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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foreword by Philip Jose" Farmer

Malzberg

Malzberg. BLANDINGS ON RIVERWORLD by Phillip C. Jennings

Gregory Betancourt

CONTENTS

Foreword by Philip Jose Farmer ix

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

by Philip Jose" Farmer 7

A HOLE IN HELL by Dane Helstrom 65

GRACELAND by Alien Steele 73

EVERY MAN A GOD

by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg 101

BLANDINGS ON RIVERWORLD

by Phillip C. Jennings 141

TWO THIEVES by Harry Turtledove 173

FOOL'S PARADISE by Ed Gorman 207

THE MERRY MEN OF RIVERWORLD

by John Gregory Betancourt 237

UNFINISHED BUSINESS by Robert Weinberg

283

FOREWORD

by Philip Jose Farmer

What we have here is a gathering of stories by different writers about one planet. This is the Riverworld, the first novel about which was written by me and was published in 1971. This novel was called To Your Scattered Bodies Go. The second, The Fabulous Riverboat, appeared the same year. Then came The Dark Design, The Magic Labyrinth, and Gods of Riverworld. My novelet, River-world, is part of the series but is not concerned with the main plot or main characters.

The book at hand is a shared-world anthology. That is, each of its stories takes place on the Riverworld but is by a different writer. These writers were given carte blanche with their situations and characters but had to follow the structure and strictures of the Riverworld as laid down by me. However, when the action takes place on a planet where there is a river almost eighteen million miles long, and which is populated by over thirty-six billion and six hundred million human beings who lived and died on Earth from circa 100,000 B.C. to A.D. 1983, the writers are not very confined.

My "Crossing the Dark River" is the lead story. "A Hole in Hell," a very short but powerful story, is by Dane Helstrom, a name appearing in print for the first time. Jennings's "Blandings on Riverworld" is the first humorous Riverworld story to be written. Betancourt's "The Merry Men of Riverworld" is about a character who is well known in the Western world. Well, it is in a way. "Fool's Paradise" is by Ed German, a well-known mystery writer, and is his first science-fiction story. His protagonist, as might be expected, is a detective-turned-writer well known in the twentieth century. Weinberg's "Unfinished Business," Resnick's and Malzberg's "Every Man a God," and Turtledove's "Two Thieves" exhibit the inventive virtues and high imagination we have come to expect from these writers.

In fact, as one of the editors choosing these stories for inclusion in the anthology, I was very pleased with their handling of another writer's basic concept and of the historical characters they chose to write about.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did.

Crossing the Dark River

Philip Jose Farmer

"What? You prescribed lemon juice to cure cholera?"

"What? You had a sure cure for infants who held their breaths until their faces turned blue? And for young females in a hysterical seizure? You stuck your little finger up their anuses? Presto! Changeo! They're rid forever of infantile behavior and the tantrums of the body?"

"What? You're searching for the woman who's supposed to have given birth to a baby somewhere along the River? A baby? In this world where all are sterile and no woman has ever gotten pregnant? You believe that's true? How about buying the Brooklyn Bridge?

' 'No? Then how about a splinter from the True Cross? Ho! Ho! Ho! And you believe that this baby reproduced by parthenogenesis is Jesus Christ born again to save us Valleydwellers? And you've been traveling up-River to find the infant? Who do you think you are? One of the Three Wise Men? Ho! Ho! Ho!"

And so Doctor Andrew Paxton Davis had not stayed long any place until he had been detained by Ivar the Boneless. He had wandered up the Valley, seldom paus-

2 Philip Jos<5 Farmer

ing, just as, on Earth, he had been the peripatetic's peripatetic. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, he had traveled to many cities in the United States. There he had lectured on and practiced his new art of healing and sometimes established colleges of osteopathy. Denver, Colorado; Quincy, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, Ohio; LaFayette and Indianapolis, Indiana; Dallas and Corsicana, Texas; Baker, City, Oregon; Los Angeles, California, and many other places.

Then he had originated Neuropathy, an eclectic discipline of healing. It combined all the best features of osteopathy, chiropracty, magnetism, homeopathy, and other systems of drugless medicine. He had preached that God-inspired gospel throughout the country. And he had written four thick books that were used by osteopaths and ophthalmologists and read by many laymen throughout the United States.

"From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it."

That was Satan's answer to God when He said, "Whence comest thou?" That could be said also of Andrew P. Davis. But Davis loathed Satan, and his model was Job, who "was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed evil."

Since Davis had awakened on the Riverworld, he had suffered the torments of Job. Yet he had not faltered in his faith any more than had Job. God must have made this world, but the Great Tempter was here too. To realize that, you just had to look around at the inhabitants.

Riverworlders dreamed most often about lost Earth. The one exception to this was the nightmare about their mass resurrection, the Day of the Great Shout when all

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER 3

the dead had screamed at one time. What a cry that must have been!

Doctor Andrew Paxton Davis had often awakened moaning, sometimes screaming, from that nightmare. But he had another dream that distressed him even more.

For instance, on this early and still-dark morning of the fifth anniversary of The Day, he had painfully oozed into wakefulness from a Riverworld-inspired nightmare. Not terror but shame and humiliation had written the script for that sleep-drama.

He had gotten his M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1867. But, after many years as a physician in the rural areas of Illinois and Indiana, he had become unhappy with the practice. Always a seeker after truth, he had become convinced that the new science and art of healing devised by Dr. Andrew Taylor Still was a breakthrough. Davis had been in the first class (1893) to complete the courses of the newly established American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri.

But, ever questioning, ever seeking, he had decided that osteopathy alone was not enough. Hence, his own discipline and his founding of the College of Neuropathy in Los Angeles. When he died at the age of eighty-four of stomach cancer—he also had nightmares about that long agony—he was still the head of a flourishing practice. However, medical science had improved considerably from his birth in 1835 to his death in 1919. And, from then on, it had accelerated at an incredible velocity. His late-twentieth-century informants made it sound like one of those scientific romances by H.G. Wells.

In the first two years on the Riverworld, he had proudly, at first, anyway, told the doctors he met of his knowledge and accomplishments. He had also confided

4 Philip Jos€ Farmer

his belief that the Savior had been born again. So many had laughed at him that he became very reserved about telling any M.D. that he had practiced the healing art. He was almosf as reticent about revealing his Quest to laymen. But how could he find the Holy Mother and the Holy Infant unless he told people that he was searching for them?

He had awakened this morning and lain in a sweat not caused by the temperature. After a while, he vaguely remembered a dream preceding the one about the mockery and jeers.

He was outside the tower on top of the hill and just starting to walk down the hill when he heard the king calling him. He turned and looked up through the twilight that enveloped most of his dreams. Ivar the Boneless" was staring down at him from the top of the tower. As usual, the king was half smiling. Beside him, Ann Pullen, the queen not only of Ivar's land but of all the bitches in the world, was leaning through a space in the top wall. Her bare breasts were hanging over the top of the stone. Then she lifted one and flipped it at him.

Suddenly, Sharkko the Shyster appeared beside the two. Sharkko, the man who would have been utterly miserable if he could understand how detestable he was. But Sharkko was unable to imagine that anyone could not like him. He had been given solid proof, kicks, slaps, curses, and savage beatings, that he was not loved by all. Yet his mind slid these off and kept his self-image undented and unbreakable.

These three were the most important beings in Davis's life in Ivar's land. He would have liked to have put them in a rocket and fired them off toward the stars. That way, he would keep them from being resurrected somewhere

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER 5

along the River and thus avoid meeting them again. Except in his nightmares, of course.

Later, a few hours after dawn, Davis was walking up the hill to the tower after fishing in the River. He had caught nothing and so was not in a good mood. That was when he met the lunatic gotten up like a clown.

"Doctor Faustroll, we presume?"

The man, who spoke in a strangely even tone, held out an invisible calling card.

Davis glanced down at the tips of the man's thumb and first finger as if they really were holding a card.

"Printed in the letters of fire," the man said. "But you must have a heart on fire to see them. However, imaginary oblongs are best seen in an imaginary unlighted triangle. The darker the place, the brighter the print. As you may have noticed, it's late morning, and the sunlight is quite bright, At least, they seem to be so."

The fellow, like all other insane on Earth, must have been resurrected with all traces erased of any mental illness he had suffered there. But he was crazy again.

His forehead was painted with some kind of mathematical formula. The area around his eyes was painted yellow, and his nose was painted black. A green mustache was painted on his upper lip. His mouth was lipsticked bright-red. On his chest, a large question mark was tattooed in blue. A dried fish was suspended on a cord reaching to his belly. His long, thick, and very black hair was shaped into a sort of bird's nest and held in place by dry gray mud.

And, when the man bent his neck forward, he exposed the upper part of an egg in the nest. Davis could easily see it because the man was shorter than he. It did not roll with the movement of the head. Thus, it must be fixed

6 Philip Jos6 Farmer

with fish glue to the top of his head. The wooden and | painted pseudo-egg, Davis assumed, was supposed to : represent that laid by a cuckoo. Appropriate enough. The stranger was certainly cuckoo.

A large green towel, the clown's only garment, was draped around his hips. The gray cylinder of his grail was near his bare feet. Most people carried a fish-skin bag that held their worldly possessions. This fellow lacked that, and he was not even armed. But he did carry a bamboo fishing pole.

The man said, "While on Earth, we were King Ubu. Here, we are Doctor Faustroll. It's a promotion that we richly deserve. Who knows? We may yet work our way to the top and become God or at least occupy His empty throne. At the moment, we are a pataphysician, D.Pa., at your service. That is not a conventional degree in one sense, but in all senses it is a high degree, including Fahrenheit and Kelvin."

He started to put his imaginary card in an imaginary pocket of an imaginary coat.

Davis said, "I'll take it," and he held out his hand. Humoring the pataphysician, whatever that was, might prevent him from becoming violent.

He moved his hand close to his bare chest to suggest that he was pulling out a card from an inner pocket of his coat. He held it out.

"Andrew Paxton Davis, M.D., Oph.D., N.D., D.O., D.C."

"Where's the rest of the alphabet?" the man said, still keeping his voice even-toned. But he pretended to take the card, read it, and then put it inside his coat.

"I made soup of it," Davis said. His blue eyes seemed to twinkle.

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER 7

Doctor Faustroll's dark-brown eyes seemed to reflect the twinkle, and he smiled. He said, "Now, if you'll be kind enough to conduct us to the ruler of this place, whatever his or her or its names, we will present ourself or perhaps more than one of our selves and will apply for a position or positions."

Davis was startled. He said, "What? You don't know where you are? The guards did not stop you? How did you get by them?"

Doctor Faustroll indicated an invisible object by his right foot. "We carried ourself through the border in our suitcase. The guards did not see the case. It was midnight and cloudy. Also, they were drowsy."

"It must be a very large case to hold you. All of you?"

"It's very small, but there's enough room for us and our conscience," Doctor Faustroll said. "We take the conscience out of the case only when we intend to use it, which isn't often, Or when it needs airing."

He picked up his grail with one hand and his fishing pole in the other.

Davis hitched up the towel Velcroed to his waist and then grasped the handle of his own grail. His good humor had vanished. He was getting impatient with the fellow, and he did not want to be late for his appointment with the king.

Looking serious, he said, "If I were you, I'd get out of this place as quickly and quietly as possible. If you don't, you'll be working with those wretched people down there."

He pointed at the riverbank. Faustroll turned around to stare at the swarm of sweating, straining, and shouting men and women. Tiny figures at this distance, they were

Philip Jos6 Farmer

striving to pull or to push a roughly cube-shaped and bungalow-sized block of granite on log rollers into the River. Its forward edge was on two wooden runners, heavily lubricated with fish fat, that dipped into the water.

"They're building a pyramid beneath the surface of the River?" Faustroll said.

"Must you keep up this nonsense?" Davis said. "And why don't you ask me why I'm giving you this advice to scoot out of here as fast as your feet can carry you? If, that is, you're able to do so, which I doubt very much."

"There is no such thing as nonsense," Faustroll said. "In fact, what you call nonsense makes greater sense than what you call sense. Or, perhaps, there is no concrete abstraction that we term sense. But, if there is no sense, then there is also no nonsense. We have spoken. Selah."

Davis sighed, and he said, "If you don't mind risking slavery and perhaps torture, come along with me. Don't say I didn't try to warn you."

They had been standing at the edge of the grass-carpeted plain. Now they trudged up the slope of the foothills. Davis, a red-haired man of medium height and build but with abnormally large hands, led the way. The madman was slower because he was observing the whole milieu. Though the mountains towering straight up to 20,000 feet, the mile-wide foothills, and the mile-wide plains on either side of the mile-wide River were typical

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER 9

of most of the Rivervalley, the human activity was not. Many men and women were cutting away large blocks of stone in the vertical face of the mountains and were sliding the blocks down the foothills. The grass in the path of the very heavy weights was crushed, and the earth had sunk in. But the grass was so tough that it had not died out.

Near the lower edge of the foothill were extra oak log rollers for moving the blocks across the plain. Halfway along the plain, several crews were pulling on ropes tied around the blocks while gangs shoved against the rear of the blocks. When these got to the River's edge, they were placed on runners and slid into the water.

As in most areas, the River was shallow for several yards beyond the banks, which were only a few inches above the River. Then the level bottom abruptly became a cliff. That plunged straight down at least a mile before reaching the cold and lightless bottom in which was a multitude of strange forms of fish.

Not only was the bank swarming with people, the River itself was jammed with boats small and large. And two gigantic wooden cranes on the bank were close to being completed.

The other side of the River showed a similar scene. Even as Faustroll watched, a huge stone block on that side slid on runners into the water and disappeared. A huge bubble formed above the roiling water and burst.

Suddenly, Faustroll caught up with Davis.

"We don't leap to quick conclusions," he said, "or even walk to them. But it seems to us that those workers are trying to fill the River. They're not having much success at it."

"Building a dam," Davis said. He quickened his pace.

Philip Jos£ Farmer

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

"Ivar and that other fool across the River, King Arpad, plan to dam the stream with all those blocks of stone if it takes them a hundred years. Then they'll be able to keep any boats from slipping through past the guards at night. They'll also tax the merchant boats going up and down the River past this point. Also, Ivar thinks that he'll be able to cut through the mountains to the other side of the Valley. He'll invade the state on the other side and rule it. And the tunnel will be a conduit for trade from the other side. Ivar also has this dream that the tunneling will reveal large deposits of iron.

"Pride goeth before a fall. He'll suffer the fate of the arrogant Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel thinking that he could conquer the hosts of Heaven."

"How can they cut granite with flint tools?" Faustroll said.

"They can't. But this area was blessed—or cursed— with underground deposits of copper and tin. The only such for thousands of miles either way from here. Ivar and his army of Vikings and Franks grabbed this land three years ago, and that's why he has bronze tools and weapons."

Going up the hill, they heard a loud explosion as rock was blasted with black gunpowder. When they stopped at the top, they heard a loud clanging. Beyond the shallow valley below them was a higher hill on top of which was a large round tower of granite blocks. Circling it at its base was a moat.

Below the two in the valley were the smithies, the molds, and great chunks of tin- and copper-bearing ore and the round bamboo huts with cone-shaped and leaf-thatched roofs in which the workers lived. The din, heat, and stench rolled over the two men in a nauseating wave.

