Riverworld and Other Stories Read online

  “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?

  They didn’t. Why should they?

  What about the angel who appeared to Mary and announced that she would give birth though she was a virgin?

  How could that be when Jesus had older brothers and sisters, all fathered by Joseph and borne by Mary? Anyway, Mary, whom he knew well, had never said anything about an angel.

  Mix, observing that the redness of some faces was not wholly caused by the liquor, leaned close to Yeshua.

  “Careful,” he whispered. “These guys may have decided that their religion was false, but they still don’t like to hear denied what they were taught all their life was true. And a lot of them are like Kramer. They believe, even if they won’t say it, that they’re in a kind of purgatory. They’re still going to Heaven. This is just a way station.”

  Yeshua shrugged and said, “Let them kill me. I will rise again elsewhere in a place neither worse nor better than this.”

  One of the councilors, Nicholas Hyde, began banging his stone mug on the table.

  “I don’t believe you, Jew!” he bellowed. “If you are a Jew! You are lying! What are you doing, trying to create dissension among us with these diabolical lies? Or perhaps you are the devil?”

  Stafford put his hand on Hyde’s arm. “Restrain yourself, dear sir. Your accusations make no sense. Just the other day I heard you say that God was nowhere on The River. If He isn’t here, then Satan is also absent. Or is it easier to believe in Old Nick than in the Creator? This man is here as our guest, and as long as he is such, we will treat him courteously.”

  He turned to Yeshua. “Pray continue.”

  The questions were many and swift. Finally, Stafford said, “It’s getting late. Our guests have gone through much today, and we have much work tomorrow. I’ll allow one more.”

  He looked at a tall distinguished-looking youth who’d been introduced as William Grey.

  “Milord, care you to put it?”

  Grey stood up somewhat unsteadily.

  “Thank you, my lord-mayor. Now, Master Yeshua, were you present when Christ was crucified? And did you see him when he had risen? Or talk to someone reliable who had seen him, perhaps on the road to Emmaus?”

  “That is more than one question,” Stafford said. “But I’ll allow it.”

  Yeshua was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he did so even more slowly.

  “Yes, I was present when he was crucified and when he died. As for events after that, I will testify only to one thing. That is, he did not rise from the dead on Earth. I have no doubt that he rose here, though.”

  A clamor burst out, Hyde’s voice rising above the others and demanding that the lying Jew be thrown out.

  Stafford stood up, banging a gavel on the table, and cried, “Please, silence, gentlemen! There will be no more questions.”

  He gave orders to a Sergeant Channing to conduct the three to their quarters. Then he said, “Master Mix, I will speak with you three in the morning. God gives you a pleasant sleep.”

  Mix, Yeshua, and Bithniah followed the sergeant, who held a torch, though it was not needed. The night sky, blazing with giant star clusters and luminous gasclouds, cast a brighter light than Earth’s full moon. The River sparkled. Mix asked the soldier if they could bathe before retiring. Channing said that they could do so if they hurried. The three walked into the water with their kilt-towels on. When with people who bathed nude, Mix did so also. When with the more modest, he observed their proprieties.

  Using soap provided by the copias, they washed the grime and sweat off. Mix watched Bithniah. She was short and dark, full-bosomed, narrow-waisted, and shapely-legged. Her hips, however, were too broad for his tastes, though he was willing to overlook this imperfection. Especially now, when he was full of liquor. She had long, thick, glossy blue-black hair and a pretty face, if you liked long noses, which he did. His fourth wife, Vicky Forde, had had one, and he’d loved her more than any other woman. Bithniah’s eyes were huge and dark, and even during the flight they had given Mix some curious glances. He told himself that Yeshua had better watch her closely. She radiated the heat of a female alleycat in mating season.

  Yeshua now, he was something different. The only resemblance he had to Mix was physical. He was quiet and withdrawn, except for that one outburst against Kramer, and he seemed to be always thinking of something far away. Despite his silence, he gave the impression of great authority—rather, of a man who had once had it but was now deliberately suppressing it.

  Channing said, “You’re clean enough. Come on out.”

  “You know,” Mix said to Yeshua, “shortly before I came to Kramer’s territory, something puzzling happened to me. A little dark man rushed at me crying out in a foreign tongue. He tried to embrace me; he was weeping and moaning, and he kept repeating a name over and over. I had a hell of a time convincing him he’d made a mistake. Maybe I didn’t. He tried to get me to take him along, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. He made me nervous, the way he kept on staring at me.

  “I forgot about him until just now. I’ll bet he thought I was you. Come to think of it, he did say your name quite a few times.”

  Yeshua came out of his absorption. “Did he say what his name was?”

  “I don’t know. He tried four or five different languages on me, including English, and I couldn’t understand him in any of them. But he did repeat a word more than once. Mattithayah. Mean anything to you?”

  Yeshua did not reply. He shivered and draped a long towel over his shoulders. Mix knew that something inside Yeshua was chilling him. The heat of the daytime, which reached an estimated 80 F. at high noon (there were no thermometers), faded away slowly. The high humidity of the valley (in this area, anyway) retained the heat until the invariable rains fell a few hours after midnight. Then the temperature dropped swiftly to an estimated 65 F. and stayed there until dawn.

