Gods of Riverworld: The Fifth Book of the Riverworld Series Page 5

  "I asked him what he was so upset about," Burton said. "He replied that he wasn't any more and that Pete's experiences had made Pete so paranoiac that he was hearing sounds that did not exist. Pete's suspicions were infectious. So Loga said."

  "That's like throwing a stone through your own window!" Frigate said. "There was nobody more paranoiac than Loga!"

  "If he was, then we've been on the wrong side," Nur said calmly. "Those who follow a crazy man are as crazy as he. However, talking about that is useless. What do we do now?"

  Frigate's sarcastic suggestion that they pile furniture by the door was, realistically, the best offered. It was an inconvenient arrangement if they were to use the door much, but, at the moment, they planned to stay within the suite.

  Moreover, there now seemed little chance that the unknown could poison their food and water. Frigate and Nur got simplified schematics of the e-m converters and studied them. The unknown could cut off the power to the converters and so starve them. But the food was produced by e-m conversion via preprogrammed circuits that the unknown could not change. He had no way of introducing poison into them. But their drinking and bath water came through pipes, and the unknown could put toxic substances into them.

  Frigate and Nur made arrangements whereby the water would be produced from the converters in the rooms. The Computer did not balk at producing the necessary plumbing for them to connect the water outlets to the converters. The eight had a plumbing job to do, but their inexperience was overcome by instruction books and tools furnished by the Computer. Meanwhile, the eight would get their water in bowls and pails from the converters.

  "This seems useless and stupid," Li Po said. "There are so many other ways the unknown could get at us."

  "Nevertheless, we must do what we can to avoid his tricks," I Nur said. "That is, if he has any up his sleeve. And if he does indeed exist."

  5

  * * *

  "I'm going to bed," Burton said.

  "I'll eat first," Nur said.

  The little Moor looked as fresh as if he had just had eight hours of very good sleep. By then, everybody but de Marbot and Behn was in the big room. Burton left it to Nur to explain the door blockade, and he walked down the hall a few steps and entered his apartment within an apartment. It consisted of three rooms: a living room twenty-four feet square, luxuriously furnished yet usable as a workroom, a bedroom and a bath. Burton unbuckled the belt holding the holster, which encased the beamer, and he shed his single garment, a scarlet kilt decorated by bright yellow male lion-shapes. The floor was covered with a thick carpet like that in the big community entrance room. The inwoven figures were different, each consisting of three interlocking circles. The walls were pale cream, but a word from Burton to the Computer could change the color to whatever he wished. He could also order any shape or symbol, anything, imposed on the basic color. Here and there were paintings that looked like oil originals but had been reproduced by the Computer. No art specialist could have distinguished the original from the copy, since the two were exactly alike down to the molecular level.

  Burton crawled into bed and was asleep at once. He awoke feeling drugged and with a vague memory of a nightmare. A hyena twice as tall as he had threatened him with fangs that were curving steel swords. He remembered parrying the scimitarlike teeth with a fencing foil and the hyena laughing at him. The cachinnations had been remarkably like his.

  "I've been called, quite unjustifiably, a human hyena," he murmured, and he rolled out of bed. He would have to make the bed himself, though androids — protein robots — were available to do it. For the time being, no androids would be admitted into the suite. They were a potential danger because the Unknown might have ordered them to attack the eight.

  Burton exercised vigorously for an hour, then ordered breakfast from the Computer. The coffee was the best that had ever been produced on Earth; the shirred eggs, the best; the brown bread toast, exquisitely heated and covered with the best butter Earth had ever known. There was also a jam to send the palate into ecstasy, and a fruit unknown to Earth but tasting somewhat of muskmelon.

  He brushed his teeth and took a medium-warm shower despite the possibility that the water could be poisoned. As Frigate had said, if the unknown had intended to kill them off, he could have done it by now.

