They took a ride on the rollercoaster, but Star Spoon got sick during the up-and-down-and-arounding and threw up in the seat. The android operating the ride called two others to clean up thei mess after Burton had told him to do so.
"You seem even more nervous today," Burton said.
"It's all those strange creatures," she said, waving her hand.
She was not; of course, familiar with the beings with which Carroll had populated the Alice books and which the real Alice had brought to life. They made her uneasy, because she had not been conditioned to them through the books. What made her especially nervous was the Jabberwock, which looked exactly like Tenniel's illustration. Its scaly body was that of an attenuated dragon, and it had leathery dragon wings, but the exceedingly long and relatively thin neck, and the narrow face, which looked like a very evil old man's, and the absurdly long toes of the front paws made it like no other dragon in myth, legend or fictional literature. It was huge, its head reaching to thirteen feet when it stood upright. The Jabberwock, however, did not venture upon the field but prowled around within a confined area under a gigantic oak, its long tail always lashing.
"It frightens me," Star Spoon said.
"You know that it's been programmed not to hurt anybody.”
"Yes, I know. But what if something went wrong in it? Look at those terrible teeth. It has only four, two above and two below, but think what those teeth could do if they bit down on you.”
"You need a drink," he said, and he steered her toward a table. The androids serving there were a Fish-Footman, a Frog-Footman and a White Rabbit. The former two wore the eighteenth-century garments and white powdered wigs Tenniel had portrayed. The White Rabbit had pink eyes, a stiff white collar, a cravat, a checked coat and a waistcoat. A gold chain inserted by a stud into a buttonhole in his waistcoat was attached at the other end to a large watch in a pocket of the waistcoat. From time to time, the White Rabbit took the watch out and looked at it.
"Excellent," Burton said, grinning.
"I don't like them," Star Spoon whispered, as if it made any difference if they heard her. "Those huge goggly eyes.”
"The better to see you, my dear.”
He looked up as a shadow passed over him. It had been cast by the chair of de Marbot, who was leading a flight of thirty or more of his friends. He was dressed in a Hussar's uniform; so were some of his friends. Others wore field marshals' uniforms, though none had ever attained that rank. Most of the ladies were dressed in the style of the 1810s.
A few minutes later, Aphra and a dozen others arrived. Everybody who had been invited was here, Burton thought. He was wrong, though. Shortly after the last of Behn's group had left the host and hostess, a motorcycle roared onto the field. Sitting in the front was Bill Williams and clinging to him was the black woman Burton had seen with him in the corridor. Williams wore a black astrakhan hat, very Russian, but his face was painted like a witch doctor's, his torso was bare except for a necklace of human hand bones, and he wore black leather pants and boots. The woman had come-upped Sophie; she wore nothing except a necklace of huge diamonds and a complex painting of many bright-colored figures, which covered her front and back and her legs.
Burton had not known that Alice had invited Williams. Judging from her expression, she was sorry that she had. However, she smiled as a hostess should and introduced the couple to Maglenna. His eyes were as wide as his grin when he took the woman's hand. Burton wished that he were near enough to hear their conversation.
Frigate strolled up to Burton and pointed at the late-comers. "Quite a sensation, right. The last shall be first.”
"Quite," Burton said.
"Sophie doesn't know if she should be delighted or furious." The White Knight rode by on his sorry white nag. His helmet was off, revealing a face that looked exactly like Carroll's except for the very long drooping white moustache. A scabbard holding a huge straight two-edged sword was attached to a belt, and a big club with a wooden shaft and a knobbed end with spikes was stuck shaft down in a boot hanging from the saddle. Attached to the back of the armor was a box, upside-down, its lid hanging. This was, in Through the Looking-Glass, supposed to have been the White Knight's invention, a container for his sandwiches and clothes. But it was upside down to keep the rain out of the box, and so its contents had fallen out.
Behind him rode the Red Knight on a roan stallion. It was a sinister figure with its crimson armor, horse-head-shaped helmet, and big spiked club.
A Walrus and a Carpenter in its paper hat and leather apron walked by, conversing. Trailing them on thin spindly legs were forty or so oysters, each with long antennae with eyes on the ends projecting from their shells.
"This must have taken Alice a long time to prepare," Frigate said. "Think of all the details she had to put into the Computer.”
"Oh, look," Sophie said, pointing at a tree. "Can you believe it? The Cheshire Cat!”
As they walked towards the tree, the cat, which was the size of a large lynx, began to disappear. The tail vanished, then the hindquarters, then the front quarters, then the neck, then the head. Except for a cat's grin hanging in the air above the branch on which it had sat, it was invisible. They walked underneath it, looking for a mechanism of some sort, but could find none.
"Have to ask Alice how this is done," Burton said. "Probably, though, she won't know. The Computer would've taken the order and done its scientific magic, no explanations needed.”
The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle walked by conversing. The Gryphon was a lion-sized creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The Mock Turtle had the body of a giant tortoise, weighing perhaps six hundred pounds, and the head and back legs of a cow. It crawled slowly but, once, halted, and pushed with its short but immensely powerful front legs, causing it to spring upright. While it teetered on the end of its shell, its bovine legs braced, the hoofs digging into the ground, tears flowing, it sang in a magnificent contralto, "Beautiful soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen!”
But when it reached the chorus, beginning with "Beau— ootiful Soo—oop!" it lost its balance and fell heavily on its back, still singing. There was some consternation then until six androids turned it over. After which it resumed crawling and singing.
Star Spoon said, "I think I'll go sit down for a while, Dick. I'm tired, and these animals" —she nodded at the Gryphon— "look so dangerous. I know they're not, but ...”
"Very well, I'll check on you later," Burton said.
He watched her walk to the west end of the field and sit down in a very comfortable chair. A very fat, bald-headed and old-looking android—it had to be Father William—came to her side. It must have asked her if she wanted anything, because she nodded and her mouth moved.
Burton walked around and looked at the Queen of Hearts and the other androids fashioned to simulate the living pack of cards. From the front, they looked exactly like Tenniel's drawings, but they presented a much thicker profile, about three inches wide, he estimated. The Computer could do only so much in making a reality of fantasy. The things had to have space for muscles and organs and blood. Their faces were painted on the oblong bodies, but, though the painted mouths did not move, voices issued from them.
"Marvelous!" Burton said.
Aphra Behn happened to be standing near him. She said, "Yes, aren't they? It's such a childish conceit, however. Not that I disparage Alice for all this. We've struggled so hard to get here, endured so many dangers and tribulations, that we've relaxed and become children again for a while. We have to play, don't you think?”
"The playtime, unfortunately is over," he said. "What happened to Turpin and Frigate may happen to us.”
He went to a table and ordered a glass of Scotch from one of the living chess pieces, a Castle. He also got a fine Havana pana-tela. Cigar in one hand, glass in the other, he strolled over to the croquet field. The field was as in the book, ridges and furrows with bent-over card-androids serving as arches, flamingoes as mallets, and rolled-up hedgehogs as balls. Since Alice was not cruel or callous, she must have made arrangements in the neural systems of the birds and animals that would prevent them from being hurt.
Turpin seemed to have forgotten his troubles; he was having a good time at croquet.
An hour passed. Burton had two more Scotches. He took rides on the merry-go-round and again on the rollercoaster and watched the orchestra for a while. Most of the musicians were Frog- and Fish-Footmen, but the conductor was Bill the Lizard, a giant saurian smoking a cigar and wearing a flat cap. They had been programmed to play any kind of music from waltzes to dixieland to classical. At the moment, they were blasting out a wild barbaric piece that Burton thought must be the rock-and-roll described by Frigate. After listening for a while, he could understand why Frigate had been tempted to erase all of this type of music from the records.
An ugly Duchess and a Queen of Hearts waddled by him.
"Off with their heads! Off with their heads!”
"Beat him until he sneezes!”
Burton went back to the croquet field, played a game, wandered around, stopping to chat with several people, and then watched the Mad Tea Party for a while. The child-android playing Alice was charming; the large dark eyes had the real Alice's dreaminess. Burton could understand why Mr. Dodgson had fallen in love with the ten-year-old girl.
When the Mad Hatter said, "And ever since that, he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now," Burton walked away. It was amusing to watch them go through the whole scene once, but the repetition was boring.
Feeling in need of exercise, he played volleyball for a while. The game was fun and vigorous, and he loved to watch Bill Williams' woman leap into the air to bat a ball back. Then, sweating, he walked to a chair and sat down. A Tweedledee and a Tweedledum asked him what he wanted. He ordered a mint julep. The two grotesquely fat androids went to a table and there had an argument—programmed in, of course—about which one would serve him. While their heated and amusing discussion was going on, he watched the blue caterpillar on a nearby giant mushroom smoking its hookah. In a way, he thought, it was a pity that all these things were to be destroyed. Yet, he could understand why Alice had tired of them.
He watched the dance floor for a while. The orchestra was playing some type of music he did not recognize. Frigate was walking by then, and Burton called him over. "What is that music, and what kind of gyrations are the dancers doing?”
"I don't know the particular piece," Frigate said. "It's from the 1920s, sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it. The dance is called the Black Bottom.”
"Why do they call it that?”
"I don't know.”
Alice and Monteith seemed to be enjoying the wild motions. At last she had found a partner to share her love of dancing. Burton had never cared for it. In fact, he had only danced several times in his life, and that had been for the edification of a black African tribal chief.
The fat identical-twin schoolboys, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, walked by him. Neither had a drink on a tray. Burton said, "What...?" and at that moment the music stopped in the middle of a bar. He rose and stared at the stand. The musicians had put aside their instruments and were getting down off the bandstand.
"What's going on?" Frigate said.
Alice was staring puzzledly at the departing musicians.
"Not planned for," Burton said. A chill passed over his skin.
The little Frenchman, de Marbot, his blue eyes wide, trotted up to Burton. "Something is wrong," he said.
Burton turned to take in three hundred and sixty degrees of vision. The androids were hastening to the woods, their pace increasing. All except the Mock Turtle, which had fallen on its back and was bawling and kicking its legs. No, not all were heading for the trees. A number were spreading toward the west end of the field, where the hill began. Among them were the Red and White Knights on their chargers, the Lion and the Unicorn, and the Gryphon. They stopped just before coming to the hill and turned around to face the field.
By then the other androids had disappeared into the shadows under the massive oaks.
Burton glanced at de Marbot's scabbard and the hilt of the saber sticking from it.
"I daresay you may have to use your snickersnee, Marcelin," he said. "How many ... are all your Hussars armed?”
"Why, yes," de Marbot said. "We have twelve sabers among us.”
"Tell them to draw them," Burton said. "Listen, Marcelin, I think we're going to be attacked. Somebody, I'm sure, has put in an overriding program in the androids. Alice didn't plan this.”
He glanced around. Star Spoon must have had the same idea. She was running for the rollercoaster now. He looked at de Marbot.
"You have the most military experience," he said. "You're in command now.”
He turned and began yelling, "Everybody over here! Quick! On the double!”
Some of the crowd came running. Others stood still as if frozen; the rest ambled toward him.
Maglenna, pulling on Alice's hand, ran up to Burton. "I say, what's going on?”
"I am not sure." Burton looked at Alice. "You don't have the slightest idea?”
She shook her head. "No. Could the Snark be behind this? What can we do about it?”
"That's up to Marcelin," Burton said. "But I think we should make for the chairs. You and Monteith can sit on somebody's lap. We can't get through them—" he indicated the grim beasts guarding the west edge "—without serious loss.”
De Marbot was talking in rapid French to his friends. But he stopped and looked at the south edge of the field. The androids were coming out from the forest with weapons: spears, swords, maces, morning stars and daggers.
Burton swiveled to take in the north and east sides of the field. Androids were emerging from the shadows there; all were similarly armed. And those from the east side were hurrying to place themselves between the guests and their flying vehicles.
"Too late," Burton said.
De Marbot was bawling orders out in Esperanto so that all would understand him. They began to form a ragged square with the Hussars on the eastern side. Burton called to him, "I'm going to get some weapons.”
"Where?" de Marbot said.
"The musical instruments. Some of them can be used as clubs.”
He ran to the bandstand with some men behind him. The androids from the north, those nearest the stand, did not change their pace or utter a sound. If they had run, they could have cut Burton off. But he was able to pick up a saxophone, and the others got guitars, bass fiddles, flutes, French horns, anything that might be wielded as a blunt instrument of warfare.
They ran back to the square, where they were arranged in a ragged fashion by de Marbot. He was quivering with eagerness, his blue eyes bright, his round face split with a smile. "Ah, my darlings!" he cried to his Hussars. "You will show these monsters how the soldiers of Napoleon fought!”
His voice was stilled by a great whistling bellow. All looked at the south side of the field, where the Jabberwock was rearing up on its hind legs, stretching its snaky neck out, its mouth gaping, exposing the four sharp teeth. It did not, however, as Burton had feared it would, charge at once. It dropped to all fours and walked slowly toward them, bellowing.
Burton was on the western side of the square, facing the beasts and the Knights there. At the same time that the Jabberwock had begun advancing, the beasts and the Knights' horses had begun walking slowly toward the humans.
On all sides of the group, the androids walked toward it in formation, silently.
Suddenly, Burton was aware that Star Spoon was not with them. She had climbed up the side of the rollercoaster and was perched near the top of a cross-piece.
It was too late to go after her. Calling to her to come down would only attract the attention of the androids to her. Perhaps they would not notice her. In any event, she was on her own. No. If he could get to a chair, he could fly to her and take her away.
"They outnumber us three to one," Burton said loudly to anyone who would hear. "The big beasts and the Knights make the odds even worse. But try to grab their spears and clubs away from them. If any of them fall, pick up their weapons.”
De Marbot repeated the .advice for the whole group. A black woman, one of the Second Chancers, shrilled, "Oh, Lord, what can we do? We can't shed blood! We're pacifists, peaceful in your sight, Lord!”
"Damn it, woman!" Burton shouted. "Those things aren't human! They're machines! It's no sin to fight for your life against them!”
