Though some of the names in The Riverworld Series are fictional, the characters are or were real. You may not be mentioned, but you're here.
To Sam Long and my godson David, son of Doctor Doctor
And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp
and woof is wretched Man Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we
doubt it owns a plan.
-The Kasidah of Haji Abdu al-Yazdi
"Sentence first-verdict afterwards."
-Alice in Wonderland
THE BOOK AT HAND IS VOLUME III OF THE RIVERWORLD SERIES.
Originally, it was to be the conclusion of a trilogy. However, the Ms. was more than 400,000 words long. Published under one cover, it would be too heavy and unwieldy for the reader.
Therefore, the publisher and myself decided to cut it into two. Volume TV, The Magic Labyrinth, will follow this book. It will definitely conclude this phase of the series, explain all the mysteries set forth in the first three volumes, tie up all ends in a knot, Gordian or otherwise.
Any novels about the Riverworld after volume IV are not to be considered as part of the mainstream of the series. These will be the "sidestream," stories not directly concerned with mystery and the quests of the first three. My decision to write these is based on my belief-and that of many others-that the Riverworld concept is too big to compress within four volumes. After all, we have a planet on which a single river, or a very long and narrow sea, runs for 16,090,000 kilometers, or about 10,000,000 miles. More than thirty-six billion people live along its banks, human beings who existed from the Old Stone Age through the first part of the Electronic Age.
There is not room in the first four volumes to chronicle many events which might interest the reader. For instance, the resurrectees were not distributed along The River according to the chronological sequence in which they had been born on Earth. There was a considerable mixture of races and nationalities from different centuries. Take as an example one of the many thousands of blocs along the banks. This would be in an area ten kilometers long, and the people comprising it would be 60 percent 3rd-century A.D. Chinese, 39 percent 17th-century A.D. Russians, and 1 percent men and women from anywhere and anytime.
How would these people manage to form a viable state from anarchy? How would they succeed, or fail, in their efforts to get along with each other and to form a body which could defend itself against hostile states? What problems would they have?
In the book at hand, Jack London, Tom Mix, Nur ed-din el-Musaf ir, and Peter Jairus Frigate sail on the Razzle Dazzle II up The River. There is considerable characterization of Frigate and Nur in volumes III and IV. However, there was not enough space to fully develop the characters of the others. So, the "sidestream" stories will give me scope to do this.
These will also relate how the crew of the Razzle Dazzle meet some major and minor representatives of various fields of human endeavor. These should include da Vinci, Rousseau, Karl Marx, Rameses II, Nietzsche, Bakunin, Alcibiades, Eddy, Ben Jonson, Li Po, Nichiren Daishonin, Asoka, an Ice Age cavewife, Joan of Arc, Gilgamesh, Edwin Booth, Faust et al.
It's been apparent to some that Peter Jairus Frigate remarkably resembles the author. It is true that I am the basis for that character, but Frigate has approximately the similarity to me that David Copperfield has to Charles Dickens. The author's physical and psychic features are only a springboard for propelling reality into that parareality-fiction.
I apologize to the readers for the cliffhanger endings of the first three volumes. The structure of the series was such that I could not emulate that of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. In these each volume seemed to have a definite conclusion, the mystery seemingly solved, only to reveal in the sequel that the previous ending was false or misleading.
I hope to finish the series, volumes I through V (or possibly VI), before it's my time to lie down and rest while waiting to board the fabulous riverboat.
-Philip Jose Farmer
Dreams haunted the Riverworld.
Sleep, night's Pandora, was even more generous than on Earth. There, it had been this for you and that for your neighbor. Tomorrow, that for you and this for next door.
Here in this endless valley, along these unceasing Riverbanks, she dumped her treasure chest, showering everybody with all gifts: terror and pleasure, memory and anticipation, mystery and revelation.
Billions stirred, muttered, groaned, whimpered, laughed, cried out, swam to wakefullness, sank back again.
Mighty engines battered the walls, and things wriggled out through the holes. Often, they did not retreat but stayed, phantoms who refused to fade at cockcrow.
Also, for some reason, dreams recurred more frequently than on the mother planet. The actors of the nocturnal Theater of the Absurd insisted on return engagements, performances which they, not the patrons, commanded. The attendees were powerless to jeer or applaud, to throw eggs and cabbages or walk out, to chatter with their seatmates or doze.
Among this captive audience was Richard Francis Burton.
Fog, grey and swirling, formed the stage and the backdrop.
Burton stood in the pit like an Elizabethan too poor to afford a seat. Above him were thirteen figures, all in chairs which floated in the mist. One of them faced the others, who were arranged in a semicircle. That man was the protagonist-himself.
There was a fourteenth person mere, though it stood in the wings and could be seen only by the Burton in the pit. It was a black, menacing shape which, now and then, chuckled hollowly.
A not quite similar scene had happened before, once in reality and many times in dreams, though who could be sure which was which? There he was, the man who'd died seven hundred and seventy times in a vain effort to elude his pursuers. And there sat the twelve who called themselves the Ethicals.
Six were men; six, women. Except for two, all had deeply tanned or heavily pigmented skins and black or dark brown hair. The eyes of two men and a woman had slight epicanthic folds, which made him think that they were Eurasians. That is, they were if they had originated on Earth.
Only two of the twelve had been named during the brief inquisition-Loga and Thanabur. Neither name seemed to be of any language he knew, and he knew at least a hundred. However, languages change, and it was possible that they might be from the fifty-second century A.D. One of their agents had told them that he came from that time. But Spruce had been under threat of torture and might have been lying.
Loga was one of the few with comparatively pale skins. Since he was sitting and there was (and had been) nothing material to measure him against, he could be short or tall. His body was thick and muscular, and his chest was matted with red hair. The hair on his head was fox-red. He had irregular and strong features: a prominent, deeply clefted chin; a massive jaw; a large and aquiline nose; thick pale-yellow eyebrows; wide, full lips; and dark green eyes.
The other light-skinned man, Thanabur, was obviously the leader. His physique and face were so much like Loga's that they could be brothers. His hair, however, was dark brown. One eye was green, though a rare leaf-green.
The other eye had startled Burton when Thanabur had first turned his face toward him. Instead of the green mate he had expected, he saw a jewel. It looked like an enormous blue diamond, a flashing, multifaceted precious stone set in his eye socket.
He felt uneasy whenever that jewel was turned on him. What was its purpose? What did it see in him that a living eye could not see?
Of the twelve, only three had spoken: Loga, Thanabur, and a slim but full-breasted blonde with large blue eyes. From the manner in which she and Loga spoke to each other, Burton thought that they could be husband and wife.
Watching them offstage, Burton noted again that just above the heads of each, his other self included, was a globe. They whirled, were of many changing colors, and extended six-sided arms, green, blue, black, and white. Then the arms would shrink into the globe, only to be replaced by others.
Burton tried to correlate the rotating spheres and the mutation in the arms with the personalities of the three and of himself, with their physical appearances, with the tones of their voices, with the meanings of their words, with their emotional attitudes. He failed to find any significant linkages.
When the first, the real, scene had taken place, he had not seen his own aura.
The spoken lines were not quite the same as during the actual event. It was as if the Dream-Maker had rewritten the scene.
Loga, the red-haired man, said, "We had a number of agents looking for you. They were a pitifully small number, considering the thirty-six billion, six million, nine thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven candidates that are living along The River."
"Candidates for what?" the Burton on the stage said.
In the first performance, he had not uttered that line.
"That's for us to know and you to find out," Loga said.
Loga flashed teeth that seemed inhumanly white. He said, "We had no idea that you were escaping us by suicide. The years went by. There were other things for us to do, so we pulled all agents from the Burton Case, as we called it, except for some stationed at both ends of The River. Somehow, you had knowledge of the polar tower. We found out how later."
Burton, the watcher, thought, But you didn't find out from X.
He tried to get nearer to the actors so he could look at them more closely. Which one was the Ethical who had awakened him in the preressurection place? Which one had visited him during a stormy, lightning-racked night? Who was it that had told him that he must help him? Who was the renegade whom Burton knew only as X?
He struggled against the wet, cold mists, as ethereal yet as strong as the magic chains which had bound the monster wolf Fenrir until Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.
Loga said, "We would have caught you, anyway. You see,every space in the restoration bubble-the place where you unaccountably awakened during the preresurrection phase-has an automatic counter. Any candidate who has a higher than average number of deaths is a subject for study sooner or later. Usually later, since we're short-handed.
"We had no idea it was you who had racked up the staggering number of seven hundred and seventy-seven deaths. Your space in the PR bubble was empty when we looked at it during our statistical investigation. The two technicians who had seen you when you woke up in the PR chamber identified you by your . . . photograph.
"We set the resurrector so that the next time your body was to be recreated, an alarm would notify us, and we would bring you here to this place."
But Burton had not died again. Somehow, they had located him while he was alive. Though he had run away again, he had been caught. Or had he? Perhaps, as he ran through the night, he had been killed by lightning. And they were waiting for him in the PR bubble. That vast chamber which he supposed was somewhere deep under the surface of this planet or in the tower of the polar sea.
Loga said, "We've made a thorough search of your body. We have also screened every component of your . . . psychomorph. Or aura, whichever word you prefer."
He pointed at the flashing, whirling globe above the Burton who sat in the chair facing him.
Then the Ethical did a strange thing.
He turned and looked out into the mists and pointed at Burton, the watcher.
"We found no clues whatsoever."
The dark figure in the wings chuckled.
The Burton in the pit called out, "You think there are only twelve of you! There are thirteen! An unlucky number!"
"It's quality, not quantity, that matters," the thing off-stage said.
"You won't remember a thing that occurs down here after we send you back to the Rivervalley," Loga said.
The Burton in the chair said something that he had not said in the original inquisition.
"How can you make me forget?"
"We have run off your memory as if it were a tape recording," Thanabur said. He talked as if he were lecturing. Or was he warning Burton because he was X?
"Of course, it took a long time to run your memory track for the seven years since you've been here. And it required an enormous amount of energy and materials. But the computer Loga monitored was set to run your memory at high-speed and stop only when you were visited by that filthy renegade. So, we know what happened then exactly as you knew what happened. We saw what you saw, heard what you heard, felt what you touched, what you smelled. We even experienced your emotions.
"Unfortunately, you were visited at night, and the traitor was effectively disguised. Even his voice was filtered through a distorter which prevented the computer from analyzing his-or her-voice-prints. I say his or her because all you saw was a pale thing without identifiable features, sexual or otherwise. The voice seemed to be masculine, but a female could have used a transmitter to make it seem a man's.
"The body odor was also false. The computer analyzed it, and it's obvious that a chemical complex altered that.
"In short, Burton, we have no idea which of us is the renegade, nor do we have any idea why he or she would be working against us. It is almost inconceivable that anyone who knew the truth would try to betray us. The only explanation is that the person is insane. And that, too, is inconceivable."
The Burton in the pit knew, somehow, that Thanabur had not spoken those words during the first performance, the real drama. He also knew that he was dreaming, that he was sometimes putting words in Thanabur's mouth. The man's speech was made up of Burton's own thoughts, speculations, and fantasies which were afterthoughts.
The Burton in the chair now voiced some of these.
"If you can read a person's mind-tape it, as it were-why don't you read your own minds? Surely you have done that? And just as surely, you would have found your traitor."
Loga, looking uncomfortable, said, "We submitted to a reading, of course. But ..."
He raised his shoulders and spread out his palms upward.
Thanabur said, "So, the person you call X must have been lying to you. He is not one of us but one of the second-order, an agent. We are calling them in for memory scanning. That takes time, however. We have plenty of that. The renegade will be caught."
The Burton in the chair said, "And what if none of the agents is guilty?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Loga said. "In any event your memory of awakening in the preressurection bubble will be erased. Also, your memory of the renegade's visit and all events from that time on will be a blank space. We are truly sorry to have to do this violent act. But it is necessary, and the time will come, we hope, when we can make amends."
The Burton in the chair said, "But... I will have many recollections of the preressurection place. You forget that I often thought of that between the time I awoke on the banks and X's visit. Also, I told many people about it."
Thanabur said, "Ah, but do they really believe you? And if they do, what can they do about it? No, we do not want to remove your entire memory of your life here. It would cause you great distress; it would remove you from your friends. And"-here Thanabur paused-"it might slow down your progress."
"Progress?"
"There is time for you to find out what that means. The insane person who claims to be aiding you was using you for his own purposes. He did not tell you that you were throwing away your opportunity for eternal life by carrying out his designs. He or she, whoever the traitor is, is evil. Evil, evil!"
"Now, now,'' Loga said. "We all feel strongly about this but we must not forget. The . . . unknown is sick."
The jewel-eyed man said, "To be sick is, in a sense, to be evil."
The Burton in the chair threw back his head and laughed loudly and long.
"So you bastards don't know everything?"