"Men have brought Hell from Earth to this fair place," Faustroll said. "They should be seeking spiritual progress, not material gain and conquest. That, we believe, is why we were placed in this purgatory. Of course, without the science of pataphysics, they won't get far in their quest.

"On the other hand, left or right, we don't know, it may all be accidental. But accidental doesn't necessarily mean meaningless."

Davis snorted his contempt for this remark.

"And just what is pataphysics?" he said.

"Our friend and fellow doctor, let us charge through the breach created by our conversation and assault the definition of pataphysics. It is an almost impossible task since it can't be explained in nonpataphysical terms.

"Pataphysics is the science of the realm beyond metaphysics. It lies as far beyond the metaphysics as metaphysics lies beyond physics—in one direction or another, or perhaps still another.

"Pataphysics is the science of the particular, of laws governing exceptions. You follow us so far?"

Davis only rolled his eyes.

"Pataphysics, pay attention, this may be the heart of the matter, pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. But only imaginary solutions are real."

Davis grunted as if struck a soft blow in the stomach.

"For pataphysics, all things are equal," Faustroll continued. "Pataphysics is, in aspect, imperturbable.

"And this, too, is the heart of the matter, one of them anyway. That is, all things are pataphysical. Yet few people practice pataphysics."

"You expect me to understand that?" Davis said.

"Not at once. Perhaps never. Now, the last castle to be

Philip Jos6 Fanner

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

conquered. Beyond pataphysics lies nothing. It is the ultimate defense."

"Which means?"

Faustroll ignored that question. He said, "It allows each man or woman to live his own life as an exception, proving no law but his own."

"Anarchy? You're an anarchist?"

"Look about you. This world was made for anarchy. We don't need any government except self-government. Yet men won't permit us to be anarchists—so far."

"Tell this to Ivar," Davis said. He laughed, then said, "I'd like to see his face when you tell him that."

"Ah, but what about the brain behind that face? If he has a brain?"

"Oh, he has brains! But his motives, man, his motives!"

They descended the hill and then climbed to the top of the next hill, much steeper and higher than the previous ones. The tower drawbridge was down, but many soldiers were by its outer end. Most of them were playing board games or casting dice carved from fish bones. Some were watching wrestling matches and mock duels. Their conical bronze helmets were fitted with nose- and cheek-pieces. A few wore chain-mail armor made of bronze or interlocking wooden rings. All were armed with daggers and swords and many had spears. Their leather bronze-ringed shields were stacked close by them. The wooden racks by these held yew bows and quivers full of bronze-tipped arrows. Some spoke in Esperanto; others, in barbaric tongues.

The sentinels at each end of the drawbridge made no effort to stop the two. Davis said, "I'm the royal osteopath to King Ivar. Since you're with me, they assume you're not to be challenged." -

"I like to be challenged," Faustroll said. "By the way, what is an osteopath?"

"You've never heard of osteopathy?" Davis said, raising his reddish eyebrows. "When did you die?"

"All Saints' Day, though I'm no saint in the Catholic sense, in 1907. In Paris, which you may know is in France, who knows how many light-years away?"

Davis said only, "Ah!" That explained the man's madness and decadence. He was French and probably had been a bohemian artist, one of those godless immoral wretches roistering in the dives of Montmartre or the Left Bank or wherever that kind of low life flourished. One of those Dadaists or Cubists or Surrealists, whatever they were called, whose crazed paintings, sculptures, and writings revealed that their makers were rotten with sin and syphilis.

There wasn't any syphilis on this world, but there was plenty of sin.

"My question?" Faustroll said.

"Oh, yes! One, osteopathy is any form of bone disease. Two, it's a system of treatment of ailments and is based on the valid belief that most ailments result from the pressure of displaced bones on nerves and so forth. Osteopaths relieve the traumatic pressure by applying corrective pressure. Of course, there's much more to it than that. Actually, I seldom have to treat the king for anything serious, he's in superb physical health. It could be said that he retains me—enslaves me would be a better term—as the royal masseur."

Faustroll lifted his eyebrows and said, "Bitterness? Discontent? Your soul, it vomits bile?"

Davis did not reply. They had gone through the large foyer and up the stone steps of a narrow winding stair-

Philip Jos6 Fanner

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

case to the second floor. After passing through a small room, they had stepped into a very large room, two stories high and very cool. Numerous wall slits gave enough light, but pine torches and fish-oil lamps made the room brighter. In the center, on a raised platform, was a long oaken table. Placed along it were high-backed oaken chairs carved with Norse symbols, gods, goddesses, serpents, trolls, monsters, and humans. Other smaller tables were set around the large one, and a huge fireplace was at the western wall. The walls were decorated with shields and weapons and many skulls. i

A score or so of men and women were in a line leading to a large man seated in a chair. The oaken shaft of a huge bronze-headed ax leaned against the side of the chair.

"Petitioners and plaintiffs," Davis said in a low voice to Faustroll. "And criminals."

"Ah!" Faustroll murmured. "The Man With the Ax!" He added, "The title of one of our poems."

He pointed at a beautiful bare-breasted blonde sitting in a high-backed chair a few feet from the king's throne. "She?"

"Queen Ann, the number-one mare in Ivar's stable," Davis said softly. "Don't cross her. She has a hellish temper, the slut."

Ivar the Boneless, son of the semilegendary Ragnar Hairybreeches, who was the premier superhero of the Viking Age, stood up from the chair then. He was at least six feet six inches tall. Since his only garment was a sea-blue towel, his massive arms, chest, legs, and flat corded belly were evident. Despite his bulk, his quick and graceful movements made him seem more pantherish than lionlike. His only adornment was a wide bronze band around »

the upper right arm. It bore in alto-relief a valknut, three hunting horns meeting at the mouthpieces to form a triskelion, a three-legged figure. The valknut, the knot of the slain, was the sacred symbol of the greatest of the Norse gods, Odin.

His long, wavy, and red-bronze hair fell to his very broad shoulders. His face would have been called, in Davis's time on Earth, "ruggedly handsome." There was, however, something vulpine about it. Though Davis could not put a verbal finger on the lineaments that made him think of Brer Fox, he always envisioned that character when he saw the king.

Ivar was not the only general in the ninth century A.D. Danish invasion of England. Many native kings ruled there, but the king of Wessex would be the only one whose name would be familiar to twentieth-century English speakers. That was Alfred, whom later generations would call The Great, though his son and grandson were as deserving of that title. Though Alfred had saved Wessex from conquest, he had not kept the Danes from conquering much of the rest of England. Ivar had been the master strategist of the early Dane armies. Later, he had been co-king of Dublin with the great Norwegian conqueror, Olaf the White. But Ivar's dynasty had ruled Dublin for many generations.

As Davis and Faustroll approached the king, Davis said softly, "Don't call him Boneless. Nobody does that to his face without regretting it. You can call him Ivar, though, from what he's told me, it was Yngwaer in the Norse of his time. Languages change; Yngwaer became Ivar. His nickname in Old Norse was The Merciless, but it was close in sound to a word meaning "boneless."

Philip Jos6 Fanner

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

Later generations mistranslated the nickname. But don't call him Merciless either.

"If you do, you'll find out why he was called that."

Doctor Davis was surprised.

He had been sure that the king would hustle the grotesquely painted and nonsense-talking Frenchman to the slave stockade at once. Instead, Ivar had told Davis to get quarters in the tower for Faustroll, good quarters, not some tiny and miserable room.

"He's been touched by the gods and thus is sacred. And I find him interesting. See that good care is taken of him, and bring him to the feast tonight."

Though this duty was properly the province of the king's steward, Davis did not argue. Nor did he ask Ivar what he meant by referring to the gods. On Earth, Ivar had been a high priest of the Norse god Odin until a few years before he died. Then he had been baptized into the Christian faith. Probably, Davis thought, because the foxlike Dane figured that it couldn't hurt to do that. Ivar was one to make use of all loopholes. But, after being resurrected along the River, the Viking had rejected both religions. However, he was still influenced by both, though far more by his lifelong faith.

Ivar gave his command in his native language, instead of Esperanto. Ivar referred to it as "that monotonously regular, grating, and unsubtle tongue." Davis had learned Old Norse well enough to get by. Two-thirds of its speakers in the kingdom came from Dublin, where Ivar

had been king of the Viking stronghold when he had died in 873. But most of these were half-Irish, equally fluent in the Germanic Norse and Keltic Gaelic. Davis could speak the latter, though not as well as he could Norse.

Since the Franks made up one-fourth of the population of Ivar's kingdom, having been resurrected in the same area as the Dane, Davis had some knowledge of that tongue. The Franks came from the time of Chlodowech (died A.D. 511 in Paris), known to later generations as Clovis I. He had been king of the western, or Salian, Franks and conqueror of the northern part of the Roman province of Gaul.

Andrew Davis and Ivar's queen, Ann Pullen, were the only English speakers, except for some slaves, in the kingdom. Davis only talked to her when he could not avoid it. That was not often, because she liked him to give her frequent treatments, during which she did her best to upset him with detailed stories of her many sexual encounters and perversions. And she brazenly insisted that he massage her breasts. Davis had refused to do this and had been backed by Ivar, who seemed amused by the situation.

Ann Pullen had never told Davis that she was aware that he disliked her intensely. Both, however, knew well how each felt about the other. The only barrier keeping her from making him a quarry slave was Ivar. He was fond, though slightly contemptuous, of Davis. On the other hand, he respected the American for his knowledge, especially his medical lore, and he loved to hear Davis's stories of the wonders of his time, the steam iron horses and sailless ships, the telegraph and radio, the automobile, the airplane, the vast fortunes made by American robber barons, and the fantastic plumbing.

Philip Jos6 Farmer

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

What Davis did not tell Ivar was what the late-twentieth century doctors he had met had told him—to his chagrin. That was that much of his treatment of his patients on Earth had been based on false medical information. However, Davis was still convinced that his neuropathic treatments, which involved no drugs, had enormously benefited his patients. Certainly, their recovery rate had been higher than the rate of those who went to conven-tional M.D.'s. On the other hand, the physicians had admitted that, in the field of psychiatry, the recovery rate of the mentally disturbed patients of African witch doc- ; tors was the same as that of psychiatrists' patients. That admission, he thought, either down-valued twentieth-century j medicine or up-valued witch doctors. 1

A few of his informants had admitted that a large number of physically sick people recovered without the help of medical doctors or would have done so without such help.

He explained this to the painted madman on the way to the room, though he was irked because he felt compelled to justify himself. Faustroll did not seem very interested. He only muttered, "Quacks. All quacks. We pataphysicians are the only true healers."

"I still don't know what a pataphysician is," Davis said.

"No verbal explanation is needed. Just observe us, translate our physical motion and verbal expressions into the light of truth, vectors of four-dimensional rotations into photons of veracity."

"Man, you must have a reasonable basis for your theory, and you should be able to express it in clear and logical terms!"

"Red is your face, yet cool is the room."

Davis lifted his hands high above his head. "I give up! I don't know why I pay any attention to what you say! I should know better ! Yet..."

"Yet you apprehend, however dimly, that truth flows from us. You do not want to acknowledge that, but you can't help it. That's good. Most of the hairless bipedal apes don't have an inkling, don't respond at all. They're like cockroaches who have lost their antennae and, therefore, can't feel anything until they ram their chitinous heads into the wall. But the shock of the impact numbs even more the feeble organ with which they assumedly think."

Faustroll waved his bamboo fishing pole at Davis, forcing him to step back to keep from being hit on the nose by the bone hook.

"I go now to probe the major liquid body for those who breathe through gills."

Faustroll left the room. Davis muttered, "I hope it's a long time before I see you again."

But Faustroll was like a bad thought that can't be kept out of the mind. Two seconds later, he popped back into the room.

"We don't know what the royal osteopath's history on Earth was," Faustroll said, "or what your quest, your shining grail, was. Our permanent grail is The Truth. But the temporary one, and it may turn out to be that the permanent (if, truly, anything is permanent) grail or desideratum or golden apple is the answer to the question: Who resurrected us, placed us here, and why? Pardon. Not a question but questions. Of course, the answer may be that it doesn't matter at all. Even so, we would like to know."

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"And just how will you be able to get answers to those questions here when you couldn't get them on Earth?"

"Perhaps the beings who are responsible for the Riverworld also know the answers we so desperately sought on Earth. We are convinced that these beings are of flesh and blood, though the flesh may not be protein and the blood may lack hemoglobin. Unlike God, who, if It does exist, is a spirit and thus lacks organs to make sound waves, though It seems to be quite capable of making thunder and lightning and catastrophes and thus should be able to form its own temporary oral parts for talking, these beings must have mouths and tongues and teeth and hands of a sort. Therefore, they can tell us what we wish to know. If we can find them. If they wish to reveal themselves.

"It's our theory, and we've never theorized invalidly, that the River in its twistings and windings forms a colossal hieroglyph. Or ideogram. Thus, if we can follow the entirely of the River and map it, we will have before us that hieroglyph or ideogram. Unlike the ancient May an or Egyptian hieroglyphs, it will be instantly understandable. Revelation will come with the light of comprehension, not with the falling of the stars and the moon turning blood-red and the planet cracking in half and the coming of the Beast whose number is 666 and all those delicious images evoked by St. John the Divine."

Davis spoke more hotly than he had intended. "Nonsense! In our first life, faith and faith alone had the answers, faith in the divine work as recorded in the Bible. As on Earth, so here."

"But there is no Holy Scripture here."

"In our minds!" Davis said loudly. "It's recorded here!" And he tapped a fingerpoint against his temple.

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"As you know, no afterlife depicted in any religion faintly resembles this one. However, we do not argue. We state the truth and move on, leaving the truth behind us yet also taking it with us. But truth is arrived at when one ceases thinking. That's hard to do, we admit. Yet, if we can think about abandoning thought, we will be able to quit thinking. Thus, with that barrier to mental osmosis removed, the molecules of truth penetrate the diaphragm."

"Lunacy! Sheer lunacy! And blasphemy!"

Faustroll went through the doorway. Over his shoulder, he said, "We go, yet that is an illusion. The memory of this event remains in your mind. Thus, we are still here; we have not left."

Andrew Davis sighed. He sure had a lot to put up with. Why didn't he just take French leave and continue his quest up-River? Why didn't he? He had compelling reasons not to. One, if he were caught sneaking out of Ivar's domain, he'd be a slave and probably flogged. Two, if he did get out of the kingdom's boundaries, he still would not be safe from recapture for several days. The kingdoms for a fifty-mile stretch up the River had an agreement to return slaves to the states from which they had run away. Three, he could take the guaranteed foolproof way of escape. But, to do that, he'd have to kill himself. Then he'd be resurrected far away, but the thought of killing himself was hard to contemplate.

But, though his mind knew that he'd live again, his body didn't. His cells fiercely resisted the idea of suicide; they insisted on survival. Furthermore, he loathed the idea of suicide, though it was not rationally based. As a Christian, he would sin if he killed himself. Was it still a sin on the Riverworld? He doubted that very much. But

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his lifelong conditioning against it made him act as if it were.

Also, if he did do away with himself, he had a fifty-fifty chance of being translated downstream instead of upstream. If that happened, he'd have to travel past territory he'd already covered. And he could be captured and enslaved again by any of hundreds of states before he even got to Ivar's country.

If he awoke far up the River, he might have the goal of his quest behind him. Not until he had come to the end of the River would he know that he had skipped it. Then he would have to retrace his route.