"That's right!" a black man shouted. "It's no sin! Fight, brothers and sisters! Do battle for the Lord without sin! Tear them apart!”
One group, Burton thought it was the Revised Free Will Baptists, began singing a spiritual. They had not gotten more than a few words out when de Marbot roared for silence.
"If you sing, you can't hear my orders!”
With the Frenchman leading, the square began trotting toward the chairs. Burton, in the rear, kept glancing backward. The Knights and the beasts had not stepped up their pace. Apparently, they were set to close in on the group at a predetermined rate.
The Jabberwock was near the end of the line of androids, coming in from the south side of the field. The monster was the most dangerous attacker, and it should be opposed by at least six sabermen. Burton swore. If only he had a sword instead of a saxophone in his grip.
The group, the women inside, the men forming a shell around them, trotted toward the ranks of creatures standing before the chairs. There were about two hundred or more there, the thickest concentration of bodies. Whoever had planned this had guessed correctly that the humans would try to get to their vehicles. To attempt the hill so they could get inside the house, they had to attack the big beasts and the Knights, and the aspect of these was so fearsome that the humans would prefer to go the other way.
Suddenly, the people ahead of him screamed. He jumped up so he could get a better look at what was frightening them. He saw that chairs were flying up without riders, and he groaned. Androids hidden behind the defensive lines were sending the chairs up. Even if the humans did fight through, they would have no aerial escape; they would have to keep on going into the forest. And they would be hunted down.
De Marbot understood this at once. He cried out a command to halt. The people, however, kept on moving ahead, pushing and shoving, until de Marbot's sabermen suceeded in stopping them. Instantly, the Frenchmen raced around the group to the back, which had now become the front.
"We must get through them to the hill and to the house!" de Marbot shouted. "Dick, you take your men to the left flank! The honor of defending us against the Jabberwock is yours!”
Burton hustled his group as ordered. The androids continued to advance slowly and voicelessly. By now, they were within sixty feet of the humans.
De Marbot raised his saber and yelled, "Charge!”
He and his sabermen leaped ahead of the others, who took more time than they should have in attaining any speed. They were undisciplined and scared, and thus some ran faster than others, jostling those ahead, and some, as was inevitable, fell down, and some tripped over these. Burton only had time to glance at the screaming milling crowd and at the Frenchmen closing with the Red and White Knights, the Lion, the Unicorn, a Walrus, the Gryphon, and a Humpty Dumpty. Then the open mouth of the Jabberwock, its four teeth flashing, saliva running from its lower lip, roaring, was shooting at him. Burton threw the saxophone with all his force into its mouth, and the thing closed its jaws automatically on it. Its nose struck Burton on the chest, knocked him backward, and rammed the air from his lungs. He rolled away while trying to regain his wind, and several women fell on top of him.
The saxophone, spat out, landed near his outstretched right hand. He grabbed it. One of the struggling black women on top of him shrieked, and she was lifted up in the Jabberwock's mouth. The teeth closed through her body; she became limp and silent. With a toss of the head, the monster threw her body away and whipped the snaky neck and head outward and down and seized another screaming woman.
Though he had not yet gotten all of his breath back, Burton heaved the one woman on top of him away, rolled, and ran by the Jabberwock's giant right front foot. A Tweedledee and a Tweedledum walked steadily toward him, holding long spears, their huge fat faces expressionless. Yelling, Burton ran at them, his saxophone held high.
They were programmed to do only certain things, though these were many. One thing they had not been commanded to do was to avoid the area of the Jabberwock's lashing tail, something any human would have consciously done. As a result, the two identicals were knocked flat by the enormous scaly tail. No, not just knocked down. The tail had broken some of their bones. They were crumpled on the grass and groaning.
He glanced back and up. The Jabberwock was not aware of his presence; it was engrossed in killing another woman. Burton ran to the rear flank and waited for the tail to lash to his left. As he did so, he glimpsed the head and shoulders of Williams running toward the chair-parking area. Androids were clumsily stabbing at him with spears and hacking at him with swords, but he was zigzagging desperately. Then Burton could give him no more attention; he leaped forward, landed, stooped, and grabbed a spear the fallen Tweedledee or Tweedledum had dropped. He straightened up, whirled and leaped back into the protection of the monster's flank. He lifted the spear with both hands and drove it into the heaving side. It sank halfway into the body; blood spurted out and around the shaft. Bellowing deafeningly, the thing reared up on its back legs; the woman in its mouth dropped out.
Burton had turned and run away. The end of the tail came within an inch of hitting him. A green pig charged him, its curling tusks wet and yellow. Burton leaped up and came down on its back but slipped and fell on the grass, bracing against the impact with his hands. One of the card people, a trey of hearts, lay face down near him, its spindly legs kicking. Burton scrambled up, seized the spear it had been carrying, and thrust upward into the belly of the Mad Hatter, who had just missed him with the edge of a saber. The Hatter reeled backward, its hands by its sides, instead of reacting instinctively, as a human would, by grabbing the shaft. Its face, however, was twisted with agony.
Burton let loose of the spear and picked up the saber it had dropped. Now he did not feel so naked and helpless; now he had a weapon he could use as few could. Immediately a Frog-Footman, a giant owl, and an ugly Duchess attacked him. The bird's weight, sharp beak and beating wings made it the most formidable. He slashed half a wing off, cut through the shaft of the Frog-Footman's spear, severed the head of the owl with a back-slash, parried the ugly Duchess' spear, and ran her through the belly.
The whole field was a melee now, individuals and clusters battling one another. Many of the humans had grabbed weapons. Though outnumbered, they had one advantage. The androids were neither skilled weapon wielders nor capable of improvised action. They could only thrust straight ahead of them with the spears or hack down with the swords, and their ability to parry was nil. As a result, those humans who were armed were outfighting their opponents, and more and more humans were grabbing weapons. On the other hand, being inferior in number, they could not guard their flanks and sides as well as they would have liked.
The big beasts and the Knights had to be dealt with first. Then, just possibly—it was a fighting chance—the humans could mop up on the lesser creatures.
Burton was free of any immediate attackers for a moment. He looked around swiftly, trying to gauge how the battle was going. He could not find Alice, but Star Spoon was still high up on the rollercoaster. She should come down and help them, but he did not blame her for fearing to do so. The field rang with hoarse cries, screams, yells, groans and roars. The White Knight and the Red Knight were still on their horses, their arms rising and falling as they brought down their spiked clubs on the heads of the humans. The White Knight had not put his helmet on; his gentle face was as placid as if he were discussing the weather.
The Unicorn was dead, its horn stuck through the chest of a Hussar. The man's saber had not yet been picked up by one of his fellows. The Lion, roaring, was rearing up, a paw ripping off a woman's breasts and sending her whirling. Its sides and mane, however, were dripping with blood, not all of it its enemies'. Even as Burton watched, a Hussar brought the edge of his saber down with both hands just back of the mane, and the beast fell. A black woman was riding the back of a Walrus, holding on with one hand and stabbing repeatedly with a dagger. Then the Walrus stood up and fell backward, crushing her. But it was too wounded to do anything but bellow and wave its flippers.
The Jabberwock had three spears in it now but was still ravaging. It bit a man in two as Burton watched.
A pink flamingo leaped at Burton, its wings fluttering, its toes out to grab him. He lopped its head off, whirled, parried a sword thrust by a White Rabbit, stepped in, grabbing the gloved hand of the Rabbit, and jerked it off balance. Before it could regain it, its neck was cut half-through by the saber.
Burton turned to defend himself against a tove, a creature the size of a dog and looking like a combination of badger, lizard and corkscrew. Its three-foot-long nose handicapped it, because it had to rear up to get the nose out of the way before it could bite. Burton severed the nose and ran at three living cards, a deuce of hearts, a four of diamonds, and a jack of clubs. They were side by side and holding spears, but he was going to attack the one on his left and dispose of him before the others could get behind him. His feet slipped on blood on the grass, and he slid feet first into the legs of the one in the middle. The four of diamonds fell forward, but his wide flat body acted as a plane, and he flew over Burton. The others turned slowly and clumsily. Burton rolled away, holding the saber above him, got to his feet, and cut the two down.
Now the March Hare approached, the shaft of a morning star in his hand. This was a medieval weapon consisting of a two-foot-long wooden stick to which was attached a length of chain to which was attached a large spiked steel ball. Handled properly, it could crush armor. Burton had to retreat before it, meanwhile glancing around to make sure that no one was about to jump on him from behind or on his sides. Then he stepped forward as the spikes just missed him and severed the hand holding the wooden shaft. The March Hare screamed, as it was programmed to do if hurt, but it did not run away as a human might have. It stood there until the loss of blood from the stump caused it to crumple.
Burton saw another Walrus, the last one, go down before a flurry of cuts from three men. Then the White Knight was on these and felled two before Burton had to turn away to defend himself against a Carpenter and a chicken-sized gnat. After putting them away, he attacked a Red Queen from behind, sliced off her crowned head, and whirled just in time to defend himself against the Cheshire Cat. This lynx-sized creature's enormous head was blood-smeared; evidently, it had done considerable carnage. Yowling, it sprang at him, its dripping paws out, but he brought the saber down against its skull, between the eyes. He was bowled over, but when he got up he saw that the feline was permanently out of action.
Something hit him from behind. Stunned, his sight dimmed, not knowing who he was or where, he fell to his knees. He was easy prey now for whoever had hit him, but a man he did not recognize rushed by him. He heard the thud of weapon on weapon as he fell to all fours and shook his head. Then a hand was helping him up. His senses came back slowly, the back of his head hurting abominably. The man who had rescued him was Monteith Maglenna. He was holding a bloody two-edged ^ sword. His clothes were torn and cut, and blood was welling from a dozen wounds.
"Close call, that," he said hoarsely.
Burton looked at Bill the Lizard and at the reddened flat cap and the club on the ground beside his body.
"Thanks," he said. "I'll be all right.”
"Good," Maglenna said. "Have to get that bloody Jabberwock out of the way. Come help when you feel up to it.”
The big blonde man ran off, his sword held high with both hands as if he were holding an ancestral claymore. By now, the Jabberwock was showing signs of internal bleeding from the spear thrusts and other wounds. The blood flowing from its mouth could not all be that from its victims. It was crouching on all fours, its tail still lashing but not as vigorously as before. Its head turned this way and that as it bellowed at the pestiferous men and women surrounding it. These were not, however, coming close to it; they were leaping in and out, slashing at it but not daring to come within reach of the still-dangerous head. Behind those keeping it distracted was a line of people fighting off the androids, guarding the backs of the Jabberwock attackers. They, at least, had some organization.
He turned around, fighting dizziness and nausea. The White Knight and his horse were down, but the Red Knight, aided by some cards, Father William, some Eaglets, two White Rabbits, some toves, and a Carpenter, was bashing heads right and left. Its horse slipped several times on blood but recovered and stumbled once over a pile of bodies. He groaned, heartsick. So many human bodies. And there were many androids still standing. Some were not fighting but were killing the wounded humans. They must have had orders to finish off all those they downed before going on to do more battle.
He caught sight of Alice. She was holding a rapier, and her clothes were crimsoned. She had broken free of the melee and could have fled to her house. Perhaps she had thought of that, since she looked several times longingly up the hill. But she turned away, ran down the slope, and thrust her rapier through a Carpenter's back.
Star Spoon was climbing down from the rollercoaster. Whether she was doing so to join the fray or to run for safety he had no time to find out.
He turned away and walked up to the back of a Dodo that was beheading wounded humans. Under its wings, it had short arms at the ends of which were human hands, just as in Tenniel's illustration. The shortness of its arms made its sword strokes ineffective, forcing it to hack again and again before it could get its victims' necks completely cut through. Burton snickersneed its head off just as it was about to deliver a final stroke to a Chinese man.
Burton wondered where Li Po was. No sooner asked than answered. There was the tall Chinese on a big table, fighting off a trio of cards with his rapier. They kept thrusting their spears at him from three sides, but he danced around, leaping to avoid thrusts, kicking with one foot against the shafts, and flicking the rapier point at them. Then Frigate, covered with blood, ran up holding a strange weapon. For a moment, Burton did not know what it was. When it was brought up and down against one of the cards, Burton recognized it. It was the Caterpillar's hookah. In short order, Frigate had smashed down two of the cards, and Li Po had run the other through twice.
Burton turned again to help those fighting the Jabberwock. Maglenna was running straight at it, his sword held high.
With his vorpal blade, Burton thought.
A dozen men and women were still harassing the monster; a dozen were protecting the attackers' backs. While Maglenna was running, the rear guard was cut down to six, and some androids immediately launched themselves at the other humans after dispatching the wounded. These caught four of the Jabberwock attackers from behind, and the rest of the humans were caught between the great beast and the other androids. Maglenna ignored all of them. He leaped from a body just as the Jabberwock dipped its head to close its jaws around the head of a man. Burton could hear the Scot's war cry from across the field. Maglenna was going to sever that thick neck, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, the corpse he used as a launching platform turned a little under his foot, and the tip of his blade only nicked the scaly neck. He fell flat on his face, his blade flying from his hand at the impact. He was up quickly, looking for his weapon, but the Jabberwock opened its mouth and dropped the lifeless body on top of Maglenna. He pushed it aside and stood up. The gigantic jaws seized his head and shoulders, and his writhing body was lifted up. It came down minus head and shoulders, which were spit out a moment later.
He could hear Alice's scream through all the noise; he knew it from long experience. Turning, he saw her standing horrified, the back of her hand over her mouth, her eyes huge dark holes.
He also saw the Red Knight on his galloping horse, charging toward him, the spike-knobbed club held high. The crimson armor and the horse-head-shaped helmet were a terrible sight. The beat of the horse's hooves was like the roll of a drum just before the gallows trapdoor was dropped.
Burton shifted the saber to his left hand, stopped, picked up a spear, and braced himself for the throw. His target was not the Red Knight but its charger. When the armored thing was thirty feet away, he cast the spear, and its sharp broad head plunged into the horse's shoulder. It fell forward, turning over. Its rider flew through the air and landed with a crash of steel upon the grass. Burton took the saber in his right hand and ran to the horse, which was starting to get up, and he slashed its jugular. It, too, had been programmed to kill; it had bitten and kicked while its rider was swinging its club; it had to be made harmless first.