  Channing led them to their residences. These were two small, square one-room bamboo huts, the roofs thatched with the huge leaves of the irontree. Inside each was a table, several chairs, and a low bed, all of bamboo. There were also wooden towel racks and a rack for spears and other weapons. A baked-clay nightjar stood in one corner. The floor was a slightly raised bamboo platform. Real class. Most huts had bare earth floors.

  Yeshua and Bithniah went into one hut; Mix, into the other. Channing started to say good night, but Mix asked him if he minded talking a little while. To bribe the sergeant, he gave him a cigar from his grail. At one time on Earth Mix had smoked, but he had given up the habit to preserve his image as a “cleancut” hero for his vast audiences of young movie-goers. Here, he alternated between long stretches of indulgences or abstinences. For the past year, he had laid off tobacco. But he thought it might make the sergeant chummier if he smoked with him. He lit up a cigarette, coughed, and became dizzy for a moment. The tobacco certainly tasted good, though.

  Micah Shepstone Channing was a short, muscular, and heavy-boned redhead. He’d been born in 1621 in the village of Havant, Hampshire, where he became a parchment maker. When the civil war broke out, he’d joined the forces against Charles I. Badly wounded at the battle of Naseby, he returned home, resumed his trade, married, had eight children of whom four survived to adulthood, and died of a feve
r in 1687.

  Mix asked him a number of questions. Though his interest was mainly to establish a friendly feeling, he was curious about the man. He liked people in general.

  He then went on to other matters, the personalities of the important men of New Albion, the setup of the government, and the relations with neighboring states, especially Kramer’s Deusvolens, which the Albions pronounced as Doocevolenz.

  During the English Civil War, Stafford had served under the Earl of Manchester. But, losing a hand from an infected wound, he went to live in Sussex and became a beekeeper. In time he became quite prosperous and branched out from honey to general merchandising. Later, he specialized in naval provisions. In 1679 he died during a storm off Dover. He was, Channing said, a good man, a born leader, quite tolerant, and had from the first been instrumental in establishing this state.

  “Twas he who suggested that we do away with titles of nobility or royalty and elect our leaders. He’s now serving his second term as lord-mayor.”

  “Are women allowed to vote?” Mix said.

  “They weren’t at first, but last year they insisted they get their rights, and after some agitation, they got them. There’s no holding them,” Channing said, looking somewhat sour. “They can pick up any time they want and leave, since there’s little property involved and no children to take care of and blessed little housework or cooking to do. They’ve become mighty independent.”

  Anglia, on the south border of New Albion, had a similar system of government, but its elected chief was titled the sheriff. Ormondia, to the north, was inhabited chiefly by those royalists who’d been faithful to Charles I and Charles II during the troubles. They were ruled by James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, lord-lieutenant of Ireland under Charles I and Charles II, and chancellor of Oxford University.

  “It’s milord and your grace in Ormondia,” Channing said. “Ye’d think that England had been transplanted from old Earth to The River. Despite which, the titles are mainly honorary, ye might say, since all but the duke are elected, and their council has in it more men born poor but honest and deserving than nobles. What’s more, when their women found out ours was getting the vote, they set up a howl and there was nothing His Grace could do but swallow the bitter pill and smile like he was enjoying it.”

  Though relations between the two tiny states had never been cordial, they were united against Kramer. The main trouble was that their joint military staffs didn’t get along too well. The duke didn’t like the idea of having to consult the lord-mayor or deferring to him in any way.

  “Far as that goes, I don’t like it either,” Channing said. “There should be one supreme general during a war. This is a case where two heads be not better than one.”

  The Huns across The River had caused much trouble in the early years, but for some time now they’d been friendly. Actually, only about one-fourth of them were Huns, according to Channing. They’d fought among themselves for so long they’d killed off each other. These had been replaced by people from other places along The River. They spoke a Hunnish pidgin with words from other languages making up a fourth of the vocabulary. The state directly across from New Albion was at the moment ruled by a Sikh, Govind Singh, a very strong military leader.

  “As I said,” Channing said, “for three hundred miles along here on this side the people resurrected were mainly British of the 1600’s. But there’s some ten-mile stretches where they aren’t. Thirty miles down are some thirteenth-century Cipangese, fierce little slant-eyed yellow bastards. And there’s Doocevolenz, which is fourteenth-century and half-German and half-Spanish.”

  Mix thanked him for the information and then said that he had to turn in. Channing bade him a good night.

  5.

  Mix fell asleep at once. Sometime during the night he dreamed that he was making love to Victoria Forde, his fourth wife, the one woman whom he still loved. Drums and blarings from many fish-bone horns woke him up. He opened his eyes. It was still dark, but its paleness indicated that the sun would soon come up over the mountains. He could see through the open window the graying sky and the fast-fading stars and gas clouds.

