by."
"In any event, we'll get there first."
Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the locals, he could find none of those he sought.
In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive physique and facial features of the Ethicals Thanabur and Loga. The man who called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky, hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton, these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn't know Sumerian or ancient Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan pronunciation and intonation.
That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered the tongues. Or it meant that both were innocent and what they claimed to be.
Twenty-two days after he'd passed through the strait in an area where there weren't more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a tall skinny woman with big eyes and a big mouth. Her white teeth shone in the black African face.
She spoke in Esperanto affected heavily by a backwoods Georgia accent. Her name was Blessed Croomes, and she wanted to go on the boat as far as it would go. Then she'd go on foot to the headwaters.
"That's where my mother Agatha Croomes went. I'm looking for her. I think she must have found the Lord and is now living at His right hand, waiting for me! Hallelujah!"
41
It was difficult to stop her flow of talk, but Burton finally said, loudly and sternly, that she had to answer his questions.
"Okay," she said, "I'll listen to the wise. Are you wise?"
"Wise enough," he said, "and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you're not stupid. Let's start at the beginning. Where were you born and what were you on Earth?"
Blessed told him that she was born a slave in Georgia in 1734 in the house of her master. Come early, caught her mother in the kitchen while she was helpin
g prepare the evening meal. She'd been raised as a house slave and baptized into the faith of her father and mother. After her father had died, her mother had become a preacher. She was a very devout and very strong woman who scared her flock, though they also loved her. Her mother had died in 1783 and she in 1821. But both had been resurrected near the same grailstone.
"Of course, she wasn't an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old momma a young woman. That didn't make no difference to her, though. She was as holy and righteous and filled with the spirit as when she'd lived on Earth. Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she converted them, and then they got in trouble . . ."
"You're wandering again, Burton said. "That's enough of your background. Why do you want to go with me?"
"Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird."
"But why do you want to go to the end of The River?"
"I would have told you if you hadn't interrupted me, man. You see, my mother being here didn't shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of us, because we were sinners on Earth. Some worse than others. This was really Heaven, the outskirts of it anyway. What sweet Jesus wanted was that the real believers should go up The River, the sweet Jordan, and find Him at the end. He was up there, waiting to embrace those who truly believed, those who'd go to the trouble of seeking Him out. So she went.
"She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn't sure anyway that she knew what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that. It would've been like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway, it wasn't just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet man, and he wouldn't go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were. So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.
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