The Knight lay prone and motionless. Burton turned the heavy body over and undid the helmet fastenings. He had to make sure that the thing was dead, not just unconscious. Seeing the face, he recoiled with shock. It was his face.
"One of Alice's jokes," he said.
He rose, looked at the dead features, and thought of how strange it was to see himself as a corpse. He gazed over the field between him and the foot of the hill. There were bodies everywhere, some in heaps. The only one standing in that direction was Alice, who was just pulling her rapier from a Humpty Dumpty. Her tears were washing the blood from her face.
Then he saw Star Spoon running down the hill with a beamer in each hand. She had fled, but only to get weapons from the house that would assure their victory, though she might be the only one left alive.
He turned. There were ten androids on their feet, not counting the Jabberwock. Three humans were still fighting, Li Po, a black man and a white woman, one of Aphra Behn's friends. The woman went down under a rain of swordstrokes as he watched.
The Jabberwock, breathing in short unsteady gasps, waddled toward the cluster of battlers. It turned when it got near, and its tail whipped out, catching three androids and the black man. Li Po rapiered the White Queen in front of him and ran for the parking area. There were still three chairs there.
Frigate came from somewhere and also headed toward the chairs. The remaining androids hacked at the fallen black man before pursuing the two men.
The Jabberwock swung its head from left to right, saw Burton, and lumbered toward him.
The field was comparatively quiet now, but, suddenly, Burton heard a motor turning over. That was followed by a series of explosions, and Bill Williams, bloody but grinning, rode his cycle from behind the little house with the chimneys like rabbit's ears and the fur-covered roof. Burton did not know what he had been doing there or how he had gotten his cycle there. Perhaps he had pushed it there during the fray, intending to get away at an opportune moment. Perhaps, and this was more likely, he was just waiting for a chance to use it. Or he might have gotten the machine hidden and then fainted from his wounds. Recovering, he had followed his original plan. Whatever had happened, and Burton was never to know, the fellow was now doing what only he could have thought of.
As the monster advanced toward Burton, not turning its head to find the source of the new noise, Williams speeded up the machine. Dodging around the bodies, sometimes driving over - an outstretched arm or leg, Williams sped straight at the side of Jabberwock, and he smashed his motorcycle into its ribs.
So great was the impact, the Jabberwock was moved a few inches to one side. Williams flew headlong over its back and slammed into the ground. The monster raised its head as high as the neck could reach, gave a great bawling cry, and died.
Burton ran to Willians and turned him over. He was dead, his face smashed and his neck broken.
Though doomed, the androids advanced toward Burton as programmed. They never reached him. Frigate's and Li Po's chairs smashed into them and knocked them down again and again until they could no longer get up. Then the two men got out of the chairs and finished their work.
Burton heard a gasp behind him. Turning, he saw that Star Spoon had slipped and fallen on her face. She had let the beamers loose to soften the fall with her hands. He walked up to her and picked her up. Sobbing, she went into his arms.
Except for the weeping of Alice, Star Spoon and Frigate, the field was silent. Only he, those three, and Li Po had survived. No. The Blue Caterpillar was sitting on the giant mushroom, and the rocking-horse-fly, a creature too fragile to have been programmed to kill, was alive. They did not, however, count.
He felt more weary, more emptied than he had ever felt in his long life. He was in shock, numb, the world around him seeming alien and drifting way.
"Who could have done this horrible thing?" Alice wailed.
Who, indeed?
At that moment, William Gull groaned and sat up from the dead.
Though covered with blood, the Englishman was uninjured except for a bump on the back of his head.
"I was knocked out, and some of those killed fell on top of me. The androids did not see me.”
He gingerly touched his head and grimaced.
"You were very fortunate," Burton said dully. "I think you were the only one who went down who escaped beheading.”
Why did Gull have the good luck? Why couldn't Nur or de Marbot or Behn have been spared?
No, that did not matter, he told himself. They can be resurrected.
And then he knew that the murderer would have insured that they would stay dead. Why bother to kill them if they could be brought back? It made no sense.
He would have to find out about that. Just now, they must recover from their exhaustion and shock. Then the dead must be converted into ashes; the horrible mess cleaned up.
"Let's go to the house," he said. "There's nothing to be gained by staying here.”
First, though, he must take precautions to guard himself and the others. He picked up the two beamers and said, "Star Spoon, were there any androids in the house when you got these?”
"I didn't see any," she said. Her voice was empty of expression as her face.
"We'll have to do everything for ourselves," he said. "We can't trust the androids.”
He stopped walking. The beamers seemed rather light. He opened the bottom of the beamer butts and looked into the receptacles for the powerpacks. He swore. They were empty.
He showed them to Star Spoon and said, "These would have been useless.”
"I'm sorry," she said. "I was too excited to notice.”
She shuddered. "It's a good thing I didn't have to use them.”
"Yes. But whoever did this is very clever. Only ...”
They were trudging up the hill, every step forward seeming to be in a thick and heavy substance, as if they were walking at the bottom of a treacle well.
"What?" she said.
"Why didn't the killer have the androids take the beamers from the house and kill us with them? It would have been very easy. We wouldn't have had a chance.”
Li Po had been listening in. He said, "Perhaps the killer likes the sight of blood. Or it may be that he wanted us to suffer or to think that we might survive. As it turned out ...”
"He won't stop," Burton said.
"He failed," the Chinese said. "All we have to do is raise our friends, and he will be ...”
His mouth fell open. "Ah! What if he has inhibited their resurrection?”
"Exactly," Burton said. "Well, we'll soon find out.”
Frigate caught up with them. He looked behind, and Burton turned to see what he was staring at. Gull was far behind them, moving slowly up the slope.
"I could be overly suspicious," the American said, "but don't you think it's funny that he wasn't killed after he fell? I have no evidence for my suspicions, but, after all, he was Jack the Ripper. Maybe he played it safe, programmed the androids to spare him. He might even have fixed it so that one would knock him out or tap him lightly on the head if it looked as if we'd win. I hate to say these things, but we can't take any chances now.”
"I've thought of the same thing," Burton said. "However, his story could be true.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. The sky was still blue, and the sun was about where it would be at six o'clock. He thought of what the Mad Hatter had said. "It's always six o'clock here.”
The birds were singing again in the woods, and an angry squirrel was scolding something, probably one of Alice's cats. The wild animals must have been frightened into silence by the uproar, but now that that had ceased, they had resumed normal life. All the noise and the babel meant nothing to them after they had passed. Those innocent creatures lived only in the present; the past was forgotten.
He envied them their innocence and unawareness of time.
They paused to catch their breaths in the large and beautiful garden of flowers at the top of the hill. Burton scanned the sky, wondering if the chairs were pressing against the blue wall somewhere out there. They would keep doing that until their power supply weakened, and then they would settle down slowly into the trees.
They entered the huge empty house—he hoped it was empty—and they searched every room, their weapons ready. Satisfied that no one, human or android, was hiding in ambush, they showered. After putting on new clean clothes, simple robes, they met in the large library. By then the antishock pills given by the Computer were doing their work. They were still very tired and dispirited, however. The drinks did not seem to help much. Nor was anybody hungry.
"Well, there's no use putting it off," Burton said, and he seated himself in front of the computer console. Though he dreaded to ask the question, he did so. And what he did not want to hear was what the Computer, through the computer, told him.
The dead, Nur, Turpin, Sophie, de Marbot, Aphra, all the slain, could not be raised. Someone had inhibited the raising, and the Computer would not say who that person was.
"Oh, my God!" Alice said, and she moaned. "I had Monty for six days, and now he's gone forever!”
"I wouldn't say forever," Burton said. "We'll find a way to cancel the overrides. Some day.”
"We should warn the others," Alice said.
"The others?" Burton said. "Oh, you mean those in Turpin-ville. And Netley and his people and the gypsies.”
"Tell the gypsies," Frigate said. "Never mind those who threw Tom and me out of our places. They don't deserve to be warned. What they do deserve ... well ...”
"I understand your feelings," Burton said, "but, in a way, they're our allies. The Snark or whoever the killer is won't be attacking just us.”
"How do you know that?" Frigate said.
"1 don't know that, but we must warn them.”
He tried Turpinville first. Though the screen was activated, there was no reply, and they could see only a dim diffuse dark amber light.
Burton was about to try Netley when Li Po said, "Wait! I thought I saw something!”
"What is it?" Burton said, squinting his eyes—as if that would help.
"Something dark. Moving," Li Po said.
The others crowded around the console. They, too, squinted.
"I don't see anything," Burton said.
"You don't have my eagle eyes," Li Po said. He pointed. "There! Can't you see it? It's dark, and it's moving, though very slowly. Wait.”
Presently, Burton could see a dark vague bulk. It swelled almost imperceptibly, taking a near-unendurable time to float nearer. Minutes passed, and then the outlines became more distinct. Alice gasped and said, "It's a man!”
Burton asked the Computer to make the area .brighter if it could. The fluid—it had to be a fluid since the man was floating in it—was illuminated a little. More minutes passed, and then they could see the face of a black man, eyes staring and mouth open.
"I don't know what's happened," Burton said, "but something horrible has. The screen for receiving messages from outside Turpin's world is in the room next to Turpin's office. Obviously, it's filled with water or some kind of liquid.”
"That can't be!" Star Spoon said.
"Oh, yes, it can. The Computer can do almost anything.”
"Try Netley's," Frigate said.
Burton did so. This time, the screen showed them a clearer fluid. They could not see very far into it, but they could distinguish a shadowy bulk that looked like a sofa. Near it was a small dark object too fuzzy to be identified. But it was floating. It could be a plastic bottle of some sort, partly full, perhaps, and buoyed by the air in it.
"Definitely another flood," Burton said.
"Ask the Computer if it knows what happened," Frigate said.
Burton glared at him. "Don't be a stupid ass. Whoever did this would command the Computer not to tell us anything.”
"You don't know. Maybe the Snark doesn't care. Maybe he'd like us to know. Anyway, if he thought that we'd all be dead, no one around to question it, why conceal anything?”
"Anything is possible^ Sorry about the remark.”
Burton asked the Computer if it had made recordings of the recent events in Turpinville and Frigate's world. It replied that it had. Burton then ordered it to run off the pictures of Turpinville, starting from the moment that the liquid had poured into that world.
They had thought that the only video-audio transmissions inside the worlds were made through the computer sets inside the private worlds, these being connected through cables to the floors of the worlds. But the Snark, the unknown, had found a way to break this communication and video-audio barrier. Selected areas of the world's wall had been made into screens, and Burton and his companions saw the deluge as a flying bird would see it. They watched as the waters of the fountains and the river and the marshes and lake were replaced by the amber liquid. Which, the Computer told them in answer to Burton's question, was bourbon.
"Bourbon?" Burton said, and he asked the Computer to repeat the statement.
It was bourbon.
The inlets for the various water sources had poured in the liquor under great pressure. The fountains had soared up until they almost touched the top of the Brobdingnagian chamber, and the river and lakes and marshes had spewed forth the swift raging floor of whiskey.
"No doubt, it was the best bourbon," Burton muttered.
The citizens of Turpinville had been panicked, but, after a few minutes, they had taken every means of transportation to the exit. They had fought each other for the hundred available flying chairs, hitting, knifing and shooting. Those left behind had fought for the automobiles, motorcycles, and horses and buggies. They had jammed into the railroad train and climbed on top of the cars. Those in the chairs had gotten swiftly to the exit, only to find that they could not open the door. The people f on foot and in the ground vehicles were drowned before they reached the exit.
If they had not panicked, they could have made flying chairs in the e-m converters and flown to the exit. Where they would have discovered that their efforts were in vain.
Though the liquor poured out swiftly, it had an enormous volume to fill, and the surface of the fluid body was only one-fourth of the way up the walls. The people in the chairs had taken them to the ceiling, but they had been overcome by the fumes or died from lack of oxygen. Some of them might still be alive; they would not last long. Though the flood had ceased to rise, it did not have to do so to complete its work.
"What a way to die!" Burton said.
He looked at the pale set faces. "I suppose we might as well try Netley's world.”
The same thing had happened there, except that the liquor was gin. The best, of course.
Burton anticipated that those who had died in both worlds would be denied resurrection by the Computer, and he was right.
The gypsies had been traveling in a corridor leading to the well of the wathans—perhaps they meant to sightsee it—when a big wheeled robot had come upon them and pierced them with beamer rays. Ten minutes later, robots had cleaned up the blood and carried the bodies off to be turned to ashes in converters.
"That leaves six of us alive," Burton said. "Seven if the Snark is counted. But ...”
"But what?" Alice said after a long silence.
He did not reply. He was thinking that the killer could have done away with them much more easily if he—or she—had flooded Alice's world.' Why the different means? Was it for grisly amusement, using the exotic androids against them, the charming creatures of two fantasy books for children suddenly turned into bloodthirsty monsters?
It seemed more probable that the killer had made an exception in Alice's world because he or she had been one of the guests. And that guest had perhaps wished to see that his or her enemies, people he or she must have hated .deeply, would be slain most bloodily.
And that guest had made arrangements by programming the androids to spare him or her.
He knew Alice, Peter Frigate, and Li Po too well to suspect them. That left only two. William Gull, who claimed to be a changed and deeply religious man, but had once murdered five -women. And Star Spoon, who, however, had no motive—as far as he knew.
Yet Gull had not been in the tower long enough to learn how to operate the Computer with the skill, no, the ingenuity, that the killer needed.
Star Spoon had been studying the Computer long and hard, but would she have been able in such a relatively short time to gain knowledge that those who had been using the Computer much longer than she did not have?
It could be that there was a second Snark.
If so, then the six were at his mercy.
Still, it was possible that one of the six had probed deeply into the Computer's potentialities and learned how to carry out the slaughters.
Why would any of them wish to do so?
He got up from the console chair and said, "We have to run off the memories of everyone for the past six weeks.”