  He selected a dark green kilt and a long flowing robe of green decorated with a design of yellow birds of an unknown species. Then he activated a wall-screen to see what was going on in the main room. Li Po, Nur, Behn, and Turpin were sitting in chairs and reading the lists of control limits. The furniture was still stacked in front of the door.

  Burton went into the main room, greeted them, and said, "Have the others reported in?"

  Nur said that they had. Burton went to an auxiliary computer and activated the screens in the bedrooms of those absent. He could not see them, but he could hear their voices as they said that they would be right out. A few minutes later, Alice, Frigate and de Marbot appeared. Alice was wearing a loose Chinese-looking robe, scarlet with green dragons, and brocade slippers with turned-up toes. Her short dark straight hair shone as if it had been brushed many times. Her only makeup was a light-red lipstick. She could have used some powder to cover the dark smudges under her eyes.

  "I didn't sleep well at all," she said as she sat down in a chair. "I couldn't get it out of my mind that someone might be watching me."

  "If we could trust the androids, we could have them paper over the bedrooms," Frigate said. "That'd block out the screens."

  "If . . . if," Burton growled. "I'm getting sick of these almighty ifs. I'm fed up with being in a cage. As soon as we find out what we can and can't do, we'll conduct a manhunt. It'll be dangerous, but I, for one, will not keep on hiding like a rabbit in its burrow. We're not rabbits. We're human. And human beings are not meant to be cooped up like pigeons."

  "Rabbits and pigeons," Frigate muttered.

  Burton swung around to face him. "What the devil do you mean by that?"

  "The rabbits and the pigeons don't have the slightest idea why they're caged. They don't know they're being fattened up to be eaten. But we, we don't know why Loga was done away with or what's planned for us. We're worse off than the rabbits and pigeons. They, at least, are dumb but happy. We're dumb but unhappy."

  "Speak for yourself," Nur said. "I would like to point out to those who may not have thought of it that this list may be incomplete. The unknown may have kept certain powers from the list. Even if he has not done so, he can eliminate almost any of those he wishes to eliminate."

  There was a long silence. The Chinese rose, went to a converter, and ordered a huge goblet of rye whiskey. Burton grimaced but said nothing to him. It would have been useless, and Li Po's defiance would lessen Burton's authority.

  Li Po sipped the rye, belched to indicate his appreciation, and went back to his chair. He said, "I need a woman!"

  Burton had thought that Alice was past blushing, but the Victorian in her was a long time dying.

  "You'll just have to keep jacking off," Burton said. "We have enough problems without resurrecting a woman just so she can drain off your lust."

  Alice's face became redder. Aphra Behn laughed.

  "It's unnatural," Li Po said. "My yang needs its yin."

  Burton laughed because "yang" meant "human excrement" in a West African language. Po asked him why he was laughing. When Burton explained, the Chinese laughed uproariously.

  "Well, if I can't have a woman, I'll work out my desire with exercise. What say we fence for an hour or so, rapiers or sabers?"

  "I need it, too," Burton said, "but you're drunk. You'd be no match."

  Li Po protested loudly and shrilly that he could have drunk twice as much and still beat Burton with any weapon Burton cared to choose. Burton turned away from him, and the Chinese staggered to his chair, fell into it, and began snoring. Frigate and Turpin carried him to the bedroom door. This, however, was locked with Po's codeword, which his bearers did not know. T
hey placed him on the hall floor and returned to the big room.

  "We'll all be behaving like Po if we have to stay here," Turpin said. He went to a converter and ordered a tall glass of gin with a lemon twist. Aphra, who had a glass of the same, raised it and said, "A toast to craziness! This may be a gaol, but it beats Newgate."

  She knew what she was talking about; she had twice been in debtors' prison.

  She could also afford her cavalier attitude, though it was not realistic. She had a lover, de Marbot, with whom she was happy, and she had every luxury she'd ever had on Earth and many more. Except freedom. That, however, did not bother this adaptable and cheery woman just now.

