Tales of Riverworld Read online

  This made for an extended explanation. Stafford had lived when North America was first being colonised by the English, but he knew very little of it. Also, in his time, Mexico was an area conquered by the Spanish, and he had almost no data on it. But after listening to Mix's lengthy exposition, he handed his cup to Mix.

  Tom sniffed at it and said, 'Well, I don't know what it is, but I ain't afraid of it. Here, try the tequila.'

  Stafford followed the recommended procedure: the drink at once succeeded by the salt and the lemon.

  'Zounds! It feels as if fire were leaping from my ears!'

  He sighed and said, 'Most strange. But most pleasant and exhilarating. What about yours?'

  Mix sipped. 'Ah! I don't know what the hell brand it is! But it tastes great, though it's a little gross. Whatever its origin, it's wine – of a sort. Maybe it's what the ancient Babylonians used to push. Maybe it's Egyptian, maybe it's Malayan or early Japanese saki, rice wine. Did the Aztecs have wine? I don't know, but it's powerful stuff, and it's rank yet appealing.

  'Tequila is a distilled spirit gotten from the heart-sap of the century or agave plant. Well, here's to international brotherhood, no discrimination against foreign alcohol, and your good health.'

  'Hear, hear!'

  Having finished his supply from the copia, Stafford ordered a keg of lichen liquor in. This was composed of alcohol distilled from the green-blue lichen that grew on the mountain cliffs and then cut with water, the flavour provided by powdered dried leaves from the tree-vines. After quaffing half a cupful, Stafford said, ‘I don't know why Kramer's men were so eager to kill you that they dared trespass on my waters.'

  Speaking carefully and slowly, so that they could understand him easier, Mix began his story. Now and then Stafford nodded to an officer to give Mix another drink. Mix was aware that this generosity was not just based on hospitality. If Stafford got his guest drunk enough, he might, if he were a spy, say something he shouldn't. Mix, however, was a long way from having enough to make him loose-tongued. Moreover, he had nothing to hide. Well, not much.

  'How far do you want me to go back in my story?'

  Stafford laughed, and his slowly reddening eyes looked merry.

  'For the present, omit your Earthy life. And condense it previously to your first meeting with Kramer.'

  'Well, ever since All Souls' Day' – one of the names for the day on which Earthpeople had first been raised from the dead – 'I've been wandering down The River. Though I was born in 1880 A.D. in America and died in 1940, I wasn't resurrected among people of my own time and place. I found myself in an area occupied by fifteenth-century Poles. Across The River were some sort of American Indian pygmies. Until then I hadn't known that such existed, though the Cherokee Indians have legends of them. I know that because I'm part Cherokee myself.'

  That was a lie, one which a movie studio had originated to glamorise him. But he'd said it so often that he half believed it. It couldn't hurt to spread it on a little.

  Stafford belched, and said, 'I thought when I first saw you that you had some redskin blood in you.'

  'My grandfather was a chief of the Cherokees,' Mix said. He hoped that his English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Irish ancestors would forgive him.

  'Anyway, I didn't hang around the Poles very long. I wanted to get to some place where I could understand the language. I shook the dust off my feet and took off like a stripe-assed ape.'

  Stafford laughed and said, 'What droll imagery!'

  'It didn't take me long to find out there weren't any horses on this world, or any animals except man, earthworms, and fish. So I built me a boat. And I started looking for folks of my own time, hoping I'd run into people I'd known. Or people who'd heard of me. I had some fame during my lifetime; millions knew about me. But I won't go into that now.

  'I figured out that if people were strung along The River according to when they'd been born, though there were many exceptions, me being one, the twentieth-century people ought to be near the River's mouth. That, as I found out, wasn't necessarily so. Anyway, I had about ten men and women with me, and we sailed with the wind and the current for, let's see, close to five years. Now and then we'd stop to rest or to work on land.'

  'Work?'

  'As mercenaries. We picked up extra cigarettes, booze, good food. In return, we helped out people that needed helping real bad and had a good cause. Most of the men were veterans of wars on Earth and so were some of the women. I'm a graduate of Virginia Military Institute...'

