R.W. V - Gods of Riverworld Read online

  "We are, in a sense, gods," Burton said. "But humans with godlike power. Half-gods."

  "Half-assed gods," Frigate said.

  Burton smiled and said, "We've been through much on The River. It's scourged us, winnowed out the chaff. I hope. We shall see."

  "The greatest enemy is not the unknown," Nur said. He did not need to explain what he meant.

  3

  * * *

  An ancient Greek philosopher, Herakleitos, once said, "Character determines destiny."

  Burton was thinking of this as he paced back and forth in his bedroom. What Herakleitos said was only partly true. Everyone had a unique character. However, that character was influenced by environment. And every environment was unique. Every place was not exactly like every other place. In addition, a person's character was part of the environment he traveled in. How a person acted depended not only upon his character but also on the peculiar opportunities and constraints of the environment, which included the person's self. The self carried about in it all the environments that the person had lived in. These were, in a sense, ghosts, some of thicker ectoplasm than the others, and thus powerful haunters of the mobile home, the person.

  Another ancient sage, Hebrew, not Greek, had said, "There is nothing new under the sun."

  The old Preacher had never heard of evolution and so did not know that new species, unfamiliar to the sun, emerged now and then. Moreover, he overlooked that every newborn baby was unique, therefore new, whether under the sun or under the moon. Like all sages, the Preacher spoke half-truths.

  When he said that there was a time to act and a time not to act, he spoke the whole truth. That is, unless you were a Greek philosopher and pointed out that not acting is an act in itself. The difference in philosophy between the Greek and the Hebrew was in their attitudes toward the world. Herakleitos was interested in abstract ethics; the Preacher, in practical ethics. The former stressed the why, the latter, the how.

  It was possible, Burton thought, to live in this world and only wonder about the how. But a complete human, one trying to realize all his potential, would also probe the why. This situation demanded the why and the how. Lacking the first, he could not function properly with the second.

  Here he was with seven other Earthborns, in a tower set in the center of a sea at the north pole of this world. The sea had a diameter of sixty miles and was ringed by an unbroken range of mountains over twenty thousand feet high. In this sea The River gave up almost all of its warmth before it plunged from the other end and began picking up heat again. Thick mists like those from the gates of Hell hid a tower that rose ten miles from the sea surface. Below the waters and deep into the earth, the tower extended five miles or perhaps even deeper.

  There was a shaft in the center of the tower that housed some billion of wathans at this moment. Wathans. The Ethical name for the artificial souls created by a species extinct for millions of years. Somewhere near the tower, deep under the earth, were immense chambers in which were kept records of the bodies of each of the thirty-five billion plus who had once lived on Earth from circa 100,000 B.C. through A.D. 1983.

  When a person died on the Riverworld, the resurrector, using a mass-energy converter and the record, reproduced that body on a bank of The River. The wathan, the synthetic soul, the invisible entity that held all of what made that person sentient, flew at once to the body, attracted as iron by a magnet. And the man or woman, dead twenty-four hours before, was alive.

  Of the thirty-five billion plus, Burton had experienced more of death than any. A man who had died 777 times could claim a record. Though he had been dead more often than anyone else, there were few who had lived as intensely on Earth and the Riverworld as he. His triumphs and sweet times had been few; his defeats and frustrations, many. Though he had once written that the bad and the good things of life tended to balance out, his own ledger had far more red ink than black. The Book of Burton showed a deficit, a heavy imbalance. Despite which, he had refused to take bankruptcy. Why he continued fighting, why he wanted so desperately to keep living, he did not know. Perhaps it was because he hoped to balance the books someday.

  And then what?

  He did not know about that, but it was the then-what? That fed his flame.

  Here he was, trailing a horde of ghosts and placed by forces, which he had not understood and still did not understand, in this vast building at the top of the world. It had been erected for one purpose, to allow Terrestrials a chance for immortality. Not physical foreverness but a return, perhaps an absorption into, the Creator.

  The Creator, if there was one, had not given Earthpeople, or indeed any sentients, souls. That entity which figured so largely in religions had been imaginary, a nonexistent desideratum. But that which sentients could imagine they might bring into actuality, and the might-be had become the is. What Burton and others objected to was the implied should-be. The Ethicals had not asked each resurrectee if he or she wished to be raised from the dead. They had been given no choice. Like it or not, they became lazari. And they had not been told how or why.

  Loga had said that there just was not enough time to do that. Even if a thousand agents were assigned to asking a thousand people per hour whether or not they wished to be endowed with synthetic souls, the project would take thirty-five million hours. If fifty thousand agents conducted the interviews, it would take half a million hours. If the interviews could be conducted on a twenty-four-hour basis, and they couldn't, it would take somewhat over fifty-seven years to question every person. What would have been accomplished at the end of that time? Very little. Perhaps ten or twelve million might decide not to keep on living. Even a man like Sam Clemens, who insisted that he wanted the eternal peace and quiet of death, would opt for life if he was given a chance for it. He would at least want to try the life offered, one with conditions different from those on Earth. A hundred considerations would make him change his mind. The same would apply to those others who felt, for various reasons, that life on Earth had been miserable, wretched, painful and altogether not worthwhile.