  What was keeping some of them from studying their peril was the vast potentialities of the list. Where they should have been examining what limited them, they were considering what gratifications it offered. Though Burton could understand their excitement over this, he was disturbed by their lack of concern for the dangers that were — as it were — just around the corner.

  Judging from their facial expressions, Nur was the only one thinking of the unknown enemy. Burton felt like kicking the others. Instead, he slapped his hands together sharply, jolting them from their dreams.

  "That's enough of nonsense," Burton said. "The situation is serious. Deadly. There's no time to think of anything but how we're going to fight the enemy. If we defeat him, you may play all you want. Till then . . . The unknown has a great advantage over us in that he can use the Computer better than we. But if we can learn how to use it against him, it becomes our ally. Let me remind you that the Computer is not just that huge protein electroneural mass at the bottom of the central shaft. The Computer is also the tower, this vast building in which we reside. The brain is the central protein organ, the clearinghouse. But the majority of circuits are in the floors, the walls and the ceilings of the tower. We're in the heart, the nerves of the enemy. And we can find ways to strike at that heart, those nerves. Or perhaps I should say, ways to seize them and use them as weapons."

  "If you're thinking of belling the cat," Alice said, "we don't even know where the cat is."

  "It may be another mouse who's buffaloed us into thinking it's a cat," Nur said.

  "If . . . if . . . may be," Burton said. "No more speculations on ifs. We abandon speculation; we act."

  "Fine. But how?" Nur said. "Everything we're saying now or will say may be, probably is, overheard. And perhaps seen."

  "I said, 'No more ifs and may bes!' "Burton thundered.

  Frigate laughed and said, "We can't help that, we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. We must be, or we wouldn't have come here."

  "What are you talking about?" Burton said.

  "He's paraphrasing the conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice in Wonderland," Alice said.

  "The mention of the cat reminded me of the Cheshire Cat," Frigate said. "In a way, the unknown is the grin without a cat."

  Burton threw his hands up.

  "I wish I had all of you in the army!" he cried.

  There was silence, but Burton knew that it would not last long. Not in this group.

  "That," Frigate said, "may be just what we need."

  "What?"

  "An army. We can have the Computer make us an army of robots and androids. We'll set it up so that the unknown, the Snark, let's call him, can't override our commands to the robots. We can set them to looking for the Snark and guarding us. We'll also order them to seize or kill anyone who is not us. Non-us is the enemy. The robots and androids can do in a short time what would take us years."

  Burton stared at the American, then said, "You wrote that — what do you call it? — science fiction too long. It's rotted your brain."

  "It's within the capabilities of the tower," Frigate said. "If we're going to win, we have to think big. I know it sounds crazy, but we need an army, and we can get it. I'd say, oh, a force of about one hundred thousand."

  Some burst out laughing. Frigate grinned, but he said, "I'm serious." He went to a console and punched out some numbers and an operation. Simple multiplication. The screen showed: 107,379.

  "Three automaton soldiers to a room makes one hundred seven thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine. We could have a whole army in several days. The soldiers could watch every known room and keep an eye out for a stranger and also probe for hidden rooms."

  Nur, smiling, said, "I admire your creativity but not your lack of restraint or your contempt for realities."

  "What do you mean?" Frigate said. "Restraint is good only in situations that call for it. This doesn't. As for realities, the army could be easily realized."

  Nur admitted that twice the number proposed could easily be raised. However, androids were not self-conscious and were not at all intelligent. Their actions had to be programmed. The army would have to be separated into small groups acting on their own. This required command levels of noncoms and officers, androids who could act on their own initiative when situations not in their programming arose. The leaders simply would not know what to do. For that matter, they would not even know that they had to do anything.

  "Moreover," Burton said, "there's still that nagging worry. Can the unknown install in the robots and androids some sort of channel whereby he can override our commands?"