He stood up, the gray fog supporting him as if it were solid, and he shouted, "You don't want me to get to the headwaters of The River! Why? Why?"
Loga said, "Au revoir. Forgive us for this violence."
A woman pointed a short, slim blue cylinder at the Burton on the stage, and he crumpled. Two men, wearing only white kilts, emerged from the fog. They picked up the senseless body and carried it into the mists.
Burton tried again to get at the people on the stage. Failing, he shook his fist at them, and he cried, "You'll never get me, you monsters!"
The dark figure in the wings applauded, but his hands made no noise.
Burton had expected to be placed in the area where he had been picked up by the Ethicals. Instead, he awoke in Theleme, the little state which he had founded.
Even more unexpected was that he had not been deprived of his memory. He remembered everything, even the inquisition with the twelve Ethicals.
Somehow, X had managed to fool the others.
Later, he got to wondering if they had lied to him and had not intended to tamper with his memory. That made no sense, but then he did not know what their intentions were.
At one time, Burton had been able to play two games of chess at the same time while blindfolded. That, however, only required skill, a knowledge of the rules, and familiarity with the board and the pieces. He did not know the rules of this game, nor did he know the powers of all the chessmen. The dark design had no pattern.
Groaning, Burton half-awoke.
For a moment, he didn't know where he was. Darkness surrounded him, darkness as thick as that which he felt filled him.
Familiar sounds reassured him. The ship was rubbing up against the dock, and water lapped against the hull. Alice was breathing softly by him. He touched her soft, warm back. Light footsteps came from above, Peter Frigate on night watch. Perhaps he was getting ready to wake up his captain. Burton had no idea what time it was.
There were other well-known sounds. Through the wooden partition the snores of Kazz and his woman, Besst, gurgled. And then, from the compartment behind theirs, the voice of Monat issued. He spoke in his native language, but Burton could not distinguish the words.
Doubtless, Monat was dreaming of far-off Athaklu. Of that planet with its "wild, weird clime" which circled the giant orange star, Arcturus.
He lay for a while, rigid as a corpse, thinking, Here I am, a one-hundred-and-one-year-old man in the body of a twenty-five-year-old.
The Ethicals had softened the hardened arteries of the candidates. But they had not been able to do anything about atherosclerosis of the soul. That repair was apparently left up to the candidate.
The dreams were going backward in time. The inquisition by the Ethicals had come last. But now he was dreaming that he was experiencing again the dream he'd had just before he awoke to the Last Trump. However, he was watching himself in the dream; he was both participant and spectator.
God was standing over him as he lay on the grass, as weak as a newly born baby. This time, He lacked the long, black, forked beard, and He was not dressed like an English gentleman of the fifty-third year of Queen Victoria's reign. His only garment was a blue towel wrapped around his waist. His body was not tall, as in the original dream, but was short and broad and heavily muscled. The hairs on His chest were thick and curly and red.
The first time, Burton had looked into God's face and seen his own. God had had the same black straight hair, the same Arabic face with the deep, dark eyes like spearpoints thrusting from a cave, the high cheekbones, the heavy lips, and the thrust-out, deeply cleft chin. However, His face no longer bore the scars of the Somali spear that had sliced through Burton's cheek, knocking out teeth, its edge jammed into his palate, its point sticking out the other cheek.
The face looked familiar, but he couldn't name its owner. It certainly was not that of Richard Francis Burton.
God still had the iron cane. Now He was poking Burton in the ribs.
"You're late. Long past due for the payment of your debt, you know."
"What debt?" the man on the grass said.
The Burton who was watching suddenly realized that fog was swirling around him, casting veils between the two before him. And a grey wall, expanding and contracting as if it were the chest of a breathing animal, was behind them.
"You owe for the flesh," God said. He poked the ribs of the man on the grass. Somehow, the standing Burton felt the pain.
"You owe for the flesh and the spirit, which are one and the same thing."
The man on the grass struggled to get onto his feet. He said, gasping, "Nobody can strike me and get away without a fight."
Somebody snickered, and the standing Burton became aware of a dim, tall figure in the fog beyond.
God said, "Pay up, sir. Otherwise, I'll be forced to foreclose."
"Damned money lender!" the man on the grass said. "I ran into your kind in Damascus."
"This is the road to Damascus. Or it should be."
The dark figure snickered again. The fog enclosed all. Burton awoke, sweating, hearing the last of his whimperings.
Alice turned and said sleepily, "Are you having a nightmare, Dick?"
"I'm all right. Go back to sleep."
"You've been having many nightmares lately."
"No more than on Earth."
"Would you like to talk?"
"When I dream, I am talking."
"But to yourself."
"Who knows me better?" He laughed softly.
"And who can deceive you better," she said a little tartly.
He did not reply. After a few seconds, she was breathing with the gentle rhythm of the untroubled. But she would not forget what had been said. He hoped that morning would not bring another quarrel.
He liked arguing; it enabled him to explode. Lately, however, their fights had left him unsatisfied, ready at once for another.
It was so difficult to blaze away at her without being overheard on this small vessel. Alice had changed much during their years together, but she still retained a ladylike abhorrence of, as she put it, washing their dirty linen in public. Knowing this, he pressed her too hard, shouted, roared, getting pleasure out of seeing her shrink. Afterward, he felt ashamed because he had taken advantage of her, because he had caused her shame.
All of which made him even more angry.
Frigate's footsteps sounded on the deck. Burton thought of relieving Frigate early. He would not be able to get back to sleep; he'd suffered from insomnia most of his adult life on Earth and much here, too. Frigate would be grateful to get to bed. He had trouble staying awake when on watch.
He closed his eyes. Darkness was replaced by grey ness. Now he saw himself in that colossal chamber without walls, floor, or ceiling. Naked, he was floating in a horizontal position in the abyss. As if suspended on an invisible, unfelt spit, he was turning slowly. Rotating, he saw that there were naked bodies above, to the sides, and below. Like him, their heads and pubic regions were shaven. Some were incomplete. A man nearby had a right arm which was skinless from the elbow down. Turning, he saw another body that had no skin at all and no muscles in the face.
At a distance was a skeleton with a mess of organs floating inside it.
Everywhere, the bodies were bounded at head and foot by red metallic-looking rods. They rose from the unseen floor and ascended to the unseen ceiling. They stood in rows as far as he could see, and in a vertical line between each pair hovered the wheeling bodies, rank on rank of sleepers, bodies as far down, bodies as far up, as the eye could encompass.
They formed vertical and horizontal lines stretching into grey infinity.
This time, watching, he felt some of the bewilderment and the terror of the first moment of awakening.
He, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Her Majesty's consul at the city of Trieste in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had died on Sunday, October 19, 1890.
Now he was alive in a place that was like no heaven or hell he had ever heard of.
Of all the millions of bodies he could see, he was the only one alive. Or awake.
The rotating Burton would be wondering why he was singled out for this unsought honor.
The watching Burton now knew why.
It was that Ethical whom Burton called X, the unknown quality, who had roused him. The renegade.
Now the suspended man had touched one of the rods. And that had broken some kind of circuit, and all the bodies between the rods had started to fall, Burton among them.
The watcher felt almost as much terror as when it had first occurred. This was a primal dream, the universal human dream of falling. Doubtless, it originated from the first man, the half-ape half-sentient, for whom the fall was a dread reality, not just a nightmare. The half-ape had leaped from one branch to another, thinking in his pride that he could span the gulf. And he had fallen because of his pride, which distorted his judgment.
Just as Lucifer's fall had been caused by his pride.
Now that other Burton had grabbed a rod and was hanging on while the bodies, still turning slowly, hurtled past him, a cataract of flesh.
Now he looked up and saw an aerial machine, a green canoe shape, sinking down through the space between nearby rods. It was wingless, propellerless, apparently buoyed up by some kind of device unknown to the science of his day.
On its bow was a symbol: a white spiral which ended pointing to the right and from which point white threads flared.
In the reality, two men had looked over the side of the flying machine. And then, suddenly, the falling bodies slowed in their fall, and an invisible force seized him and brought his legs up and tore him loose from the rod. He floated upward, revolving, went past and above the canoe, and stopped. One of the men pointed a pencil-sized metal object at him.
Screaming with rage and hate and frustration, that Burton shouted, "I'll kill! I'll kill!"
The threat was an empty one, as empty as the darkness that stilled his fury.
Now, only one face looked over the edge of the machine. Though he could not see the man's face, Burton thought it looked familiar. Whatever the features, they belonged to X.
The Ethical chuckled.
Burton sat upright and grabbed for the throat of X.
"For God's sake, Dick! It's me, Pete!"
Burton opened his hands from around Frigate's throat. Starlight as bright as Earth's full moon beamed in through the open doorway and silhouetted Frigate.
"It's your watch, Dick."
"Please be less noisy," Alice murmured.
Burton rolled off the bed and felt the suit hanging from a peg. Though he was sweating, he shivered. The little cabin, hot from the night-long radiation of two bodies, was cooling now. The cold fog was pressing in.
Alice said, "Brrr!" and sounds indicated she was pulling the thick towels over her. Burton caught a glimpse of her white body before it was covered. He glanced at Frigate, but the American had turned and was heading up the ladder. Whatever his faults, he was not a Peeping Tom. Not that he could really blame the fellow if he had taken a look. He was more than half in love with Alice. He had never said so, but it was obvious to Burton, to Alice, and to Loghu, Frigate's bunkmate.
If anybody was to blame, it was Alice. She had long ago lost her Victorian modesty. Though she would deny it, she may have, subconsciously, of course, teased Frigate with a quick flash of herself.
Burton decided not to bring that subject up. Though he was angry at both Frigate and Alice, he'd look like a fool if he said anything about this. Alice, like most people, bathed in The River in the nude, seemingly indifferent to the passersby. Frigate had seen her hundreds of-times without clothing.
The night suit was composed of a number of thick towels held together by magnetic tabs underneath the cloth. Burton opened it and fitted the cloths to make a hooded garment around legs and body. He buckled on a belt of hornfish skin holding scabbards containing a flint knife, a chert axe, and a wooden sword. The edges of the latter were lined with tiny flint chips and its end held a sharp hornfish's horn. He removed from a rack a heavy ash spear tipped with horn and went up the ladder.
Gaining the deck, he found that his head was above the fog. Frigate was his same height, and his head seemed to float bodiless above the swirling wool of the mists. The sky was bright, though The Riverworld had no moon. It blazed with stars and with vast, shining gas clouds. Frigate believed that this planet was near the center of Earth's galaxy. But it could be inside some other galaxy, for all anybody knew.
Burton and his friends had built a vessel and had sailed from Theleme. The Hadji II, unlike its predecessor, was a cutter, a fore-and-aft rigged single-master. Aboard it were Burton, Hargreaves, Frigate, Loghu, Kazz, Besst, Monat Grrautut, and Owenone. The latter was a woman of ancient pre-Hellenic Pelasgia who did not mind at all sharing the Arcturan's bunk. With his peculiar crew (Burton had a not always fortunate talent for collecting an unhomogeneous band of followers), he had voyaged up-River for twenty-five years. One of the men with whom he had shared many adventures, Lev Ruach, had decided to stay in Theleme.
The Hadji II had not gotten as far as Burton had hoped. Since the crew had little elbow room, its members were in too close and constant contact with each other. It had been necessary to take long shore leaves so they could cool off their cabin fever.
Burton had decided that it was about time for another long liberty when the boat had sailed into this area. This was one of the rare widenings of The River, a lake about 20 miles or 32 kilometers long and 6 miles or 9.6 kilometers wide. At its western end the lake narrowed into a strait about a quarter-mile or 321 meters wide. The current boiled through this, but fortunately the prevailing wind here was behind a vessel going upstream. If the Hadji II had had to sail against the wind, it would have had little space to tack.
After looking at the strait, Burton thought that the passage could be made, though it would be close. However, now was the time to take a long rest. Instead of putting into one of the banks, he had stopped the boat alongside one of the scores of rocks that jutted up from the middle of the lake. These were tall spires With some level land at their bases. Some of them had grailstones, and around these were gathered a few huts.
The island-spire nearest the strait had a few floating docks. They would have been more convenient if they had been on the down-current side, but they were not, so the boat was taken alongside one. It was secured by lines to the posts and against the bumpers, bags of tough skins of alligator-fish filled with grass. The island's inhabitants approached them cautiously. Burton quickly assured them of his peaceful intentions, and he politely asked if his crew could use the grailstone.
There were only twenty islanders-short, dark people whose native language was unknown to Burton. They spoke a degraded form of Esperanto, however, so there was little language barrier.
The grailstone was a massive mushroom-shaped structure of grey red-flecked granite. The surface of its top was as high as Burton's chest and bore seven hundred round indentations in concentric circles.