"I'm too tired for that just now," Frigate said. Alice, Gull and Star Spoon also protested that they were exhausted.
"Let's do it tomorrow after we get rested," Alice said.
"Anyway, it's a waste of time," Star Spoon said. "You know that anyone who has done all that," she waved her hand, "will have set up false memories.”
"Yes, I know. But we have to do it.”
They sat around for an hour, their brief and dull sentences floating between long gloomy silences. Frigate finally said that he thought that he could get some food down. The others agreed to try it, and they ate more than they had expected to. They also drank much and became more animated, even if not carefree. Burton spoke then of something that had occupied his thoughts ever since he had entered the house.
"Our enemy closed the exit on the Turpinites and Netleyites.
He should be able to do the same for this place. Since he failed to kill all of us with the androids, he may use the very successful method of drowning us. It might be best if we left here and moved into a suite.”
They talked about that at some length. Finally, Alice, at Burton's suggestion, ordered that the door to the central area be opened. The screen showed them that it was operating.
"But that does not mean that the Snark cannot close it on us when he wishes," Burton said.
"Then let's get out," Frigate said. "The trouble is ... what's to prevent the Snark from closing the suite door?”
"I don't know," Burton said. "At least, he can't drown us.”
They had the e-m converter make chairs for them, and they flew out over the darkened world and under the simulated full moon. Nobody said a word about the bodies on the field. They would not have time to dispose of them; the crows, eagles, and hawks would strip them of their flesh. By the time they returned, if they ever did, they would deal with bones only.
After another nightcap, they went to separate bedrooms in the suite, except for Burton and Star Spoon. She crawled into bed at once, said, "Good night, Dick," and was asleep. He followed her a few minutes later, and, against his expectation, passed into sleep at once. He awoke four hours later, his lifelong insomnia clutching him like the Old Man of the Sea. The woman was on her side, facing away from him, and snoring softly. He got out of bed, put on a robe, went to the main room and got a big cup of coffee. After that had removed some of his weariness, he set to work at the computer console. Five hours later, he had put into the Computer every injunction and override he could think of to protect all in his suite. He was sure, however, that there were others. He would ask his companions to add to the list.
"I should have done that long long ago," he told himself.
He decided that he would not wait until his fellow tenants got up for breakfast. As tired as they were, they might sleep until noon. He began scanning the corridors because, at that moment, he could think of nothing else to do. He started from the top of the tower with the hangar, worked the first level and then the second. That was quick because a glance showed that the circular area was empty, and there was no life except animal in the little worlds.
The scan moved into Level 60 and raced up and down the corridors and into the rooms along them. It came to a corridor the inner wall of which formed a side of the wathan well. Here, he knew, was where an observer could see the surface of the mass of wathans.
He cried out, "Stop!”
He stared at the curving transparent wall of the shaft.
The beautiful, bright, many-colored, swelling, shrinking and whirling entities called wathans were gone. The well was empty and dark.
Peter Frigate was the first to enter the room. He stopped, and he looked at Burton, at the beamer on the table, and at the half-opened door to the corridor. "What's going on?”
Li Po came in just as Burton opened his mouth to answer Frigate. Burton said, "Have some coffee first, Pete.”
"How are you, Dick?" the Chinese said.
"I've been up most of the night. Working.”
Li Po also glanced at the weapon and the door. He raised his eyebrows but did not comment. Frigate, after pouring out coffee from a pot on the table, said, "You look awful. The dark circles around your eyes ... you look like a debauched raccoon. What've you been doing?”
"I feel more than awful," Burton said slowly. "I feel ... how would you feel if you knew that the end of the world was near? Or perhaps I should say that the world has ended—for all practical purposes.”
Frigate drank the whole cup of very hot coffee without flinching. He said, "The end of the world happens every second.”
Burton did not know what he meant and did not think it worthwhile to find out. In any event, Frigate's words were just a means for putting off the bad news.
Li Po took a sip of coffee and said, "What do you mean?”
"Perhaps I should wait until everybody's here. I don't like to repeat.”
"Sure you don't," Frigate said. "Let's hear it.”
Burton told them that the wathan enclosure was empty.
Li Po and Frigate paled but said nothing.
"I checked the body-records then," Burton said. "I had to force myself to do it because I didn't want to know what had been done to them, although, of course, I already knew. But it needed doing, and so I did it.”
"And they ... they ..." Frigate said, choking.
"They had all been erased. All thirty-five billion six hundred and forty-six million plus. No exceptions. All. And no wathans have come in since I made the discovery.”
Li Po sat down. "I've had too many shocks lately.”
After a long while, Frigate said, "So ... when we die, we die for the last time.”
"Quite.”
After another long silence—only a supercatastrophe could have kept Li Po's mouth shut so long, Burton thought—Frigate poured brandy into a half-full cup of coffee and downed all of the steaming liquid. Li Po looked as if he would like to do the same, half-rose, shook his head, and sank back into the chair. This was the first time Burton had ever seen him reject a drink.
The brandy had restored some of the American's color. He drank more, straight this time, and said, "The Snark has overridden that automatic function ... I mean, no bodies will be recorded from now on?”
"Right.”
"But if we can survive until the Gardenworlders get here, we can be recorded again. Otherwise, we, too, will lose our chance for immortality forever.”
"Of course," Burton said. "But when they get here, our time will be up anyway. If we're not ready to Go On, our records will be erased. And if we're not, we'll be erased.”
He got up and poured himself more coffee, looked at the brandy bottle, and decided against it. "I immediately asked the Computer about that. I was shocked, of course, and I cursed myself, railed against the fates, if you must know, because as soon as we got here from Alice's, I commanded the Computer to refuse to erase any body-records. I was forestalling that. But I was too late. I did not know that then because the Computer, the idiot, did not tell me that my command was too late. It should have, but the Snark had told it not to display that data unless it was asked for it.”
"We've all been just drifting along, doing things too late," Frigate said in a dull tone. "Sometimes ... I wonder if the Snark has had the Computer broadcast some sort of neural suppressant field, something dampening our intelligence?”
"I doubt it. We've just been playing with our toys ... like children. However"—Burton lifted a napkin and revealed a yellow ball the size of a cranberry—"I've been busy while you were sleeping. This is the sphere that records a body. I had the Computer duplicate one for me. It's empty now, but I wanted to see one. And holding it in my hand enabled me to postulate something ... a theory, but the only explanation I could come up with that was reasonable. That is, how could the Snark get into Alice's world, into Turpin's and yours ... Netley's ... and there arrange for operations that just could not be done from outside those worlds?”
Alice entered a minute later. Burton had to repeat his story and to wait for her to recover enough before he could continue.
"First, though, I don't think that the Snark did it. I mean I don't think that there's an Ethical hiding in the tower. Nur eliminated her, though we cannot, of course; ever be sure. But the murders in the little worlds were done by one of us. By one of the survivors.”
Li Po shot up from his chair, and, quivering, said, "Gull! Or Star Spoon! But why?”
Burton nodded. "Gull may have reverted, but he would have to have gone mad to do that. Star Spoon? She would have to be insane. If either is, he or she has concealed it well. First, let me tell the rest of my theory.”
"First... pardon the interruption," Frigate said, "we have to consider that it may be neither Gull nor Star Spoon. What if somebody we haven't even seen is the killer? After all, Williams raised Gull and the others involved in the Ripper killings. And there are the gypsies. We don't know who raised them, but I suspect Williams did it just as a joke or just to bug us. Or maybe somebody else did. Anyway, what if someone raised a person who was destructively insane, to put it mildly, and that person is our second Snark?”
"I asked the Computer to scan the tower for other people. It reported that it could find none. I asked for a rundown of all those who'd been raised, and the number corresponds exactly with my calculations. Still, the Computer could be reporting only what it's been told to report.”
Frigate threw his hands up. "Nothing's certain!”
"It never has been. However, I think that we don't have to consider a third party or parties.”
He held up the yellow sphere. "Here is how I think he ... or she ... did it.”
The killer had ordered a number of his body-recordings made in an e-m converter.
"Nobody had inhibited this action until I told the Computer not to allow that, but I was too late. The deed was done.”
The Snark, Snark the Second, as it were, had been given an opportunity to enter the worlds of Turpin, Frigate and Alice. Perhaps all the worlds and some apartment suites, too.
"There the Snark put the recording-spheres in converters that were out of the way, seldom if ever used. And the Snark also concealed them in other places for easy access and probably carried them around in his clothing.”
The Snark then killed himself in the privacy of an unused apartment. By prearrangement with the Computer, the Snark was resurrected in a converter inside a world.
"The converter in which the Snark died would then disintegrate the body. The Snark did not want anybody finding it, though that possibility was remote.”
Once inside Alice's world, Snark II did what had to be done. The androids were verbally programmed when they were out of sight of Alice and Maglenna or perhaps they were programmed before Maglenna showed. Since the Snark had to be furtive about the process, it undoubtedly took weeks to complete it.
The flooding of the two worlds, though, was ordered from the outside.
"The Ethicals thought that they were one hundred per cent safe when they were in their private worlds. Of course, they were not nearly as security-conscious as we since they believed the tower to be an impregnable fortress. They knew that one of them was a traitor, but they still could not conceive that he would actually personally endanger them.
"But an ingenious person could flood the little worlds by ordering the liquid supply to pour into it until it was completely filled or its inhabitants had been drowned.”
"That may be true," Alice said, "but how could the Snark shut the doors to the worlds? And how could he see what was going on in the worlds when the flooding began? The Computer had commands to open the door only to authorized codewords, and it would not transmit pictures or any communications except as ordered by the tenants. No one could override those.”
"But they could be bypassed by various means. The Snark made cameras in the worlds he had gotten into via the recording-spheres, flew the cameras to the ceilings, probably at night, and attached them there. You see, the Computer had orders not to transmit wave frequencies through the-circuits of the walls except through certain channels, but the Computer interpreted those orders literally. It did have orders to transmit the frequencies through the wall circuits to the converters and the computer auxiliary and communication devices. It did not distinguish between those computers installed and authorized by the Ethicals and any installed later. It would assume that the additions were authorized.”
"But the doors?" Alice said.
"The Snark sealed the exterior of the door with a substance that hardened and so resisted the operating mechanisms of the doors, which open outward.”
That meant that the Snark had sealed the doors while Alice's party was going on. The Snark had killed himself or herself, had been resurrected in an apartment, and then had flown in a chair to the central area and applied the substance to the exit doors of two of the worlds. Then the Snark had ordered the liquid supply to convert to bourbon and gin and started the deluging. After which, the Snark had committed suicide, been resurrected in an apartment, and returned to Alice's place as a guest. There the Snark had waited until the androids had started their predetermined attack. During the battle, the Snark had made sure that he was not harmed by the androids. His or her plans had not been completely successful, but the Snark was not dismayed. There would be other opportunities.
Li Po said, "Ah! Only those at the party could be suspects! So ... Gull or Star Spoon!”
"Not necessarily," Frigate said. "The Snark could be someone else, if that someone had had an opportunity to get into the worlds. It would have to be one of those raised, someone we know or ought to know. It could be many people. After all, we haven't seen all the bodies in Turpin's or Netley's ... my ... world. We should find out if anyone is missing from there.”
"First, we put Gull and Star Spoon through the grinder," Burton said.
If one of them was so infernally clever, he thought, wouldn't he or she have anticipated that one of the others might be Sherlock Holmes enough to narrow the suspects to two?
If that was so, the Snark would know that his or her identity would soon be revealed.
Li Po, as if he had been reading Burton's thoughts said, "That accounts for the beamer on the table? You'll be ready for the Snark?”
"Yes. If one of them walks through the doorway with a weapon in hand, I won't be caught surprised.”
"It seems to me," Alice said, "that they ... one of them ... could kill himself ... or herself ... and be resurrected elsewhere. What's to keep the Snark from coming through there?" She pointed at the open door to the corridor.
"Ah, that," Burton said. "Well, you see, I copied the killer's modus operandi. Very early this morning, I sealed Gull's and Star Spoon's doors.”
Burton did not have to tell them what would happen. The guilty one would be unable to get out, and it would not be long before he or she knew why. The only escape was the route the Snark had often taken. Commit suicide and be resurrected elsewhere.
"What if the Snark pretends innocence and asks us to let him out?" Frigate said.
"We won't let either out. Sooner or later, the Snark will leave.”
The immediate excitement had lifted them from the shock of finding out that the wathans were gone and the records erased. They were not concentrating on the numbing realization that they would be dead forever the next time they died. Or that those still alive in The Valley would not be raised again after they had died. Or that all that they had suffered to get here had been in vain.
No, he thought. It was not in vain, not wasted time. We have lived far longer than we thought we would when we died on Earth. Our youthful bodies were restored, and we fought and loved with the full vigor of youth and perfect health. We lived fiercely, we were active, and we worked hard for a goal. It has been worthwhile. And if we can live until the Gardenworlders come, we ... no. This phase of the project will be over, and we must die to make room for the resurrected in the next.
He would worry about that when the time came. Just now, the only thing to consider was the Snark.
"There's the screen," Frigate said. Burton got up and walked to the console in the corner. Gull looked out from the display. Seeing Burton, he said, "Good morning. I don't know what the matter is, but the door won't open for me.”
"That's strange," Burton said. "Have you asked the Computer why?”
"Of course, but it says that it does not know.”
"We'll see what we can do about it," Burton said. "Meanwhile, you don't have to starve. Get yourself breakfast, and we'll investigate.”
When the screen had become blank, Burton asked that the screen in his bedroom be activated. It showed the room at once—Burton had not been sure that it would not have been cut off—and he saw that the bed was unoccupied. Star Spoon was not in sight, but she could be in the bathroom. He verified that his voice could be transmitted, and he called her loudly. Though he repeated her name several times, he was not answered.
"She's gone.”
Frigate said, "Where's her body?”
"I don't know," Burton said. "We'll have to find out.”