  "He's probably thinking about that right now," Alice said. "If he's watching us, he can anticipate anything we do."

  She shuddered.

  "My answer to your objection," Frigate said to Burton, "is that we could make some modifications in the neural systems of the androids. We could make them partly mechanical. By that, I mean that we could install mechanical devices in them. Say, something like a locker or safe combination that would set our commands mechanically but that would then transmit them electrically.

  "We would set the combinations after we'd received the basic device from the Computer. That way, neither the Computer nor the Snark could control what we did. And . . . oh, hell! The Snark could still put a neuron complex in the android that would tell it to override the combination command by radio or whatever."

  "The hard facts," Nur said, "are that we are in the power of this Snark. He does not have to attack us. All he has to do is shut off our power, and we'll starve to death. If he intended to do that, he could have done so. He has not done so, therefore, we can assume that he isn't going to. He has set certain limits to our use of the Computer but allowed us considerable powers. There are certain things he doesn't want us to have. Otherwise, he just doesn't care. He's ignoring us."

  "The question, one of the questions, is why?"

  "We can't answer that. He'll have to, if he ever does," Frigate said.

  "Right," Nur said. "Now, while you were all sleeping, I had the Computer locate the secret entrance that Loga arranged long ago. The entrance we used to get into the tower after we'd crossed the mountains and taken that boat to the base of the tower. I tried to get the Computer to open that. It seemed to me that perhaps the unknown might be wanting us to leave the tower and return to The Valley. He did not wish us to use the aircraft for obvious reasons.

  "But the secret door would not open when I asked the Computer to do it for me.

  "Therefore, the unknown does not wish us to leave the tower.

  "There may come a time when he'll wish us to go, and, if so, he'll open an exit for us. Until then, we're prisoners. But this prison is vast and has, in a sense, more treasures to offer than the Earth we lived on or the Rivervalley. The treasures are physical and mental, moral and spiritual. I suggest that we find out what these are and use them. We might as well. We can't stay caged in this suite.

  "Meanwhile, of course, we'll be trying to think of ways to override the unknown's overrides. What one person sets up, another may knock down. The unknown is not a god."

  "What you're suggesting is that we move back into our apartments and live as if there were no unknown?" Burton said.

  "I say that we should leave this particular area, which is a small prison, and go out
into the larger prison. After all, Earth was a prison. So was the Rivervalley. But if you're in a large enough space to give you the illusion of freedom, then you don't think of yourself as a prisoner. The half-free man is one who thinks he is free. The really free man is one who fully knows what he can do in prison and does it."

  "A Sufi's wisdom," Burton said, smiling but with a sneer in his voice. "We do look rather ridiculous, don't we? We run into a hole and then ask ourselves why we ran and decide that we didn't have to."

  "We were following instinct," Nur said. "It was wrong to do so. We had to find a place where we could be safe. At least, think we were. Then we had the relative peace of mind to evaluate our situation."

  "Which turned out to be no peace of mind. Well, I do feel better, I won't feel as much a prisoner. And that pile of furniture irks me. Let's tear it down."

  Frigate said, "Before we do, I have something to tell you."

  Burton, who had started for the door, stopped and turned around.

  "Nur wasn't the only one who did a little independent investigating," Frigate said. "As you know, Monat can't be resurrected because of Loga's command, which the Snark reaffirmed. Monat's body-record is still on file. But I asked the Computer to locate his wathan in the shaft, and the Computer said that it had been there but was now gone. You know what that means. Monat has Gone On."

  Tears welled from Burton, and with the grief was mixed surprise that he should feel such grief. He had not known until that moment how he really felt about Monat. One of the first people he had encountered during his first resurrection had been the strange-looking, obviously non-Terrestrial Monat. Monat had accompanied him for a long time in The Valley and had impressed Burton with his compassion and wisdom. He had seemed warm. Thoroughly human despite his appearance, that is, what humans ideally should be.