Shortly before sunset, each person put in one of the shallow holes a tall cylinder of grey metal. English-speakers called it a grail, a pandora (or its shortened form, dora), a tucker box, lunch pail, glory bucket, and so on. The most popular name was that given it by the missionaries of the Church of the Second Chance. This was the Esperanto pandora. Though the grey metal was as thin as a sheet of newspaper except for the base, it was unbendable, unbreakable, and indestructible.
The owners of the grails retreated about fifty paces and waited. Presently, intense blue flames roared upward from the top of the stone to 20 feet or a little over 6 meters. Simultaneously, every one of the stones lining the banks of the lake spat fire and shouted thunder.
A minute later, several of the little dark people climbed onto the stone and handed down the grails. The party sat down under a bamboo roof by a fire of bamboo and driftwood and opened the lids of the cylinders. Inside were racks holding cups and deep dishes, all filled with liquor, food, crystals of instant coffee or tea, cigarettes and cigars.
Burton's grail contained both Slovene and Italian food. He had been first resurrected in an area consisting mainly of people who had died in the Trieste area, and the grails of these usually gave the type of food they had been accustomed to eat on Earth. About every ten days, however, the grails served something entirely different. Sometimes it was English, French, Chinese, Russian, Persian, or any of a hundred national foods. Occasionally it offered dishes which were disgusting, such as kangaroo meat, burned on the surface and raw underneath, or living grubworms. Burton had gotten this Australian aborigine meal twice.
Tonight the liquor cup contained beer. He hated beer, so he traded it for Frigate's wine.
The islanders' grails contained food much of which reminded Burton of Mexican cuisine. However, the tacos and tortillas were packed with venison, not beef.
While they ate and talked, Burton questioned the locals. From their descriptions, he surmised that they were pre-Columbian Indians who had lived in a wide valley in the Southwest desert. They had been composed of two different tribes speaking related but mutually unintelligible languages. Despite this, the two groups had lived peacefully side by side and had formed a single culture, each of the groups differing only in a few traits.
He decided that they were the people whom the Pima Indians of his time had called the Hohokam, The Ancient Ones. These had flourished in the area which the white settlers would call the Valley of the Sun. It was mere that the village of Phoenix of the Arizona Territory had been founded, a village which, according to what he had been told, had become a city of over a million population in the late twentieth century.
These people called themselves the Ganopo. In their Terrestrial time they had dug long irrigation ditches with flint and wooden tools and turned the desert into a garden. But they had suddenly disappeared, leaving the American archaeologists to explain why. Various theories had been advanced to account for this. The most widely accepted was that belligerent invaders from the north had wiped them out, though mere was no evidence for that.
Burton's hopes that he could solve this mystery were quickly dissipated. These people had lived and died before their society came to an end.
They all sat up late that night, smoking and drinking the alcohol made from the lichen which coated their rock spire. They told stories, mostly obscene and absurd, and rolled on the ground with laughter. Burton, when he told Arabic tales, found it necessary not to use unfamiliar references or to explain them if they were simple enough to be understood. But they had no trouble grasping the stories of Aladdin and his magic lamp or of how Abu Hasan broke wind.
The latter had been a great favorite with the Bedouins. Burton had often sat around a fire of dried camel dung and sent his listeners into shrieks of laughter though they had heard it a thousand times.
Abu Hasan was a Bedouin who had left his nomadic life to become a merchant of the city of Kaukaban in Yemen. He became very rich, and after his wife died he was urged by his friends to marry again. After some resistance, he gave in and arranged a marriage to a beautiful young woman. There was much feasting of rices of several colors and sherbets of as many more, kids stuffed with walnuts and almonds and a camel colt roasted whole.
Finally, the bridegroom was summoned to the chamber where his bride, clad in many rich robes, waited. He rose slowly and with dignity from his divan but, alas! He was full of meat and drink, and as he walked toward the bridal chamber, lo and behold! he let fly a fart, great and terrible.
On hearing this, the guests turned to each other and talked loudly, pretending not to have noticed this social sin. But Abu Hasan was greatly humiliated, and so, pretending a call of nature, he went down to the horsecourt, saddled a horse, and rode away, abandoning his fortune, his house, his friends, and his bride.
He then took ship to India, where he became the captain of a king's bodyguard. After ten years be was seized with a homesickness so terrible that he was about to die of it, and so he set out for home disguised as a poor fakir. After a long and dangerous journey, he drew near to his city, and he looked from the hills upon its walls and towers with eyes flowing with tears. However, he did not dare venture into the city until he knew that he and his disgrace had been forgotten. So he wandered around the outskirts for seven days and seven nights, eavesdropping upon the conversations in street and marketplace.
At the end of that time he chanced to be sitting at the door of a hut, thinking that perhaps he could now venture into the city as himself. And then he heard a young girl say, "O my mother, tell me the day I was born, for one of my companions needs to know that so she can read my future."
And the mother replied, "You were born, O daughter, on the very night when Abu Hasan farted."
The listener no sooner, heard these words than he rose from the bench and fled, saying to himself, "Truly your fart has become a date, which shall last forever."
And he did not quit traveling and voyaging until he returned to India and there lived in self-exile until he died, and the mercy of God be upon him.
This story was a great success, but before he told it Burton had to preface his story with the explanation that the Bedouins of that time considered farting in company a disgrace. In fact, it was necessary that everyone within earshot pretend that it had not happened, since the disgraced one would kill anyone who called attention to it.
Burton, sitting cross-legged before the fire, noted that even Alice seemed to enjoy the story. She was a middle-Victorian, raised in a deeply religious Anglican family, her father a bishop and the brother of a baron, descended from John of Gaunt, King John's son, her mother the granddaughter of an earl. But the impact of River-world life and a long intimate association with Burton had dissolved many of her inhibitions.
He had then gone on to the tale of Sinbad the Sailor, though it was necessary to adapt this to the experiences of the Ganopo. They had never seen a sea, so the sea became a river, and the roc which carried off Sinbad became a giant golden eagle.
The Ganopo, in their turn, told stories from their creation myths and the ribald adventures of a folk hero, the trickster Old Man Coyote.
Burton questioned them about the adaptation of their religion to the reality of this world.
"O Burton," their chief said, "this is not quite the world after death which we had envisioned. It is no land where maize grows higher than a man's head in one day and deer and jackrabbit give us a good hunt but never escape our spears. Nor have we been reunited with our women and children, our parents and grandparents. Nor do the great ones, the spirits of the mountains and the river, of the rocks and the bush, walk among us and talk to us.
"We do not complain. In fact, we are far happier than in the world we left. We have more food, better food, than we had there, and we do not have to work to get it, though we had to fight to keep it in the early days here. We have far more than enough water, we can fish to our heart's content, and we do not know the fevers that killed or crippled us nor do we know the aches and pains of old age and its enfeeblements."
Here the chief frowned, and with his next words a shadow fell upon them and the smiles faded.
"Tell me, you strangers, have you heard anything about the return of death? Of death forever, I mean? We live upon this little island and so do not get many visitors. But from the few we do meet and from those we talk to when we visit the banks, we have heard some strange and troubling stories.
"They say that for some time now no one who has died has been raised again. A person is killed, and he or she does not wake up the next day, his wounds healed, his grail beside him, upon a bank far from the scene of his death. Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?"
"I do not know,'' Burton said. "It is true that we have traveled for thousands of kilometers ... I mean, we have passed by an uncountable number of grailstones on our voyage. And for the past year, we have noticed this thing of which you speak."
He paused for a moment, thinking. From the very second day after the great resurrection, the lesser resurrections, or translations, as they were generally called, had occurred. People were killed or killed themselves or had fatal accidents, but, at dawn the next day, they found themselves alive. However, they were never raised at the scene of their deaths. Always, they found themselves far away, often in a different climatic zone.
Many attributed this to a supernatural agency. Many more, among whom was Burton, did not think that there was any agency except an advanced science which accounted for this. There was no need to call in the supernatural. "No ghosts need apply,"-to quote the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Physical explanations sufficed.
Burton knew from his own experience, apparently a unique one, that a dead person's body could be duplicated. He had seen that in the vast space where he had awakened briefly. Bodies were somehow made from some kind of recording, their wounds healed, diseased flesh regenerated, limbs restored, the ravages of old age repaired, youth restored.
Somewhere under the crust of this planet was an immense thermionic energy-matter converter. Probably, it was fueled by heat from the nickel-iron core. Its machinery operated through the complex of grailstones, the roots of which reached deep under the earth, forming a circuit so complex that it staggered the mind to think of it.
Was the recording of the dead person's cells made by something in the stones themselves? Or was it made as Frigate had suggested, by unseen orbital satellites which kept an eye upon every living being, much as God was supposed to note even the fall of a sparrow?
Nobody knew, or, if they did, they were keeping the secret to themselves.
Energy-matter conversion through the grailstone system also accounted for the free meals every citizen of The Riverworld found in his grail three times a day. The base of each of the metal cylinders must conceal a tiny converter and an electronic menu. The energy was transmitted through the grailstone complex into the grails. And there electricity became complex matter: beef, bread, lettuce, etcetera, and even luxuries, tobacco, marijuana, booze, scissors, combs, cigarette lighters, lipstick, dreamgum.
The towel-like cloths were also provided via the stone system, but not through the grails. They appeared in a neat pile next to the resurrected body and the grail.
There had to be some sort of mechanism inside the underground roots of the stone complex. This somehow could project through many meters of earth the vastly complicated configuration of molecules of human bodies, grails, and cloths at precisely a centimeter above ground level.
Literally, people and things formed from the air.
Burton had sometimes wondered what would happen if the translatee should happen to be formed in an area occupied by another object. Frigate said that there would be a terrible explosion. This had never happened, at least not to Burton's knowledge. Thus, the mechanism "knew" how to avoid this intermingling of molecules.
There was, however, as Frigate had pointed out, the volume of atmosphere which the newly formed body had to displace. How were the molecules of air kept from a fatal mingling with the molecules of the body?
No one knew. But the mechanism must somehow remove the air, make vacuums into which the body, grail, and cloths appeared. It would have to be a perfect vacuum, too, something which the science of the late 10th century had not succeeded in making.
And it did it silently, without the explosion of a mass of suddenly displaced air.
The question of how bodies were recorded still did not have a satisfactory answer. Many years ago, a captured agent of the Ethicals, a man calling himself Spruce, had said that a sort of chrono-scope, an instrument which could look back in time, recorded the cells of human beings. Of every person who had ever lived from about two million B.C. to 2008 a.d.
Burton did not believe this. It did not seem possible that anything could go backward in time, bodily or visually. Frigate had expressed his disbelief, too, saying that Spruce probably had used "chronoscope" in a figurative sense. Or perhaps he had lied.
Whatever the whole truth, the resurrection and the grail food could be explained in purely physical terms.
"What is it, Burton?" the chief said politely. "You have been seized by a spirit?"
Burton smiled and said, "No, I was just thinking. We too have talked to many who said that no one has been translated for a year in their areas. Of course, this may just mean that the places through which we voyaged may not have had any translatees. It is possible that there have been translatees elsewhere. After all, The River may be ..."
He paused. How could he put across the concept of a River which was possibly 10,000,000 or more kilometers long to people who did not understand any number above twenty?
"It may be so long that a man who sailed from one end of The River to the other would take as many years to do it as the combined lifetimes of your grandfather, father, and yourself on Earth.
"Thus, even though there may be as many deaths as there are blades of grass between two grailstones, that still would not be much compared to the numbers who live along The River. Even though we have voyaged very far, we still have not gone far compared to the length of The River. So, there may be many areas where the dead have risen.
"Also, not as many people die now as in the first twenty years here. The many, many little states have been permanently established. Few slave states now exist. People have made states which keep order among their own citizens and protect them from other states. The evil people who lusted for power and the food and goods of others were killed off. It is true they popped up elsewhere, but in other areas they found themselves without their supporters. Things are fairly well settled now, though, of course, there are still accidents, mainly from fishing, and individuals do kill, though chiefly from passion.
"There are not so many dying nowadays. It is possible that the areas through which we went just were not the areas in which translatees appeared."
"Do you really believe that?" the chief said. "Or are you saying that merely to make us feel happy?"
Burton smiled again. "I do not know."
"Perhaps," the chief said, "it is as the shamans of the Church of the Second Chance tell us. That this world is only a stepping stone, a way station, to another. A world even better than this one. The shamans say that when a person becomes a very good man here, much better than he was on Earth, he goes on to a world where the great spirits truly dwell. Though the shamans do insist that there is only one great spirit. I cannot believe that, since everybody knows that there are many spirits, born high and low."
"That is what they say," Burton replied. "But how should they know any more than you or I know?"
"They say that one of the spirits that made this world appeared to the man who founded their church. This spirit told the man that this was so."
"Perhaps the man who claims this is mad or a liar," Burton said. "In any event, I would have to talk to this spirit myself. And he would have to prove that he was indeed a spirit."