They went down the bedroom hall, all armed with beamers. Burton and Li Po used them to burn the sealing agent off. Since the smoke had an acrid odor, which made them cough, they had to slow down the burning to give the air-conditioning time to suck the smoke away. When the last of the glossy violet substance was gone, Burton gave the codeword, and the door swung open. Cautiously, he entered first, the beamer ready. The bedroom and bathroom were empty.
"She must have killed herself by stepping into the converter cabinet and having it incinerate her," Frigate said.
"That would make her disappearance more mysterious," Burton said. "I wonder where she could be”
Alice said, "You don't seem surprised, Dick.”
"No. I didn't think that Gull had had time to learn how to operate the Computer well enough to do all the Snark has done.”
"For God's sake!" Frigate said, "Why would she do that? What did she have against us? She must hate us! Everybody! Why?”
"I think," Li Po said, "that she has always been very sad behind that merry face she put on. She has had a bad life, many bad times, anyway, so many that she thinks of her life as all bad, too horrible to endure any longer. She has suffered so much, been raped and abused so much, and the attack by Dunaway was just too much. 1 think—I could be wrong, though I doubt it—that she decided that we would all be better off dead. She'd be better off dead. Everybody would be. She told me more than once that she was sorry that we had been resurrected, that it was horrible that no one could take refuge even in death. Did she ever say anything like that to you, Dick?”
"Several times.”
"There has to be more than that to it," Frigate said. "If she wanted to be dead forever, all she had to do was erase her own recordings.”
"She's not sane," Burton said. "She may have it in her mind that she's doing everybody a favor by making sure that they don't have to suffer as she did. Also, I suppose, she wishes to insure that those who made others suffer could no longer do that.”
He was appalled, more shaken by her deeds than by anything he had ever experienced. But he did not hate her. Though she had committed the greatest sin in the world, the irrevocable and unforgivable sin, he could not hate that demented sufferer. He pitied her. Grieved for her, in fact. But he would have to kill her. No one would be safe until she was dead, and he would be doing her the greatest kindness by putting her out of her wretchedness.
He was sure that she planned to end herself eventually but not until after everyone left in the tower was dead. She would, he supposed, have liked to dispose of all in The Valley, too, but that she could not do. She would have to be satisfied knowing that they would finally pass away.
"Nonsense!”
"What?" Alice said.
"We don't have the slightest idea of what's really going on in that twisted mind. It doesn't matter if we do or don't. What does is that she must be stopped.”
A loud pinging began. Burton started, though he had been expecting the noise, and he went to the console. The screen was displaying a diagram of a tower level section and a tiny but bright orange light was moving along one of the-corridors. In the corner of the screen was: level 4, corridor 10.
The others had crowded behind him. Frigate said, "What now?”
"She must have just left the room in which she was resurrected," Burton said. "The room would have been painted, of course, so that her past-display would not be visible to her, and I suppose that the Computer shows it only when it can be seen by the subject. What I did, I told the Computer to show me where her past-display is. Star Spoon has undoubtedly commanded the Computer not to reveal her presence by allowing us to scan the halls near where she is. But one thing she cannot do is to prevent the past-display from accompanying her as soon as she leaves her room.”
"She's intelligent," Li Po said. "She'll soon realize that you may be tracking her through the display. What we can do, she can do. She'll ask the Computer to show her our displays.”
"Yes," Burton said, "but the thing about the Computer is that whoever gets ahead of the other with his command can forestall the other. I told it not to show her where ours are.”
"She'll know that when the Computer doesn't show them to her," Li Po said. "That'll make her very cautious.”
"She would be anyway," Burton said. "Pete, go burn off Gull's sealant. Tell him what's happened, give him a beamer. We need everyone we can get.”
Frigate looked reluctant to leave, but he did so at once.
"We can't stay in this place," Burton said. "She can't seal up the door as long as it's open, but she could set up something—a robot machine that would automatically beam us the moment we stuck our heads through the doorway, for instance—so we won't stay here.”
The orange light had stopped at a shaft, VC-A3-2.
"That leads up our corridor," Burton said. "We haven't much time.”
He got up from the console chair and went through the doorway leading to the bedroom corridor. Frigate had just finished melting off the sealant and was waiting for the smoke to clear away. The door to Gull's room had swung open. Burton shouted, "Tell him to hold his breath and get right out here!”
The others went to their bedrooms and got their weapons and extra powerpacks. Burton watched the screen while the others were busy. When they were all in the main room, he told them what they must do. Gull was confused and did not know all that had happened, since Frigate had only had time to give him a few facts. Nevertheless, he nodded when Burton rapid-fired instructions at him, and he ran off.
All left the apartment then, and Burton had the Computer close the door. The apartment was halfway on the corridor between two lift shafts. Star Spoon was by the fourth-floor entrance to the shaft to their right as they left their place. They sped down the corridor toward the shaft, Alice dropping behind them to enter an apartment on the right side. She would station herself in the darkened area by the door, which would be left half-open. From there she could cover the shaft entrance, about four hundred and fifty feet away.
The four men separated when they came to the cross-corridor. The lift shaft was in the center of the cross-corridor, and there were deep bays at each corner to permit traffic of big machines. The shaft could be entered from four sides. Li Po and Gull went to the right down the cross-corridor and took positions behind partly closed doors about a hundred feet from the shaft. Burton continued down the corridor and entered a room that was about a hundred feet from the shaft. Frigate was to go to the left at the intersection and take a station behind a door about two hundred feet from the shaft.
When Star Spoon left the shaft at this level, she would be the target of cross-fire from five beamers.
Burton's room was dark except for the glow of the computer console screen. He watched the orange light, waiting for it to move into the shaft and ascend toward the third level.
"She's certainly taking her time," he muttered. What was she doing? Trying to imagine all the possible traps? Or had she lost her nerve?
Very early that morning, Burton had taken one hundred pounds of plastic explosive from the e-m converter. Using his flying chair to elevate himself to the tops of seven lift shafts and along the sides, working furiously, he had pressed the explosive around the entrances of the nearest shafts. He had not applied the plastic to the bottom of the entrances because Star Spoon would probably see it before exiting. By the time she had left the shaft, even if she saw the plastic on the sides, she would be too late to escape. Proximity fuses would set off the explosive.
These might be useless, since she might take a distant shaft. But if she passed close to a mined opening, she still might set off one.
He looked down the corridor and through the opening of the shaft. Then he glanced back at the screen. Ah! The orange light was ascending the lines indicating the shaft near which they waited.
He crouched by the door. A few seconds later, a transparent vehicle, in the center of which Star Spoon sat, rose into full view. It halted, suspended in the shaft, allowing him to see it in all its details. It was much like the armored chair that he had fashioned except that there were more heavy beamers than in his.
He could only see her back until she turned her head to give him a half-profile. She was expressionless.
The armor would resist for a while the ray of a beamer on full-power. Only if the ray could be kept on one spot could it penetrate the armor. And Star Spoon would keep her vehicle moving.
What was discouraging was that, if she was killed, she would be resurrected elsewhere in the tower. Any victory by her enemies was only a half-victory for them and a temporary setback for her. Yet they had to keep fighting and hope that they would catch her before she could kill herself or be killed. Or that her record-spheres would be found out and, eventually, she would be in the same situation they were. The next death would be the final death.
Burton had expected her to appear in an armored vehicle, and he hoped that its armor would absorb just enough of the explosive shock to knock her out. That was why he had lined each entrance with only 3.57 pounds of the explosive. As it was, he was not sure that he did not have more than he needed for his purpose.
He said, "Go on! Go on! What're you waiting for?”
The moment the vehicle moved from the center of the shaft toward the opening, he would step back, and, pressing his fingertips into his ears, would stand by the wall out of the way of the direct shock waves. So would the others.
At last, Star Spoon made up her mind. She had looked down the corridor straight ahead and seen that all the doors to the apartment suites were open but one. She would know that the door was Burton's, and she would, he hoped, believe that all five were holed up in it. Her survey of the corridor at right angles to the one straight ahead had shown her that all the doors on both sides were open. That was as it was almost everywhere in the tower.
Satisfied that she was headed toward the exit, Burton backed away a few feet from the door. Then he lost consciousness; he never heard the explosion.
When he came to, his smitten senses not yet fully recovered, he was coughing on the burning fumes pouring around him. He sat up, his back against the wall, and tried to get up but failed. His strength had gone for a walk and his wits had scattered like picnickers before the sudden appearance of a bear. When he did manage to get up, he staggered across the room, the air of which was getting somewhat clearer as the air-conditioning sucked the smoke away. The screen still glowed, showing the orange ball down the corridor around the corner. He dimly realized that this was where Li Po and Gull were stationed.
At least, he knew who he was and where he and the others were. His movements were slow, though.
"Got to get out there, get her," he *aid. His lips had moved with the thoughts, but he could not hear his own voice any more than he could hear the voices of himself and Isabel, his Earthly wife, from the past-display on the wall near the door.
By the time he had reached the door, he could think clearly enough to know that something had gone wrong. The explosion had been far more violent than it should have been. Could he have miscalculated so much, or had something unforeseen happened? He looked around the side of the doorway, realized then that he had dropped the beamer, went back to retrieve it, and returned to the doorway. The smoke was a thin veil now. He could see the far-strewn pieces of the vehicle on the floor. The sphere had been made of some shatterable material. The explosive lining the opening nearest Burton had gone off. Probably, a piece of the machine shot through this opening had activated the fuse. The additional explosion had doubled the effect of the shock waves, but even that was not near enough to account for the violence that had knocked him out.
The vehicle must have contained a large amount of explosives, and this had gone off when Burton's trap had erupted. Or perhaps it was a coincidence that the explosives in the vehicle had gone off just as the vehicle cleared the entrance shaft.
The thing operating the vehicle had been an android, the exact duplicate of Star Spoon, who had sent it ahead as a sacrifice.
Burton's head still hurt. His thoughts had been climbing a steep hill, struggling to get to the top, where they could re-form and become a potent force. Most of them had gotten up the hill, but they were not yet organized enough. Why had the past-display accompanied the false woman and not the real one?
Slowly, it came to him that she must have sent the android out first. And the idiot Computer, identifying her as the real Star Spoon, had sent the past-display along by her side. Then the real woman had emerged from her hiding place ... she must have muffled her features in a hood or masked them ... and she had come up an unmined shaft.
There she was, coming around the corner of the intersection from the corridor where Li Po and Gull were stationed. She was, as he had expected, inside a spherical armored flying machine, the duplicate of the android's. If she had been masked, she was not now. Unlike the android, her face was expressive, set in a demon's smile except for the lips, which moved as she talked to herself.
The machine came to the middle of the corridor just past the walls of the shaft—he could see through its openings—and it stopped, then made a quarter-turn so that she faced down the corridor. What had happened to Li Po and Gull? Were they still groggy from the explosion? Or had they foolishly attacked her as she passed them? He had no way of knowing; he would have been deaf to any cries.
The machine, moving six feet above the floor, came to the one closed door. It stopped and turned. A barrel slid out from the box beneath the seat, went through a hole in the sphere, and shot out a violet liquid. His mental processes were still sluggish; he should have recognized the fluid at once as the sealant. She was entombing the people that she believed were in the suite. Or, if she was not sure they were in there, she had to carry out this operation anyway.
He saw Alice's dark head stick out from the half-open door. She ducked back after a very quick look. Star Spoon, intent on moving the vehicle along the sides of the door of Burton's suite, had not seen her.
He could distinguish a glowing patch on the wall beside Star Spoon. That had to be the display of her memory. The Computer, after the android had disappeared in the explosion, had switched the display to accompany the real woman. Now that she was closing in for the kill, she did not care if they knew where she was. Perhaps she wanted them to know so that they would venture out to attack her.
Li Po, a beamer in his hand, stepped out into Burton's sight. Seeing the woman, he stepped back. He was fortunate that Star Spoon had not noticed him or his past-display, which would have appeared on the wall of the bay opposite him.
A small TV set was mounted on her left. She would be in communication with the Computer and would be using it to find out if the five were loose, and, if they were, to track them down.
By now, the violet liquid had hardened over the door and the wall area around it. He expected her to turn the machine down, but she did not. Instead, she started to repeat the sealing process. Evidently, she wanted the door to be doubly unmovable.
He had a minute, perhaps two minutes, before she began searching. He strode to the e-m converter and gave instructions to the Computer. He was not worried that Star Spoon would be listening in or be able to learn anything of his activities or location at this moment. He had long ago told the Computer that it was not to reveal anything about himself or his companions to her. She could scan all the rooms in the tower, and she would not be shown this room. However, the refusal of the Computer to scan would give her negative knowledge. If he was not in the rooms scanned, then he must be in one of the other rooms.
He opened the converter, stooped, and picked up with one hand a gray doughy mass, 3.75 pounds of the plastic explosive. After carrying this to the doorway and putting it on the floor, he went back to the converter. He shut its door; two seconds later, he opened it. The proximity fuse lay on its floor. Going back to the doorway, he inserted the long, thin metal rod protruding from the small metal box into the center of the mass.
He set the fuse by voice and looked around the door again. He said, "Oh, my God!" Star Spoon had somehow determined that Alice was in her room, perhaps with a heat-and-sound detector. Alice had done the only thing she could do, closed the door with a codeword. And Star Spoon was sealing it.
Burton jumped out from behind the door, aimed the beamer, and saw the ray, a bright scarlet rod with a diameter of one-fourth of an inch, leap from the bulb at the end of his weapon to the side of the transparent sphere. If the ray could have pierced the shield, it would have gone through Star Spoon's head near her left ear. Instead, the armor glowed at the point, and she saw it at once. She moved a control on the board by her right hand. The vehicle, rotating, moved away from the door, stopped, and shot toward Burton.
He turned and ran close to the wall, hoping that the second door would block him from her view. If he could avoid being hit, if she came by the door just as the explosive went off, if he could get inside the next door before it did ... He wanted to look behind him to calculate the velocity of her vehicle. She might have accelerated to the point where she would pass the trap before it exploded. But he could not afford to glance behind because it would slow him, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway.
