Riverworld03- The Dark Design (1977)

by Philip José Farmer

  Tom Rider has been up and down The River for hundreds of thousands of kilometers and has three times been killed. Once he was resurrected near the mouth of The River. By near I mean he was only about 20,000 kilometers distant. This was in the arctic region. The River's mouth is, like its headwaters, near the North Pole. However, the two seem to be diametrically opposite, the waters issuing from the mountains in one hemisphere and emptying into the mountains in the other hemisphere.

  From what I've heard, there's a sea around the North Pole, and it's walled by a circular mountain which would make Mount Everest look like a wart. The sea pours out of a hole at the base of the mountains, winds back and forth in one hemisphere, finally curving around the South Pole to the other hemisphere. There it wriggles like a snake up and down from the Antarctic to the arctic and back again a thousand or so times, and finally empties into the north polar mountains. (Actually, it's one mountain – like a volcanic cone.)

  If I drew a sketch of The River, it'd look like the Midgard Serpent of Norse myth, a world-girdling snake with its tail in its mouth.

  Tom said that the areas near the mouth are populated chiefly by Ice Agers, ancient Siberians, and Eskimos. There's a scattering of modern Alaskans, upper Canadians, and Russians, though. And some others from everywhere and every time.

  Tom, being the adventurer that he is, decided to travel to the mouth. He and six others made some kayaks and paddled downstream from the land of the living into the wasteland of the fog shrouds. Surprisingly, vegetation grew in the mists and the darkness all the way to the mouth. Also, the grailstones extended for a thousand kilometers into the fog. The expedition had its last grail meal at the last stone and then, laden with dried fish and acorn bread and what they'd saved from the grails, they paddled on, the ever increasing current speeding them toward their goal.

  The last hundred kilometers was in a current against which there was no turning back. They couldn't even try for the shore; sheer canyon walls soared up from the edge of the water. The voyageurs were forced to eat and sleep sitting up in their kayaks.

  It looked like curtains, finit, for them, and it was. They plunged into a great cave the ceiling and walls of which were so far away that Tom's torchlight could not reach them. Then, with a horrible roaring, The River entered a tunnel. By then the ceiling was so low that Tom's head was knocked against it. That's all he remembers. Undoubtedly, the kayak was torn to pieces against the ceiling.

  Tom woke up the next day somewhere near the south polar region.

  Chapter 39

  * * *

  (Frigate's letter continued)

  "There's a tower in the middle of a sea surrounded by the polar mountains," Tom said.

  "A tower?" I said. "What do you mean?"

  "Haven't you heard about that? I thought everybody knew about the tower."

  "Nobody ever mentioned it to me."

  "Well," he said, looking somewhat peculiar, "It is a hell of a long River. I suppose there are plenty of areas where nobody's heard the tale."

  And he proceeded to tell me that that was just what it was, a tale. No proof. The man who told Tom about it may have been a liar, and God knows there are just as many here as there were on Earth. But this wasn't an account heard from a man who'd heard it from another who'd heard it from still another and so on and so on. Tom himself had actually talked to a man who claimed to have seen the tower.

  Tom had known this man for a long time, but he'd never said a word about it until he got stumbling drunk with Tom one night. After he sobered up, he refused to talk about it. He was too scared.

  He was an ancient Egyptian, one of a party led by the Pharaoh Akhenaten or Ikhnaton, as some pronounced it. You know, the one who tried to found a monotheist religion about the thirteenth century B.C. Apparently, Akhenaten was resurrected in an area of people from his own time. The teller of the tale, Paheri, a nobleman, was recruited by Akhenaten along with forty others. They built a boat and started off, not knowing how far they had to go. Or, indeed, what their goal was, except the source of The River. Akhenaten believed that Aton, God, the sun, would live there and that he would receive any pilgrim with great honor. Would, in fact, pass him on to paradise, a place better than The Riverworld.