What if the story of the woman who gave birth in the Valley was false? No, he would not consider that. He had not only faith but logic behind his belief. This world was a final test for those who believed in Jesus as their savior. Pass this test, and the next stage would be the true Paradise. Or the true Hell.

The Church of the Second Chance had some false doctrines, and it was another trap set by Satan. But the Devil was subtle enough to have planted some true doctrines among the false ones. The Second Chancers did not err in claiming that this world did offer all souls another opportunity to wash off their spiritual filth. What that church overlooked or deliberately ignored was that it also gave Satan a second chance to grab those who had eluded his clutches on Earth.

He looked through the wide, arched, and glassless window. From his height, he could see the hills and the plain and the River and, the plain, hills, and mountains on the opposite bank. Arpad (died A.D. 907) ruled that twelve-mile-long area. He was the chief of the seven Mongolian tribes, called Magyar, who had left the Don

River circa A.D. 889 in what would be Russia and migrated westward to the Pannonian Plains. This was the area that would become Hungary. Arpad had been resurrected among a population that was partly ancient Akkadian, partly Old Stone Age southeast Asiatics, and ten percent of miscellaneous peoples. Though he was a Magyar, a tiny minority in this area, he had become king. That testified to his force of personality and to his ruthless methods.

Arpad was Ivar's ally and also a partner in the dam project. His slaves worked harder and longer and were treated much more harshly than Ivar's. The Norsemen was less severe and more generous with his slaves. He did not want to push them to the point of revolt or of suicide. Arpad's slaves had rebelled twice, and the number of suicides among them was far higher than among Ivar's.

Nor did Ivar trust Arpad. That was to be expected. Ivar trusted no one and had good reason not to rely on the Magyar. His spies had told him that Arpad had boasted, when drunk, which was often, that he would kill Ivar when the dam was finished.

If the Dane planned to jump the gun and slay Arpad first, he had not said so. Though he drank deeply at times, he reined in his tongue. At least, he did so concerning matters of state.

Davis was convinced that one of the two kings was not going to wait for the dam to be completed. Sometime, probably during the next two years, one was going to attack the other. Davis, on the principle that the lesser of two evils was to be preferred, hoped that Ivar would win. Ideally, each would knock the other off. Whichever

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happened, Davis was going to try to flee the area during the confusion of the battle.

He must have been looking through the window longer than he had thought. Faustroll had left the tower and was walking downhill, the fishing pole on his shoulder. And, some paces behind him, was the inevitable spy, a woman named Groa. She, too, carried a fishing pole, and, as Davis watched, she called to the Frenchman. He stopped, and they began talking. A moment later, they were side by side and headed for the River.

Groa was a redheaded beauty, daughter of a ninth-century Norwegian Viking, Thorsteinn the Red, son of Olaf the White and that extraordinary woman, Aud the Deep-Minded. Thorsteinn had been killed in a battle after conquering the northern part of Scotland. It was this event that caused Aud to migrate to Iceland and become ancestress of most Icelanders of the twentieth century.

No doubt, Thorsteinn was somewhere on the River and battling some foe while trying to get power over the foe or else battling to keep a foe from getting power over him. Power had been the main fuel of humankind on Earth. As on Earth, so here. So far. Until the Savior— Savioress?—grew up and worked God's will on His creations.

Groa must have been ordered by Ivar to attach herself to Faustroll. She was to find out if his story was true. Though the king had seemed to accept Faustroll at face value, he would wonder if the fellow had been sent by

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Arpad to assassinate him. Groa would test him, probe him, and go so far as to lie with him if it was necessary. Perhaps, even if it was not necessary. She was a lusty woman. Then she'd report to Ivar later.

Davis sighed. What a life the afterlife was! Why couldn't everybody live in peace and trust? If they could not all love each other, they could at least be tolerant.

They could not do this for the same reason they had not done so on Earth. It was the nature of Homo sapiens. Of most of men and women, anyway. But... their situation was so different here. It was set up so that none need work hard for food and housing and other necessities. If people could all be pacifists and honest and compassionate, they would need no government by others. The Frenchman was right, though Davis hated admitting it even to himself. Given a new type of people, anarchy could be workable here.

Obviously, Whoever had placed humanity here had designed the Rivervalley so that humans, not having to spend so much time working, had time to advance themselves spiritually. But only those who understood this would advance themselves, change themselves for the better, and go on to whatever stage the Whoevers had built for them.

The Whoevers, however, had to be God. For Davis, there was no doubt or mystery about the identity of the creator of this place. The big mystery was why He had prepared a halfway house for the once-dead instead of the heavenly mansion the Bible had described.

He admitted to himself that the Bible had been very vague about the specifics of the abode of the saved, the saints. It had been much more concrete about the abode of the damned.

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He could only accept that God, in His infinite wisdom, knew what he was doing.

Why, as so many complained, had not God given them some reassurance? A sign? A beacon toward which they could go as a moth could fly to the flame? Though that was not the best of comparisons, now he considered it. Anyway, where was the sign, the beacon, the writing in the sky?

Davis knew. It was the birth of a baby to a virgin. In a world where men and women were sterile, one woman had been the exception. She had been impregnated with the Holy Spirit, and she had conceived. God had performed a miracle. The infant, so the story went, was female. At first, hearing this, Davis had been shocked. But, thinking about it calmly and logically, trying to overcome his preconceptions, he had concluded that he should not be upset, not kick against the pricks. On Earth, the Savior had been a male. Here, the Savior was a female. Why not?

God was fair-minded, and who was he to question the Divine Being?

"Davis!" a harsh voice said behind him. He jumped and whirled, his heart beating hard. Standing in the doorway was Sharkko the Shyster, the ever-egregious slave of whom he had dreamed last night.

"Hustle your ass, Davis! The Great Whore of Babylon wants you for a treatment! Right now!"

"I'll tell the queen what you said about her," Davis said. He did not intend to do so, but he wanted to see the loathsome fellow turn pale. Which he did.

"Ah, she won't believe you," the slave said. "She hates your guts. She'd take my word against yours any

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time. Anyway, I doubt she'd be insulted. She'd think it was a compliment."

"If it wasn't against my nature, I'd boot you in the rear," Davis said.

The slave, his color now restored, snorted. He turned and limped down the hall. Davis left the room. He watched the man as he walked behind him. Though the man had been resurrected in his twenty-five-year-old body, his vision restored to 20/20, he was now a human wreck. His right leg had been broken in several places and reset wrong. His nose had not been reset after the bridge had been shattered. He could not breathe properly because of his nose and some ribs that had also lacked proper resetting. One eye had been knocked out and was not yet fully regrown. His face twisted and leered with a tic.

All of this had resulted from a beating by slaves whose overseer he had been. Unable any longer to endure his bullyings, kicks, and other unjust treatment, they had worked on him late one night and thus worked out their hatred of him. His hut had been too dark for him to identify his attackers, though he, and everybody else, knew his men were the malefactors. If you could fairly call them malefactors. Most people though the deed was justified self-defense.

Ivar thought so, too, after hearing testimony. He decided that Sharkko had broken the rules laid down by the king. These were mainly for the sake of efficiency, not of humanitarianism. But they had been disregarded, and Sharkko's back was bloody from forty lashes with a fish-hide whip. Each of the overseer's slaves had administered a stroke. Ivar, witnessing this, had been highly amused.

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Sharkko had then been degraded to a quarry slave. But his injuries had kept him from doing well at the hard work, and he had been made a tower slave after six months. Ivar used him for, among other things, a human bench when he wished to sit down where a chair was unavailable.

The Shyster had been so named by a Terrestrial client who was now a citizen of Ivar's kingdom. From what the client said, he had been cheated by Sharkko and had been unable to find justice in the court. The ex-client was among those who had beaten Sharkko.

The Shyster had been indiscreet enough to tell some cronies that he meant to revenge himself on all who had wronged him. Though Davis did not think that he had earned Sharkko's hatred, he was among those named for some terrible retribution. The Shyster had not been so full of braggadocio that he had said anything about revenging himself on Ivar. He knew what would happen to him if the king heard about such a threat.

Sharkko, hunched over, dragging one foot and mumbling to himself, continued on down the hall. Sharkko was a veritable Caliban, Davis thought, as he followed the monster down the hall to a steep and spiraling staircase.

He felt unusually uneasy. It seemed to him that events were coming to a head, a big, green, and pus-filled boil on the face of this kingdom. The coming conflict between Arpad and Ivar, the arrival of the grotesque and disquieting Faustroll, the increasing tension between himself and the queen, and Sharkko's hatred added up to a situation that could pop open—like a boil—at any time. He could feel it. Though he could not logically predict that the eruption would occur soon, he sensed it.

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Or, perhaps, this was caused by his internal conflicts. He himself was ready to break open and out, much as he wanted to wait until the right moment for flight.

The virgin mother and the baby were waiting for him up the River. They did not know it, of course. But he was to play a strong part in the events that would bring on the revelation of the second Savior to this world. Though it might be egotistic to think so, he was sure of it.

He entered the large room where Queen Ann waited for him. She was on the osteopathic table that he had built. But, spread out naked there, she looked as if she were waiting for a lover. Her two attendants giggled when they saw him. They were blacks who had been slaves of an early-twentieth-century Arabian family on Earth. They had been free for only one year after their resurrection. Now they were slaves again.

They should be sympathizing with his plight. Instead, they were amused.

"Massage my inner thigh muscles," Ann said. "They're very tight."

She kept talking softly while laughing loudly between sentences. Her remarkably bright and leaf-green eyes never left his face. Though he kept it expressionless, he longed to snarl at her, spit in her face, and then vomit on her. The Jezebel! The Scarlet Women! The Great Whore of Babylon!

"When you're on your back, rotating your pelvis,

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your legs up in the air for a long time, you put a strain on those muscles," she said. "It's almost an equal strain when I'm on top. Sometimes I have to rest between up-and-downs and hip gyrations. But then I squeeze down on him with my sphincter muscle and so don't really get a rest. It is the sphincter, isn't it, Doctor?"

He knew the human body so well he did not have to see what he was doing. His head turned away from her, his eyes half closed, he kneaded her flesh. How soft her skin was! What a muscle tone! Sometimes, when he was in that drowsy twilight state between dreaming and awakening, he knew his fingers were working on flesh. Not hers, of course. The reflex was caused by a digital memory, as it were, of the thousands of bodies he had treated while on Earth.

"Don't get too close to the king's personal property," she said. "You touch it, and he might cut your hands off."

If he did that, Davis thought, scores of the males in the kingdom would be without hands.

"You're not much of a man," she said. "A real man's tallywhacker would be lifting that towel right off his waist, rip the Velcro apart."

The slave girls giggled though they did not understand English. But they had heard similar phrases in Esperanto for a long time. They knew that she was saying something taunting and demeaning.

Davis envisioned closing his hands around the queen's throat. It wouldn't take long.

Then he prayed, Oh, Lord! Save me from such sinful thoughts!

"Perhaps," he said, "I should massage your knees, too? They seem to be rather stiff."

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She frowned and stared hard at him. The she smiled and laughed.

"Oh! You're suggesting... ? Yes, do. I have spent a certain amount of time on my knees. But they're on pillows, so it's not so bad. However..."

Instead of flying into a rage, as he had expected, she was amused. She also looked somewhat triumphant, as if goading him into saying something insulting to her, even an innuendo, was a victory. However, she probably did not regard his comments as an insult. The bitch was more likely to think he had complimented her.

What did he care what she thought? To be honest with himself, he cared a lot. Unless she was stopped by Ivar, she could make his life unbearable, torture him, do anything with or to him. Davis had not heard any stories about her being cruel, except for her sexual teasing, which could not be ranked with torture or killing. But he had no guarantee that she might not become so. Especially in her dealings with him.

Ann Pullen was a fellow American, though a nauseating example as far as he was concerned. She had been born about 1632 in Maryland. Her family had been Quakers, but when it converted to Episcopalianism, she had gone to hell. Those were her own words. She had been married four times to tobacco plantation owners in Virginia and Maryland. She had survived them all.

No wonder, Davis thought. She'd wear any man out, if not from her incessant sexual demands and infidelity, then from her TNT temper and willfulness.

Mostly, she had lived in Westmoreland County, Virginia, which was between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. In her day, the area had many thick forests and large swamps but no roads. Travel was mainly by river or

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creek. Nor did the plantations resemble those of a later era. There were no beautiful many-pillared mansions and broad well-kept lawns. The owners' houses were modest, the stables were likely to be made of logs, and chickens and hogs roamed the yards. Pig stealing was common even among the plantation owners. Cash was scarce; the chief currency was tobacco. The people were unusually hot-tempered and litigious, though no one knew why.

By her own testimony, Ann had once been sentenced to ten lashes on her bare shoulders because of her libelous and scandalous speeches against a Mister Presley. She also had once attacked her sister-in-law with bare hands.

It had been recorded in the Order Book of the county in A.D. 1677 that Ann Pullen had encouraged her daughter Jane to become "the most remarkable and notorious whore in the province of Virginie." But Davis had to admit that, in the strict sense of the word, she was not a whore. She fornicated because she liked to do so and never took money.

The Order Book also said that Jane's mother, Ann Pullen, had debauched her own daughter by encouragement to commit adultery and break the whole estate of matrimony.

The daughter's husband, Morgan Jones, had enjoined more than once (as the court had recorded) any man from entertaining or having any manner of dealing with Jane or transporting her out of the county or giving her passage over any river or creek.

It was also recorded that Ann Pullen had declared that Jane had no husband at that time, Jones having died, and she (Ann) did not know why her daughter should not take the pleasure of this world as well as any other woman.

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Also, Ann did not care who the father of her daughter's child was, provided one William Elmes would take her to England, as he had promised.

Ann was a feminist ahead of her time, a lone pioneer in the movement in the days when it was dangerous to be such. She had also been a libertine, though Davis thought that automatically went with the desire for female equality.

However, such Terrestrial attitudes should not apply on the Riverworld. Even he admitted that, though insisting that there were limits to that viewpoint. Ann had certainly overstepped them. With seven-league boots.

Ivar's kingdom was basically Old Norse. Since women (though not female slaves) in the pre-Christian era had had many more rights than those in the Christian countries, they had even more rights on the Riverworld. In this state, anyway. Theoretically, Ann could divorce Ivar with a simple statement that she wished it, and she could take her property with her. Not half of the kingdom's, that is, the king's. Her grail, her towels, her artifacts, and her slaves were hers.

But divorce didn't seem likely. Ivar was greatly amused by her, even when she became angry at him, and he reveled in her uninhibited and many-talented lovemaking. He knew that she had lovers, but he didn't seem to care. He doubted that she would plot with a lover to assassinate him. She knew well on which side her vagina was buttered.

So Andrew Davis had to suffer the indignities she piled on him. Meanwhile, he dreamed of the divinely begotten infant far up the River. He also tried to think of foolproof ways to escape this land. And how to prevent capture by the other slave-holding states between him and his goal.

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Doing his Christian duty, he had tried to pray for Ann. But he sounded so insincere to himself that he knew God would ignore his requests that she be forgiven and be made to see the Light.

When her treatment was over, he left the chamber as he always did. He was angry, frustrated, and sweating, his stomach was boiling, and his hands were shaking.

Oh, Lord, how long must I endure this? Do not, I pray You, continue to subject me to evil and the temptation to curse You as you did Job!