He grabbed the edge of the door and swung himself around it so vigorously that he banged his left shoulder on the doorway and was spun halfway around. Two scarlet rays shot past the door. Probably, other rays had hit the door. No matter, he thought. I'm in. Another shock wave knocked him down, but this one had far less impact than the first.
He got up, praying, and, clinging to the edges of the door, looked around it. Since there was not much smoke, he could clearly see the vehicle against the wall opposite the doorway where the charge had been placed. The explosion had thrust it across the corridor and slammed it against the wall. Star Spoon was unconscious. Burton watched as the car resumed its original speed, grating against the metal wall, and collided with the wall at the next intersection. There it stuck.
Li Po and Frigate, beamers ready, ran around the corners and up to Burton. "I boobytrapped her," he said. "But we have to get her out before she comes to.”
"Where's Alice and Gull?" Frigate said.
"No time for that," Burton said. "Pete, have the hypodermic syringe ready. Po, you come with me.”
Frigate removed the syringe from the case attached to his belt. While Burton held his beamer ray steady on one point of the armor, the Chinese ran to the nearest room to order from the converter a ladder and two stepladders to use to climb up to the car. Burton wanted to take her alive, but he hoped that, if she showed signs of rousing, the hole would have been burned through the shell so that he could put a hole through her body.
However, Li Po returned quickly, and they burned off the i hatch locks while she lay unmoving. Burton crawled in, took the syringe from Frigate, blew the drug into her arm, and used the controls to ease the vehicle to the floor. They carried her into the nearest room, placed her on a bed, stripped her, searched her clothes, and then put her in the converter so that the Computer could probe her neural system. It reported that her brain was too complex to be an android's.
"I'd say we have her," Burton said. "Only ... what if she's anticipated this possibility and ordered the Computer to make a false report? She'll be alive somewhere in this labyrinth.”
"I don't believe that she would consider that possibility," Li Po said. "She must have believed that she was invulnerable in her armored vehicle. You have to take some things on faith.”
"No, I don't.”
Though he thought that Li Po was right, he intended to search the tower thoroughly. Not until then would he be at ease about her.
Leaving Frigate to watch the woman, Burton and Li Po burned off the sealant over Alice's door. Though not hysterical, she needed a long drink to quiet her nerves. She had thought that she might be imprisoned in the room forever or at least for a time that would have seemed forever.
On the way back to the room where Star Spoon was, they saw Gull's body lying face up on the floor of the corridor. Li Po explained that Gull had been caught by a ray from the vehicle as Star Spoon was pursuing Burton.
"He must have left the room just as I dived into mine," Li Po said. "I don't know why he did it. He told me just before we took our stations that he could not use his beamer. It was all right to kill the androids because they were not human beings, but he could not fight Star Spoon.”
"He should have said so at once and stayed with Alice," Burton said.
"I think that he probably went out into the corridor to plead with Star Spoon," Li Po said. "He was as crazy as she.”
After conferring, they decided that it would be cruel to lock Star Spoon up in a room with the hope of curing her insanity. Questioning the Computer, they learned that the cryogenic techniques of the Ethicals far surpassed those of Earth. She could be frozen instantaneously without tissue damage, and so she was. Star Spoon would wait in her casket until the Gardenworlders arrived.
After a day of rest, they began the search. The first room they went to was the one she had left when she set out to finish them off. The Computer would not directly give them the location, but it immediately yielded the records of the passage of the orange light on the diagrams. Entrance to the room on the one hundred and sixteenth level—the Ethicals counted the stories from the top instead of the bottom—was easy. Star Spoon had not closed the door, because she had thought that only she would be alive when her mission was accomplished.
They went cautiously into a very large room with halls running off it in two directions. There were five rooms off each hall, all but one with closed doors, which would not open at Burton's request. Though he could not get into them, he could see into them by simply asking the Computer for screen vision. And he wished that he had not been so curious.
The only one of the all-male prisoners, one in each room, whom he recognized was Dunaway, the man who had raped Star Spoon in Turpinville. The others were three Chinese, two Caucasians, an Amerindian, two Negroes, and a Neanderthal. Li Po knew one of the Chinese.
"He is Wang Chih Mao, a minor official of the emperor. I met him once. Star Spoon later told me about him. He is the man who raped her when she was ten years old.”
Four of them were gibbering insane. Two seemed to be close to going crazy. Dunaway was one of the two who had retreated into catatonia. The ninth was hiding under the bed and would not come out when Burton called him via the screen.
Burton watched the past displays on the ceilings, floors, and walls of all the rooms. Over and over again, as seen through Star Spoon's eyes, the rapings were shown on large screens, in living color, and at high volume. The men could escape these only by sleep, which would not have come easily, by madness, or by death. Suicide was almost impossible. They were naked and so could not make nooses from their clothes. Their converters gave them only bread, boneless meat, and vegetables. Except for the beds, which consisted only of frame and mattress, there was no furniture. The bathrooms had a seatless toilet and a faucet for cold water above a small bowl. No soap, no towels and no toilet paper.
Alice shuddered. "She got her revenge. Horrible!”
"Poetic justice," Frigate said. "Gotten with the aid of science.”
"There's nothing we can do for them," Burton said, "unless we can shut off the converter power and let them starve to death.”
Questioned, the Computer said that it could not do that without Star Spoon's authorization.
Finding nothing revealing in the main room or Star Spoon's bedroom, they began working the areas that the Computer refused to scan for them. Though they came across twelve such, they could not get into the rooms that they knew were behind locked doors or blank walls. At the end of three weeks they quit. There was still another place to investigate, the vast deep underground pre-resurrection chamber in which Burton had awakened so many years ago. But they could not get into this.
"Neither could Star Spoon," Burton said.
Now that the immediate major problem was out of the way, they had to consider their future. They could not get out of the tower, and they could bring in no lovers or companions. They were three men and one woman who would have only each other.
The years ahead of them, Burton thought, were not just bleak. The future was a psychic Siberia, an emotional Ice Age. It was true that the four of them had known one another intimately for many years and had gone through many hardships together and had worked as an excellent team—none better— for their goal. They were getting along now without suffering the abrasions that usually wore people out with one another's too-close and too-often contact, but, eventually, they would grow sick of one another. They must have more than a community of four. They would need lovers and good friends and the occasional new person to meet.
"Man does not live by bread alone," a wise man had once said. He could also have said that no one lives, truly lives, without others to talk to, many others.
By the time that the Gardenworlders came, the four would be twisted, cranky, eccentric. Strange. Odd hermits. Stir-crazy.
There was also the problem of sexual release. Alice would not take all three as lovers, or even one. Alice firmly believed that to be a lover, you had to be in love.
One evening, the men sat on chairs on a balcony of the castle in Burton's world, where all were living for that month. The artificial sun was ten degrees above the artificial west horizon, and they were having their drinks while they waited for Alice to join them. Li Po had said that the longer time went on, the less repulsive was the idea of making beautiful female androids programmed to be bedpartners.
"You'd know that they were not truly human, that they'd be submorons," Frigate said. "You couldn't talk to them as you would to a real woman. You'd know that their passion was simulated, mechanical and unconscious. OK, so you'd get sexual relief. But that's not enough.”
"True," Li Po said, "but they'd be better than nothing.”
"Would they?" Burton said.
Alice came onto the balcony then. The men dropped the subject, not because Alice would have been embarrassed by its nature but because she would have felt bad that she could do nothing to help them. They talked about what they had achieved during their studies that day, Burton with his investigations into the dialects that had formed the Urmother of the Semitic languages, Li Po in his studies of English and French, so that he could read their poetry, Frigate in his study of every motion picture that had been made (or at least preserved by the Ethicals), and Alice with her newfound passion of painting with oils.
At dinner, served by androids, they talked about the yet-to-be-solved mystery of Loga's murder and the identity of the woman whom Nur had killed.
Burton pushed his chair away from the table, pulled a cigar from his shirtpocket, lit it, and said, "I'd devote most of my time to sleuthing those enigmas if I thought it would do any good. I'm convinced, however, that the Computer won't—can't— permit us to even get a foot in the door, as it were. We will never know until the Gardenworlders come and perhaps not then.”
"You won't have to wait that long.”
Alice screamed. Burton gasped, shoved his chair back, and rose to face the man who had spoken.
Loga, smiling, stood in the entrance to the dining room.
Loga had lost his fat-turkey look. His clothes, a sky-blue kilt, open yellow robe with blue dragons, and blue sandals, showed a stocky and powerfully muscled body without an ounce of excess weight.
He was unarmed.
Loga held his hand up. "Please. If you'll quiet down, I'll explain all. First, though, my apologies for startling you.”
Burton had recovered enough from his shock to say, "You always did like the dramatic.”
"True.”
Li Po said, "How did you get in here?”
"I'll tell you all in due time. However, I had no trouble overriding the codeword. After all, I control the tower.”
He went to the sideboard by the door and poured himself a goblet of cognac. Alice, a hand on her breast, sat down. The men exchanged glances the meaning of which they understood from long intimacy. If he makes the slightest move that seems dangerous to us, we'll all jump him at the same time.
Loga, however, was very much at ease, almost hail-fellow-well-met. That meant nothing. He was a superb actor. On the other hand, Burton thought, why should he have anything bad in mind for us?
"Am I right in assuming that your melting ... your death ... was a trick, a simulation by the Computer?" Burton said. "And that you've been watching us since you disappeared?”
Loga faced them, his thick legs braced as if he were on the foredeck of a sailing ship. He smiled and said, "Yes. I know that that was one of the possibilities you considered.”
"So you were spying on us, eavesdropping!" Burton said angrily.
"Everywhere except in those rooms you painted. That was a clever idea, but then I've always known that you were intelligent and imaginative. That, of course, is one of the reasons why I chose you as my agents. It's not true, though, that you completely blocked my monitoring. When you used the auxiliary computers, I tapped in on those.”
He sipped on the cognac while regarding them over the rim. When he moved the goblet away, he said, "It's good to have someone to talk to. Not just anyone; you are special. I feel very close to you. Though I imagine that, at this moment, you're rather furious with me. I don't blame you, but I'm sure that after you've heard my story, you'll forgive me.”
"I don't think so," Alice said, her dark eyes narrowed, her lips stretched back. "I don't know what sort of game you've been playing, but you're responsible for dooming—" She stopped as if something had just occurred to her. Her cheeks became even more red.
"I repeat, I'm sorry to have had to put you through an emotional mincer. But you survived, and you would have survived even if you hadn't, in a manner of speaking.
"What I had to do was to insure that you would be capable of operating the tower and could be trusted not to be corrupted by the great power in your hands. I believed that you could pass the test, but my thinking, my wishing, didn't make it so. I had to give you the practice of power. It's not what a person says but what he does that reveals his true character.
"You did fail in some things. You should have resurrected your comrades who died during the expedition to the tower. I'm sure that, if events hadn't stopped you, you would have done so soon. I was disappointed, however, because I wanted to put them through the test too.”
"Most of them would have done what we did," Burton said.
"I know, but I wanted them to prove themselves in the field.”
"They proved themselves along the way," Burton said. "Just as we did.”
"To a point," Loga said. "But the ultimate test was how they would behave in the tower. Turpin, for instance, was not selective enough in resurrecting his friends. Nor were you, Li Po. You erred grievously in resurrecting Star Spoon.”
Li Po shrugged. "How was I to know?”
"Have you learned your lesson?”
"I am even quicker at learning than I am to take offense," the Chinese said. "If I could do it over again, I would make sure that the Computer would give those we brought in no powers that could be used against me.”
"Very good. But would you also make sure that you had no powers that you could use against others? They're a danger to you as well as to the others. Your powers might be seized by others despite all your precautions.”
"Somebody has to be in charge," Li Po said. "Somebody has to possess the powers, somebody who can be trusted with them.”
"The point is," Burton said, "are we to be trusted now?”
"What if you resurrected somebody who seemed to be trustworthy but proved not to be? That person might take away your powers and use them for purposes that you would reject because they would be bad.”
He sipped again and then began pacing back and forth as he talked.
"You're thinking that my disappearing was criminal because it resulted in the erasure of the body-recordings and, so, the loss of immortality for almost all of the resurrected. That is not so, and I'm disappointed that you could believe that I would permit such a horrible thing. What really happened is—”
"You had the Computer make a duplicate of itself or a duplicate already existed," Burton said. "The duplicate has the records. Or there is only one Computer, but it gave us false reports.”
Loga stopped pacing and looked at Burton with amazement, then burst out laughing.
"When did you think of that?”
"A minute ago.”
"I did have a backup Computer made before I disappeared.”
"Then it was no test for us when we first entered the tower and prevented the Computer from dying? Goring's sacrifice was in vain?”
"No, that was for real. It frightened me so much that I at once had the backup made. Actually, the backup has become the primary since I let you use the first one as your toy.”
"It seems to me," Frigate said, "that it would have been standard engineering procedure to install the backup from the very beginning of this project.”
"We thought that the Computer could not malfunction, not to any dangerous extent, anyway. We thought that it was invulnerable.”
"Yes, and the Titanic was declared unsinkable.”
"What about the Mongolian woman whom Nur killed?" Alice said.
"Ah, her! She was part of the plot to confuse and mystify you. Someone had to be held responsible for my death, and she was placed so that you would think that she was responsible. You would then have to try to find out who and what she was, but there was no way that you could do that.”
"She was an android?" Frigate said.
"Of course.”
"Some of us thought that Nur killed her rather too easily," Frigate said.
Burton blew out smoke, hoping that he looked more cool than he felt. He said, "I thank you for the explanation. I won't thank you for the stress, the anxiety and the bloodshed. But, as you say, we had to learn the hard way, and no doubt your intentions were good. However, as you yourself said, it's not what one thinks, what one's intentions are, but one's actions that reveal the true character. Be that as it may, I have a question, perhaps the most important of all!”
He paused, then said, "Do we stay in the tower? Or must we go back to The Valley?”
Loga grinned and said, "What would you like to do?”
"I can't speak for the others, but I would prefer to stay here.”
The others said they would also like to remain.
"Why?" Loga said.