  "The resurrectees have to be dealt with en masse," Loga had said. "There is no other way to handle them. We have, however, made a few exceptions. You were one, because I secretly arranged to have you awaken in the resurrection area so many years ago. You became a special case. The Canadian, La Viro, was visited by one of us, and certain ideas were given him so that he would found the Church of the Second Chance. Their missionaries spread teachings that contained some of the truths about this situation. They stressed the ethical reasons for the lazari being here; they stressed that each person must advance himself ethically."

  "Why couldn't everybody have been told the truth at the outset?" Burton had said. And then, before Loga could reply, Burton had answered himself.

  "I see. For the same reason that every person could not be asked if he wished to have another life and another chance at it."

  "Yes. And even if we Ethicals had appeared in The Valley and told the truth to all, only a certain percentage would have believed us. And our teachings would have been perverted, changed, and denied by many.

  "Believe me, our way is the best, even if it has its disadvantages and limits. We know because of what our predecessors told us about their projects in resurrecting other sentients. Besides, when Earthpeople were all raised on that day, there were one hundred thousand languages spoken by them. We would not have been understood by many. All the people could not hear the message until the Church of the Second Chance had spread a common language, Esperanto, throughout the Riverworld."

  Burton had then said, "In the previous projects, uh, I'm almost afraid to ask, how many, what percentage, Passed On?"

  "Three-quarters of those raised on the Gardenworlds did," Loga had said. "The remaining one-fourth . . . their recordings were dissolved when they died after their grace period was up."

  "Died or were killed?" Burton had said.

  "Most of them killed each other or committed suicide."

>   "Most?"

  Loga had ignored this.

  "One-sixteenth of the people resurrected as adults or juveniles in previous projects passed the test, Went On. Each of these projects had at least two phases. Here, after the phase with those who died before or during A.D. 1983 is done, then those who died after that will be raised for the second stage. The final one."

  "But the first stage is going to take longer than planned because of your interference," Burton had said.

  "Yes. I believe . . . I know . . . that the percentage of those Going On could have been higher, much higher, if the lazari had been given more time. I could not endure the thought of so many being doomed, so I became a renegade. I betrayed my fellow Ethicals. I . . . I may have condemned myself to . . . not Going On. But I don't believe that. I did it for my love of humanity."

  The Christians and the Muslims on Earth had believed in a physical resurrection. And so it had been. But the ultimate goal of the Ethicals was Buddhistic, absorption of the soul into the All-Being.

  As if reading his mind, Loga had said, "Tell me, Dick, do you really believe, believe in the innermost and deepest part of your mind, where it counts, that you will Go On?"

  Burton had stared at Loga for a moment. Then, slowly, he had said, "No. Not in the sense you mean. I just cannot believe it. There is no evidence that such a thing as Going On occurs." "Yes, there is! Our instruments cannot perceive the wathan, what you call the soul, when its owner has died after attaining a certain stage of . . . let's call it goodness instead of ethical advancement."

  "Which only means that the instruments can't detect it," Burton had said. "You have no knowledge of what really happens to the wathan at that point."

  Loga had smiled and said, "In the end, we have to fall back on faith, don't we?"

  "From what I've seen of its manifestations on Earth, I have no faith in faith," Burton had said. "How do you know but what the wathan, as you call it, has simply worn out? It's an artificial thing, but its life may end naturally, just as all synthetic things . . . and natural, too . . . end. The wathan is not a material entity, as we know material things, but that's the point. We don't really know if it's material or not. It may be a form of matter unknown to us. Or a thing of pure energy. If so, a form of energy unknown to us. But how do you know that it may not change into another form, which your instruments cannot detect?"

  "It does! It does!" Loga had said. "Into the Undetectable! How else could you explain that the wathan only passes beyond the instrument range when the owner has reached a certain stage of ethical advancement? Those who don't reach this stage may die again and again, but always, always, the wathans return to their resurrected bodies!"

  "There may be an explanation you haven't thought of."

  "Hundreds of thousands of minds greater than yours have tried to find another explanation, and they have failed."

  "But one may yet come along who won't fail."

  "You're depending upon faith now," Loga had said.

  "No. Upon history, logic and probability."

  Loga had been upset, not because he was beginning to doubt his beliefs but because he feared that Burton would not Go On.

  As it had turned out, Loga was not going to Go On. His body-record had been destroyed, and he would no longer have the opportunity to attain that final goal. Yet . . . it was Loga's own fault that he did not have that chance now. If he had not set the project on a different course, he would still be alive, and his body-record would insure that he could keep striving for that mysterious event known as Going On.

  Was the unknown who had committed Loga to oblivion an Ethical who had somehow survived Loga's mass slaughter of his fellows? If he was, why didn't he show himself? Was he afraid of the eight lazari? Was he biding his time until he could kill them and raise them in The Valley where they could no longer interfere with the original design?