  Paheri, unlike the Pharaoh, was a conservative polytheist. He believed in the "true" gods; Ra, Horus, Isis, all the Old Bunch. He went along with his Pharaoh, thinking that he would lead them to the seat of the gods and would then get his just deserts for having abandoned the old religion on Earth. Poetic justice. But he, Paheri, would be suitably rewarded for his faith.

  Fortunately for their quest, the area in which they'd been first resurrected was in the northern hemisphere, far up The River. Also fortunately, they passed through areas mainly inhabited by late-twentieth-century Scandinavians. These were comparatively peaceful, so the boat's crew wasn't enslaved, and there was no problem using the grailstones.

  As they got closer to the polar mountains, they came into an area populated by giant subhumans. These seem to have been a species the fossils of which were never found on Earth. Eight to ten feet high (2.45 to 3.048 meters), believe it or not. With noses like proboscis monkeys. Language users, though their speech was simple.

  Any one of these behemoths could have wiped out the whole crew singlehanded, but the boat frightened them. They thought it was a living monster, a dragon. Apparently, their area, which extended for several thousand kilometers, was cut off from the area below them by a very narrow valley. The River boiled through it at great pressure, making a current against which a boat could not be rowed.

  The Egyptians weren't stopped by this. It took them six months, but they made it. Using flint tools and some iron tools – there was some iron in this area for which they traded booze and tobacco from their grails – they chopped out a narrow ledge about 3 meters above the water. They disassembled the boat and, carrying the parts on their backs, they crawled the kilometer or so to the end of the narrow part.

  In the land of the giants, the Egyptians recruited an individual whose name they couldn't pronounce. They called him Djehuti (the Greek form of this name was Thoth) because his long nose reminded them of that god. Thoth had the head of an ibis, a long-beaked bird.

  The boat proceeded up The River, to where the grailstones ceased. This area was in perpetual fog. Though The River had given up much of its heat while going through the sea behind the polar mountains, it still had enough left to form clouds when it encountered the colder air.

  They came to a cataract that was wide enough to float the moon on, or so said Paheri. The boat had to be left behind then, and for all anybody knows it is still on a platform in a sheltered cove. Rotten by now, what with all that moisture.

  Now, here comes one of the strangest parts of the tale. The expedition came to a cliff which seemed insurmountable. But they found a tunnel which someone had cut through the cliff. And then, later, at the bottom of another insurmountable cliff, they found the end of a rope made from cloths. Up it they went, and though their path was anything but smooth from then on, they did get to the polar sea beyond the mountains.

  Who made the tunnel and who left the rope? And why? It seems obvious to me that someone prepared the way for us Earthlings. I doubt that it was Riverdwellers who cut the tunnel and who planted the rope. The mountain which contained the tunnel was made of hard quartz. The tunnel would have worn out a large number of steel tools, which would not in any event have been available in large numbers. Moreover, Paheri said that there was no debris, no cuttings and shavings which would have to be piled outside the tunnel. Even with iron tools, a party would not have time enough to cut the tunnel. They couldn't possibly have brought along enough food for the time it would take to do the job.

  In addition, how could anyone have gotten up the aforementioned cliff without a rope? Maybe some mysterious party preceding the Egyptians fired a rocket trailing a rope? But there was only one projection, a tall, thin spire of rock, for the hypothetical rope with hypothetical grapnels
to catch on. The chances of the rocket hitting it (especially when it's invisible from below) and the grapnels catching on it are highly remote. Also, there was no empty rocket case around. Whoever had lowered the rope had tied the end of the rope around the projection. And Paheri said that it looked as if the projection had been cut out of a larger spire.

  Anyway, after crawling on a ledge through a dark cave through which a cold wind howled, they came out onto the sea. Clouds covered the sea from rim to rim of the unbroken range circling the sea. Only it wasn't really unbroken. On the other side there must have been a great gap between two mountains. Djehuti saw it first; he went around a corner just as the sun broke through for a moment. Those behind him heard a cry, then a bellow, and then a long, dwindling wail. They inched around the corner and got to the edge of the ledge just in time to see Djehuti's body disappear in the clouds below.