  Another movie prevarication.

  'Virginia I've heard about,' Stafford said. 'But...'

  Tom Mix had to pause in his narrative to ask just how much Stafford knew of history since his death. The Englishman replied that he'd gotten some information from a wandering Albanian who'd died in 1901 and a Persian who'd died in 1897. At least, he supposed they had those dates right. Both had been Moslems, which made it difficult to correlate their calendar with the Christian. Also, neither had known much about world history. One had mentioned that the American colonies had gained their independence after a war. He hadn't known whether or not to believe the man. It was so absurd.

  'Canada remained loyal,' Mix said. 'I see I have a lot to tell you. Anyway, I fought in the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boer War. I'll explain what these were later.'

  Mix had fought in none of these, but what the hell. Anyway, he would have if he'd had a chance to do so. He'd deserted the US cavalry in his second hitch because he wanted to get to the front lines and the damned brass had kept him home.

  'A couple of times we were captured by slavers when we landed at some seemingly friendly place. We escaped, but the time came when I was the only one left of the original group.

  The rest were either killed or quit because they were tired of travelling. My lovely little Egyptian, a daughter of a Pharaoh... well, she was killed, too.'

  Actually, Miriam was the child of a Cairo shopkeeper and was born sometime in the eighteenth century. But he was a cowboy, and cowboys always embellished the truth a little. Maybe more than a little. Anyway, figuratively, she was a daughter of the Pharaohs. And what counted in this world, as in the last one, was not facts but what people believed were the facts.

  He said, 'Maybe I'll run into her again someday. The others, too. They could've just as well been re-resurrected down-River as up-River.'

  He paused, then said, 'It's funny. Among the millions, maybe billions of faces I've seen while sailing along, I've not seen one I knew on Earth.'

  Stafford said, 'I met a philosopher who calculated that there could be at least thirty-five billion people along The River.'

  Mix nodded.

  'Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. But you'd think that in five years just one... well, it's bound to happen someday. So, I built this last boat about five thousand miles back, a year ago. My new crew and I did pretty well until we put in at a small rocky island for a meal. We hadn't used our buckets for some time because we'd heard the people were mighty ornery in that area. But we were tired of eating fish and bamboo shoots and acorn bread from our stores. And we were out of cigarettes and the last booze we'd had had been long gone. We were aching for the good things of life. So, we took a chance on going ashore, and we lost. We were brought before the local high muckymuck, Kramer himself, a fat ugly guy from fifteenth-century Germany.

  'Like a lot of nuts, and begging your pardon if there's any like him among you, he hadn't accepted the fact that this world isn't near what he thought the afterlife was going to be. He was a bigshot on Earth, a priest, an inquisitor. He'd burned a hell of a lot of men, women, and children after torturing them for the greater glory of God.'

  Yeshua, sitting near Mix, muttered something. Mix fell silent for a moment. He was not sure that he had not gone too far.

  Although he had seen no signs of such, it was possible that Stafford and his people might just be as lunatic in their way as Kramer was in his. During their Terrestrial exis
tence, most of the seventeenth-centurians had had a rock-fast conviction in their religious beliefs. Finding themselves here in the strange place neither heaven nor hell, they had suffered a great shock. Some of them had not yet recovered.

  There were those adaptable enough to cast aside their former religion and seek the truth. But too many, like Kramer, had rationalised their environment. Kramer, for instance, maintained that this world was a purgatory. He had been shaken to find that not only Christians but all heathens were here. He had insisted that the teaching of the Church had been misunderstood on Earth. They had been deliberately perverted in their presentation by Satan-inspired priests. But he clearly saw The Truth now.

  However, those who did not see the truth as he did must be shown it. Kramer's method of revelation, as on Earth, was the wheel and the fire.

  When Mix had been told this, he had not argued with Kramer's theory. On the contrary, he was enthusiastic – outwardly – in offering his services. He did not fear death, because he knew that he would be resurrected twenty-four hours later elsewhere along The River. But he did not want to be stretched on the wheel and then burned.

  He waited for his chance to escape.