"I do not trouble myself about such matters," the chief said. "It is better to leave the spirits alone, to enjoy life as it is and to be one whom the tribe finds good."
"Perhaps that is the wisest course," Burton said.
He did not believe this. If he did, why was he so determined to get to the headwaters of The River and to the sea behind the mountains ringing the north pole, the sea that was said to have at its center a mighty tower in which the secret makers and rulers of this world lived?
The chief said, "I mean no offense, Burton, but I am one who can see into a person. You smile and you tell funny stories, but you are troubled. You are angry. Why do you not quit voyaging on that small vessel and settle down? You have a good woman, all, in fact, that any man needs. This is a good place. There is peace, and thieves are unknown, except for an occasional passerthrough. There are not many fights except between men who want to prove that one is stronger than the other or between a man and his woman because they cannot get along with each other. Any sensible person would enjoy this area."
"I am not offended," Burton said. "However, for you to understand me, you would have to listen to the story of my life, here and on Earth. And even then you might not understand. How could you when I don't understand it myself?"
Burton fell silent then, thinking of another chief of a primitive tribe who had told him much the same thing. This was in 1863 when Burton, as Her Majesty's consul for the west African island of Fernando Po and the Bight of Biafra, visited Gelele, king of Dahomey. Burton's mission was to talk the king into stopping the bloody annual human sacrifices and the slave trade. His mission had failed, but he had collected enough data to write two volumes.
The drunken, bloody-minded, lecherous king had acted highhandedly with him, whereas when Burton had visited Benin its king had crucified a man in his honor. Still, they had gotten along rather well, considering the circumstances. In fact, on a previous visit, Burton had been made an honorary captain of the king's Amazon guard.
Gelele had said that Burton was a good man but too angry.
Primitive people were good at reading character. They had had to be to survive.
Monat, the Arcturan, sensing that Burton's withdrawal was lowering the high spirits of the occasion, began to tell stories of his native planet. Monat had somewhat awed the islanders at first because of his obviously nonhuman origin. However, he had no trouble in warning them, since he knew exactly how to make a human being feel at ease. He should have; he had had to do this every day of his life on The Riverworld.
After a while, Burton arose and said that his crew should be getting to bed. He thanked the Ganopo for their hospitality but said that he had changed his mind about staying there for several days. His original intention to rest there while he studied them was gone.
"We would like very much for you to stay here," the chief said. "For a few days or for many years. Whichever you prefer."
"I thank you for that," Burton said. He quoted the words of a character from The Thousand and One Nights. "Allah afflicted me with a love of travel."
He then quoted himself, "Travelers like poets are mostly an angry race."
That at least made him laugh, and he went to the boat feeling less gloomy. Before going to bed, he set the watches. Frigate protested that a guard wasn't needed in this isolated place where the few inhabitants seemed to be honest. He was overruled, which was no surprise to him. He knew that Burton thought that acquisitiveness was the mainspring of human action.
Burton was thinking of this and other events of last night, including the dreams. He stood for a while, smoking a cigar, while Frigate stood by him. The assemblage of closely packed stars and wide-spreading gas sheets paled as they silently watched. Dawn would be coming within a half-hour. Its light would wash out most of the celestial objects, would spread out for some time before the sun finally cleared the northern mountain wall.
They could see the fog, like a woolly blanket, covering The River and the plains on both banks. It lapped against the tree-covered hills, on the sides of which were a few lights. Beyond the hills of the valley were the mountains, inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees for the first thousand feet or 305 meters or so, then ascending straight up, smooth as a mirror, for 10,000 feet or about 3048 meters.
During his first years here, Burton had estimated the mountains to be about 20,000 feet or 6096 meters high. He was not the only one to make that error when only the eye was available for calculation. After he had been able to construct rather crude surveying instruments, however, he had determined that the mountain walls were, generally, twice as low as he had thought. Their blue-grey or black rock created an illusion. Perhaps this was because the valley was so narrow, and the walls made the dwellers feel even more pygmyish.
This was a world of illusions, physical, metaphysical, and psychological. As on Earth, so here.
Frigate had lit a cigarette. He had quit smoking for a year, but now, as he put it, he had "fallen from grace." He was almost as tall as Burton. His eyes were hazel. His hair was almost as black as his companion's, though it reflected a reddish undercoating in sunlight. His features were irregular: bulging supraorbital ridges, a straight nose of average size but with large nostrils, full lips, the upper very long, a clefted chin. The latter seemed to recede because of his unusually short jaw.
On Earth he had been, among many other things, one of that rare but vigorous breed which collected all literature by, about, and relevant to Burton. He hadn also written a biography of him but had eventually novelized it as A Rough Knight for the Queen.
On first meeting him, Burton had been puzzled when Frigate had identified himself as a science fiction writer.
"What in Gehenna is that?"
"Don't ask me to define science fiction," Frigate had said. "No one was ever able to give it a completely satisfactory definition. However, what it is ... was ... was a genre of literature in which most of the stories took place in a fictional future. It was called science fiction because science was supposed to play a large part in it. The development of science in the future, that is. This science wasn't confined to physics and chemistry but also included extrapolations of the sociological and psychological science of the author's time.
"In fact, any story that took place in the future was science fiction. However, a story written in 1960, for instance, which projected a future of 1984, was still classified as science fiction in 1984.
"Moreover, a science fiction story could take place in the present or the past. But the assumption was that the story was possible because it was based on the science of the author's time, and he merely extrapolated, more or less rigorously, what a science could develop into.
"Unfortunately, this definition included stories in which there was no science or else science poorly understood by the author.
"However (there are a lot of howevers in science fiction), there were many stories about things which could not possibly happen, for which there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. Lake time travel, parallel worlds, and faster-than-light drives. Living stars, God visiting the Earth in the flesh, insects tail as buildings, world deluges, enslavement through telepathy, and more in an endless list."
"How did it come to be named science fiction?"
"Well, actually, it was around a long time before a man named Hugo Gernsback originated the label. You've read the Jules Verne novels and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, haven't you? Those were considered to be science fiction."
"It sounds as if it were just fantasy," Burton had said.
"Yes, but all fiction is fantasy. The difference between mundane fantasy, what we called mainstream literature, and science fiction was that mainstream stories were about things which could have happened. They also always took place in the past or the present.
"Science fiction stories were about things that could not happen or were highly improbable. Some people wanted to name it speculative literature, but the term never caught on."
Burton never thoroughly understood what science fiction was, but he did not feel bad about it. Frigate couldn't explain it clearly either, though he could give numerous examples.
"Actually," Frigate had said, "science fiction was one of those many things that don't exist but nevertheless have a name. Let's talk about something else."
Burton had refused to drop the subject. "Then you were in a profession which didn't exist?"
"No, the profession of writing science fiction existed. It was just that science fiction per se was nonexistent. This is beginning to sound like a dialog in Alice in Wonderland."
"Was the money you made from your writings also nonexistent?"
"Almost. Well, that's an exaggeration. I didn't starve in a garret, but I also wasn't driving a gold-plated Cadillac."
"What's a Cadillac?"
Thinking of that now, Burton found it strange that the woman who slept with him was the Alice who had been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's two masterpieces.
Suddenly, Frigate said, "What's that?"
Burton looked eastward toward the strait. Unlike the areas above and below it, the strait had no banks. High hills rose abruptly along its length, hills which were smooth walls. Below the strait something-no, two objects-were moving toward him, seemingly suspended above the fog.
He climbed a rope ladder to get a better look. The two objects were not suspended in the air. Their lower parts were just hidden by the mists. The nearest was a wooden structure with what seemed to be a human figure on its top. The second, much farther back, was a large, round, black object.
He called down. "Pete! I think it's a raft! A very large one! It's moving with the current, and it's headed directly toward us! There's a tower with a pilot on it. He isn't moving, though, just standing there. Surely ..."
No, not surely. The man on the tower had not moved. If he were awake, he would have seen that the raft was on a collision course.
Burton hooked an arm around a rope, cupped his hands, and bellowed warnings. The figure leaning against the guardrail did not move. Burton stopped shouting at him.
"Wake up everybody!" he thundered at Frigate. "On the double! We must get the boat out of the way!"
He climbed swiftly down and went over the side onto the dock. Here, where his head was below the surface of the fog, he could see nothing. By running one hand along the hull, however, he could feel his way to the mooring posts. By the time he had untied two lines, he heard the others on the deck above. He shouted that Monat and Kazz should get onto the dock on the other side and untie the lines there.
In his haste, he rammed into a post and for several seconds hopped around holding his knee. Then he resumed his work.
Having completed his part of unloosing, he groped back along the hull. Someone had by then let down the gangway. He went up it, his hands sliding along the railing, and came aboard. Now he could see the tops of the women's heads and the American's face.
Alice said, "What's going on?"
"Have you gotten the poles out?" he said to Frigate.
"Yeah."
He swung up onto the rope ladder again. The two objects were still on a course that must end at the docks. The man on the watch tower had not moved.
By now there were voices coming from the island. The Ganopo were awake and calling out questions.
Monat's head and shoulders rose from the greyness. He looked like a monster sliding up out of the fog of a Gothic novel. The skull was similar to that of a human being's, but the fleshy features made him seem only semihuman. Thick black eyebrows curved down alongside the face to knobbed cheekbones and flared out to cover them. Thin membranes that swung with the movement of his head hung from the lower part of his nostrils. At the end of his nose was a deeply cleft boss of cartilage. His lips were like a dog's, thin, black, and leathery. The lobeless ears were convoluted like seashells.
Kazz bellowed somewhere near Monat. Burton could not see him since he was the second shortest of the crew, only about 5 feet or 1.5 meter tall. Then he came very close, and Burton could make out the squat figure.
"Get the poles and push the boat from the docks!'' Burton yelled.
"Where in hell are they?" Besst called.
Frigate said, "I pulled them from the rack. They're on the deck below it."
Burton said, "Follow me," and then he cursed as he stumbled over something and fell flat on his face. He was up again at once, only to bump into somebody. From the bulky shape, he thought it must be Besst.
After some confusion, the poles were gotten and their wielders were stationed along the sides. At Burton's orders, they thrust the ends against the top of the dock, there being no room between the hull and the side of the dock for the poles to shove against the stone bottom of the underwater shelf. Since they had to fight against the current, which was strongest on the middle of the lake, they could only move the vessel very slowly. Once past the dock, they lowered the ends of the poles into the water and pushed against the rocky bottom. Even so, the poles slipped on the bare, smooth rock.
Burton ordered that they should let the prow of the boat swing around. This was done, and then the polers on the port side moved to the starboard to help the others keep the vessel from drifting side-wise against the spire. At this point, both the beach and the underwater shelf abruptly ceased. Now they had to hold the poles horizontally and shove against the wall of the spire.
Burton, hearing an unknown voice, looked back. The dark figure on the tower was moving now and screaming down into the fog. Other voices, fainter than the pilot's, came through the mists.
The large, round, dark object had become even larger. In the starlight it looked like the head of a giant. He estimated that the distance between the tower and the other object was about 100 meters. That meant that the raft which carried them was huge. He had no idea how wide it was, and he hoped he did not find out until after the boat was on the other side of the island.
Just before he turned back to his task, he saw another man appear on the tower. He was waving his hands, and his shrill voice dominated the other man's.
"Here it comes!" Frigate called out.
Burton didn't blame him for sounding panicked. He was in a frenzy himself. All that weight and momentum, hundreds, perhaps thousands of logs, were moving toward the Hadji II.
"Push your guts out!" he yelled. "We'll be crushed if you don't!"
By then the bowsprit, the large spar projecting forward of the ship, had cleared the spire. About ten more pushes should clear the corner, and the Hadji II would be taken by the current past the spire, away from the danger.
The yelling from the raft was loud and close. Burton spared a glance at the tower. It was only a little over 400 feet or 122 meters away. Furthermore, the side of the tower had turned a little. He cursed. That meant that the raft had turned, or been turned, off its course to avoid striking the island in its center part. Unfortunately, it was going to the left instead of to the right.
"Heave!" Burton shouted.
He wondered where the tower was located. Was it on the very prow of the raft or was it set back? If the latter was the situation, then there would be a large part of the raft forward of the tower. That meant that somewhere under the fog the forward part of the raft was very near the boat.
In any case, the raft was not going to miss the island. He did not care about that if it did not strike the boat.
A man on the tower was screaming orders in an unknown language down into the mists.
The prow of the Hadji II was now past the spire. But here the strong current at the corner had pressed the boat against the rocky wall, and their poles were slipping on the rock, which was smoother than that just passed.
"Push, you sons of bitches, push!" Burton thundered.
There was a roar, an abrupt lifting of the deck, a tilting inward toward the rock. Burton was dashed against a bright hardness that made him go soft and black inside. Dimly, he was aware that he had fallen back onto the deck, was lying on his back, was trying to get up in the dark greyness. Screams arose from around him. These and the snapping of smashed timbers and a final explosion, the impact of the forward part of the raft against the rock, were the last things he heard.