  Afterward, they reconstructed what had happened. He had rounded the corner and seen a grail a few paces before him. Yes, a grail. Someone had preceded them. Apparently, Djehuti saw it, too, and then the sun shone through the gap in the mountain. Blinded, or startled, he had stepped backward and tripped over the grail.

  There was just enough light from the passing sun to give a glimpse of something in the middle of the sea. It looked like the upper end of a colossal grail sticking from the clouds. Then the sun passed the gap and the clouds rolled back up and covered the big grail.

  You're probably asking, how could the Egyptians see the sun? Even if the break in the mountains extended to the horizon, wouldn't the clouds still cover it? The answer is, yes, the clouds would cover it under normal circumstances. But there was a combination of wind which cleared the clouds away momentarily just as the sun passed the gap. An unhappy combination of circumstances, for Djehuti, anyway.

  The winds are peculiar in that region. Twice, they cleared the clouds away so that the Egyptians could see, briefly, the upper portion of the tower. Without the direct rays of the sun, in the gloomy twilight of reflection from the skies, they could see only a dark bulk. But it was enough. There was an object out there, a vast object. Not necessarily a manmade object, since we don't know if the owners and operators of this planet are human. But it was an artifact; it was too smoothly cylindrical to be anything else. Though, at that distance, it could have been a spire of rock, I suppose.

  But here's another clincher. Several hours later the Egyptians saw an object rise up from the clouds around the tower. It was round, and for them to see it from where they stood, it must have been enormous. When it got far up, it reflected light from the never setting sun. Then it rose so high it became invisible.

  That really excited me. I said, "That tower could be the headquarters, the home base, of Whomever is behind all this?"

  "That's what Frisco and I think."

  The Egyptians had become fond of Djehuti. Despite his ogreish appearance, he had a good heart, and he liked to joke. He wasn't above making puns in Egyptian, which shows a considerable intelligence on his part. Humankind is unique in the animal kingdom; it's the only species that can pun. Homo agnominatio? I don't know. My Latin gets weaker by the day. If I could find an ancient Roman or a Latin scholar I'd take a refresher course.

  Back to Paheri's tale. And Djehuti. If it hadn't been for his gorillan strength, the Egyptians wouldn't have gotten as far as they did. So they said some prayers over him and pushed on down the path.

  The narrow ledge inclined, generally, at a 45-degree angle and was slippery with moisture. It was just wide enough for one man to walk along, his shoulder brushing the cliff. There were several narrowings where they had to face the cliff and slide along it, their chests against the rock, their heels hanging over the edge, their fingers clutching every tiny roughness.

  Halfway down, Akhenaten almost fell off. He'd stumbled in the fog over a skeleton. Yes, a skeleton, undoubtedly the one who'd abandoned the grail. None of his bones seemed to be broken, so they guessed that he had died of starvation. The Pharaoh said a prayer over the bones and cast them into the sea. After a while they came to the end of the path. This was at sea level. They despaired then, but Akhenaten grabbed hold of an outcropping with one hand and with a torch in his other hand looked around the projection.

  On the other side was an opening, the mouth of a cave. He eased around the outcropping, the sea up to his knees, his feet on the underwater continuation of the ledge. His torch showed him a smooth rock floor that slanted upward at a 30-degree angle. The others followed him without mishap.

  Akhenaten in the lead, they walked up the slope. Their hearts beat hard, their skins were cold, their teeth chattered. One man – our Paheri – was so scared that he had nervous diarrhoea:

  Was this the entrance to the hall of the gods? Was jackal-headed Anubis waiting to conduct them to the great judge who would balance their good deeds against the bad?

  It was then that Paheri got to thinking about the mean and unjust things he'd done, his pettinesses and cruelties, his greed and treachery. For a moment he refused to go on. But when the others kept walking, and the darkness began to press in on him, he resumed walking – though at a distance behind them.

  The cave became a tunnel, the rock walls evidently worked by tools. It began curving gently and then, after a hundred meters, it entered a very large circular chamber. This was lit by nine black metal lamps on tall tripods. The lamps were ball shaped, and they burned with a cold, steady light.