At high noon, the grailstone in the tower courtyard erupted in lightning and thunder. He left the room in which he had been waiting until this happened. To stand in the yard near the stone was to be deafened. Though his grail was full of excellent food and drink, he had no appetite. What he did not eat, he shared with his cronies at the table in the big hall. The cup of brandy and the pack of mingled tobacco and marijuana cigarettes he put aside. He could have kept half of the booze and the coffin nails for himself, but he would give them all to Eysteinn the Chatterer, Ivar's chief tax and tribute collector.

Thus, he paid his taxes at a double rate. That enabled him halfway through the month to pour the daily quota of the liquor down a drain and to shred the cigarettes. He did this secretly because many would have been outraged at this waste. They would report to the king, who would confiscate the extra "goodies" and would punish him.

He had never, during his two lives, tasted any alcohol or smoked. In fact, on Earth, he had not even drunk ice water because of its unhealthy effects. He loathed having to contribute to the king and his vices. But, if he didn't, he would suffer the cat-o' -nine-tails or become a quarry slave. Or both.

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That evening, shortly after sunset, he went to the great hall built near the bank. This was where Ivar preferred to eat supper, to drink, and to roister among his cronies and his toadies. (Davis admitted that he was one of the latter. But he had no choice.) The hall was built in the old Viking style, a single huge room with Ivar's table on a platform and at the head of the floor-level tables. The platform had not been used on Earth among the semi-democratic Vikings. It was an innovation adopted by Ivar. The support poles were carved with the heads of humans, gods, beasts, and symbols from the old religion. Among these and often repeated were gold-mining dwarfs, dragons, the Earth-encircling Midgard serpent, stags, bears, valknuts, frost giants, Thor and his hammer, one-eyed Odin with, sometimes, his ravens Hugin and Munin on his shoulders, right-handed swastikas, runic phrases, and Skidbladnir, the magical ship that could be folded and carried in a bag after use.

Tonight, as usual, the men and women drank too much, the talk was fast and furious, boasting and bombast thundered in the hall, people quarreled and sometimes fought. Ivar had forbidden duels to the death because he had lost too many good warriors to them. But the belligerents could go at each other with fists and feet, and the king did not frown on gouging of eyes, crushing of testicles, ripping off of ears, and biting off of noses. Though it took three months, the eyes, noses, and ears would grow again, and the testicles would repair themselves.

Davis had grown used to these nightly gatherings, but he did not like them. Violence still upset him, and the air stank of tobacco and marijuana smoke and beer and liquor fumes. Also, the sickening odor of farts, followed

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by loud laughter and thigh-slapping, drifted to him now and then. Queen Ann, who was sitting on Ivar's left, was one of the loudest in her laughter when this form of primitive humor erupted. Tonight she wore a towel around her neck, the ends of which covered her breasts. But she was rather careless about keeping them in place.

Mingled with the other smells was that of the fish caught in the River and fried in one end of the hall.

Davis sat at the king's table because he was the royal osteopath. He would have preferred a table as far away as it could be from this one. That would give him a chance to sneak away after all were too drunk to notice him. Tonight, however, he was interested in watching and occasionally overhearing the conversation of Doctor Faustroll and Ivar the Boneless. The Frenchman sat immediately to the king's right, the most favored chair at the table. He had brought an amazing amount of fish to the feast, far more than any other anglers. Once, during a lessening of the uproar, Davis heard Ivar ask Faustroll about his luck.

"It's not luck," Faustroll had said. "It's experience and skill. Plus an inborn knack. We survived mainly on fish we caught in the Seine when we lived in Paris."

"Paris," Ivar said. "I was with my father, Ragnar, son of Sigurd Hring, when we Danes sailed up the Seine in March, the Franks not expecting Vikings that early in the year. A.D. 845, I've been told. The Prankish ruler, Charles the Bald, split his army into two. I advised my father to attack the smaller force, which we did. We

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slaughtered them except for one hundred and eleven prisoners. These my father hanged all at once as a sacrifice to Odin on an island in the Seine while the other Prankish army watched us. They must have filled their drawers from horror.

"We went on up to Paris, a much smaller city then than the vast city others have told me about. On Easter Sunday, the Christian's most holy day, we stormed and plundered Paris and killed many worshipers of the Savior. Odin was good to us."

Ivar smiled to match the sarcastic tone of his voice. He did not believe in the gods, pagan or Christian. But Davis, watching him closely, saw the expression on his face and the set of his eyes. They could be showing nostalgia or, perhaps, some unfathomable longing. Davis had seen this expression a score of times before now. Could the ruthless and crafty hungerer for power be longing for something other than he now had? Did he, too, desire to escape this place and its responsibilities and ever-present danger of assassination? Did he, like Davis and Faustroll, have goals that many might think idealistic or romantic? Did he want to shed the restrictions of his situation and be free? After all, a powerful ruler was as much a prisoner as a slave.

"The One-Eyed One blessed us," Ivar said, "though it may just have been coincidence that Charles the Bald was having serious trouble with other Prankish states and with his ambitious brothers. Instead of trying to bar us from going back down the Seine, he paid us seven thousand pounds of silver to leave his kingdom. Which we did, though we did not promise not to come back again later."

Faustroll had so far not interrupted the king, though

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disgust sometimes flitted across his face. He drank swiftly and deeply, and his cup was never empty. The slave behind him saw to that. He also gave the Frenchman cigarettes after he had smoked up his own supply. The slave was Sharkko, apparently delegated by the king to serve Faustroll tonight. Sharkko was scowling, and, now and then, his lips moved. His words were drowned out by the din, and a good thing, too, Davis thought. Davis could lip-read both English and Esperanto. If Ivar knew what Sharkko was saying, he would have him flogged and then put into the latrine-cleaning gang.

Finally, he banged his wooden cup down, causing those around him, including Ivar, to look startled.

"Your Majesty will pardon us," he said loudly. "But you are still as you were on Earth. You have not progressed one inch spiritually; you are the same bloody barbarous pirate, plenty of ofifense meant, as the old hypocrite who died in Dublin. But we do not give up hope for you. We know that philosophy in its practical form of pataphysics is the gate to the Truth for you. And, though you at first seem to be a simple savage, we know that you are much more. Our brief conversation in the hall convinced us of that."

Many at the table, including Davis, froze, though they rolled their eyeballs at each other and then gazed at Ivar. Davis expected him to seize the war ax always by his side and lop off Faustroll's head. But the Viking's skin did not redden, and he merely said. "We will talk with you later about this philosophy, which we hope will contain more wisdom and less nonsense than that of the Irish priests, the men in women's skirts."

His "we," Davis knew, was a mimicking and mocking of Faustroll.

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Ivar rose then, and silence followed three strokes on a huge bronze gong.

Ivar spoke loudly, his bass voice carrying to all corners of the huge hall.

"The feast is over! We're all going to bed early tonight, though I suppose many of you will not go to sleep until you can no longer get it up!"

The crowd had murmured with surprise and disappointment, but that was followed by laughter at the king's joke. Davis grimaced with disgust. Ann, seeing his expression, smiled broadly.

"We haven't run out of food or drink," Ivar said. "That's not why I'm cutting this short. But it occurred to me a little while ago that tomorrow is the third anniversary of the founding of my kingdom. That was the day when I, a slave of the foul Scots tyrant, Eochaid the Poisonous, rose in revolt with Arpad, also a slave, and with two hundred slaves, most of whom now sit in honored places in this hall. We silently strangled the guards around Eochaid's hall. He and his bodyguards were all sleeping off their drunkenness, safe, they supposed, in their thick-walled hall on a high mound of earth. We burned the log building down and slaughtered those who managed to get out of the fire. All except Eochaid, whom we captured.

"The next day, I gave him the death of the blood eagle as I did on Earth to King Aella of York and King Edmund of East Anglia and some of my other foes whom I sacrificed to Odin."

Davis shuddered. Though he had never seen this singular method of execution, he had heard about it many times. The victim was placed facedown, his spine was cut, and his lungs were pulled out and laid on his back,

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forming the rough shape of an eagle with outspread wings. ^

"I have decided that we will go to bed early and get up early tomorrow. The slaves will be given the day off and given plenty of food and drink. Everybody will celebrate. We will all work to collect much fish, and that evening we will start the festivities. There will be games and archery and spear-casting contests and wrestling, and those who have grudges may fight to the death with their enemies if they so wish."

At this, the crowd shouted and screamed.

Ivar lifted his hands for silence, then said, "Go to bed! Tomorrow we enjoy ourselves while we thank whatever gods made this world that we are free of Eochaid's harsh rule and are free men!"

The crowd cheered again and then streamed out of the hall. Davis, the handle of his grail in one hand, was heading for the tower and halfway up the first hill when the even-toned voice of Faustroll rose behind him. "Wait for me! We'll walk the rest of the way with you!"

Davis stopped. Presently, the Frenchman, in no hurry, caught up with him. Heavy fumes of whiskey mixed with fish enveloped him, and his words were somewhat slurred. Man ami! Mia amico! That which treads on day's heels is beautiful, is it not? The beings that burn in the nocturnal bowl above in their un-Earth patterns, how inspiring! Wise above the wisdom of men, they will have nothing to do with us. But they are generous with their splendor."

"Uhmm," Davis said.

"A most observant remark. Tell me, my friend, what do you think is the real reason behind Ivar's ending the feast?"

"What?"

"I do not trust the goat who leads the woolly ones. Statesmen and politicians, generals and admirals, they seldom reveal their real intentions. The Boneless is up to something his enemies won't like. Nor will his people."

"You're very cynical," Davis said. He looked across the River. The plains and the hills in Arpad's kingdom were dark except for the scattered fires of sentinels. There were also torches on the tops of the bamboo signal towers a half-mile apart and forming a ten-mile-long line.

"Cynical? A synonym for experience. And for one whose eyes have long been open and whose nose is as keen in detecting corruption as the nose of the hairy one some claim is man's best friend. Remember, our leader comes from the land where something is rotten, to paraphrase the Bard of Avon."

They had resumed walking. Davis said, "What did Ivar say to make you suspicious?"

"Nothing and everything. We do not accept anything at face value. The meaning of words and of facial expressions, the hardness of objects, the permanence of the universe, that fire will always burn skin, that a certain cause always leads to a certain result, that what goes up must come down. It isn't always necessarily so."

He swung the cylinder of his grail around to indicate everything.

Davis did not feel like talking about metaphysics or, in fact, anything. Especially not with this fellow, who made no sense. But he accepted Faustroll's invitation to sit down in the tower courtyard and converse for a while. Perhaps he might find out just why Faustroll suspected that Ivar was up to something. Not that it made any difference. What could he do about anything here?

There was a table near a row of torches in wall

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brackets. They sat down. The Frenchman opened his grail and drew out a metal cup half filled with whiskey. Davis looked at the formula painted on the man's forehead. He had attended lectures on calculus at Rush Medical College, and he was familiar with the markings. But, unless you knew the referents of the symbols, you could never know what they meant or how to use them. He read: - O - a - + a + O =

Faustroll said, "The significance of the formula? God is the tangential point between zero and infinity."

"Which means?"

Faustroll spoke as if he had memorized this lecture. "God is, by definition, without dimension, but we must be permitted..."

"Is this going to be long?" Davis said.

"Too long for tonight and perhaps for eternity. Besides, we are rather drunk. We can visualize all clearly, but our body is weary and our mind not running on all eight cylinders."

Davis rose, saying, "Tomorrow, then. I'm tired, too."

"Yes, You can understand better our thesis if we have a pen and a piece of paper on which to lay it out."

Davis said good night, leaving the Frenchman sitting at the table and staring into the dark whiskey as if it were a crystal ball displaying his future. He made his way up to his tiny room. It was not until he was at its door that he remembered how astray his conversation with the Frenchman had gone. Faustroll had not told him what he had concluded from his suspicions about Ivar.

He shrugged. Tomorrow he would find out. If, that is, the crazy fellow's tongue did not wander off again. To him, a straight line was not the shortest path between two

points. Indeed, he might deny the entire validity of Euclidean geometry.

Davis also had an uneasy feeling that Faustroll's near-psychopathic behavior hid a very keen mind and a knowledge of science, mathematics, and literature far exceeding his own. He could not be dismissed as just another loony.

Davis pushed in the wooden-hinged and lockless door. He looked out through the glassless opening into the darkness lit only by the star-crowded sky. But that light was equal to or surpassed that of Earth's full moon. At first, it seemed peaceful. Everybody except the sentinels had gone to bed. Then he saw the shadows moving in the valley below the tower. As his eyes became more adjusted to the pale light, he saw that a large body of men was in it.

His heart suddenly beat hard. Invaders? No. Now he could see Ivar the Boneless, clad in a conical bronze helmet and a long shirt of mail and carrying a war ax, walking down the hill toward the mass of men. Behind him came his bodyguard and counselors. They, too, were armored and armed. Each wore two scabbards encasing bronze swords, and they carried spears or battle-axes. Some also bore bundles of pine torches or sacks. The containers would, he knew at once, hold gunpowder bombs.

Faustroll had been right. There would be no celebration tomorrow unless it was a victory feast. The king had lied to cover up a military operation. Those not involved—as yet—in the military operation had been lied to. But selected warriors has been told to gather secretly at a certain time.

Suddenly, the starlight was thinly veiled by light clouds. These became darker quickly. Davis could no longer see

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Ivar or, in fact, any human beings. And now the sound of distant thunder and the first zigzag of lightning appeared to the north.

Soon, the raging rain and the electrical violence that often appeared around midnight would be upon the kingdoms of Ivar and Arpad. Like the wolf on the fold, Davis thought. And Ivar and his army would be like the ancient Assyrians sweeping down from the hills on the Hebrews as that poet—what was his name?—wrote.

But who was Ivar going to assault?

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The wind spat raindrops through the window into Davis's face. Another layer of darkness slid in and cut off his view of the men. Thunder rolled closer like a threatening bully. A lightning streak, brief probing of God's lantern beam (looking for an honest man?), noisily lit up the scene. He glimpsed Ivar's group running over the top of the nearest hill to the River. He also saw other dark masses, like giant amoebae, flowing onto the plains from the hills. These were warriors hastening to join Ivar. The larger body of plains dwellers waiting for the king was, as it were, the mother amoeba.

Another blazing and crashing streak, closer this time, revealed a great number of boats in slips that had been empty for a long time. These had to have come in recently from upstream. Just off the bank many vessels: rowboats, dugouts, catamarans, dragonships, and the wide-beamed merchant. boats called dromonds. Their sails were furled, and all bristled with spears.

Under cover of the night, Ivar's warriors from every part of the kingdom had slipped down here. Of course, there would be other parties who would attack the opposite bank, Arpad's domain, up-River. The attack had to be against the Magyar's kingdom. Davis did not know why he had wondered what the king was up to. However, Ivar was unpredictable, and it was chancy to bet on any of his next moves.

The secrecy with which the operation had been carried out impressed Davis. He had had no inkling of it, yet he was often in the king's company. This operation, though it involved thousands of men who had somehow not revealed the plans to their female hut mates, had been exceedingly efficient.

But the lightning was going to display the invaders to Arpad's sentinels. Unless, that is, some of Ivar's men had crossed the River earlier and killed the guards.