  One evening a group had been seized by Kramer as they stepped off a boat. Mix pitied the captives, for he had witnessed Kramer's means of changing a man's mind. Yet there was nothing he could do for them. If they were stupid enough to refuse to pretend that they agreed with Kramer, they must suffer.

  'But this man Yeshua bothered me,' Mix said. 'In the first place, he looked too much like me. Having to see him burn would be like seeing myself in the flames. Moreover, he didn't get a chance to say yes or no. Kramer asked him if he was Jewish. Yeshua said he had been on Earth, but he now had no religion.

  'Kramer said he would have given Yeshua a chance to become a convert, that is, believe as Kramer did. This was a lie, but Kramer is a mealy-mouthed slob who has to find justification for every rotten thing he does. He said that he gave Christians and all heathens a chance to escape the fire – except Jews. They were the ones who'd crucified Jesus, and they should all pay. Besides, a Jew couldn't be trusted. He'd lie to save his own skin.

  'The whole boatload was condemned because they were all Jews. Kramer asked where they'd been headed, and Yeshua said they were looking for a place where nobody had ever heard of a Jew. Kramer said there wasn't any such place; God would find them out no matter where they went. Yeshua lost his temper and called Kramer a hypocrite and an anti-Christ. Kramer got madder than hell and told Yeshua he wasn't going to die as quickly as the others.

  'About then, I almost got thrown into prison with them. Kramer had noticed how much we looked alike. He asked me if I'd lied to him when I told him I wasn't a Jew. How come I looked like a Jew if I wasn't? Of course, this was the first time he thought of me looking like a Jew, which I don't. If I was darker, I could pass for one of my Cherokee ancestors.

  'So I grinned at him, although the sweat was pouring out of me so fast it was trickling down my legs, and I said that he had it backwards. Yeshua looked like a Gentile, that's why he resembled me. I used one of his own remarks to help me; I reminded him he'd said Jewish women were notoriously adulterous. So maybe Yeshua was half-Gentile and didn't know it.

  'Kramer gave one of those sickening belly laughs of his; he drools until the spit runs down his chin when he's laughing. And he said I was right. But I knew my days were numbered. He'd get to thinking about my looks later, and he'd decide that I was lying. To hell with that, I thought, I'm getting out tonight.

  'But I couldn't get Yeshua out of my mind. I decided that I wasn't just going to run like a cur with its tail between its legs. I was going to make Kramer so sick with my memory his pig's belly would ache like a boil every time he thought of me. That night, just as it began to rain, I killed the two guards with my axe and opened the stockade gates. But somebody was awake and gave the alarm. We ran for my boat, had to fight our way to it, and only Yeshua, Bithniah and I got away. Kramer must have given orders that the men who went after us had better not return without our heads. They weren't about to give up.'

  Stafford said, 'God was good enough to give us eternal youth in this beautiful world. We are free from want, hunger, hard labour, and disease. Or should be. Yet men like Kramer want to turn this Garden of Eden into hell. Why? I do not know. One of these days, he'll be marching on us, as he has on the people to the north of his original area. If you would like to help us fight him, welcome!'

  'I hate the murdering devil!' Mix said. 'I could tell you things... never mind, you must know them.'

  'To my everlasting shame,' Stafford replied. 'I must confess that I witnessed many cruelties and injustices on Earth, and I not only did not protest, I encouraged them. I thought that law and order and religion, to be maintained, needed torture and persecution. Yet I was often sickened. So when I found myself in a new world, I determined to start anew. What had been right and necessary on Earth did not have to be so here.'

  'You're an extraordinary man,' Mix said. 'Most people have continued to think exactly what they thought on Earth. But I think the Riverworld is slowly changing a lot of them.'

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  The food from the copias had been put on wooden plates. Mix, glancing at Yeshua, saw that he had not eaten his meat. Bithniah, catching Mix's look, laughed.

  'Even though his mind has renounced the faith of his fathers, his stomach clings to the laws of Moses.'

  Stafford, not understanding her heavily accented English, asked Mix to translate. Mix told him what she'd said.

  Stafford said, 'But isn't she Hebrew, too?'