"For two reasons," Burton said. "One, life is much more enjoyable for me here—despite the events you caused. It affords me an opportunity to study, to gain knowledge, which I would have given my soul on Earth to have, if I'd thought I had a soul and if someone had made me an offer. It's also much more luxurious, about as close to Heaven, a physical Heaven, as one could imagine. Two, I think that I am worthy of being here. I have come as close to Going On as I ever will. Sending me back to The Valley would only impoverish and frustrate me and would not raise my ethical level one bit. In fact, it might lower it.”
Loga asked the others if they had similar or different reasons. Their answers were much like Burton's.
"First, before I tell you what you so evidently are desperate to know, I'll tell you something else. Burton, when you said that you were as close to Going On as you would ever be, you unconsciously spoke the truth. Your saying that makes me curious. Is there more behind that remark than appears on the surface? Have you some inklings, some suspicions, that... ?”
He smiled and took another sip of the cognac. Burton felt that Loga expected him to expand on his statement. If he did, he was going to be disappointed. Burton had no idea what Loga was hinting at.
"You'll have to continue," Burton said. "You were saying... ?”
"Very well. You've been told by me and by the Church of Second Chance that, when you've attained a certain high level of character and morality, become compassionate and empathetic and free of psychosis and neurosis to a certain degree, then you'll be ready to Go On. When you die, you won't be resurrected on the Riverworld again. Your wathan will disappear; it can no longer be caught or detected by our instruments. You have been told that your wathan, or soul, if you prefer that term, goes to God or is absorbed in the Godhead. That, of course, is an explanation that covers ignorance. It was the only explanation that seemed to fit. But ...”
He sipped again. His gaze moved over them as if he were anticipating their reaction to his next words. He looked delighted.
"The sad truth is—though I don't really know if it's so sad— the sad truth is that no wathans ever disappear, ever Go On! Not as long as the bodies they've partnered continue to be resurrected!”
Burton was not as surprised as he should have been. Once, long ago, he had considered that possibility but had rejected it. Alice was shocked; she looked as if she could never again believe anybody. Li Po smiled and stroked his moustache. Frigate's face was impassive.
Burton thought about the Computer report that such people as Buddha and Jesus Christ had Gone On. Obviously, they had not. The Computer had given false data. Why? Because Loga had ordered it to do so to further the deception.
Burton sighed, and he said, "What is the truth? You will tell the truth this time, won't you? You'll pardon me if I'm skeptical. You've lied so many times.”
Alice's voice trembled as she said, "The wathans? You told us that they were artificial. If it had not been for that ancient race that made them, we'd all be soulless. Is that true, God's own truth?”
"Who knows what God's truth is?" Loga said. "God's truth is that What Is Is. But yes, it is a fact that those ancients did make wathans, and we who have inherited their work have made sure that every human being conceived on Earth had a wathan. What is not true is that the wathans go to God or are absorbed into the Godhead. Perhaps they will be some day. I don't know; no one does.
"The truth is that you can be immortal, relatively so, anyway. You won't last beyond the death of the universe and probably not nearly as long as the universe does. But you have the potentiality for living a million years, two, perhaps three or more. As long as you can find a Terrestrial-type planet with a hot core and have resurrection machinery available.
"Unfortunately, not all can be permitted to possess immortality. Too many would make immortality miserable or hellish for the rest, and they would try to control others through their control of the resurrection machinery. Even so, everybody, without exception, is given a hundred years after his Earthly death to prove that he or she can live peacefully and in harmony with himself and others, within the tolerable limits of human imperfections. Those who can do this will be immortal after the two projects are completed.”
"Then," Burton said slowly, "the standards, the ethical goals, are not so extremely high, so demanding, as we have been led to believe?”
"They are high, though not impossibly high for forty percent of the resurrectees.”
"The other sixty percent?" Alice said.
"Their body-records will be destroyed.”
"That seems hard.”
"It is. But it's absolutely necessary.”
"And then?" Frigate said. He looked anxious.
"The survivors will be carried, as body-records in the form of the yellow sphere, to Earth.”
"Earth?" Burton said. He had never been told so, but he had had the feeling that Earth had been destroyed.
"Yes. Most of life on Earth was killed by radiation in the hydrogen and neutron bomb war. But the Gardenworlders have cleaned it up—it took them one hundred and sixty years—and have been restocking it with plant and animal life. Earth will be ready for you, but you won't be the kind of people who will abuse it and slowly kill it by pollution. And—”
"Then we won't be permitted to have children?" Alice said.
"Not on Earth. It won't have room, though there will be plenty of living room, I think you call it elbow space, for you. However, there are millions of planets without sentient life in this universe, and you can go there if you want children.”
"Earth!" Burton said dreamily. His homesickness was so keen that his chest ached. Earth. It would not be the Earth he had left, but surely its topography had not changed. And that it would not be the Earth that had existed when he had died was, he had to admit, for the good.
"This is quite a shock," Alice said. "I was a devout member of the Anglican Church and then, when I came here, I lost my faith and became an agnostic until recently, when I was seriously considering joining the Church of the Second Chance. Now ...”
"Loga," Burton said, "since you are finally telling the truth, tell me this. Why did you turn renegade and pervert the course of events that your fellow Ethicals had decided upon? Is your story that you could not bear that your family, your loved ones, might not Go On, the truth? Go On in the sense you've just explained, not the old sense? Did you cause all this blood struggle, this overthrow of your comrades, just to give your parents and siblings and cousins more time?”
"I swear to you by all that was, is, or might be holy that that is the truth.”
"Well, then," Burton said, "I don't understand how you, who were raised on the Gardenworld from the age of four, could have passed the test. If the Ethical standards have any meaning, any value, how did you escape being eliminated? How could yoti have become a criminal? A criminal with a conscience, but still a criminal. Or were you truly ethical, and then, somehow, you became crazy? And if you can become crazy, what's to prevent others who've also passed from going insane?”
Loga paled, turned, set the goblet on a table, and turned again. He was smiling, and his eyes moved from left to right and back again as if he were looking for something beyond the group.
"I'm not crazy!”
"Consider all that you've done for the sake of a score or so of people," Burton said.
"I am not crazy! What I did, I did for love.”
"Love has its insanities," Burton said. He leaned back in his chair, blew cigar smoke out, smiled, and said, "It doesn't, for the moment, matter if you are insane or not. You still haven't answered us. Must we go back to The Valley or may we stay here?”
"I had thought you could stay," Loga said. "I had judged that you had attained the level where you could be trusted and where we could all enjoy each other's company in love. You could bring in others. I intend to bring in my family and show them what they must do if they would be immortal. Some of them ...”
"You're doubtful about some of them, then?" Burton said.
Frigate leaned over the table and, staring hard at Loga, said, "We were told that passing the test, Going On, was an automatic event. It involved no judging by human beings. Now ... who judges?”
Burton was annoyed by the question, though he had wondered about it. The important question was the one he had just put. The others could be answered later.
"That will be done by the Computer. After that, the people in this project, the Valleydwellers, will eat food that will cause them to fall asleep and die. Their wathans will then be scanned by the Computer. As you know, the wathan displays through its colors and their relative breadths the ethical development of the individual. Those that meet the standards will be reunited on Earth with their bodies. Those that do not will be released and go to wherever they go.”
"Judging by a machine?" Frigate said.
"It is infallible.”
"Unless it's tampered with," Burton said.
"That is not very likely.”
"Not until you made it likely," Burton said.
Loga glared at him. "I won't be here.”
"Where will you be?”
"I will have gone on one of the ships in the hangar to an uninhabited planet.”
"You could have done that at any time after you got rid of your fellow Ethicals and their Agents," Frigate said. "Why didn't you just pick up your family and take them with you?”
Loga looked at Frigate as if he just could not believe that anybody would say that. "No, I couldn't do that."
"Why not?" Burton said. "It seems the logical action to take."
"They wouldn't be ready. They wouldn't have passed the test; the Computer would reject them. They'd be doomed."
"You don't make sense," Frigate said. "What do you care about that? You'd be safe on some planet where they wouldn't find you for a thousand years, maybe never, and you'd have your family."
Loga frowned, and sweat oozed on his forehead. "You don't understand. They shouldn't be living then. They would not have Gone On. I couldn't take them until they had attained the level that makes immortality bearable for them.”
The others looked at each other. Unspoken: he is crazy.
Burton sighed and leaned forward, reached under the table, and withdrew from its shelf a beamer that had been there since the day the castle was built. His finger moved the dial on its side to stun-power. He brought the weapon out swiftly and pressed the sliding tongue that acted as the trigger. The very pale red line struck Loga in the chest, and the Ethical fell backwards.
"I had to do it," Burton said. "He is hopelessly psychotic and he would have sent us back to The Valley. God knows what he would have done then.”
At Burton's orders, Frigate ran to get from a converter a hypodermic syringe containing the needed amount of somnium. Burton stood guard, waiting to stun Loga again if he showed signs of consciousness. The man was immensely powerful; a bolt that would knock most men out might make him only semiconscious.
Burton paced for a few minutes while he thought of how he could solve the problem of Loga. He had to be kept alive. The moment he was dead, he would undoubtedly be resurrected in a hidden chamber. That would mean finit for the four tenants because Loga had prime control of the Computer. If he were put in a cryogenics cylinder, he would be dead as far as the wathan was concerned, and he would be resurrected in a secret room in the tower. Should he be awake but imprisoned, he could kill himself no matter what security arrangements his captors took. Even if the tiny black ball in his brain, the ball that could release a deadly poison with one mentally projected codeword, were surgically removed, Loga could swallow his tongue and choke to death. The tongue could be cut out, but Burton was not -tough enough to do that no matter how desperate he was.
It was possible to keep Loga drugged. Burton, however, doubted that the Ethical could survive thirty-three years in that state. It was useless to ask the Computer to display Loga's memory so that Burton could locate Loga's hidden-body recordings. The Computer would have orders from Loga not to reveal these.
Burton stopped, and he smiled. There was a way out.
Working out the plan took two days, since he had to be very careful. One mistake, and Loga might win out after all.
He ordered the Computer to make a modified android that looked exactly like Loga and had a voice exactly like his. Inside the skin, the android matched Loga except for the brain structure, which was much simpler than Loga's. If the android had been a one hundred percent duplicate, it would, in many respects, have been the Ethical and would have behaved as he would. The only difference, and it was a great difference, was that the android would have lacked self-consciousness.
Burton verbally programmed it in the speech of the Ethicals and then had it transmit his orders to the Computer. The Computer matched the voiceprints, electric skin field, face and body shape, skin, hair and eye color, ear shape, and the chemical composition of the odors of perspiration with Loga's prints. It also scanned the finger, palm and foot prints.
Unfortunately, despite everything else, the Computer refused to obey the android unless the proper codeword was given.
"That's very frustrating," Burton told the others. "One word or perhaps a phrase is all that's blocking it. It might as well be a million words.”
No one said anything; all looked gloomy. Even Li Po was silent for once.
After two minutes, Alice, who had been frowning and biting her lip, said, "I know that none of you believe in feminine intuition. I don't either, not as it's usually defined. I think it's a form of logic that doesn't follow the rules of logic, Aristotelian or symbolic. I don't think that feminine intuition, call it that or something else, is confined to women. Oh, what am I talking about?”
"Yes, what are you talking about?" Burton said.
"It's such a silly idea, so wild. I'd be making an utter ass of myself!”
"Anything will be appreciated," Burton said. "I promise not to laugh.”
"None of us will," Frigate said. "Anyway, what's the difference if we do?”
"It's just that there's no rhyme or reason to it," she said. "Well, perhaps there is some reason to it. Loga is such a trickster, and he does like to play games, rather childish, I think, but there it is.”
"There is what?" Burton said.
"It's such an improbability. The odds against it are fantastically high. But ... I don't know. It couldn't hurt to try. It wouldn't take much time.”
"For God's sake, what?" Burton said.
"Well, do you remember what Loga cried out just before he cracked? Seemed to crack, I mean.”
"I tsab u,' " Burton said. "Ethical for 'Who are you?' “
"Yes. Could Loga have been giving us a clue, the real codephrase? He would have been very amused doing that because there was no chance that we would ever use it. We just simply could not ever find out that it was the open-sesame, the most important identification. Yet he couldn't resist saying it. We'd think that he was addressing the person who had killed him, a person we now know didn't exist. And at the same time ...”
"He'd have to be crazy to play with us like that," Burton said.
"Well?”
"It's nuts, but it'd only take a minute," Frigate said. "What do we have to lose? Besides, Alice may be rather quiet, but she does have a keen insight into individual psychology.”
"Thank you," Alice said. "I wasn't very good at reading people's characters when I came to the Riverworld, but I had to develop that talent to survive.”
They went into the room where the android was sleeping. Burton awoke it gently and gave it a cup of coffee. Then he slowly and carefully told the android what it must do. Once more, it stood in front of the screen on the wall, and it said, "I tsab u.”
The screen flashed the characters of the Ethical alphabet.
"That means 'ready,' " Burton said.
The android then told the Computer that it was transferring prime control to Burton. But the Computer refused to do that.
"Now what?" Frigate muttered.
Burton called the android to him and told him to go into the corridor with him. Though he did not know if that precaution was necessary, he could not afford to take chances. Having instructed the android what to say, he watched from the doorway as it relayed his commands. And the Computer obeyed.
They cheered and hugged each other, and Li Po did a little dance.
The android had ordered that all persons in the records, except for certain ones, whose names and record numbers it gave, be resurrected in The Valley. Henceforth, the process of resurrection would continue until the project was closed down.
The android also said that it wanted its, that is, Loga's, security measures canceled. Immediately, the Computer replied that it had done so. And it displayed diagrams showing where Loga had hidden his body-records.
"Very good," Burton said, smiling. "If we have to deal with the Computer through the android, so be it. I can endure that.”
It took them an hour to collect the thirty-nine records cached in rooms at different levels.
"I'd be completely confident now that Loga can't be resurrected without our knowledge," Burton said, "if he wasn't so canny. What if he hid some records without telling the Computer where they were?”