After a while, the heart of the storm raged over the area within his sight. Now the warriors were grouped on the bank and embarking. So frequent and vivid were the bolts, he could see the invaders moving. They were many-legged clumps the individuals of which were not visible from this distance in the rainy veil.

He gasped. A fleet was putting out from the opposite bank.

A few seconds later, more groups began to gather behind Ivar's forces on the bank. He groaned, and he muttered, "Arpad has pulled a sneak play!" His force had come ashore farther up the River and sneaked along the banks to come up on the Ivarians' flank. And now the Arpadians were charging it. The surpriser had been surprised; the fox had been outfoxed. The Magyar was going to grind his former ally between two forces. But

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that was easier planned than done. Ivar's men on shore, though taken by surprise, had not fled. They were fighting fiercely, and their shore force outnumbered the enemy's. Soon, Ivar's warriors in the boats would join those on the bank. As quickly as the oars could drive the boats, they were driving toward the slips and the open bank. Though the boatmen could not get back to the bank to disembark swiftly, they should be able to get all ashore before the enemy's second force arrived from the opposite bank. And they would overwhelm the ambushers—if Ivar had anything to do with it. He was a very cool and quick thinker. His men, veterans of many battles, did not panic easily.

Meanwhile, Arpad's fleet was about a quarter of a mile from their destination. Its commander, whom Davis assumed was Arpad, not one to hang back behind his army, would be considering two choices. He could order the boats back to his shore and there await the inevitable assault from Ivar's forces. Or Arpad could keep on going straight ahead, hoping that the ambushers would keep Ivar's men entangled long enough for him to land his army.

The rain thickened. Davis saw the conflict now as if through distorted spectacles. And then, five or six minutes later, the downfall began to thin. The worst of the storm had passed over, but thunder and lightning still harried the land. Intermittently, starlight between masses of clouds revealed that a third force had entered the fray. It was a large fleet that must recently have come around the River's bend a half-mile to the north. Davis could not identify who its sailors were. But the only ones liable to come from the north were the men of Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter.

Thorfinn had been on Earth the earl of the Orkney

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Islands and part of northern Scotland. Though a mighty warrior, as his nickname testified, he had died in A.D. 963 in bed. The "straw death," as the Norse called it, was not the fate he wanted. Only men who were killed in battle went to Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, where the heroes fought each other during the day and those killed were resurrected to fight the next day, where the mead and the food was better than anything on Earth, and where, at night, Odin's Valkyries screwed the drunken heroes' brains out.

But Thorfinn had awakened in the Rivervalley along with everyone else: the brave and the cowardly, the monarchs and the slaves, the honored and the despised, the honest and the crooked, the devout and the hypocrite, the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, and the lucky and the unlucky.

However, the Riverworld was, in many respects, like Valhalla. The dead rose the next day, though seldom in the place where they had died; the drink and the food were marvelous; nonfatal wounds healed quickly; a chopped-off foot or a gouged-out eye grew back again; women with the sexual drive of a Valkyrie abounded. Of course, Valkyries never complained or nagged, but they were mythical, not real.

And what was he, Andrew Paxton Davis, a pacifist, a Christian, and a virtual slave, doing standing here and watching the battle among the heathens? Now, now, now was the time to escape.

He quickly stuffed his few possessions in a fish-skin bag and grabbed the handle of his grail. Like the Arab in the night, I steal away, he thought. Except that I don't have to take the time to fold my tent. He walked out of his room swiftly and sped down the narrow winding

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steps. He met no one until he got to the courtyard. Then he saw a dark figure ahead of him. He stopped, his heart beating harder than his running accounted for. But a lightning bolt revealed the face of the person who had struck such fear into him.

"Doctor Faustroll!"

The Frenchman tried to bow but had to grip the side of the table to keep from falling on his face.

"Doctor Davis, I presume?" he mumbled.

The American was going to hurry past him but was restrained by a charitable impulse. He said, "There's uproar in Acheron, my good fellow. Now is the time to gain our freedom. Ivar was going to make a sneak attack on Arpad, but Arpad had the same idea about him. There's the devil to pay, and Thorfinn, Ivar's ally, has just shown up. Chaos will reign. We have an excellent chance of getting away during all the commotion."

Faustroll put a hand on his forehead and groaned. Then he said, "Up the River? Our quests for the probably nonexistent?"

"Think, man! Do you want to remain a slave? Now's the time, the only chance we may ever have!"

Faustroll bent to pick up his grail and fishing pole. He groaned again and said, "La merde primitive! The devil is using our head as an anvil."

"I'm going," Davis said. "You may come with me or not, as you please."

"Your concern for us is touching," the Frenchman said. "But we really don't have to run. Though we've been in lifelong bondage, we have never been a slave. Unlike the billions of the conventional and the swine-minded, we have been free."

A distant flash faintly illumined Faustroll. His eyes

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were rolling as if he were trying to see something elusive.

"Stay here, then, and be free in your miserable bonds!" Davis shouted. "I felt it was my duty to tell you what is going on!"

"If it had been love compelling you, it would be different."

"You're the most exasperating man I've ever met!"

"The gadfly has its uses, especially if it is equipped not only with a fore sting but an aft sting."

Davis snorted and walked away. But, by the time he had started down the hill from the tower, he heard Faustroll call out to him.

"Wait for us, my friend, if, indeed, you are that!"

Davis halted. He could not say that he liked the grotesque fellow. But...something in the absurd Frenchman appealed to him. Perhaps, Davis thought, it's the physician in me. The man's mad, and I should take care of him. I might be able to cure him someday.

More likely, it's just that I don't want to be alone. Crazed company is better than none. Sometimes.

The thunder and lightning had rolled on down the Valley. In a few minutes, the bright zigzags and the vast bowling-pin noises would be out of sight and out of ear. Then, as almost always, the downpour would stop as if a valve had been shut. The clouds would disappear within thirty minutes or so after that. And the star-filled sky would shed its pale fire on the pale weapons of the warriors and their dark blood. It would also make it easier for Faustroll and him to be seen.

Now he could faintly hear the frightening sounds of the clash. Shrill screams, deep cries, swords clanging, drums beating, and, now and then, the bellowing of a black

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gunpowder bomb as it destroyed itself in a burst of light. He also became aware that the tower, in which he had thought was no living soul, was as busy as a disturbed anthill. He turned to look back. Faustroll, panting, was just about to catch up with him. He was silhouetted by the many torches of the many people streaming from the tower.

Among them was Ann Pullen. She had put a heavy towel over her shoulders and a long one around her waist. But her white face and streaming blond hair were vivid under the flaming brand she held high.

And there was Sharkko walking as fast as his dragging leg would permit him. He carried a grail in one hand, a sword in the other, and a large bag was strapped to his back.

The others passed Davis on their way down the hill. Apparently, they were going either to join Ivar in the battle or to find a place where they could more closely observe it. The latter, more likely. If they thought that things were going against Ivar, they would be running, too.

Davis grabbed a torch from a slave woman as she passed him. She protested but did not fight him. He held it up and pointed up-River. "Let's go!"

Easier said than done. Just as they reached the edge of the plain, they were forced to stop. A large body of men, many of them holding torches, jogged by. Davis looked at the round, wooden, leather-covered helmets, the broad dark faces, and the eyes with prominent epicanthic folds. He groaned. Then he said, "More of Arpad's men! They must be a second flanking force! These were not Magyars but soldiers from Arpad's

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ancient Siberian citizens, forming ten percent of the kingdom's population. They looked much more like the American Indians than Eskimos or Chuk-chuks. A group of six or seven men broke off from the mass and trotted toward them. Davis yelled, "Run!" and he fled back up the hill. Behind came the sound of bare feet on the wet grass and wet mud under it. But it was Faustroll.

When he was halfway up the hill, Davis looked behind him. The invaders were no longer in pursuit. Finding that they could not kill the two men easily, they had rejoined the army.

After a while, he and Faustroll quit climbing along the sides of the hill and went down to the edge of the plain. Within ten minutes the starblaze was undimmed by clouds.

"Time to look for a boat," Davis said.

They went slowly and stealthily among the huts. Now and then, they had to go around corpses. Most of these were women, but some had managed to kill invaders before they had been cut down.'"The never-ending story," Davis said. "When will they learn to stop killing and raping and looting? Can't they see that it does nothing to advance them? Can't..."

"They didn't see on Earth, why should they here?" Faustroll said. "But perhaps it's a weeding-out process here. We get not just a second chance but many chances. Then, one day, poof! The evils ones and the petty, the malicious, and the hypocritical are gone! Let's hope that that does not mean that nobody is left here. Or, perhaps, that's the way it's going to work out."

He stopped, pointed, and said, "Eureka!"

There were many boats along here, beached or riding at anchor a few feet from the short. They chose a dugout canoe with a small mast. But, just as they were pushing

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it off the grass into the water, they were startled by a yell behind them.

"Wait! For God's sake, wait! I want to go with you!"

They turned and saw Sharkko hobbling toward them. He was dragging another bag, a large one, behind him. No doubt, Davis thought, it was filled with loot Sharkko had picked up on the way. Despite his fear, his predatory nature had kept the upper hand.

Davis said, "There's not enough room for three."

Panting, Sharkko stopped a few feet from them. "We can take a larger boat."

Then he turned quickly to look down-River. The distant clamor had suddenly become closer. The starlight fell over a dark and indistinct mass advancing from the south. Shouts and clanging of bronze on bronze swelled from it. It stopped moving toward Davis for several minutes. Then the sounds ceased, and the group moved again, more swiftly now.

Whoever the men chasing after those who fled were, they had been killed. But another hue and cry rose from behind the survivors. The men coming toward Davis began to run.

"Get in one of the boats!" Sharkko squalled. "They'll grab them, and we won't have any!"

Davis thought that that was good advice, but he did not intend to take the fellow with him. He resumed helping the Frenchman push the canoe. It slid into the water. But Sharkko had splashed to it, thrown his grail and bags into it, and started to climb in. Davis grabbed the bags and threw them into the water. Sharkko screamed with fury. His fist struck Davis's chin. Stunned, Davis staggered back and fell into the water. When he rose, sputtering, he saw that Sharkko was going after the bags. He got to the

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boat and threw Sharkko's grail after him. That made the man scream more loudly. Without the grail, Sharkko would either starve to death or have to live from the food he could beg or the fish he could catch.

Faustroll, still standing in the water, was doubled over with laughter.

Davis's anger ebbed and was replaced by a disgust he felt for himself. He hated Sharkko, yet despised himself for hating him and for losing his temper. It was hard to act like a Christian when dealing with such a "sleazebag" (a word he had learned from a late-twentieth-centurian).

But he now had no time to dwell on his own failings. The running men had stopped near him. They seemed out of breath, though that was not the only reason they had halted. They were Ivar and about fifty of his Norse and Prankish warriors and a dozen women. Ann Pullen was one of them. Ivar was bloody though not badly wounded, and the bronze war-ax he waved about dripped red. He seemed to be in favor of making a stand of it against the pursuers. Some of his men were arguing against it. Davis did not know what had happened at first. By listening to them while he was getting into the canoe, he pieced out their situation.

Apparently, the rear attack had caught Ivar by surprise. But he had rallied his men, and Arpad's had been routed. No sooner was this done than Arpad, leading his fleet, had stormed the shore. In the melee, Ivar had killed Arpad.

"I hewed off his sword arm!" Ivar shouted. "And hifr-forces lost heart and fled. We slaughtered them!"

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But Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter had his own plans. He had sent a part of his army to overrun the west bank. While they were doing that, he had attacked the rear of Arpad's fleet. That was partly responsible for the panic among Arpad's men on the east bank.

Thorfinn had decided then, or perhaps he had long ago decided, to betray Ivar. Thus, he would become master not only of his own kingdom but of Arpad's and Ivar's.

Ivar and his soldiers had not expected betrayal, but they had rallied quickly and had fought furiously. But they had been forced to run, and Thorfinn's hounds were baying close to their heels.

Ivar yelled in Norse, "The traitor! The traitor! No faith, no faith! Thorfinn swore by Odin on the oath-ring that we would be as brothers!"

Davis, even in the midst of his anxiety, could not help smiling. From what he knew about Norse kings and their brothers, he was sure that there was nothing unusual about their trying to kill each other. That, in fact, had been typical of most medieval royal kin, whatever their nationality.

Oh, he was among barbarians, and he had been just about to be free of them when the Norns decreed that they should catch up with him. No, he thought, it's not the Noms, the three female Fates of the ancient Scandinavian religion. It's God who's destined this. I've been among the Vikings so long, I'm beginning to think like them.

By now, Ivar had quit raving. In one of the sudden

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switches of mood that distinguished him, he was laughing at himself.

"After all, Thorfinn only did what I might have done, given the circumstances. Seize the chance turn of events! Get the power! The power!"

Faustroll, now sitting in the canoe, called out, "Your Majesty, true descendant of the great King Ubu! We believe that Power is what motivates almost all of humanity, and Power is responsible for more rationalizations and false justifyings than Religion is, though the two are by no means unconnected! You are a true son of Adam, not to mention of Eve, and perhaps of a fallen angel who saw that the daughters of men were fair and went unto them and lay with them! Go, go, go, our son! Consider Power, worship it, obey its ten thousand commandments! But we are a voice crying in the Wilderness! Crying in the jungle fertilized by the never-ending flow of desire for Power in its ten thousand manifestations, the true shit of the true universe!

"Yet somewhere there is the Holy Grail! Seek it, find it, seize it! Be redeemed thereby and by It! In the Grail you have the greatest fountain of Power! But it renders all other Powers powerless!"

Ivar's counselors had been babbling while Faustroll spoke, but they fell silent when their leader lifted his hand. From a distance, not far enough away to damp the writhing of Davis's nerves, came the yells of Thorfinn's men as they ran toward the fugitives.

"For God's sake!" Davis murmured. "Let's get into the boats and get away!"

Ivar shouted, "You are a strange man, Doctor Faustroll! One touched by whatever gods may be! You may have been sent by them! Or by Chance, of which I have heard

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so much from men of the latter days since I came to this world. Either way, you may have been sent to me. So, instead of slaying you, which would do little good except to get rid of your presence, and I might run into you again, I will go with you! Perhaps..."

He was silent for a moment while the others about him looked more man uneasy. Then he roared, "Into the boats!"

No one protested, though a few of the more aggressive warriors sighed. They scrambled, though not in a panicky manner, into the vessels. Ivar roared orders, assigning each to a particular craft. Davis was commanded, along with Faustroll and Ann Pullen, to get into the largest craft, a single-masted merchant boat with oarlocks for fourteen rowers. Ivar took the helm while the rowers began pulling and the big sail was unfurled.

He laughed uproariously and said, "The Norns have smiled on me again! These must be the boats Arpad's men used to bring them to this bank for the flanking attack!"

Davis, Pullen, and Faustroll were sitting on a bench just below the helm deck. The Frenchman called up, "Perhaps it's a sign from them that you should leave this area forever!"

"What! And allow the troll-hearted Thorfinn to crow that he defeated Ivar Ragnarsson?"

He shouted in Norse at the warriors who had not yet gotten into a boat. "You there! Helgi, Ketil, Bjorn, Thrand! Push the empty boats into the stream! We will jeer at our enemies while they dance frustrated and furious on the bank and utter threats that will harm us no more than farts against the wind!"

Helgi the Sharp yelled back,

"Boatless will they be. Boneless makes them bootyless.

Boneheaded Thorfinn, Bare is your bottom!"