  There were several things in the chamber to astonish them. The nearest, though, was another skeleton. Like the other, it was still clothed. The right arm was fully extended as if it had been reaching out for something. Beside it was a grail. At the moment, they didn't examine the bones, but I'll describe it now. It was the skeleton of a female, and the skull and some still unrotted patches of hair showed that it was a Negress's.

  She had probably died of starvation. That was tragically ironic, since she had died a few meters from food.

  After her companion had died, she'd gone on, probably crawling part of the way, summoning enough strength to stand up and edge around the very narrow places. Then, with salvation in sight, she had died.

  I wonder who she was? What drove her to take that perilous journey? How many of her party died or turned back before they got through the vast cave through which the waves of the polar sea rush out? How did they get past the hairy, big-nosed colossi? What was her name, and why was she so fiercely determined to drive on into the heart of darkness?

  Perhaps she may have left a message inside her grail. However, its lid was closed, and so only she could open it. Anyway, it's very unlikely that the Egyptians could have read her writing. This was before the Chancers spread Esperanto around the world. Furthermore, billions who can speak this language don't know how to read it.

  The Egyptians said a prayer over the bones and then silently inspected the largest objects in the chamber, metal boats. There were eleven, some large, some small, all in low, metal V-shaped supports open at both ends.

  There were also supplies of food. They didn't know that at first, since they'd never seen plastic cans. But diagrams on plastic sheets indicated how to open them, which they did. They contained beef, bread, and vegetables. They ate heartily, and then they slept for a long time, being very fatigued from their journey.

  But they felt that the gods (in Akhenaten's view, The God) had provided for them. A path had been prepared for them, though it had not been an easy one. The road to immortality had never been easy, and only the virtuous and hardy would traverse it. Perhaps Djehuti had sinned in some way and so had been hurled from the ledge by the gods.

  There were diagrams, how-to-do-it sketches using signs, in the boats. They studied these and then carried one of the large boats through the tunnel. It could hold thirty people, but four people could lift it easily or one strong man could drag it. It was shoved under the ledge into the sea, which was moderately rough, and the party got into it. There was a small control board by the wheel. Though he was a Pharaoh and
so above work of any kind, Akhenaten nevertheless took over the controls. Following the diagrammed instructions, he punched a button on the board. A screen lit up, and a bright orange outline of the tower appeared on it. He punched another button, and the boat moved of its own accord outward into the sea.

  Everybody was scared, of course, though their leader did not show it. Yet they felt that they were in the right place and were welcome – in a sense. The boat they likened to the barge in which, in their religion, the dead journeyed across the waters of the Other World, Amenti.

  (Amenti comes from Ament, a goddess whose name meant "the Westerner." She wore a feather, as did the Libyans, the people to the west of Egypt. She may have been a Libyan goddess borrowed by the Egyptians. A feather was also the sign or hieroglyph for the word "Western." In later times, "the West" meant the Land of the Dead, and Ament became the goddess of the country of the dead. She it was who welcomed them at the gate of the Other World. She proffered them bread and water and, if they ate it, they became "friends of the gods.")

  Naturally, the food they'd found in the cave reminded them of this, just as the boat was an analog of the barge used by the dead in the Other World. The Egyptians, like many people, had been upset, not to mention outraged, when they woke from death upon The Riverworld. This was not what the priests had said would happen to them after death. Yet, there were parallels here, physical analogs, to the promised land. Also, that there was a River was comforting. They had always been a riparian folk, living close to the Nile. And now they had been guided by a divine being to the heart of the Other World.

  They wondered if they should have named the giant subhuman Anubis instead of Djehuti. Anubis was the jackal-headed god who conducted the dead in the Underworld to the Double Palace of Osiris, the Judger, the Weigher of Souls. Still, Djehuti was the spokesman of the gods and the keeper of their records. Sometimes, he took the shape of a dog-headed ape. Considering their companion's features and his hairiness, he did look like that avatar of Djehuti.