  Mix said that she was. Bithniah understood their exchange. She spoke more slowly.

  'Yes, I am a Hebrew. But I have abandoned my religion, though, to tell the truth, I was never what you would call devout. Of course, I didn't voice any doubts on Earth. I would've been killed or at least sent into exile. But when we were roaming the desert, I ate anything, clean or unclean, that would fill my belly. I made sure, though, that no one saw me. I suspect others were doing the same. Many, however, would rather starve than put an unclean thing in their mouths, and some did starve. The fools!'

  She picked up a piece of ham on her plate and, grinning, offered it to Yeshua. He turned his head away with an expression of disgust.

  Mix said, ‘For Christ's sake, Yeshua. I've told you time and again that I'll trade my steak for your ham. I don't like to see you go hungry.'

  'I can't be sure that the cow was slaughtered or prepared correctly,' Yeshua said.

  'There's no kosher involved. The buckets must somehow convert energy into matter. The power that the bucketstones give off is transformed by a mechanism in the false bottom of the bucket. The transformer is programmed, since there's a different meal every day.

  'The scientist that explained all that to me said, though he admitted he was guessing, that there are matrices in the buckets that contain models for certain kinds of matter. They put together the atoms and molecules formed from the energy to make steaks, cigars, what have you. So, there's no slaughter, kosher or unkosher.'

  'But there must have been an original cow that was killed,' Yeshua said. 'The beef which was the model for the matrix came from a beast which, presumably, lived and died on Earth. But was it slaughtered in the correct manner?'

  'Maybe it was,' Mix said. 'But the meat I just ate isn't from the cow. It's a reproduction, just matter converted into energy. Properly speaking, it was made by a machine. It has no direct connection with the meat of the beast. If what that scientist said was true, some kind of recording was made of the atomic structure of the piece of beef. I've explained what recordings and atoms are to you. Anyway, the meat in our buckets is untouched by human hands. Or nonhuman, for that matter.

  'So, how can it be unclean?'

  'That is a question which would occupy rabbis for many centuries,' Yeshua said. 'And I suppose that even after that long a time they would still disagree. No. The safe
st way is not to eat it.'

  'Then be a vegetarian!' Mix said, throwing his hands up. 'And go hungry!'

  'Still,' Yeshua said, 'there was a man in my time, one who was considered very wise and who, it was said, talked to God, who did not mind if his disciples sat down with dirty hands at the table if there was no water to wash them or there were mitigating circumstances. He was rebuked by the Pharisees for this, but he knew that the laws of God were made for man and not man for the laws.

  'That made good sense then and it makes good sense now. Perhaps I am being overstrict, Pharasaical, more devoted to the letter than to the spirit of the law. Actually, I should pay no attention to the law regarding what is ritually clean and what unclean. I no longer believe in the law.

  'But even if I should decide to eat meat, I could not put the flesh of swine in my mouth if I knew what it was. I would vomit it. My stomach has no mind, but it knows what is fit for it. It is a Hebrew stomach, and it is descended from hundreds of generations of such stomachs. The tablets of Moses lie as heavy as a mountain in it.'

  'Which doesn't keep Bithniah from eating pork and bacon,' Mix said.

  'Ah! That woman! She is the reincarnation of some abominable pagan!'

  'You don't even believe in reincarnation,' Bithniah said, and she laughed.

  Stafford had understood part of the conversation. He said, eagerly, 'Then you, Master Yeshua, lived in the time of Our Lord! Did you know him?'

  'As much as I know of any man,' Yeshua said.

  Everybody at the table began plying him with many questions. Stafford ordered more lichen-liquor brought in.

  How long had he known Jesus?

  Since his birth.

  Was it true that Herod massacred the innocents?

  No. Herod wouldn't have had the authority if he had wished to do so. He would have been removed by the Romans and perhaps executed. Moreover, such a deed would have caused a violent revolution. No. That tale, which he had never heard until he came to The Riverworld, was not true. It must be a folk story which had originated after Jesus was dead. Probably, though, it was based on an earlier tale about Isaac. Then that meant that Jesus, Joseph, and Mary did not flee to Egypt?