  Anyone who knew how to input override commands in the computer should not be afraid of the eight. But then perhaps the unknown knew something that the eight did not know yet but might find out. If that were so, the unknown would try to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

  However, it was possible that one — or more — of the eight might have made Loga vanish.

  Burton was thinking of this when Nur's head appeared on a wall-screen. "I'd like to speak to you."

  Burton gave the codeword that allowed Nur to see him.

  "What is it?"

  Nur was wearing a green turban, indicating that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The choice of color was probably accidental, though, since the little Moor was not one to set store by such things. His long, straight black hair fell from under the cloth onto skinny brown shoulders. His narrow face was intense.

  "The inhibit input against resurrecting Monat and all the Ethicals and their agents still holds. I expected that. But something even more momentous has occurred!"

  He paused.

  Burton said, "Well?"

  "You know that Loga told us three weeks ago that he'd told the Computer to start resurrecting the eighteen billion in the records. We all assumed that it had been done. But it's not so! Apparently, Loga changed his mind for some reason. Perhaps he intended to wait until we were out of the tower. Anyway, not a single person has been resurrected since then."

  The shock silenced Burton for a moment.

  When he recovered, he said, "How many bodies are on hold now?"

  "As of now, eighteen billion, one million, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine. No. Now . . . two hundred and seven."

  "I suppose you. . . ?" Burton said.

  Nur, anticipating him, which he did with annoying frequency, said, "Yes. I ascertained that the Computer now has a reinforcing override from the unknown. The hold is still on."

  "Just think," Burton said, "only three weeks ago we thought that our long hard, struggle was over. That all the big issues were dissolved and our only problems from then on would be personal."

  Nur did not reply.

  "Very well. What we must do first is to subject each of us to a truth test. We can't proceed on the assumption that there is an unknown until we've eliminated all of our group."

  "They won't like it," Nur said.

  "But it's logical that we do it."

  "Humans don't like logic when it's inconvenient or dangerous for them," Nur said. "However, they'll submit to the test. They have to to avoid suspicion."

  4

  * * *

  If not telling a lie was the same as telling the truth, the results of the test were positive. If telling a lie could result in an indication that the truth was being told, the results were negative.

  Whether the indications were true or not, the eight seemed to be innocent.

  Each sat in turn inside a closed transparent cubicle and answered questions from Burton or Nur. The field generated inside the cubicle showed the wathan floating just above the head of the questionee and attached to it by a thread of bright scarlet light. The wathan was a sphere that swelled and shrank, whirled or seemed to whirl, and flashed a spectrum of glowing colors. This was the invisible thing that accompanied every person from the moment of conception and did not leave him or her until that person was dead. It contained all that was a person, duplicating the contents of the mind and nervous system and also giving him or her self-consciousness.

  Burton had taken the first test, and Nur had asked him several questions to which he had to give an answer he believed to be true.

  "Were you born in Torquay, England, on March 19, 1821?"

  "Yes," Burton said, and the Computer photographed his wathan at that second.

  "When and where did you die the first time?"

  "On Sunday, October 19, 1890, in my house in Trieste, that part of Italy then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire."

  The Computer took another photograph and compared the two. It then compared these two to others that had been taken many years ago when Burton had been questioned by the Council of Twel
ve.

  Nur looked at the flashing display on a screen and said, "The truth. As you know it."

  That was one of the deficiencies of the test. If a person believed that he was telling the truth, the wathan indicated that he was.

  "That is the truth," Frigate said. "I read those dates many times when I was on Earth."

  "Have you ever lied?" Nur said.

  Burton, grinning, said, "No."

  A narrow black zigzag shot over the surface of the wathan.

  "The subject lies," Nur told the Computer.

  On the screen appeared: PREVIOUSLY VERIFIED.

  "Have you ever lied?" Nur said again.

  "Yes."

  The black lightning streak disappeared.

  "Did you make Loga vanish?"

  "No."

  "Were you implicated with anyone in Loga's destruction?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "That's the truth, as far as you know it," Nur said after glancing at the screen. "Do you have any knowledge about anyone who might have made Loga vanish?"

  "No."

  "Are you glad that Loga did vanish?"

  Burton said, "What the hell?"

  He could see the image of his wathan on a screen. It was glowing with orange overlaying the other shifting colors.

  "You shouldn't have asked that!" Aphra Behn said.

  "Yes, you devil, you had no right!" Burton said. "Nur, you're a scoundrel, like all Sufis!"

  "You were glad," Nur said calmly. "I suspected so. I also suspect that most of us were. I was not, but I will allow the same question to be put to me. It may be that I, too, was glad, though deep in my animal mind."

  "The subconscious," Frigate murmured.

  "Whatever it is called, it is the same. The animal mind." "Why should anyone be glad?" Alice said. "Don't you really know?" Burton shouted.

  Alice recoiled at the violence.

  Having been cleared, for the moment, anyway, Burton left the cubicle and interrogated Nur. When the Moor appeared to be innocent, Alice seated herself. Burton forebore asking her if Loga's death had given her any joy. He doubted that it had. But when she had time to consider what she might do with the powers here, she might understand why some of the others had felt, to their shame, elated.