Fog blinded Jill Gulbirra.
By keeping close to the right bank of The River, she could barely discern the grailstones. They looked ominous, like giant toadstools in a dismal wasteland.
The next one should be the end of her odyssey. She had been counting them as she passed them, counting all night.
Now, a phantom in a ghost canoe, she paddled on. The wind was dead, but she revived it a little, or made it a pseudowind, by her own motion, driving against the current. The heavy wet air rubbed against her face like ectoplasmic curtains.
Now she saw a fire by the stone which had to be her destination. It had been a small spark. Now it was bigger, glowing palely, a ghost of a fire. From near it the voices of men. Disembodied voices.
She herself, she thought, must look like the spirit of a nun. White cloths held together by concealed magnetic tabs swathed her body. One cloth formed a hood so that anyone near enough in the fog would see her face as a darker blank in the dark greyness.
Her few belongings crouched on the floor of the canoe. In this wet, dim woolliness, they were two small beasts, white and grey. Near her was a tall grey metal cylinder, her "tucker box.'' Beyond it was a bundle, cloths containing various items. A bamboo flute. A ring of oak set with polished jadeite stone, her lover's gift, a lover departed but dead in only one sense-as far as she knew. A bag of dragonfish leather, crammed with artifacts and memories. Tied to the bundle, but invisible in this darkness, was a leather case holding a yew bow and a quiver of arrows.
Under her seat lay a spear, a bamboo shaft tipped with a hornfish horn. By it lay two heavy oak war-boomerangs and a bag containing two leather slings and forty stones.
As the fire brightened, the voices became louder. Who were they ? Guards? Drunken revelers? Slavers hoping to catch just such as she? Early worms out to catch a bird?
She smiled grimly. If they wanted violence, they would get it.
However, they sounded more like drunks. If what she had been told down-River was true, she was in peaceful territory. Neither Parolando nor its neighboring states practiced grail slavery. She could have sailed the canoe boldly in daylight, according to her information. She would be welcomed and free, free to come or to go. Moreover, it was true that they, Parolandoj, were building a giant airship.
But distrust was her native element, though she could not be blamed for that. Consider her terrible experiences. So, she would scout around in the dark. It would require more work and inconvenience; it would be inefficient. You had to make your choice between survival and efficiency, though in the long run survival was optimum efficiency, no matter how much time and effort it took.
Death was no longer a temporary event in the Rivervalley. Resurrection seemed to have stopped, and with its cessation the ancient terror had returned.
Now the fire was bright enough for her to see the huge toadstool shape. The blaze was just beyond it. Four figure, black outlines, moved by the flames. She could smell the smoke of bamboo and pine, and she thought she whiffed cigars. Why had the disgusting cigars been provided by the Mysterious Donors?
They were talking in somewhat slurred English. Either they had been drinking or English was not their native tongue. No. The voice now booming through the fog belonged to an American.
"No!" the man bellowed. "By the holy flaming rings of buggered Saturn, no! It's not sheer ego, downright stinking hubris! I want to build the biggest ever built, a fabulous ship, a true queen of the skies, a colossus, a leviathan! Bigger than Earth or The River-world has ever seen or will ever see again! A ship to make everybody's eyes bug out, make them proud they're human! A beauty! A wondrous behemoth of the air! Unique! Like nothing that ever existed before! What? Don't interrupt, Dave! I'm flying high, and I'm going to keep on flying until we get there! And then some!"
"But, Milt!"
"But me no buts! We need a big one, the biggest, the grandest, for purely logical scientific reasons. My God, man, we have to go higher, further, than any dirigible ever has! We have to range 16,900 kilometers maybe, depending upon where the boat is! And God only knows what winds we'll run into! And it's all one vast one-shot! Do you hear me, Dave, Zeke, Cyrano? A one-shot!"
Her heart would not quit racing. "Dave" had spoken with a German accent. They must be the very men she was looking for. What luck! No, not luck. She had known how many kilometers distant, counted by the grailstones spaced along the bank, her destination was. And she had been told exactly where the headquarters of Milton Firebrass was. And she knew that David Schwartz, the Austrian engineer, was one of Firebrass' lieutenants.
"It'll take too much time, too much material," a man said .loudly. His speech was that of a native of Maine. There was something, or was it just her overactive imagination, of the shriek of the wind in rigging, the creaking of rope and wood in a rolling ship, the thunder of surf, the flapping of sails, in his voice? Imagination, of course.
"Stop that, Jill," she told herself. If Firebrass had not called him Zeke, she would not now be imposing open-sea-sailing-ship images. on the voice. He would be Ezekiel Hardy, captain of a New Bedford whaler, killed by a sperm whale off the coast of Japan-1833?- and he had convinced Firebrass that he would make an excellent helmsman or navigator for the airship. After suitable training, of course. Firebrass must really be hard up for a crew if he signed on an early-nineteenth-century whaling ship skipper. The man had probably never even seen a balloon, maybe not even a steam-driven riverboat.
The grapevine had it that Firebrass had had little success so far in finding experienced airshipmen. Men, of course. Always men. So, he had accepted candidates who seemed most likely to benefit from training. Airplane pilots. Balloonists. Sailors. Meanwhile, the word had spread up and down The River for 60,000 kilometers, perhaps 100,000, that Firebrass wanted lighter-than-air men. Always men.
What did Firebrass know about building and flying a gasbag? He may have journeyed to Mars and Ganymede, orbited Jupiter and Saturn, but what did that have to do with dirigibles? David Schwartz, it was true, had designed and built the first truly rigid dirigible. It had also been the first to have a structure and skin made completely from aluminum. This was in 1893, sixty years before she had been born. He'd then started to build a better airship-in Berlin, 1895?-but work had stopped on it when Schwartz had died-January, 1897?
She was not sure now. Thirty-one years on The River had dimmed much of memories on Earth.
She wondered if Schwartz knew what had happened after he had died. Probably not unless he'd met some gasbag freak, a layman Zepfan. Schwartz's widow had carried on his work, and yet no book Jill had read had bothered to note her first name or her maiden name. She was only Frau Schwartz. She had gotten the second ship built, despite being only a woman. And some male jackass had flown the aluminum ship (which looked more like a thermos bottle than anything else), had panicked, and had wrecked it.
All that was left of Schwartz's dream and his wife's devotion to it was a crumpled mass of silvery-looking metal. So much for dreams in a high wind when a big phallus, lilliputian brains, and mouse courage were at the controls. Now, if the jackass had been a woman, her name would have been recorded. See what happens when a woman leaves the kitchen? If God had intended . . .
Jill Gulbirra trembled, a hot ache in her chest. Get hold of yourself, she murmured. Cool does it or you blow it.
She started from her reverie. While she had been dreaming of Frau Schwartz's dream, she had allowed the canoe to be carried down-River. The fire had become smaller, and the voices fainter, and yet she had not noticed. Better bloody watch out, she told herself. She had to be ever alert, or she would never convince the powers-that-be that she was qualified to be one of the airship crew. To be captain?
"There's plenty of time!" Firebrass thundered. "This isn't any government-contract, low-fund, high-pressure project! It'll be thirty-seven years or more before Sam gets to the end of The River. It'll only take two-maybe three-years to complete the beast. Meanwhile , we'll use the blimp for training. And then we' re off, heigh ho for the wild blue yonder, the misty sea of the north pole, where no Santa Claus, but somebody who's given us gifts that make Saint Nick look like the world's worst tightwad, lives! Off to the Misty Tower, the Really Big Grail!"
The fourth man spoke up now. He had a pleasant baritone, but it was evident that English was not his natal speech. What was it? It sounded like a French accent in some ways but. . . Yes, of course. That could be Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, if she could believe what she had heard at about hundredth hand. It just did not seem possible that she would soon be talking to him. Perhaps she wouldn't be, since there were so many phonies on The River.
There was silence for a moment, the silence that only the River-valley knew-when people kept their mouths shut. No birds, no animals (especially no barking dogs), no mechanical monsters roaring, bellowing, buzzing, screeching, no tooting horns, no whooping or screaming sirens, no shrieking brakes, no loud radios, no blaring loudspeakers. Only water lapping against shore and then a splash as a fish leaped out and fell back. And the crackle of wood in the fire.
"Ah!" Firebrass said. "Smooth! Better'n anything I ever had on Earth! And free, free! But when, when will the airmen show up? I need more men with experience, real gasbaggers!"
Schwartz made a smacking sound-Jill could see the bottle tilted above his lips now-and he said, "So! You are not so unworried!"
The canoe touched shore, and she got out of it without tipping it. The water was up to her waist, but the magnetically sealed cloths kept the cold liquid out. She waded closer and lifted the long, heavy canoe, moving forward until she was on shore. She let the craft down and dragged it until its entire length was out of the stream. The bank was only about 30 centimeters above the water level. She stood for a moment, planning her entrance, then decided not to go armed.
"Oh, I'll get them eventually," Firebrass was saying.
She stepped closer, sliding her feet over the short grass. .
"I'm the one you're looking for," she said loudly.
The four whirled, one almost falling and grabbing another. They stared, their mouths and eyes dark holes in paleness. Like her, they were covered with cloths but theirs were brightly colored. If she had been an enemy, she could have put an arrow into each one before they could grab their weapons--if they had such. Then she saw that they did have guns, placed on the edge of the mushroom top of the grailstone.
Pistols! Made of iron! So, it was true!
Now she suddenly saw a rapier, a long, steel sharp-pointed blade, in the hand of the tallest man there. His other hand brushed his hood back and revealed a long, dark face with a big nose. He had to be the fabled Cyrano de Bergerac.
Cyrano reverted to seventeenth-century French, of which she could understand only a few words.
Firebrass. pushed his hood back, too.
"I almost crapped in my britches! Why didn't you warn us you were coming?"
She lowered her hood.
Firebrass stepped closer and looked keenly at her. "It's a woman!"
"Nevertheless, I'm your man," Jill said.
"What'd you say?"
"Don't you understand English!" she said angrily.
Her displeasure was more at herself. She had been so excited, though pretending to be composed, that she'd reverted to her Toowoomba dialect. She might as well have spoken in Shakespearean English for all they understood. She repeated, in the standard Midwestern American she'd learned so painstakingly, "Nevertheless, I'm your man. My name, by the way, is Jill Gulbirra."
Firebrass introduced himself and the others, then said, "I need another drink.''
"I could use one myself," Jill said. "It's a fallacy that alcohol warms you up, but it does make you think you're warmed up."
Firebrass stopped and picked up a bottle-the first glass Jill had seen for years. He handed it to her and she drank the scotch without wiping the mouth of the bottle. After all, there were no disease germs on The River. And she had no prejudices about drinking from a bottle that had been in the mouth of a half-black. Wasn't her grandmother an aborigine? Of course, abos were not Negroes. They were black-skinned archaic Caucasians.
Why was she thinking such thoughts?
Cyrano, his head stuck forward, his back bent, walked up to her. He looked her over, shook his head, and said, "Mordioux, the hair is shorter than mine! And there is no makeup! Are you sure she is a woman?"
Jill moved the scotch around in her mouth and swallowed it. It was delicious, and it warmed all the way down.
"We shall see," the Frenchman said. He put his hand on her left breast and squeezed gently.
Jill sank a fist into his hard belly. He bent over, and Jill brought her knee up against his chin. He fell heavily.
Firebrass said, "What the hell?" and stared at her.
"How would you react if he felt your crotch to see if you were a man?"
"Simply thrilled, honey," Firebrass said. He whooped with laughter and danced around while the other two men looked at him as if they thought he was crazy.
Cyrano got onto his hands and knees and then onto his feet. His face was red, and he was snarling. Jill wanted to back away, especially after he picked up the rapier. But she did not move, and she said, her voice steady, "Do you always take such familiarities with strange women?"
A shudder went over him. The redness faded away, and the snarl became a smile. He bowed. "No, madame, and my apologies for such inexcusable manners. I do not usually drink, since I do not like to cloud my mind, to become bestial. But tonight we were celebrating the anniversary of the departure of the Riverboat."
"No sweat," Jill said. "Just don't let it happen again."
Though she smiled, she was cursing herself for having begun in such a bad way with a man for whom she had a great admiration. It was not her fault, but she could not expect him to forgive her for having felled him so easily before witnesses. No male ego could survive that.
THE MIST THINNED. NOW THEY DID NOT NEED THE FIRELIGHT TO see each other's faces. Below their waists the grey-white coils were still dense, however. The sky was brightening, though it would be some hours before the sun cleared the eastern peaks. The great white gas sheets that covered one-sixth of the sky had faded away with the lesser stars. Thousands of the giants still flamed red, green, white, blue, but their intensity, like gas jets slowly being turned off, was diminishing.