Those within hearing broke into laughter. And Ivar laughed until he choked, which relieved Davis, who had become even more anxious on hearing the stanza. The Dane became very angry when someone slipped up and used the surname he did not care to hear.

"I love the words," Ivar called out. "But, Helgi, your meter is blunted. Wretched. However, considering our haste and that your meter always scans as if it were a newborn foal trying to walk..."

He laughed again for several seconds. Then, recovering, he bellowed, "Row as if Loki's daughter, the hag Hel, clutches your ankles with corpse-cold hands to drag you down into Niflheim! Bend your backs as if you are the bow of Ull and your arms are the god's hundred-league arrows! Row, row, row!"

There might have been rowers as mighty as the Norse, though none was better. However, these men had been in face-to-face battle, and nothing funneled the energy out more swiftly. Nevertheless, they dug in as if they had had a long night's sleep. Their enemies on shore were left far behind. But the starlight glimmered on a large mass along the eastern bank moving up-River. It was about a half-mile behind them. Thorfinn's fleet, part of it, anyway, was hot on their trail. Not so hot, perhaps, since his men would also be battle-weary.

"We make for the kingdom of my brother, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye!" Ivar said loudly. "It's a long long way off, but our pursuers will tire before we do. We'll be safe then, and we can loll around, drink all the thickly sugared lichen beer and the grail-given liquor we want. We will also have our fill of the beautiful women there. Or vice versa."

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The rowers had no breath to laugh, though some tried.

Sigurd was one of the few men Ivar trusted and was probably his only trusted brother. He had been a mighty Viking when young. But, in his middle age, he had hung up his sword and become a peaceful and just ruler of Sjaeland, Denmark's largest island. The kingdom he had established since coming to the Riverworld was four hundred miles from Ivor's. He had visited his brother once, and Ivar had visited him twice. Davis had seen Sigurd every time. The slender, wriggly, and red birthmark on the white of his right eye had given him his Terrestrial surname. Though it was gone when he was resurrected, the nickname stuck.

Davis's thoughts were broken by cries behind him. He stood up and looked around the raised helmsman's deck. The boat holding Helgi and three men was passing by a man in the water. Though Davis could not see the swimmer's face, he knew that he had to be Sharkko. Apparently, he was asking to be taken into the boat. But they were laughing as they rowed, and presently, Sharkko, still screaming, was left behind them.

A thrill of sympathy, though fleeting, ran through Davis. Sharkko was a liar, a cheat, a blusterer, a coward, and a bully. Yet the man could not believe mat there were people, and they were many, who did not like him. It was pathetic, which was why Davis pitied him at that moment.

He sat down and looked sidewise at Ann, who was sitting near him. A small thin blue towel was draped over her head like a scarf that women wore in church on Earth. She had a strange expression, a mixture of sweetness and longing. Or so it seemed to him, though who knew what the bitch was thinking. Yet she looked like a

madonna, mother of the infant Jesus, in a painting Davis had seen in a cathedral.

He wondered if that was what she had looked like when an infant. What had erased that sweetness, that goodness?

Then she turned her head and said, "What in hell are you staring at, you lascivious lout?"

Davis sighed, relishing the moment when he had pitied her because of her lost innocence. And he said, "Not much."

"You may think you can talk to me like that because of the situation," she said. "But I won't forget this."

"Your Majesty is like King Louis XIV of France, of whom someone said that he never forgot anything," he said. He added, under his breath, "And who also said that he never learned anything."

"What?"

Most un-Christian of me, Davis thought. Why can't I learn to turn the other cheek? I should have said nothing to her. The silence of the martyrs.

Later, Ivar transferred the four men from the rear boat to his. By late morning, the lead boat in Thorfinn's fleet was far ahead of the rest of the pack. An hour before high noon, it was within arrow range of Ivar's craft. Ivar turned his vessel around, picked off seven men with his arrows, rammed the enemy, and then boarded him. Davis and Faustroll sat in the boat while the battle raged. Ann Pullen used her woman's bow to wound several men. Whatever she may be, Davis thought, she has courage. But I hope she doesn't turn around and shoot me, too.

Ivar lost six men but killed all of the enemy except those who jumped into the River. Thorfinn's other boats were still out of sight. Ivar took over the enemy's vessel

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and abandoned his own. He and his crew sailed on while they sang merrily.

By the time they got near to Sigurd's realm, they had passed through at least forty waking nightmares. Or so it seemed to Davis, though the Norse obviously enjoyed it. There was one fight after another and one flight after another. The states for hundreds of miles up-River from Ivar's ex-kingdom and probably down-River, too, were in a state of bloody flux. The invasions of Ivar's land seemed to have had a violent wave effect on others, none of which was very stable. Slaves were revolting, and kings and queens were trying to take advantage of the deteriorating situations to attack each other. Davis believed that only this semi-anarchy enabled Ivar's fleet to get this far. Even so, all but four vessels of the original fleet had been sunk or abandoned. The survivors had lived chiefly on the fish they trolled for while sailing up-River. Now and then, they had been allowed to go ashore and fill their grails. But even when the people seemed peaceful and cooperative, the Vikings were nervous. Behind the smiles of their hosts might be plans to seize the guests as slaves.

"Oh, Lord," Davis prayed, "I beseech you, stop this killing, torturing, robbing, and raping, the heartbreak and the pain, the hatred and viciousness. How long must this go on?"

As long as men permit themselves to do all the horrible deeds, he thought, God wasn't going to interfere. But, if He didn't, then He had a good purpose in His mind.

A few hours past dawn, the fleet arrived at Sigurd's kingdom. Or what had been his. It was obvious that it, too, had been torn apart by the strife that seemed to have been carried by the wind. Men and women capered

drunkenly while waving weapons and severed heads. Most of the bamboo huts and wooden buildings were blazing, and bodies lay everywhere. As the fleet drew near the bank, a horde climbed into boats and began paddling or rowing toward Ivar's boats.

"Who are they?" Ivar said. Then, "It doesn't matter. Sail on!"

"What about your brother?" Davis said.

"He may have escaped. I hope so. Whatever happened to him, I can't save him. We are too few."

After that, he was silent for many hours, pacing back and forth on the small afterdeck. He frowned much, and, several times, he smote his breast with an open hand. Once, he startled all on his boats when he threw his head back and howled long and mournfully.

Bjorn the Rough-footed, standing near Davis, shivered and made the sign of Thor's hammer. "The cry of the great wolf Fenris himself comes from his throat," he said. "Ivar acts as if he's about to go berserk! Get ready to defend yourself! Better yet, jump into the River!"

But Ivar quit howling, and he stared around as if he had suddenly been transported here from a million miles away. Then he strode to the forward end of the deck, and he called down.

"Osteopath! Clown! Come up here!"

Reluctantly, knowing that the Dane's actions could never be predicted and were often to be dreaded, Davis went up the short ladder with Faustroll. Both halted several feet away from Ivar. Davis did not know what Faustroll was thinking, but he himself was prepared to follow Bjorn's advice.

Ivar looked down at them, his face working with some unreadable expression.

Philip .lose Farmer

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

"You two are of lowly rank, but I've observed that even a slave may have more brains than his master. I've heard you speak of your quests, the spirit of which I admit I don't quite understand. But you've intrigued me. Especially when you spoke about the futility and emptiness of always striving to gain more land, more property, and more power. You may be right. I really don't know. But, a few minutes ago, I was seized by some spirit. Perhaps I was touched by whatever god made us, the unknown and nameless god. Whatever strange thing happened, I suddenly felt emptied, my mind and blood pouring out of me. That terrible feeling was quickly gone, and I saw the sense in your wisdom, I also was overwhelmed, for a moment, with the uselessness of all I had done. I saw the weariness of forever fighting to get power and then fighting to keep it or to get even more power. Glory seems golden. But it's really leaden."

He smiled at them, then looked past them toward the north. When he resumed talking, he kept on staring past them. It was as if, Davis thought, Ivar was envisioning something really glorious.

Faustroll murmured softly. "He sees, however dimly, the junction point of zero and infinity."

Davis did not speak, because Ivar was glaring at him and the Frenchman. When Ivar spoke, he wanted your complete attention, no interruptions. But Davis thought, No, it's not that, whatever that means. It's... can't remember the Greek theological term... it means a sudden and totally unexpected reversal—a flipflop—of spirit. Like the reversal of attitude and of goal that Paul of Tarsus experienced on the road to Damascus... he had been fanatically persecuting the Christians... the great light came even as he was plotting death for all

Christians... he fell paralyzed for a while... when he arose, he had become a zealous disciple of Christ. Sudden, unexpected, unpredictable by anyone. Your spirit, hastening you toward the South Pole, turns you around without your will and shoots you toward the North Pole. There were records of similar mystical or psychological reversals of spirit.

He felt awed. It was several seconds before the cold prickling of his skin faded away.

However, he reminded himself, this sudden turnabout was not always for the good. Though it was rare, a flipflop from good to evil occurred. As if Satan, imitating God, also touched a man with his spirit.

"The god did not speak with words," Ivar said. "But he did not have to do so. He said that I should go up the River until I came to its source, no matter how far away that is. There I will find a Power beyond power."

"Always power," Faustroll murmured. He spoke so softly that Davis could barely hear him, and Davis was sure than Ivar could not.

"You, kneader of sore flesh, and you, the mocker of all that men hold to be good sense," Ivar said, "also have your quests. One wants to find the baby born of a virgin. The other hopes to find the truth that has eluded all men from the birth of mankind."

He paused, then said, "Though you are no warriors and have some strange attitudes, you may be the kind of companions I need for the long journey. What do you say?"

His tone implied that he was condescending to give the invitation. Yet he intended it as a compliment.

Faustroll said, "King Ubu and his two fools looking

Philip Jose Fanner

for the Holy Grail? Ah, well, I will be pleased to go with you."

Davis did not hesitate. He said, "Why not? Perhaps we are all seeking the same thing. Or, if we're not, we'll find the same thing."

Author's Note:

It's obvious that the adventures of these three will continue and be concluded in volume 2 of the Riverworld shared-world anthology.

I have a strong sense of historical continuity that was strengthened while I was researching into my genealogy. As of this moment, I have 275 confirmed American ancestors and several thousand European ancestors. So, I thought, why not use some on the Riverworld, where everyone who has lived and died now lives? And I did so.

Thus, every named character in this story, except for Faustroll (Alfred Jarry) and Sharkko, is a direct ancestor of mine. Doctor Andrew P. Davis is my great-greatgrandfather (1835-1919). He was an extraordinary man, an eccentric, a quester after the truth, and an innovator. Ann Pullen is my nine-times-great-grandmother. She was, according to the court records, a real hellraiser, spitfire, and liberated woman in an age when it was dangerous for a woman to be so. As for my remote forebears, Ivar the Boneless and the other Viking men and women herein, their living descendants as of 1991 would number many millions. It's reasonable to assume that at least three-quarters or more of my readers will be descended from them.

A Hole in Hell

Dane Helstrom

His pen had hurled many into Hell. Now he, who should be in Heaven with his adored Beatrice, was in a pit such as he had depicted in The Inferno.

For years, he had searched along the River for the only woman he had ever deeply loved, the light of his life and his poetry. Now he was imprisoned by a man whom he deeply hated.

The eight-feet-square and twelve-feet-deep pit was on top of a foothill. Its sides were oak logs that slanted inward. (This whole world, he thought, slants inward and imprisons me.) The pit was in shadow except when the sun was directly overhead. Oh, blessed sun! Oh, swiftly moving sun! Stay in your course!

Ankle-deep in sewage, Dante Alighieri stood, his face turned upward. Dawn was an hour old. Soon, Dante's accursed enemy, Benedict Caetani, Pope Boniface VIII from 1294 to 1303, would come. Dante would know when Boniface was nearing because he would hear the barking and the howling of dogs. Yet there were no dogs in this place, which might be Purgatory or might be Hell.

A few minutes later, he stiifened. The yapping, barking,

Dane Helstrom

and howling sounded faintly. It was as if he had just detected the sounds erupting from the three heads of Cerberus, Satan's unnatural hound that guarded the entrance to Inferno. Presently, the noise became a clamor, and he saw the man who owned the dogs.

"Another God-given morning," Boniface said. "Time for my first piss. I baptize thee, Signor Alighieri, in the name of those whom you so hatefully consigned to Hell!"

His eyes shut, Dante endured the rain that did not come from the heavens. A minute later, he opened them. The pope had shed his robes and his wooden beehive-shaped tiara. The dogs—naked men and women on hands and knees or on hands and toes—prowled around the edges of the pits. Their fish-skin collars were attached to leashes held by men and women of Boniface's court. The male dogs, by the edge of the pit and parallel with it, lifted legs to piss into it.

Boniface stuck his buttocks over the pit while two men held his hands to keep him from falling backward.

"In the name of those whom you wrongfully put in Hell in your vicious poem, I give you the bread and wine of the unblessed! Eat thereof, and glory in the transub-stantiation of your fallen god, Lucifer!"

At the same time, a dozen dogs loosed their bowel contents. Only by standing in the center of the pit could he avoid being struck.

After a year of this, Dante thought, he should have been suffocated by the filth daily expelled into the hole. But the many excrement-eating earthworms kept the level of filth down to his ankles. Boniface had been pulled erect but again bent over as a series of slaves spat water

A HOLE IN HELL

between the pope's buttocks. Meanwhile, the dogs barked, howled, whined, and yipped.

Dante shouted, "May God force you for eternity to wear an iron tiara as white hot as His wrath!"

"Dante Alighieri never learns!" the pope screamed. "Does he get down on his knees, that stiff-necked Florentine, and beg forgiveness of those whom he has cruelly wronged? Not he! His mind is as the shit in which he lives!

"You committed blasphemy when you wrote of me in your Inferno as being in Hell while I was still living! Even God does not put sinners in Hell before they die!"

"You were and are evil!" Dante cried. "Would a godly man make dogs out of men, no matter what their offense?"

Boniface screamed, "Down on your knees, Guelf pig, and confess that you have wronged me and be truly contrite! Then you may continue your journey to find your beloved Beatrice! Though you should be seeking the Truth and God, not a slut such as she!"

"A fig upon you!" Dante screamed. And he bit his thumb and stabbed it at Boniface.

"Dante empits himself; he confesses his guilt and sin. Continue to suffer your rightful punishment!"

Then the pope, slaves, henchmen, and dog pack left. Four guards stayed behind to make sure that he did not find some means of killing himself.

Tonight, as every night, it would rain so hard that he could lie down in the water and drown himself. To do that would be to commit an unforgivable sin, one that automatically damned a soul. Would that be a sin in this world? Here, when a man died, he rose to life twenty-four hours later, though far away from where he had

Dane Helstrom

died. Was it then a sin to kill himself? Logic said that it was not. Yet he could not be sure. What God forbade on Earth should also be forbidden in this world. Or had the commandments been changed somewhat here to fit the situation?

Unheeding the soft squishy stuff under his feet, he paced back and forth. His mind went from the unanswerable question of suicide here to the conflicts raging during his lifetime. When he was calm and logical, which was not often, he told himself that the bloody quarrels between Ghibellines and Guelfs and between Black Guelfs and White Guelfs over politico-religious issues no longer mattered.