"In that case," Frigate said, "he couldn't be resurrected because the Computer would not be connected to it and so could not carry out the operation.”
"He might have put the record in a converter unconnected to the Computer except for the power source. An auxiliary computer could have performed the process.”
"Then we'll tell the Computer to notify us of any power demands that are unusual. Loga's orders to the Computer to suppress the indications resulting from his use of the power have been nulled.”
"We'll have to risk it. We can't just not act because of the very slight chance that Loga might get loose.”
The others agreed with Burton that they could start repopulating the tower. They would do this, though, after the three private worlds had been cleaned up. They unanimously supported his suggestion that the Valleydwellers be told the truth, in fact, the whole story from the beginning.
"The Ethicals thought it necessary to spread half-truths through the Church of the Second Chance because of their belief in the strength of the religious impulse. But I believe that the whole truth, palatable or not, should be given. We'll resurrect some people in the tower, let them live here for a while, then transport them to The Valley in the aircraft. We'll give them photographs and powerpack-operated film projectors. That should convince the skeptics. The truth will spread very slowly because of the enormous population and the length of The Valley, but it will get to all eventually. Of course, some will refuse to believe. That'll be their misfortune.”
Loga was placed in the cryogenics chamber.
Li Po resurrected his companions; Alice, Monteith Maglenna and several others, including her sisters Edith and Rhoda; Frigate, Sophie Lefkowitz and twenty others; Burton, Loghu the blonde ancient-Tokharian, Cyrano de Bergerac, Joe Miller the titanthrop, Kazz the Neanderthal, Tom Turpin, Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot, and many others whom Loga had recruited in his war against the Ethicals.
Six months passed, and Burton invited all the tenants, now numbering over two hundred, to his castle for a dinner party. After the tables had been cleared, he ordered an android to strike a huge bronze gong that hung behind his chair. He rose, raised a glass of wine, and said, "Citizens of the tower, your attention. I propose a toast. To us.”
They drank, and he said, "Another toast. To all those who hold dual citizenship, that of Earth and that of Riverworld.”
He put the glass down.
"We all seem to be well situated and happy, and I pray that we will be so until the Gardenworlders arrive. And perhaps after that. When that time comes, though, we will, whether or not we like it, return to the restored Earth or go into oblivion. I hope, and I believe, that we here will be qualified to go to Earth where we should enjoy life until the Earth's core cools and we must move on to a young planet. That should be quite a few million years in the future, however, and who knows what will happen in that inconceivably long time?”
He stopped, sipped wine, put the goblet down, and stared around at them.
"As I understand it, Earth's core will be tapped for the use of e-m converters. But this power will be used only to raise those who die there, and with the type of people on Earth then, there should not be much need for resurrection power. There will be no grails or converters to furnish food. Food will be grown on the soil. Earth, if events work out as the Ethicals plan, will be a nice quiet place. Peace and harmony will reign, though I have doubts that the lion will lie down with the lamb. Not if it's hungry. Lions do not and never will find grass nourishing.
"And, of course, even those who have Gone On will not be perfect. No human being, with perhaps a few exceptions, and these might be unendurable models for the rest of us, is perfect or will be.”
Many of his audience were looking at him as if they wondered what he was preparing to spring on them.
"Some of you, I'm sure, anticipate life on Earth with great pleasure. You know you'll always have intellectual adventures because the opportunities for study and for artistic creation will be equal to what the tower provides. And you're happy with the idea that life will be serene, well-ordered, and secure. You luxuriate in that prospect.”
He stopped, and he frowned.
"However, there is an alternative to the Earth I've described. I have investigated the spaceships in the hangar, and I have discovered that they do not require highly trained crews to navigate and operate them. They are complex in themselves, but an intelligent child of twelve, after some study, may get into one and have the ship carry him to whatever destination he wishes. Provided, of course, that the ship has enough fuel.”
Frigate smiled up at him and held up a thumb and a finger to form an O.
"What if we reject the return to the near-Utopian Earth?" Burton said. "What if we prefer another kind of life or are not sure that, even if we would love Earth as I've depicted here, we will be chosen to be among her citizens?
"Nothing can stop us from boarding a spaceship, all those in the hangar if we wish, choosing one of the virgin planets catalogued in the ship's navigation system, and then going there.
"What would we do there, our motley group of near-immortals of many races, nations, languages, and times? We wouldn't have the rich, easy life we have here, or the more restricted but still easy life on the Earth-to-be. Though we can carry with us the science and technology of the Ethicals in records, we could use very little of it for centuries. It would take a long time before our population increased to the point where we would have enough hands to do all the dirty and hard labor needed to get the raw materials for processing.
"These planets have been seeded with wathan generators and catchers just as was done on ancient Earth. We can have children because they will be born with ivathans and will be self-conscious and free-willed. But—" he looked around him again "—if any of us or our children die, we will be dead for a long time. Perhaps forever. Should the Ethicals be able to track us down, we who went on the ship from the tower will be judged then and there, at once. We may have passed and so be allowed to live. Or we may not. In any event, if we should die early, we will have to stay dead for a long time, because the Ethicals may not get to our planet for many thousands of years. And if, during that time, our descendants do build resurrection machinery, how do we know they'll decide to raise us? We can't foresee the political or religious or economic situation of that time. Our descendants may think it best we not be raised.
"That is by no means the worst thing that can happen. In the beginning, after we've landed and built homes with our own hands and tilled and planted and reaped and brought forth the first generation, we'll be a fairly harmonious society. But as the centuries, the millennia, go by, our common language, Esperanto, will become dialects, then language families as unintelligible to one another as French and Albanian. Though there will be much miscegenation, some groups will keep their racial characteristics, and our brave new world will have differing races.
"Different languages and different races. Just as an old Earth. But it will have variety.
"And, try though we will to bring up our children with love, in time, as generation succeeds generation, or perhaps in a very short time, we will have the same kind of people that we had on old Earth.
"Ladies and gentlemen, after we have labored long and mightily, survived many hardships and dangers, and perhaps established a just and equitable society for all, we will nevertheless see the inevitable degeneration of our society. As on Earth, there will be multitudes of the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the pushers and the pushed, the brave and the cowardly, the dull and the bright, the open and the shut, the givers and the takers, the compassionate and the indifferent or cruel, the sensitive and the callous, the tender-and the brutal, the victimizers and the victims, the sane, the half-sane, and the mad.
"There will be hate but love, despair but joy, defeat but triumph, misery but happiness, hopelessness but hope.”
He looked briefly at them, seeing all their faces as one. They knew the spirit if not the exact form of what he was going to say.
"But... we will have immense variety, the richness and the full spectrum that a secure life cannot give.
"And we will have adventure.
"We will be rejecting the promised Heaven of Earth. But we will be taking some of Heaven with us, and, I'm sure, more than a bit of Hell. Can Heaven exist in a vacuum? Without Hell, how do you know that you are in Heaven?
"I ask you, my friends, and even those who are perhaps not very fond of me, which shall it be? The new Earth? Or the unknown?”
His audience was silent. Then Frigate called out, "Is all this rhetorical? Where are you going, Dick?”
"You know where," Burton said.
He waved his hand to indicate the stars.
"Who's going with me?”
While of course an author would like to believe that his every word remains engraved forever on the hearts of his readers, it may be that some of the events of the previous four Riverworld novels have grown dim in some memories. Here is a brief look at the adventures that have led up to Gods of Riverworld: Richard Francis Burton, the famous (or infamous) English explorer, linguist, author, poet, swordsman, and anthropologist, dies in a.d. 1890 at the age of sixty-nine. Contrary to his expectations, he awakes from death. He is in a vast chamber containing billions of bodies floating in the air. All those he sees are human except for one near him. This body is humanoid but definitely not that of a member of Homo sapiens. Before Burton can escape from the chamber, he is rendered unconscious by two men who appear in some kind of aerial craft.
When Burton again awakes, he is lying naked on the bank of a wide river in a narrow valley surrounded by high, unscalable mountains. His body is like the one he had when he was twenty-five, minus its scars. He is only one of an estimated thirty-five billion who have been resurrected under an unfamiliar sky on the banks of a river ten million miles long.
The resurrection is not, as events will show, caused by supernatural means. It has been effected by scientific devices invented by beings unknown during the early part of the first book, To four Scattered Bodies Go. The people responsible for this, the Ethicals, planted recording machines on Earth long before the first humans evolved from the apes. (Or so Burton and others are told during the course of the series.) These machines have recorded every human being from the time of his or her conception continuously to the moment of death. And, as is discovered in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth, the souls (called wathans by the Ethicals) are artificial. There is no such thing as a natural soul; these have been provided by the Ethicals.
In the early days on the Riverworld, its inhabitants believe that everybody from approximately 2,000,000 b.c. to a.d. 2008 has been resurrected. It soon becomes apparent that children who had died on Earth at or under the age of five, the mentally retarded, and extreme psychopaths have not been raised on the Riverworld. These, Burton finds out from a renegade Ethical, have been resurrected on a planet called the Gardenworld. And it is revealed in a later volume that only those from approximately 99,000 b.c. to a.d. 1983 have been placed on the River-world. After this current Ethical project is over, those who died after a.d. 1983 will be raised.
The Ethicals are the heirs of several preceding cultures, some nonhuman, which had assumed the task of recording and resurrecting the sentient species of many worlds throughout the universe. If they did not do so, all sentients who died would be forever dead.
Some Ethicals, disguised as Terrestrials, have spread throughout the Riverworld the religious concept of Going On. A Valleydweller cannot Go On unless he or she attains a certain high ethical standard—in other words, a certain state of being "good." At the end of a hundred years this project will be phased out, and those who have not arrived at a certain ethical development will die forever. The wathans of those who have reached this stage will be absorbed by the Godhead.
This concept is planted by the Ethicals and transmitted through various religions—for instance, the Church of the Second Chance. The -missionaries of the Church also teach their disciples to speak Esperanto. A language that everybody can understand is necessary because of the mixture of peoples from many times and places.
Burton and some others are early on visited by an Ethical who won't reveal his identity. Burton and others call him X or The Mysterious Stranger. X (revealed as Loga, a member of the Ethical Council of Twelve, in The Magic Labyrinth) is thwarting the plans of his fellows. He gives various reasons for this, but the true reason for his becoming a renegade is told in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth. X is recruiting some of the resurrectees to help him in his plot. Among these are Burton, Sam Clemens, Cyrano de Bergerac, a gigantic titanthrop called Joe Miller, and other exceptional men and women.
The River, they find out, starts from a small sea at the north pole of this planet, winds back and forth down one hemisphere, circles the south pole, and winds back and forth on the other hemisphere, finally plunging back to its source, the north pole sea. A vast tower built by the Ethicals rears up from the bedrock at the bottom of this sea. It is the headquarters of the Ethicals and contains the circuitry and the huge protein brain of the Computer. It also houses in a central well those wathans held while the dead are stored in the physical recordings. When a person is resurrected, the wathan immediately reattaches itself to the raised body. This entity, the wathan, contains all the memories that the body also has, duplicates them, as it were, and also provides self-consciousness for the mind of the body. Without the wathan, the physical part of the individual would lack self-consciousness and the means to keep its identity.
The first volume, To four Scattered Bodies Go, is mainly concerned with showing the setup of the Riverworld and Burton's efforts to escape the Ethicals. These have found out that he was awakened in the resurrection chamber by their unidentified renegade colleague. Burton commits suicide 777 times while fleeing the Ethicals, but is finally caught. He is questioned in the tower by the Council of Twelve, one of whom is the renegade. His memory is taped so that the Council may see the renegade through his eyes. But the renegade has secretly rearranged various circuits in the Computer, and he has also arranged it so that the Council believes that Burton's memory of his questioning has been erased. He returns to The Valley with a complete memory.
In the second volume, The Fabulous Riverboat, Samuel Clemens, the American writer, dreams of building a great paddlewheeled riverboat on which to travel up The River to its source. From there he will go on foot to the seagirt tower. He can't start fulfilling this dream for a long time because the planet is poor in iron and other heavy metals. X arranges to divert a large iron-nickel meteorite into The Valley, and Clemens uses this for the needed metal. His boat is stolen by his partner, King John of England, brother to Richard the Lion-Hearted. Sam vows to build another boat, catch up with John, and get vengeance.
In the third volume, The Dark Design, Clemens finishes his second boat after many hardships and attempts by others to steal this one, too. After he leaves, another group at the base builds a dirigible and flies it to the tower. Only one of the crew can get inside the tower, and he does not come back out. On the way back, one of the crew is discovered to be X, but he escapes, and the airship is blown up by a bomb he planted.
In the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth, the two heavily armed riverboats meet. Both are sunk in the battle, and their captains die along with most of their crews. Burton and some of X's recruits survive. They go up The River as far as they can in a small boat, then climb the massive and rugged mountain range ringing the north polar sea. Burton is convinced that one of the party is X. After the party gets into the tower through an entrance secretly installed by X, Burton does find out who X is.
However, in the long absence of all its Ethical and Agent tenants (slain by X), the unattended tower mechanisms need some maintenance. Not getting it, a valve that admits seawater is stuck, and the protein brain of the Computer is threatened. If it dies before the valve can be repaired, the entire project will be doomed, and all the body-recordings will perish.
Hermann Goring, ex-Nazi and late Reichsmarschall of the Third Reich, is one of the party. He has repented his evil deeds on Earth and has converted to the Church of the Second Chance. He sacrifices his life trying to get to the malfunctioning valve to repair it. He fails, and it seems that the Computer will perish and with it all hope of immortality for the thirty-five billion people.
However, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, one of the party, ingeniously figures out a way to circumvent the Computer's suicidal obedience to certain inhibitions, and the project is saved.
Now the Valleydwellers will be given the extra time that Loga, the renegade Ethical, claims they need in order for all to attain the level where they may Go On. The project will be resumed as originally planned with this exception. Loga's fellow Ethicals and their Agents will not be resurrected because they would interfere with his plans.
The book at hand, Gods of Riverworld, starts a few weeks after the ending of the fourth, The Magic Labyrinth.