Westward, a dozen structures towered up from the mists. Her eyes widened, though she had heard about these through the grapevine and the drum-telegraph. Some were four-and-five-story-high buildings of sheet-iron and aluminum. Factories. But the colossus was an aluminum building, a hangar.
"It's the biggest I ever saw," she murmured.
"You ain't seen nothing yet," Firebrass said. He paused, then said, wonderingly, "So you have come to sign up?"
"I said that once."
He was The Man. He could hire and fire her. But she'd never been able to conceal irritation at stupidity. Repetition was wasteful and hence stupid. Here was a man who had a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a master's in electronic engineering. And the United States had not sent any dummies into space, though they may not have been brilliant. Maybe it was the liquor that made him seem stupid. As it did every man. And every woman, she hastened to remind herself. Be fair.
He was close, breathing the whiskey fumes up into her face. He was a head shorter than she, his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and deep chest making a curious contrast with long, skinny legs. His large eyes were brown, the balls bloodshot. His head was large, his forehead bulged, his bronze hair was so curly that it was almost kinky, his skin was bronze-red. He was supposed to be a mulatto, but the Caucasian and Onondaga Indian genes seemed to be dominant. He could pass for a Provencal or Catalonian. Or just about anything South European.
He looked her up and down. Was his bold stare supposed to challenge her to knock him down as she had Cyrano?
Jill said, "What are you thinking of? My qualifications for airship officer? Or what kind of body is under these baggy towels?"
Firebrass burst out laughing. When he had recovered, he said, "Both."
Schwartz looked embarrassed. He was short and slight, blue eyed and brown haired. Jill glared at him, and he turned away. Ezekiel Hardy was, like Cyrano, almost as tall as she. He was narrow faced, high cheekboned, black haired. He stared at her with hard pale-blue eyes.
"I'll repeat this because it needs to be stressed," she said. "I'm as good as any man and ready to prove it. And I'm a godsend. I have an engineering degree and I can design an airship from A to Z. I have 8342 hours flight-time in four different types of blimp. I can handle any post, including captain."
"What proof do we have?" Hardy said. "You could be lying."
"Where are your papers?" Jill said. "And even if you were skipper of a whaling ship, so what? What qualification is that for a dirigible man?"
"Now, now," Firebrass said. "Don't let us get our bowels in an uproar. I believe you, Gulbirra. I don't think you're one of the many phonies I've had to put up with.
"But let's get one thing straight. You are a hell of a lot more qualified than I am-as of this moment, anyway-to command the ship. But nevertheless, I am the captain, the boss, the head cheese! I'm running this whole show from start to finish. On the ground and up there. I didn't give up being chief engineer on Clemens' boat so I could take a minor position in this project.
"It's Captain Firebrass, and don't ever forget that. If that's okay, signed and sealed in blood, then I'll be jumping with joy to welcome you aboard. You might even be first mate-no sexual implications involved-though I can't promise that. The roster is a long way from being filled."
He paused, cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes.
"First thing off. You have to swear by your personal honor-and by God, if you believe in one-that you'll obey the laws of Parolando. No ifs, ands, buts."
Gulbifra hesitated. She licked her lips, feeling their dryness. She desired-no, lusted for-the airship. She could visualize it even now. It hovered over them, casting a shadow over her and Firebrass, shining silvery where the imaginary sun struck it.
"I'm not going to sacrifice any of my principles!" she said. She spoke so loudly that she startled the men. "Are men and women equal here? Is there any discrimination in sex, race, nationality, and so forth? Especially in sex?"
"No," Firebrass said. "Theoretically and legally, that is. Actually, that is, personally, there is, of course. And there is, as there has always been everywhere and everytime, discrimination based on competency. We have high standards here. If you're one of those who think that a person should be given a job just because he-or she-belongs to a group that has been discriminated against, forget it. Or move your ass on out of here."
She was silent for a moment. The men looked at her, obviously aware of the struggle inside her.
Firebrass grinned again. "You're not the only one in agony," he said. "I want you in the worst way, just as you want in the worst way, that is, the best way, to be one of the crew. But I've got my principles, just as you have yours."
He jerked a thumb at Schwartz and Hardy. "Look at them. Both nineteenth-century. One's an Austrian; one, a New Englander. But they've not only accepted me as the captain, they're good friends. Maybe they still believe, way deep down, that I'm an uppity nigger, but they'd take a poke at anyone who called me that. Right, men?"
They nodded.
"Thirty-one years on The Riverworld changes a person. If he's capable of being changed. So, what do you say? Want to hear the constitution of Parolando?"
"Of course. I wouldn't make a decision until I knew what I was getting into."
"It was formulated by the great Sam Clemens, who left on his boat, the Mark Twain, almost a year ago."
"The Mark Twain? That's pretty egostistical, isn't it?"
"The name was chosen by popular vote. Sam protested, though not very strongly. Anyway, you interrupted me. There's an unwritten rule that nobody interrupts the captain. So here goes. We, the people of Parolando, do hereby declare ..."
There was no hesitation nor, as far as she knew, any mistakes in the long recital. The almost total lack of the written word had forced the literate population to rely on memory. A skill that once had flourished only among preliterates-and actors-was now general property.
While the words rose to the sky, the sky became brighter. The mists shrank to their knees. The valley floor was still covered with what looked at a distance like snow. The foothills beyond the plains were no longer distorted. The long hillgrass, the bushes, the iron-trees, oaks, pines, yews, and bamboo no longer looked like a Japanese painting, misty, unreal, and far off. The huge flowers that grew from the thick vines intertwined on the irontree branches were beginning to collect color. When the sun would hit them, they would glow with vivid reds, greens, blues, blacks, whites, yellows, stripes and diamonds of mixed colors.
The western precipices were blue-black stone on which were enormous splotches of bluish-green lichen. Here and there, narrow cataracts fell dull-silvery down the mountain sides.
All of this was familiar to Jill Gulbirra. But each morning awoke in her the same sense of awe and wonder. Who had formed this many-million-kilometers-long Rivervalley? And why? And how and why had she, along with an estimated thirty-four to thirty-seven billion people, been resurrected on this planet? Everybody who had ever lived from about 2,000,000 b.c. to 2008 a.d. seemed to have been raised from the dead. The exceptions were children who'd died at or under the age of five and the mentally retarded. And also, possibly, the hopelessly insane, though there was doubt about the definition of hopelessly.
Who were the people who had done this? Why?
There were rumors and tales, strange, disturbing, and maddening, of people who had appeared among the lazari. Briefly. Mysteriously. They were named, among other things, the Ethicals.
"Are you listening?'' Firebrass said. She became aware that they were staring at her. "I can give you back, almost verbatim, what you've said so far," she answered.
This wasn't true. But she was sensitized-keeping one ear open, as it were, like an antenna receiving on a single frequency-for what she considered important.
Now the people were coming out of the huts, stretching, coughing, lighting up cigarettes, heading for the bamboo-walled latrines, or walking toward The River, grails in hand. The hardy wore only a towel; most were clad from head to foot. Bedouins of the Rivervalley. Phantoms in a mirage.
Firebrass said, "Okay. You ready to be sworn in? Or do you have mental reservations?"
"I never have those," she said. "What about you? In regard to me, I mean?"
"It wouldn't matter, anyway." He grinned again. "This oath is only a preliminary one. You'll be on probation for three months, then the people vote on you. But I can veto the vote. Then you take the final oath, if you pass. Okay?"
"Okay."
She didn't like it, but what could she do? She certainly wasn't going to walk out. Besides, though they didn't know it, they'd be on probation with her.
The air became warmer. The eastern sky continued to brighten, quenching all but a few giant stars. Bugles blew. The nearest was on top of a six-story bamboo tower, in the middle of the plain, and the bugler was a tall, skinny black wearing a scarlet towel around his waist.
"Real brass," Firebrass said. "There are some deposits of copper and zinc a little ways upstream. We could have taken them away from the people who owned it, but we traded instead. Sam wouldn't let us use force unless it was necessary.
"South of here, where Soul City used to be, were big deposits of cryolite and bauxite. The Soul Citizens wouldn't keep their side of the bargain-we were trading steel weapons for the ores-so, we went down and took it. In fact," he waved his hand, "Parolando now extends for 64 kilometers on both sides of The River."
The men removed all cloths except for those around the waist. Jill kept on a green-and-white-striped kilt and a thin, nearly transparent cloth around her breasts. They had looked like desert Arabs; now they were Polynesians.
The dwellers of the plains and the bases of the foothills were gathering by the Riverside. A number shucked all their cloths and jumped into the water, whooping at the cold and splashing each other.
Jill hesitated for a minute. She had sweat all day and all night paddling her canoe. She needed a bath, and sooner or later she'd have to disrobe entirely. She dropped her towels and ran to the bank and dived flatly out. After swimming back; she borrowed a bar of soap from a woman and lathered the upper part of her body. She came out of the water shivering and rubbed herself vigorously.
The men stared frankly, seeing a very tall woman, slim, long lagged, small breasted, wide hipped, deeply tanned. She had short, straight, russet hair and large russet eyes. Her face, as she well knew, was nothing to write home about. It was passable except for large buck teeth and a nose a little too long and too hawkish. The teeth were an inheritance from her blackfeller grandmother. There was nothing she could do about them. Nor was there anything she wanted to do about them.
Hardy's gaze was fastened on her pubic hair, which was extraordinarily long, thick, and ginger colored. Well, he'd get over that, and he was as close to it as he was ever going to get.
Firebrass went around the side of the grailstone and returned with a spear. Just below the steel head, attached to the shaft, was a large vertebral bone from a hornfish. He drove the spear straight into the ground beside her canoe.
"The bone means it's my spear, the captain's," he said. "I stuck it in the ground by the canoe to tell everybody that it's not to be borrowed without permission. There are a lot of things like that for you to learn. Meanwhile, Schwartz can show you your quarters and then give you a guided tour. Report to me at high noon under that irontree there."
He indicated a tree about 90 meters to the west. Towering over 300 meters, if had a thick, gnarly grey bark, scores of great branches extending 90 meters outward, huge elephant's-ear leaves with green and red stripes. Its roots surely drove down at least 120 meters, and its unburnable wood was so hard it would resist a steel saw.
"We call it The Chief. Meet me there."
The bugles rang out again. The crowds organized themselves into a military formation under the directions of officers. Firebrass pulled himself onto the top of the grailstone. He stood there, watching while the roll call was made. The corporals reported to the sergeants and the sergeants to the lieutenants, and they to the adjutant. Then Hardy to Firebrass. A moment later, the mob was dismissed. However, they did not leave. Firebrass got off the mushroom-shaped stone, and the corporals took his place. These put the grails in the depressions on the surface of the stone.
Schwartz was beside her. He cleared his throat. "Gulbirra? I'll take care of your grail."
She took it from the canoe and handed it to him. This was a grey metal cylinder, 45.72 centimeters across, 76.20 centimeters high, weighing empty about 0.55 kilogram. It had a lid which, once shut, could be lifted only by the owner. There was a curved handle on the lid. Tied to it by a bamboo fiber rope was her I.D., a tiny baked-clay dirigible. It bore her initials on both sides.
Schwartz ordered a man to place her grail on the stone. The man did so quickly, glancing often at the eastern peaks. But he was safe by two minutes. At the end of that time, the sun ballooned over the top. A few seconds later, the mushroom-shape spouted blue flames over 9 meters high. The roar of its discharged electricity mingled with the thunder of every stone on both sides of The River for as far as could be seen. All these years had not inured Jill to the sight nor sound. Though expecting it, she jumped a little. The report rolled back from the reflector of the mountains, echoed again, and died out with a mutter.
Everybody had breakfast.
They were on a foothill. the tall esparto-like grass had been recently mown to about a centimeter and a half-length. "We have some machines that do that, though much cutting is done with sickles," David Schwartz said. "The grass is made into ropes."
"We didn't have any machines where I come from," Jill said. "We used flint sickles. But we made rope from it, of course."
It was shady and cool here. The branches of an iron tree spread out to cover a small village, a scattering of square or round huts of bamboo. Many of them were thatched with the scarlet and green leaves of the iron tree. A rope ladder dangled from the lowest branch of the colossus, 33 meters up. Near it, a hut sat on a platform supported on two branches. There were other rope ladders, other platforms and huts here and there.
"Perhaps you will be assigned one of them after your probation," Schwartz said. "Meanwhile, here's your home."
Jill entered the indicated doorway. At least, she did not have to stoop in this. So many people were short and had therefore built low entrances.
She set her grail and bundles down on the floor. Schwartz followed her in. "This belonged to a couple killed by a dragonfish. It came up out of the water as if it had been fired from a cannon. It bit off one end of the fishing craft. Unfortunately, the couple were standing on the end and were swallowed along with the logs.
"It was also unfortunate that this happened after the resurrections ceased. So, they won't be appearing elsewhere, I suppose. You haven't heard anything about new lazari, have you? Recently?"