  He closed his eyes and drew the edge of the double blanket-length towels over his head. Oh, for a little more sleep! But a lifetime of discipline as a cowboy, a movie actor, and a circus star on Earth, and as a mercenary on this world, got him out of bed. Shivering in the cold, he put on a towel-kilt and splashed icy water from a shallow fired-clay basin onto his face. Then he removed the kilt to wash his loins. His dream-Vicky had been as good in bed as the real Vicky.

  He ran his hand over his jaw and cheeks. It was a habit he’d never overcome despite the fact that he did not have to shave and never would. All men had been resurrected permanently beardless. Tom didn’t know why. Maybe whoever had done it didn’t like facial hair. If so, they had no distaste for pubic or armpit hairs. But they had also made sure that hair didn’t grow in the ears and nose hairs only grew to a certain length.

  The unknowns responsible for the Riverworld had also made certain adjustments in the faces and bodies of some. Women who’d had huge breasts on Earth had wakened from death here to find that their mammaries had been reduced in size. Women with very small breasts had been given “normal”-sized breasts. And no woman had sagging breasts.

  Not all were delighted. By no means. There were those who’d liked what they had had. And of course there had been societies in which huge dangling breasts were much admired and others in which the size and shape of the female breast meant nothing at all in terms of beauty or sex. They were just there to provide milk for the babies.

  Men with very small penises on Earth here had penises which would not cause ridicule or shame. Mix had never heard any complaints about this. But a man who’d secretly yearned on Earth to be a woman had once, while drunk, poured his grievances into Mix’s ear. Why couldn’t the mysterious beings who’d corrected so many physical faults have given him a female body?

  “Why didn’t you tell them what you wanted?” Mix had said, and he’d laughed. Of course, the man couldn’t have informed the Whoevers. He’d died, and then awakened on the banks of The River, and in between he’d been dead.

  The man had hit Tom in the eye then and given him a black whopper. Tom had had to knock him out to prevent further injury to himself.

  Other deficiencies or deviations from the “normal” had also been corrected. Tom had once met a very handsome, perhaps too handsome Englishman—eighteenth century—who’d been a nobleman. From the groin upward, he’d been perfect, but his legs had been only a foot and a half long. Now he stood six feet two inches high. No complaints from him. But his grotesqueness on Earth had seemingly twisted his character. Though now a beautiful man in body, he was still embittered, savagely cynical, insulting, and, though he was a great “lover,” hated women.

  Tom had had a run-in with him, too, and broken the limey’s nose. After they’d recovered from their injuries, they became friends. Strangely, now that the Englishman’s handsomeness was ruined by the flat and askew nose, he’d become a better person. Much of his hatefulness had disappeared.

  It was often hard to figure out human beings.

  While Tom had been drying himself, he’d been thinking about what the Whoevers had done in the physical area to people. Now he wrapped himself in a cloak made of long towels held together with magnetic tabs inside the cloth, and he picked up a roll of toilet paper. This, too, had been provided by the copias, though there were societies who didn’t use it for the intended purpose. He left the hut and walked toward the nearest latrine. This was a ditch over which was a long bamboo hut. It had two entrances. On the horizontal plank above each, a crude figure of a man, full-face, had been incised. The women’s crapper was about twenty yards distant from it, and over its entrances crude profiles of women had been cut into the wood.

  If the custom of daily bathing was not yet widespread in this area, other sanitation was enforced. Sergeant Channing had informed Mix that no one was a
llowed to crap just anywhere he or she pleased. (He did not use the word “crap,” however, since this had been unknown in the seventeenth century.) Unless there were mitigating circumstances, a person caught defecating outside the public toilets was exiled—after his or her face had been rubbed in the excrement.

  Urinating in public was lawful under certain situations, but the urinator must take care to be unobserved if the opposite sex was present.

  “But it’s a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance,” Channing had said, quoting Shakespeare without knowing it. (He’d never heard of the Bard of Avon.) “In the wild lawless time just after the resurrection, people became rather shameless. There was little modesty then, and people, if you’ll pardon the phrase, just didn’t give a shit. Haw, haw!”

  At regular intervals, the latrine deposits were hauled up to the mountains and dropped into a deep and appropriately named canyon.

  “But some day it’s going to be so high that the wind’ll bring the stink down to us. I don’t know what we’ll do then. Throw it into The River and let the fish eat it, I suppose. That’s what those disgusting Huns across The River do.”

  “Well,” Mix had drawled, “that seems to me the sensible way to do it. The turds don’t last long. The fish clean them up right away, almost before the stuff hits the water.”

  “Yes, but then we catch the fish and eat them!”

  “It don’t affect their taste any,” Mix had said. “Listen, you said you lived on a farm for a couple of years, didn’t you? Well, then you know that chickens and hogs eat cow and horse flop if they get a chance, and they often do. That didn’t affect their taste when they were on the table, did it?”

  Channing had grimaced. “It don’t seem the same. Anyway, hogs and chickens eat cow manure, and there’s a big difference between that and human ordure.”

  Mix had said, “I wouldn’t really know. I never ate either.”

  He paused. “Say, I got an idea. You know the big earthworms eat human stuff. Why don’t you people drag them out of the ground and throw them into the shit pit? They’d get rid of the crap, and the worms’d be as happy as an Irishman with a free bottle of whiskey.”