The huge majority of resurrectees had never heard of these conflicts and would yawn if they did. Only in this area, where Italians of his era lived, did the hatred burn fiercely. Yet it should be forgotten. Far more important things stalked the Rivervalley and should be dealt with. If they were not, salvation would be beyond their reach.

But he could neither forget nor forgive.

At high noon, the grailstones thundered. The echoes from the mountains had just ceased when he heard the dogs coming toward him. Presently, the barking and the howling, mixed with the crack of the dog-tenders' whips, were above and around him. Dante looked upward, shielding his eyes against the sun. He cried out and sank to his knees. He said then, "Beatrice!"

Boniface, standing naked by the edge of the pit, a leash in his hand, said, "Your long quest is over, sinner! Your beloved whore was brought in this morning by slave dealers! Here she is, a lovely bitch who must surely be in heat!"

A HOLE IN HELL

Dante had averted his eyes, but he forced himself to look again. Once more, he cried out with horror.

She was naked and down on her hands and knees. She was weeping, her face so twisted that he should not have been able to recognize her. Something, some divine element, a sort of lightning flash between heaven and earth, had flashed from her to him. He had known instantly that she was Beatrice.

Boniface, grinning like a fox about to eat a chicken, pulled on her leash and kicked her, though not hard, in the ribs. She obeyed his orders to place herself parallel with the edge of the pit and very close to it. Then he gave the leash to a guard and got down on his hands and knees behind her.

"A bitch must be mounted from behind!" he shouted. She cried out, "Dante!"

A whip wielded by another guard cut her across her shoulders. She cried out again.

"Do not speak!" Boniface said. "You are a soulless dog, and dogs do not speak!"

He eased himself forward over her. She screamed when he penetrated her.

Dante was leaping upward again and again and yelping like a dog. But he could not jump high enough to grab the edge.

"Look, look, sinner!" Boniface cried. "I am no dog,

yet I am humping doglike the bitch you love so much!"

Dante wanted to close his eyes but could not.

And then Beatrice heaved upward and lifted Boniface

with her. Though the guard jerked savagely on her leash,

he could not stop her. She was at this moment as strong

as if an avenging angel had poured his holy fierceness

into her. She turned around and grabbed Boniface. Both

Dane Helstrom

A HOLE IN HELL

screaming, they fell into the pit, the leash jerking loose from the guard's hand. She landed on top of the pope and knocked the wind out of him. Immediately, she began tearing at his nose with her teeth. She ceased biting when a spear cast by a guard from above plunged deep into her back.

She gasped, "Mother of... wish... die forever," and died.

The guards shouted at Dante to stay away from the pope. He had pushed the woman's corpse aside and was scrambling to his feet. Dante, crying out with grief and rage, jerked the spear from the beloved flesh and drove its point into the pope's belly. Then he yanked it out and started to turn.

A guard who had just dropped into the pit ran toward Dante, his spear held level. But his feet slipped in the filth, and he fell hard on his face.

Dante raised the spear to stab the guard. He hesitated. If he spared the guard, he, too, might be spared. But the pope's men would only do that to torture him and then, probably, cast him again into the pit.

As the guard, slipping in the filth, tried to get up, Dante cried out, "Beatrice! Wait for me!"

He rammed the spear butt against the log wall and pushed the blade into the pit of his stomach. Despite the agony, he kept on pushing until the blade was buried in him.

He was committing the sin of suicide. But it was the only way of escape. Someday, he would find out if it was unforgivable. If he eventually went to Hell because of his evil deed—if it was evil—he was willing to pay the full price.

Beatrice had been little more than an arm's length from him. Then, within two minutes, she was gone.

But she could be found again.

Though he might have to search for a hundred years, he would find her.

Surely, God understood his great love for her. He would not be jealous because his creature, Dante Alighieri, loved Beatrice more than he loved his Creator.

Dante's last thought dwindled into darkness. Forgive ... didn't mean tha...

Graceland

Alien Steete

"... strange days, it seems..."

"I miss me gold tooth," Keith said.

He was sitting on the edge of the oak stage, his bare legs dangling over the bamboo-slat front. The Mersey Zombies were taking a break during the sound check. A couple of Titanthrop stagehands were making themselves busy, checking the electrical cables for burn-throughs in the fish-skin insulation and rearranging the massive stacks of speakers. In the sound booth, located in the middle of the open-air amphitheater's seating area, the King was haranguing some luckless techie about the recurrent feedback problems from the mikes; they couldn't hear what was being said, but the King's ring-encrusted forefinger was jabbing back and forth and the techie's head was alternately nodding, shaking, nodding, shaking, as if keeping time: yes sir Elvis, no sir Elvis, yes sir Elvis, no sir Elvis...

"You miss your tooth." Sitting next to Keith, his bare back resting against a monitor speaker, John lit a limp

Alien Steele

joint with a firestarter and sucked the smoke into his lungs. "So what? I miss my glasses...."

" 'Coo, you always looked like a fairy with them on...."

"I most certainly did not," John croaked. He held in the toke for a second, then slowly exhaled. Behind them, Sid was sullenly practicing the opening riffs of ' 'Anarchy in the U.K." on his bass. Brian was nowhere in sight, as usual. "And just for the record, I never believed that story about how you busted your mouth after your drove a Caddy into a Holiday Inn swimming pool...."

"It wasn't a Caddy," Keith insisted, "it was a bloody Lincoln Continental, and I did so break out me front tooth, when I climbed out of the water and slipped on the pool deck while running from the coppers...."

"Yeah, yeah. We've heard the whole sodding story many times." John passed the joint to Keith. "And I didn't look like a fag with my glasses on. I loathed those contact lenses Epstein used to make me wear...."

"Heard from him again lately?"

"Not since he joined the Dowists... besides, Yoko liked the glasses...."

"Oh, for God's sake, man, when are you going to stop talking about your old lady?" Keith picked up one of his drumsticks and idly scratched his sunburned back with it. "I mean, you're getting more pussy than Frank Sinatry...."

"Lord!" John looked at him sharply. "Is Sinatra here?"

Keith shrugged. "Not that I've heard. It's just a line I picked up from one of the Yanks." He took a quick hit off the joint and passed it back to John. "Pigpen told me that one," he gasped. "Or maybe it was Lowell...."

"Okay, so I get laid regular." John gazed dismally at the rows of empty bamboo benches in front of the stage.

GRACELAND

He absentmindedly reached beneath his kilt and scratched. "But I miss the missus, all the same," he said softly. "She was a good woman. Good singer, too."

Keith made a face, but wisely kept his mouth shut. They were both quiet for a moment, listening to Sid as he struggled through the bridge of "God Save the Queen," the punked-out version that the three other members of the Mersey Zombies refused to play during their shows. Keith cocked his head toward the kid. "I mean, you think young Mr. Ritchie there misses Nancy?" he asked softly. "The bloody wench was nothing but poison. Even when she showed up here two months ago, he told her to shove off or he'd stick her again...."

Sid's head jerked up. "I did nor!" he shouted.

John looked over his shoulder at him. "Easy, lad," he murmured. "The Moon here was only joking."

Sid wasn't satisfied. He unplugged his guitar, hauled the strap over his shoulder, and threw the instrument down on the stage, startling one of the Titanthrops. "You geriatric old farts make me want to vomit," he muttered as he stalked toward the curtained door leading to the backstage area.

"Then go vomit," Keith called after him. "Just make sure you don't do it in your lunch pail again. Ah-ahaha-hahaha!"

Keith's maniacal laugh was one of the few traits that endeared him to John. He shook off the lingering memory of his wife's face as he reached over to pluck the joint from Keith's fingers. "He doesn't miss Nancy," he said, "but I think he does miss riding the old white horse."

"Just as well. The shit killed him in the end." Keith frowned, pensively tapped his drumsticks between his

76 Alien Steele

legs. "Come to think of it, so did all the booze I was putting away...."

"You both bought it within weeks of each other, as I recall...."

"Yeah. So it did." The wicked smile reappeared on his homely face. "But at least I managed to get old before I croaked. The kid, now, he was barely old enough to shave...."

" 'Hope I die before I get old....' " John sang.

"Roger was full of shit and so was Pete. Ox didn't say enough to be full of shit...."

"S'truth. Way I felt about George."

" Ah-hahahahahahaha! Lord love a duck... or a bass player!" Keith reached up to touch his youthful, undamaged front teeth. "But I still miss my front tooth, you know. It was quite classy. The birds thought it had sex appeal. You reckon I may find another one from... ?"

"Hey! What're y'all think you're doing up there?"

John and Keith looked up at the sound of the baritone, southern-accented voice. The King was stalking down the right aisle from the sound booth, clapping his hands for attention. "Shit," John murmured, discreetly stubbing out the roach behind him and palming it.

"I thought I told you," the King bellowed, " no drugs while we're working!"

Keith looked at him blandly. "But we're not working, mate," he said in a maddeningly mild tone of voice. "We're having tea." He pointed up at the midafternoon sun. "See? It's teatime."

The King's face became livid. "I don't see any tea up there, son! All I see is that goddamn mari-hoochie I told you not to smoke during rehearsals! Now you get Sid and Brian back up there and you make sure you can play your

GRACELAND

asses off tonight, 'cause we got a riverboat coming in this afternoon, now you hear me?"

"Who's the headliner?" John asked.

"The other band!" the King yelled. "And they're gonna headline all week because you English assholes can't get your shit together and an American band can and I don't like your attitude and I think y'all play like a bunch of English queers and I don't give two shits if you were one of the Beatles...!"

"Frankly," John calmly interrupted, "neither do I."

That shut him up, but John couldn't resist twisting the knife a little more. He cleared his throat as he rested his chin in the palm of his right hand. "Tell me," he inquired, "are you still blaming me for your movies?"

The King scowled at him but said nothing; he was never good for a wicked comeback. Keith hid his bemused smile behind his hand. "Goddamn fucking English eel-suckers," he finally muttered as he turned around and began stalking back toward the soundboard. "Think you invented rock 'n' roll...."

Sunlight off the letters embroidered in semiprecious stones across the back of his redfish vest: TCOB. Taking Care Of Business. John watched the King walk away, feeling somewhat sad for him. A couple of years ago, when Elvis had started managing them, he still had his just-resurrected slimness and handsomeness, a sexuality reminiscent of his Sun Studios vintage years. Now he was becoming an obese wad again, much to everyone's disgust, only worse than before: he had let his hair grow unchecked and his mammoth ass stuck out from beneath his kilt. Worst of all, he had developed into a mirror image of his old manager, albeit without the Colonel's redeeming qualities. And he couldn't sing worth a damn.

Alien Steele

GRACELAND

But he was the King of Graceland; if you didn't want to be a dragonfisher, a farmer, or a slave, you played by his rules.

"He was a lot more fun before he died," Keith whispered.

John popped the roach into his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully, savoring its burnt-herb flavor on his tongue. He stood up, giving the drummer a rough slap on the shoulder. "We were all more fun," he replied. "C'mon now, mate. Back to the grindstone."

"Rock 'n' roll," Keith murmured.

"... long live rock..."

The island was known as Graceland.

Thirty years after Resurrection Day, it was the only place in the new world where live rock 'n' roll could be heard, and its existence was largely due to Elvis's considerable influence and charisma. Through the course of many high-level trade agreements, the enlistment of a handful of loyal Titanthrops, a couple of years of seeking out resurrected musicians, and (so it was rumored) at least half a dozen translations, Elvis had managed to establish a small colony on a small island a hundred miles up-River from Parolando, an undiscovered rare bit of dirt and rock where two unclaimed grailstones lay. Not unexpectedly, he had decided to call the island Graceland. This was the way it was listed on the riverboat charts, the name by which it was known to hundreds of thousands of Valleydwellers who had heard of it.

Graceland had only one industry: rock 'n' roll, played live and loud. Elvis had been canny enough not to put his bands on riverboats to tour up and down the great river; there were too many uncivilized places where his groups could not only lose their grails and hard-won equipment, but also their lives. Instead, he settled an island and sent out word that two supergroups performed there six nights a week, eight months a year, and let everyone come to him. Tickets were bought at the dock through barter: whatever Graceland's fifty permanent inhabitants needed— fishmeat, cloth, refined metals, tools, open grails, new firestarters, precious and semiprecious stones, riverdragon products, extra liquor and cigarettes, groupies (especially groupies)—were gained in trade for a week's admission into the stockaded Graceland amphitheater.

Each week, another riverboat landed at the dock, unloading another hundred-odd passengers who had bartered their way up-River or down-River to Graceland. They surrendered their goods at the dock, then went to the lean-to cabins on the island's leeshore, where the visitor's grailstone lay. Admission to Graceland was for exactly a week, with admission to the amphitheater coming extra. However, since all weapons were confiscated at the dock by the Titanthrops and the accommodations were relatively pleasant, few minded the cost. It was the closest many of the resurrected could get to having a real vacation in the new world.

Of course, Graceland had its own dues to pay. Not only did neighboring river-nations have to be consistently bribed to keep them from contemplating invasion, but all of the amphitheater's belongings—from the electric guitars to the relatively sophisticated sound equipment to the upstream hydroelectric generators that powered everything—

Alien Steele

GRACELAND

had been custom-built by the inhabitants of Parolando and New Bohemia, who in turn received the lion's share of Graceland's gate receipts. There were few creature comforts available to Graceland's permanent inhabitants as a result of the system. However, as the King was known to frequently observe, it beat hell out of working. If picking one's fingers to the bone each night on crude copper strings couldn't be considered working, that is....

There were two regular house bands on Graceland, alternating sets each night during the concert season. One was the American band, the Wonder Creek Revival: Lowell George on local vocals and rhythm guitar, Duane Allman on lead guitar, Berry Oakley on bass guitar, Rod "Pigpen" McKuen on harmonica and keyboards, Dennis Wilson on drums and —when she was sober and able to take the stage—Janis Joplin as guest vocalist. The Creeks had a laid-back, Marin County sound that appealed to most of the Valleydwellers, considering the agrarian circumstances they had faced since Resurrection Day; it was easy to relate to a rendition of "Proud Mary" or "Watching the River Flow."

The Mersey Zombies, on the other hand, were at an inherent disadvantage. Given the mixed heritage of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Sex Pistols, the quartet could manage a few numbers that were palatable to the average Valleydweller, but then-sound was more geared toward British Invasion (both of them), guitar-driven hard rock, which seemed to be unsettling to most audiences. Songs like "Cold Turkey" and "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." didn't have much to say to an audience far removed from either heroin withdrawal or Uncle Sam. And then there were the contradictory reputations of the two bands. If Janis was

incoherent and mumbling off into a bluesy, lichen wine-ramble, there was always her old boyfriend, Pigpen, to shore her up. On the other hand, the Mersey Zombies had a nasty rep for breaking into on-stage bickering, backstage fistfights, short huffy sets... and Sid couldn't be restrained from sometimes spitting into the front rows when they began to jeer.

More than a few times, Elvis had been asked by Graceland's patrons why other resurrected rockers couldn't be found and hired. Elvis usually mumbled off with one of his usual excuses—"good idea, buddy, I'll work on it" or "we're straightening out the contract, y'know"— but the fact of the matter was that the musicians who had been found during his long talent search were the only ones who still considered themselves to be music people. Jimi Hendrix was alive, but he now lived in Soul City, where he played an occasional blues duet with Robert Johnson; no one who didn't live in the African-heritage nation-state had ever heard them perform. Hank Williams and Patsy Cline were married and owned a farm far downstream, as did their nearby neighbor, the Big Bopper. Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines were dragonfishermen; Buddy Holly and Richie Valens co-owned a small airship company flying out of New Bohemia. Bob Marley was reputed to be a revolutionary, secretly traveling along the Rivervalley to infiltrate and foster rebellions within slave-nations wherever he and his gang of Rastafarians could find them. Bon Scott was a hopeless dreamgum addict without a grail, squatting wherever he could and begging for the basic necessities in whatever village would next accept him.