"No, I haven't," she said. "Nothing reliable, anyway."
"Why do you suppose it stopped? After all these years?"
"I don't know," she said sharply. Talking about this made her uneasy. Why had the gift of immortality been so suddenly withdrawn?
"Bloody hell with it," she said loudly. She looked around. The floor was hidden under grass that reached almost to her crotch. The blades rasped against her legs. She would have to cut the grass close to the ground and then bring in earth to cover it. Even then the blades might not die. The roots went so deep and were so interconnected that the grass could flourish without benefit of sunshine. Apparently they could draw their sustenance from the roots of those exposed to light.
A steel sickle hung from a peg on the wall. Steel was so common here that this tool, priceless elsewhere, had not been stolen.
She moved around, slowly, so that the sharp edges of the grass would not cut her legs. She found two clay pots-thundermugs-in the tall green. A jar for drinking water was on a bamboo table which had not as yet been overturned by the pressure of the growing grass. A necklace of fishbones hung on another peg. Two bamboo cots and pillows and mattresses, made from magnetically locked cloths stuffed with leaves, were partially hidden by the grass. Near them lay a harp made from turtlefish shell and fish intestines.
"Well, it's not much," she said. "But then it never is, is it?" "It's big enough, though," Schwartz said. "Plenty of room for you and your mate-when you find one."
Jill took the sickle from the peg and swiped at the grass. The blades fell like so many heads. "Hah!"
Schwartz looked at her as if he wondered if she would go from the grass to him.
"Why do you assume that I want a lover?" "Why, why, why, everybody, that is, everybody does." "Everybody doesn't," she said. She hung the sickle back onto the peg. "What's next on this Cook's tour?"
She had expected that, when they were alone in the hut, he would ask her to go to bed with him. So many men did. It was evident now that he would like to ask her, but he didn't have the guts. She felt relief mixed with contempt. Then she told herself that it was a strange feeling, self-contradictory. Why should she look down on him because he behaved as she wanted him to behave?
Perhaps some disappointment was also present. When a man got too aggressive, despite her warnings, then she chopped his neck with the edge of her hand, squeezed his testicles, kicked him in the stomach while he writhed on the ground. No matter how big and strong a man, he was taken by surprise. They were all helpless, at least while the agony in the testicles lasted. Afterward . . . well, most of them left her alone. Some had tried to kill her, but she was ready for that. They didn't know how handy she was with a knife- or with any weapon.
David Schwartz was unaware of how narrowly he had escaped crippling and a permanent dent in his ego.
"It's quite safe to leave your belongings here. We've never had a case of theft yet."
"I'll take the grail. I'd feel nervous if I couldn't keep my eye on it."
He shrugged and took a cigar from the leather bag hanging from his shoulder. One of this morning's offerings from his grail.
"Not in here," she said quietly. "This is my home, and I don't want it stunk up."
He looked surprised, but he shrugged again. As soon as they had stepped out, however, he lit it. And he moved from her left side to upwind, puffing vigorously, blowing in her direction.
Jill repressed the remark she wanted so much to make. It would be indiscreet to offend him too much, to give him a chance to blackmark her. After all, she was on probation; she was a woman; she wouldn't needlessly antagonize a man with such a high position, a good friend of Firebrass'. But she would bend her principles, her neck, only so far.
Or would she? She had taken a lot of crap on Earth because she had wanted to be an airship officer. And smiled and gone home and smashed dishes and pottery and written dirty words on the wall. Childish, but satisfactory. And here she was, in a similar situation, undreamed of until several years ago. She couldn't go someplace else, because there wasn't any other place. Here was where the only airship in the world would be built. And that was to be a one-shot, a single-voyage phenomenon.
Schwartz stopped on top of the hill. He pointed at an avenue formed by ridgepole pines. At its end, halfway down the hill opposite, was a long shed.
"The latrine for your neighborhood," he said. "You'll dump your nightpots in it first thing every morning. The urine in one hole and the excrement in the one next to it."
He paused, smiled, and said, "Probationers are usually given the task of removing the stuff every other day. They take it up the mountain to the gunpowder factory. The excrement is fed to the powder worms. The end product of their digestion is potassium nitrate, and ..."
"I know, "she said, speaking between clamped teeth. "I'm not a dummy. Anyway, that process is used wherever sulfur is available."
Schwartz teetered on his heels, happily puffing his cigar, tilted upward. If he had had suspenders, he would have snapped them.
"Most probationers put in at least a month working in the factory. It's unpleasant, but it's good discipline. It also weeds out those who aren't dedicated."
"Non carborundum illegitimatus," she said.
"What?" he said out of the side of his mouth.
"A Yank saying. Jack-Latin. Translation: Don't let the bastards grind you down. I can take any crap handed me-if it's worth doing it. Then it's my turn."
"You're a tough one."
"Too right. You have to be if you survive in a man's world. I thought perhaps things would be different here. They weren't, and aren't, but they will be,"
"We've all changed,'' he said slowly and somewhat sadly. "Not always for the better. If you'd told me in 1893 that I'd be listening to a woman, an upper-class woman, not a whore or a millhand, mind you, spewing filth and subversive ..."
"Instead of subservient, you mean," she said harshly.
"Allow me to finish. Subversive suffragette rot. And if you'd told me that it wouldn't particularly bother me, I'd have said you were a liar. But live and learn. Or, in our case, die and learn."
He paused and looked at her. The right side of her mouth jerked; her eyes narrowed.
"I could tell you to stick it,'' she said. "But I must get along with you. I will take only so much, however."
"You didn't understand all I said," he replied. "I said it doesn't bother me now. And I said, live and learn. I am not the David Schwartz of 1893. I hope you are not the Jill Gulbirra of ... when did you die?"
"In 1983."
They walked down the hill in silence, Jill carrying her grail on the end of her spear, which was on her shoulder. Schwartz stopped once to point out a stream that ran down from the hills. Its source was a cataract in the mountains. They came to a small lake between two hills. A man sat in a rowboat in the middle of the lake, a bamboo fishing pole in his hand, the float drifting toward a bush overhanging the bank. Jill thought he looked Japanese.
Schwartz said, "Your neighbor. His real name is Ohara, but he prefers to be called Piscator. He's crazy about Izaak Walton, whom he can quote verbatim. He says a man needs only one name in this world, and he's chosen Piscator. Latin for fisher. He's a fish freak, as you can see. Which is why he's in charge of the Parolando Riverdragon fishing. But today's his day off."
"That's interesting," she said. He was, she believed, leading up to something .unpleasant for her. The slight smile looked sadistic.
"He'll probably be the first mate of the airship," he said. "He was a Japanese naval officer and during the first part of World War I he was attached to the British Navy as an observer and trainee on dirigibles. Later, he was a trainee-observer on an Italian Navy airship which made bombing raids on Austrian bases. So, you see, he's had enough experience to rank him very high on the list."
"And he is a man." She smiled, though seething inside. "And though my experience is much much more than his, still, he's a man."
Schwartz backed away from her. "I'm sure Firebrass will appoint officers according to their merits only."
She did not reply.
Schwartz waved at the man in the boat. He rose from his seat and, smiling, bowed. Then he sat down, but not before giving her a look that seemed to sweep over her like a metaphysical radar beam, locating her place in the world, identifying her psychic construction.
Imagination, of course. But she thought that Schwartz was right when he said, "An extraordinary man, that Piscator."
The Japanese's black eyes seemed to burn holes in her back as she walked away.
Blackness outside. inside, a night writhing with snakes of pale lightning, twisty and fuzzy. Some time later, in a place where there was no time, a bright beam ahead shone as if from the lens of a movie projector. The light was a whisper in the air; in her mind, it was bellowing. The film was being shown on a cathode-ray oscilloscope; it was a series of letters, broken words, signs, and symbols, all part of an undeciphered code. Perhaps: undecipherable.
Worse, it seemed to run backward, spun back into the reel(ity?). It was a documentary made for television, for the boobish (boobed?) viewer of the boob tube. Yet, backward was an excellent technique. Images flashed to suggest, to reverberate, to echo, to evoke, to flap intimation upon intimation with electronic quickness. Like flipping the pages of an illustrated book from back to beginning. But the text, where was the text? And what was she thinking of when she thought of images? There were no images. No plot. Yes, there was a plot, but it had to be put together from many pieces. Ah, many pieces. She almost had it, but it had slipped away.
Moaning, she awoke. She opened her eyes and listened to the rain beating upon the thatched roof.
Now she remembered the first part of the dream. It was a dream of a dream, or what she thought was a dream but was not sure. It was raining, and she had half-awakened or had seemed to do so. The hut was 20,000 kilometers from this one, but it was almost identical, and the world outside the hut, as seen by occasional flashes of lightning, would not have differed much. She had turned, and her hand had not felt the expected flesh.
She had sat up and looked around. A lightning streak, close enough to make her jump, showed that Jack was not in the hut.
She had got up and lit a fish-oil lamp. Not only was he not there, his cloths, weapons, and grail were gone.
She had run out into the stormy night to look for him.
She never found him. He was gone, and no one knew where or why.
The only one who might have been able to tell her had also sneaked out that same night. He, too, had left his hutmate without saying a word about his intentions. It was apparent to Jill that the two had run off together. Yet, as far as she knew, they had been only casual acquaintances.
Why had Jack left her, so silently and heartlessly?
What had she done?
Was it just that Jack had decided that he did not want to put up with a woman who wouldn't play second fiddle in their relationship? Also, the wanderlust had gotten him again? With both motives pushing him, he had just up and went, to use one of his corny Americanisms?
Whatever was the truth, she was living with no man anymore, ever again. Jack was the best, and the last was the best, as it should be, but he had not been good enough.
She was on the rebound when she met Fatima, the little sloe-eyed Turk. Fatima, one of the hundreds of concubines of Mohammed IV (ruled Turkey from 1648-1687), had never gone to bed with him. She had, however, not suffered overmuch from lack of sexual satisfaction. There were plenty of fellow prisoners of the Seraglio who preferred their own sex as lovers, either through natural inclinations or conditioning. She became a favorite of Kosem, Mohammed's grandmother, though there was nothing overtly homosexual in their relationship.
But Turban, Mohammed's mother, sought to get control of the government from Kosem, and eventually Kosem was caught by a party of Turban's assassins and strangled to death with the cords from her own bed curtain. It was Fatima's bad fortune to be attending Kosem when this happened and so she had to share her fate.
Jill took the sexy little Turk in as hutmate after Fatima had quarreled with her lover, a French ballet danseuse (died 1873). Jill was not in love with her, but she was sexually exciting and, after a while, she became fond of her. Fatima, however, was ignorant and, worse, unteachable. She was selfish and would remain so, was infantile and would remain so. Jill got tired of her after a year. Even so, she was grief-stricken when Fatima was raped and then beaten to death by three drunken Sikeli (born 1000 B.C.?). Her grief was intensified by the knowledge (or belief, since there was no proof) that Fatima was truly dead. Resurrection had apparently stopped. No more would a dead person rise the next day at dawn far, far from the scene of his or her demise.
Before succumbing to her sorrow, however, Jill had put an arrow into each of Fatima's murderers. They were not going to rise elsewhere either.
Years later, she had heard rumors of the great dirigible that was being built up-River. She did hot know if they were true or not, but there was only one way to find out.
So here she was, though it had taken a long time to get here.
From The Daily Leak, a five-page newspaper. owner and owner and publisher: the state of Parolando. Editor: S.C. Bagg. In the upper left-hand corner above the headline is the standard notice:
CAVEAT LECTOR
By law, the reader must place this journal in a public recycling barrel the day after receipt. In case of emergency, it may be used for toilet paper. We recommend the Letters to the Editor page as most appropriate for this purpose. First offense: a public reprimand. Second: confiscation of all booze, tobacco, and dreamgum for a week. Third: permanent exile.
Prominent in the Newcomers section:
JILL GULBIRRA
We welcome, in spite of the advice of many, our latest female candidate for citizenship. On Sunday last, this tall drink of water appeared out of the predawn fog and accosted four of our leading public figures. Despite their certain state of inebriation and possibly lecherous thoughts, two conditions leading to mental fogginess, the quartet finally comprehended that their unexpected guest had traveled approximately 32,180 kilometers (or 20,000 miles, for you dummies and dodos). She had done this alone and in a canoe (and not been raped or dunked once) and all this odyssey was performed just to make sure that our airship project proceeds on proper lines. While not exactly demanding that she be appointed commander of the dirigible when it is commissioned, she did intimate that it would be to everybody's good if she did obtain this post.
After a few snorts of the divine product of Caledonia, the quartet partially recovered from this onslaught. (One witness thus describes her appearance: "Amazonly, with a demeanor of sheer brass nerves and ironclad guts, unseemly in any woman worthy of the name.")