And no one knew what had happened to Jim Morrison

Alien Steele

GRACELAND

... if, indeed, he had truly died in Paris when everyone thought he did.

"... please to introduce myself..."

Shortly before sundown, the grailstones had delivered dinner with all its usual sound and fury. Once the audience had removed their grails, the Titanthrops had opened the wooden gates of the amphitheater's stockade and allowed the newcomers inside. Now, beneath the torchlight surrounding the seating area, a hundred of the resurrected were standing or sitting on the bamboo benches, waiting for the first band to come on stage. The summer-evening breeze carried mixed odors—fried fish, lichen wine, tobacco and marijuana smoke—along with the low buzz of voices, impatient whistles, and hand-clapping. The sounds and smells of rock 'n' roll....

"Ten minutes to curtain, John."

John let the redfish curtain fall back into place; he had parted it a half-inch to peer out at the audience from the entrance of the backstage area. He turned to look at the skinny young woman who had come up quietly from behind him.

"Already beat you to it, love," he said stoically. She blinked rapidly in apparent confusion; he pinched a fold of the curtain. "See?"

Mary West Wind blushed and looked down at the floor, embarrassed at having not caught the awful pun. John flashed her a smile to show that he didn't mind and she visibly relaxed. Mary West Wind had been a San Francisco

flower child until six tabs of particularly nasty LSD had dispatched her to strawberry fields forever. Here on Graceland, she served as stagehand and permanent groupie-in-residence to both house bands. She was so sweet and innocent, however, that none of the rockers—not even Sid, even in his most repugnant moments—had the heart to seduce her, although John was completely aware that she had a crush on him in particular.

"The King asked me to ask you to find Brian," Mary said meekly. "I mean, I know where he is, but I can't... I mean, I shouldn't...."

John sighed and rubbed his eyelids between thumb and forefinger. His vision was now perfect, but he still missed his glasses. Like Keith and his rotten gold tooth. "I know, I know," he murmured. "Bloody damn... all right, I shall go track down our errant stone."

He began walking away from the curtain; Mary deferentially stepped aside to let him pass to the short flight of stairs leading to the dressing rooms. On sudden impulse, John paused, leaned over, and gave her a quick brotherly peck on the cheek.

"Always stay the way you are, dear," he whispered in her ear. Mary giggled and blushed again as John hopped down the stairs.

Backstage was a long wooden shed, partitioned into individual, closet-size dressing rooms and a larger "green room" located just behind the stage entrance. The member of the Wonder Creek Revival were gathered in the green room, waiting for their nightly gig; Duane was practicing licks on his unplugged guitar, Berry, Lowell, and Pigpen were playing poker, Dennis was catching a nap on the couch in the corner, and Janis, as usual, was

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getting drunk. Like John himself, all were wearing simple kilts, sandals, and redfish shirts or vests.

The days of elaborate stage outfits were long gone, along with stretch limousines and overworked roadies, Dom Perignon in chilled buckets and five-course catered meals, crystal punch bowls filled with cocaine, and contract riders that stipulated that five pounds of M & Ms had to be available, with all the red ones removed first. On the other hand, also missing were the usual backstage hangers-on: overdressed radio jocks with their flunky photographers, ready to accost you while a camera flashed in your face so that a self-serving picture could be published in the next issue of Billboard; studio reps hovering in the corridor, hand-grabbing and shoulder-hugging, trying to hustle another sleazy deal; fawning winners of local record-store contests with copies of your most hated album, babbling inanities while you tried to find your way to the lavatory; and, of course, the groupies with their mall hair and blowjob lips, eager to fuck a rock star so they could write it all down ten years later in their memoirs, or at least to make their regular boyfriends insanely jealous.

All things considered, John was only too happy to see all that posturing and pretense removed from the scene. What was left was the music, pure and simple, like a neglected rose garden that had been cleaned of broadleaf vine and chokeweeds. Some things, though, had remained much the same....

He passed through the green room and walked down the short, narrow corridor to the dressing rooms. Sid was hi his room, apparently passed out on a cot, his bass guitar propped against a wall. John stuck his head through

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the door, stuck his fingers between his lips, and whistled sharply.

"Wakey wakey, you killer junkie!" he shouted. "It's showtime!"

Sid's eyelids fluttered. "Fuck off, you fuckin' ol' hippie," he muttered from the depths of his dreamgum hallucination, but John had already strode down the hall, passing a short side-corridor leading to the exit door. He heard voices down the hallway, but he didn't pause to look. Probably the King, raising hell with someone else for some real or imagined transgression....

The door of Brian's room was shut. John stopped and pressed his ear against the hollow-core panel; from within, he could hear faint gasps of pleasure amid the ruthless pounding of flesh against flesh. He grinned; Brian was getting his customary preshow lay. Different girl each night; all he had to do was scout the nearby audience camp until he found a bird who didn't mind being fucked by the man who had taught Mick Jagger how to sing. If it weren't for the fact that all Valleydwellers had been made sterile on Resurrection Day, Brian could have probably populated an entire village with his illegitimate offspring by now....

Enough was enough, though. Time to go to work. John took a deep breath, then reconsidered the urge to shout. Instead, he gently rapped his knuckles against the door, pinching his nostrils with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. "Telegram for Mr. Jones!" he called in a nasal voice.

An exasperated sigh and a feminine giggle from the other side of the door. "Coming!" Brian called gaily.

"I'm certain you are," John replied. "Five minutes."

"See you in four and a half." More muffled laughter.

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"Very good, sir." John didn't have to worry about Brian making it to the stage; it was always Sid who gave everyone trouble, Next, to find Keith; from farther down the hall, he could hear the hyperactive ratta-tap-tap of drumsticks against a piece of furniture. Keith was wired and ready to perform, as usual. Now, if only he hadn't destroyed his dressing room again...

As he turned to walk down the corridor, John was startled by a hard tap on his shoulder. He jumped a half-inch off the floor, then spun around to find a massive, hairy shape filling the hallway.

John sagged against the wall, laying a hand against his thudding chest. "Oh...Billy, it's you," he gasped. "You scared the life out of me, mate."

Billy was one of the Titanthrops who worked on the island. Although the bands rarely had any problems with audience members seeking their way to the dressing rooms uninvited, Elvis had insisted upon having one of the titans enlisted as backstage security. Billy guarded the exit door that John had just passed. No guest list was necessary; if Billy was told a name—as Brian did every night—then Billy would remember that name for weeks, even months, to come. And if someone tried to con or muscle their way into the dressing rooms, they were usually treated to a flying lesson over the stockade wall.

"Thorry to interrupth you," Billy said in his usual deep-throated lisp, "but there'th thomeone at the door who inthith upon theeing you."

Billy looked annoyed, if only because he had to bend almost double to keep from banging his huge skull against the ceiling. John sighed; rock stardom was dead in the afterlife, but it still didn't prevent zealous fans from seeking out his autograph at exactly the wrong

time. "Tell them I'm about to go onstage and I'll see them after..." he began.

"He'th rather thee you now," Billy persisted. Before John could respond, he added, "He'th from the Church of the Thecond Chanth, and he thaid he knowth you from back then."

He paused, then added in a low voice, "He thaid it wath important.. .he thaid hith name was Jim."

John looked askance at the Titan. "Jim? I don't know anyone named..."

He stopped. For a long moment, John stared at Billy, deciphering what he had said. When it struck home, his first impulse was to yell for Keith and Brian... hell, not just them, but for Duane and Pig and Janis and Mary West Wind and anyone else who remembered the magic, anyone within earshot who remembered the Lizard King....

John sucked in his breath. "Pardon me," he said, then he ducked beneath Billy's right armpit and slowly walked back toward the intersecting hallway. Behind him, he heard the nervous rattle of drumsticks, a woman's faint cry of orgasm. All around him, there was sound: the twang of Duane's muted guitar strings, someone laughing at an old joke, the faraway clapping of hands by an audience waiting to see rejuvenated legends of their past. John broke into a trot....

He stopped at the crossway, staring at the open door. Torchlight from outside illuminated a robed figure, standing half-seen just outside the doorway.

No call to him, though. No gesture of recognition, no familiar all-fucked-up amble down the corridor to meet him. Only a monkish figure in severe brown robes, a hornfish helix draped around his neck, waiting just outside the dressing room. And, within the dark pit of the

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hood, the barest hint of a familiar face, first seen long ago in Toronto when they were sharing the bill....

"Jim?" he whispered. "Jim, is that you?"

"After the show, John." The voice was very low, but it was the same unmistakable voice. "Back here when you're through."

The figure then melted into the shadows, allowing the door to slowly swing shut again.

John stared at it until Keith goosed him with one of his drumsticks and reminded him that the crowd was waiting. For the first time since anyone in the band could remember, John was late coming on stage.

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"... no future for you...."

The Mersey Zombies set lasted for an hour; to nobody's great surprise, least of all John's, it was a lame night.

John had long since learned that the intrinsic problem with the band was that, because of the all-star lineup, everyone expected to hear their favorite Beatles or Rolling Stones or Who or Sex Pistols songs. However, there were many differences between each band member's sensibilities that could not be easily paved over by the excuse that they were all British rockers; it was like expecting Nat King Cole and Jimi Hendrix to successfully collaborate because they were both black American musicians.

While it was perfectly possible, for instance, for Keith to hammer out the nuclear-attack percussion of "I Can

See For Miles," John had trouble singing the lyrics. Although John and Brian were more than happy to perform "Ruby Tuesday"—the only song which their two former groups had ever had in common—Keith would almost fall asleep at the drums and Sid would make I'm-bored faces at the audience. John would all but give up on keeping up with Sid on "Anarchy in the U.K."; Brian made weird faces at the bassist's maniacal pogoing and guitar-thrashing, and Sid barely tolerated Brian's woodwinds during "You Can't Always Get What You Want." The only song on which all four musicians meshed together was "Helter Skelter," even though it was clear from the audience reaction that that particular number was still associated with Charles Manson; even while the band kicked out the jams, too many faces out there looked as if four giant cockroaches had suddenly crawled onto the stage. Manson and his killers had ruined that song for all eternity, literally.

It was only when the other three band members left the stage to allow John to sing "Imagine" as the finale that the crowd seemed to awaken from their glassy-eyed stupor, even singing along with the final refrain. This was not unusual, though; that particular song struck a chord among the Valleydwellers, who had found themselves, after all, reborn in a world without borders, countries, or Sags. At the song's conclusion, John stood up from the makeshift piano amid rousing applause; he bowed once, then gratefully strode off the stage.

A party was already in full swing in the green room: Keith was arm wrestling with Duane; Brian had joined a conversation with Janis, Berry, and Dennis; and Sid lurked silently in the corner, glaring at everyone with

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once-fashionable punk disdain. John walked past them, completely unnoticed; he stopped by his dressing room to lay his guitar on the bed, then stood for a few moments, gazing indecisively at a fish-skin packet of joints that rested on a table. "What the hell," he murmured to himself, then picked a joint out of the packet before he left the room and headed back down the corridor toward the rear door.

Billy was minding his post, sitting on an enormous oak stool next to the open door. The titan stood up as John approached. "He'th thtill waiting for you," he rumbled. "I atnked if he wanted to come back to your room, but he didn't want to."

"It'th... oops, sorry... it'sokay, Billy."TheTitanthropic lisp was rather infectious. "I'll talk to him outside." Billy nodded sagely and stood aside; John patted his hairy forearm as he stepped outside.

The wooded area behind the backstage shed was dark, illuminated only by a couple of flickering, half-spent torches that marked the way to the outhouses. He could hear the rhythmic hand-clapping of the audience as they urged the second band to come on stage. John's eyes, unaccustomed to the gloom after the bright lights of the stage, sought the shadows.

"Jim?" he called softly. "Hullo? Jim?"

The robed figure he had seen earlier detached itself from the shadows beneath an oak tree. "Here," a quiet voice said from within the raised hood.

John took a step forward, then stopped, uncertain. "If it's truly you," he replied, "then let me see your face."

There was a moment of hesitation, then the figure's hands moved from within the dark folds of the robe and

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lowered the cowl. After another moment, he stepped farther into the light, revealing himself to John.

It was Jim, all right, but not the Jim he remembered. His dark hair no longer reached down to his shoulders; instead, it was cut very short, almost monkishly. The face was still starkly handsome, but the familiar mannish-boy glower had completely vanished, leaving behind only a neutral, almost beatific expression. Jim, by all accounts, had died overweight and bloated, his innate sensuality stolen by liquor and drugs. Now he was rejuvenated, but as a cloaked figure standing in the half-light, as if materialized from one of the William Blake poems that had so influenced him as a UCLA art student.

"You've changed a bit," John said.

Morrison's heavy-lidded eyes blinked. "We were never close, John, so how would you know how I've changed?" He raised his arms, the sleeves falling back from his arms. "Perhaps this was how I've always been."

John chuckled. "I never saw you wearing that on the cover of Rolling Stone." Jim only stared at him, unamused. John held up the joint he had grabbed before leaving the dressing room. "Care to join me for a little smoke?"

Jim said nothing. "Don't do drugs anymore, hmm? How 'bout we go out and find some girls to ball, then?" Again, no reply. "Well, why don't you just go out there and flash 'em your dick, just for old times' sake, eh?"

Jim's eyes shut for a second, seemingly to control himself. "I'm beyond these things now," he intoned. "But, yes, you're right. I have changed."

"So I noticed." John stuck the joint between his lips, lit it with a firestarter, and sucked in the ragged-tasting smoke. In one life a man's wearing ass-tight black leather and French silk shirts, the

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next he's decked out in sackcloth and ashes. Figures. "Did you hear the show?" he asked, exhaling through his nose.

"I heard."

"Not exactly a rave review...." John cocked his head toward the door. "Hey,,why don't you come on in and I'll reintroduce you to the other band? Most of 'em think you didn't make it over, but I'm sure they'd be willing to let you sit in on their set. Christ, at least you could do better justice to 'Light My Fire' than they do...."

The slightest flicker of a smile. "Perhaps... but I no longer sing."

"Really?" John started to take another toke, but suddenly felt foolish. He bent down to stub the joint out in the grass, then tossed it away. "What a waste." He paused, looking in the direction of the discarded joint. 'Y'know, I don't think I ever told you this, but you were really very, very good. I was even a little envious of your voice. And some of the things you wrote, particularly your poetry..."

"That's not why I've come here, John."

"Then why the hell have you come here, Jim?" In exasperation, John folded his arms across his chest and stared back at the disciple. "Come to stand by haughtily and laugh up your sleeve at the fool who's still singing 'Day Tripper' five nights a week?"

'I'm not laughing at you...."

"Jesus!" he shouted, suddenly fed up with the conversation thus far. "You sound like a bloody priest!"

John impulsively whirled around and began to stalk back toward the door. He was almost inside the shed— Billy, half rising from his stool, was about to get out of his way—when he impulsively turned again. "Of all the