The famous four inquired as to her credentials. She furnished these, which, if valid, are impressive indeed. A prominent citizen interviewed on the subject by our intrepid reporter, Roger "Nellie" Bligh, affirms that she is indeed what she claims to be. Though never having met her in his Terrestrial existence, he did read about her in various periodicals and once viewed her on television (a mid-twentieth-century invention which your editor did not live long enough to see and from all accounts was fortunate to have missed).
It seems that, unless this woman bears a remarkable physical resemblance to the genuine Jill Gulbirra, she is not one of the numerous phonies that have plagued this River-valley for far too long a time.
The Office of Vital (some say Deadly) Statistics has furnished us with the following information. Gulbirra, Jill (no middle name). Female. Natal name: Johnetta Georgette Redd. Born February 12, 1953, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. Father: John George Redd. Mother: Marie Bronze Redd. Heredity: Scotch-Irish, French (Jewish), Australian aborigine. Unmarried on Earth. Attended schools in Canberra and Melbourne. Graduated 1973 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Commercial aviator's license, four-motor. Free balloonist's license. Engineer-navigator on West German freighter blimp serving Nigerian government, 1977-78. Blimp pilot for Goodyear, United States, 1979. Blimp pilot for the Sheik of Kuwait, 1980-81. Blimp instructor for British Airways Systems, 1982. Became in 1983 the only qualified woman airship captain in the Western world. Logged 8342 hours airship flight time.
Died April 1, 1983 A.D., automobile accident near How-den, England, just before assuming command of the newly commissioned rigid airship Willows-Goodens.
Profession: obvious from above.
Skills: flute, archery, fencing, kendo, quarterstaff, martial arts, badmouthing.
She is pretty good with her dukes, too, having slammed a distinguished citizen, Cyrano "Schnozzola" deBergeracin the breadbasket, following with a knee to the jaw, rendering him hors de combat and speechless. This phenomenon occurred as a result of his having laid hands (without permission) upon her teat. Normally, the fiery Frenchman would have challenged anyone who handled him so savagely to a duel to the death (across the Parolando boundary, of course, since dueling is illegal in our fair state). But he is so old-fashioned that he would feel, as he put it "comme un imbecile," if he were to fight a woman. Moreover, he feels that he was in the wrong for having made advances without invitation "verbal" or "ocular."
An hour after suppertime yesterday, your enterprising intrepid appeared at the door of Gulbirra's hut and knocked. There were some grunts and then a querulous voice called. "What in hell do you want?" Apparently, the would-be interviewee didn't give a hoot about the identity of her caller.
"Miss Gulbirra, I'm Roger Bligh, reporter for The Daily Leak. I'd like to interview you."
"Well, you'll have to wait. I'm on the pot."
Your journalist lit up a cigar to pass the time. He also planned to use its burning tip later to clear out the fumes in the hut. After some time, during which he heard splashing of water in a basin, he heard, "Come on in. But leave the door open."
"Gladly," said your dauntless.
He found the subject seated at a chair by the table and smoking a joint. What with the cigar and maryjane and residue of the subject's recent occupation and the smoke from several fish wax candles, neither visibility nor olfactor-iness were at an optimum.
"Miss Gulbirra?"
"No. Miz." "What does the title mean?"
"Are you asking just to get my views or don't you really know? There are plenty of people of my time around. Surely, you've encountered Miz before?"
Your reporter confessed his ignorance.
Instead of enlightening Mr. Bligh, the subject said, "What is the position of women in Parolando?"
"In the daytime or at night?" Mr. Bligh said.
"Don't get smart with me," Miz Gulbirra said. "Let me put it simply so your mind can grasp exactly what I'm talking
about. Legally, that is, theoretically, women have equal
rights here. But in practice, in reality, what is the male
attitude toward females?"
"Mainly lecherous, I'm afraid," the intrepid replied.
"I'll give you one more chance,'' the subject said. "Then it'll be a question of chance and gravity which strikes the ground first outside the door, your ass or your stinking cigar."
"My apologies," the intrepid said. "But, after all, I am here to interview you, not vice versa. Why don't you ask our female citizens what they think of the male attitude toward them? Anyway, are you here to conduct a suffragette crusade or to build and to man (if I may use the word) the proposed dirigible?"
"Are you making fun of me?"
"The farthest thing from my mind," the dauntless said hastily. "We are quite modern here, even though the late-twentieth-centurians constitute only a small percentage of the population. The state is dedicated to the construction of the airship. To that goal, strict discipline during working hours is maintained. But a citizen may do what he damn well pleases on his hours off, as long as he doesn't hurt anybody else. So, let's get down to business. What is a Miz, not to be confused with amiss?"
"You aren't putting me on?"
"I'd swear by a stack of Bibles, if any existed."
"Briefly, it's a title which the members of the women's liberation movement in the sixties adopted. Miss and Mrs. were too indicative of male sexual attitudes. To be a Miss was to be unmarried, which automatically evoked contempt, consciously or unconsciously, on the part of the male, if the Miss were past marriageable age. It implied that something was lacking in the woman, and also that the Miss must be dying to be referred to as Mrs. That is, without an identity of her own, regarded as an appendage to her husband, a second-class citizen. Why should a Miss, for that matter, be known by her father's name? Why not her mother's?"
"In the latter case," our intrepid replied, "the name would still be a man's, the woman's father's name."
"Exactly. That is why I changed my name from Johnetta Georgette Redd-you'll notice that both my so-called Christian names are feminizations of masculine names-I changed it to Jill Gulbirra. My father raised hell about that, even my mother protested strongly. But she was a typical Aunt Dora-brainwashed."
''Interesting," Mr. Bligh said. "Gulbirra? What kind of a name is that? Slavic? And why did you choose it?"
"No, it's Australian aborigine, you dummy. A gulbirra is a kangaroo that catches dogs and eats them."
"A carnivorous kangaroo? I thought they were all vegetarians.”
"Well, actually, it may not have existed. But the abos claimed that it did exist in the outlands. It may have been mythical, but what's the difference? It's the symbolism that counts."
"So you identify with the gulbirra? I can imagine what the dogs symbolize."
At this point, Miz Gulbirra smiled so terrifyingly that your correspondent felt compelled to down a snort of the Dutch courage he always carries in his shoulderbag.
"Not that I chose that name because I identify with, or sympathize with, blackfellow culture," the Miz said. "I am one-quarter abo, but so what? It was a male chauvinist culture through and through, women were mere objects, subject to slavery, they did all the hard work and they were often beaten by their fathers and husbands. A lot of Caucasian males have sentimentalized about the destruction of abo society, but I personally thought it was a good thing. Of course, I deplore the suffering that went along with its disintegration."
"Deploration, unlike defloration, is usually managed without pain," Mr. Bligh said.
"Virginity! That's another male myth, invented solely to aggrandize the male ego and enforce his opinions about his property rights," Miz Gulbirra said bitterly. "Fortunately, that attitude changed considerably during my lifetime. But there are still plenty of pigs around, fossil boars, I called them, who . . ."
"That's all very interesting," the dauntless dared to interrupt. "But you can reserve your opinions for the Letters to the Editor page. Mr. Bagg will print anything you say, no matter how scurrilous. Our readers just now would like to know what your professional plans are. Just how do you see yourself as contributing to Project Airship, as it's officially called? Just where do you think you'll fit into the hierarchy?"
By now, the heavy acrid fumes of marijuana overrode all others. A wild, fierce light glittered in her drug-expanded pupils. Your correspondent felt it necessary to expand his rapidly shrinking dauntless state with another pull on the divine bottle.
"By all logic and by right of superior knowledge, experience , and capability,'' she said slowly but loudly, "I should be in charge of the project. And I should be captain of the airship! I've checked out everybody's qualifications, and there's no doubt at all that I am by far the best qualified.
"So why am I not put in charge of the construction? Why am I not even considered as a candidate for the captaincy? Why?"
"Don't tell me," your intrepid answered. Possibly he was overly emboldened by the liquid lava coursing through his veins and dulling his otherwise fine sensibilities. "Don't tell me. Let me hazard a guess. Could it be, I'm just groping for an explanation, mind you, could it be that you are relegated to an inferior position because you are only a woman?"
The subject stared at your correspondent, took another puff, drew it deep into her lungs, causing a slight lifting of slight breasts, and finally, face bluish with lack of oxygen, discharged the tag-ends of fumes through her nostrils. Your intrepid was reminded of pictures of dragons he had seen during his Terrestrial existence. He, however, thought of the better part of valor and did not remark upon the similarity.
"You've got it," she said. "Maybe you're not so dense after all."
Then, gripping the edge of the table as if she'd squeeze the wood, she sat up straight. "But just what do you mean by only a woman?"
"Oh, that's only my verbalization of your thoughts," the intrepid said hastily. "I was being ironic. Or whatever..."
"If I were a man," she said, "which, thank God I am not, I'd have been made at least first mate on the spot. And you wouldn't be sitting there sneering at me."
"Oh, you're mistaken about that," our dauntless said. "I am not sneering at you. However, there is a point that you may have overlooked. It wouldn't make any difference what your sex is; you could have the biggest balls for 40,000 kilometers around, and you still wouldn't be put in charge.
"Long before the Riverboat was built-the second one, I mean, not the one King John stole-it was agreed that Firebrass would be in charge of the airship project. It's even in the Parolando constitution, which you must know, since he himself recited it chapter and verse to you. You were aware of that and by taking the oath you accepted that. So, tell me, why all the bitching?"
"You don't understand after all, do you, you clown?" she said. "The point is that that rule, that arrogantly imperious law, should never have been made."
Your correspondent swallowed some more of the stuff that encourages-and stupefies-and said, "The point is that it was made. And if a man came along twice as qualified as you, he'd still have to accept the fact that he could never be higher than second. He could be Captain Firebrass' chief construction assistant and first mate on the ship. But that's all."
"There isn't any such creature as twice as qualified as me," she said, "unless an officer from the Graf Zeppelin should show up. Listen, I'm getting tired of this."
"It is rather hot and smoky in here," your correspondent said, wiping the sweat off his brow. "However, I would like to get more of your background, details of your earthly life, you know, human interest stuff. And also the story of what happened to you right after Resurrection Day. And ..."
"Are you hoping I'll get turned on by this joint and by your overwhelming male charm and virility?" she said. "Are you getting ready to make a pass at me?"
"God forbid," I said. "This is a strictly professional visit. Besides ..."
"Besides," she said, and she was the one sneering now, "you're scared of me, aren't you? You're all alike. You have to be dominant, the superior. If you meet a woman with more brains, one who is able to handle you in a fight, who is clearly the superior, then the hot air whistles out of you like a pricked balloon. A balloon with a prick."
"Now, really, Miz Gulbirra," your dauntless said, feeling his face heat up.
"Bug off, little man," the subject said.
Your correspondent thought it was wise to obey this imperative. The interview, though not complete from our viewpoint, was terminated.
Jill picked up the next evening's Leak from the distribution shack outside the press building. Some people who obviously had already read the news snickered or grinned at her. She opened the paper to the Newcomers page, suspecting what she would find there, angry before reading it.
The pages rattled in her shaking hands. The interview was bad enough, though she should have known that a late-nineteenth-century man like Bagg would print such rot. What had he been, editor of some crummy yellow rag of some frontier town in the Arizona Territory? Yes, that was it. Tombstone. Firebrass had told her something about him.
What really enraged her was the photograph. She hadn't been aware of it, but someone in the crowd her first morning here had snapped her picture. There she was, caught in a silly-looking, almost obscene, posture. Naked, bending over, her breasts hanging straight down like a cow's udders, the towel in one hand behind her and one before as she sawed it, drying her crotch. She was looking up, her mouth open, and she seemed all nose and buckteeth.
Surely, the cameraman had taken other shots. But Bagg had chosen this one just to make her a laughingstock.
She was so furious she almost forgot to pick up her grail. Swinging it from one hand, thinking how she was going to brain Bagg with it, the newspaper clutched in the other-it was also going to be jammed all the way up-she stormed toward the building. But when she got to the door, she stopped.
"Come on, Jill!" she told herself. "You're reacting just as he hoped you would, just as they all hope you will. Play it cool; don't be a knee-jerk. Sure, it'd make you feel great to slam him around his office a little. But it might ruin everything. You've endured worse, and you've come out on top."
She walked slowly homeward, the handle of the grail looped over one arm. In the fading light, she read the rest of the paper. She wasn't the only one Bagg had libeled, slandered, and mocked. Firebrass himself, though treated gently in the write-up on her, was severely criticized elsewhere and not only by Bagg. The vox pop page contained a number of signed letters from citizens outraged by Firebrass' policies.
As she left the plain and started her winding way through the hills, she was softly hailed. Turning, she saw Piscator. He smiled as he walked toward her and said in an Oxford accent, "Good evening, citizen. May I accompany you? We will be happier in each other's company than alone? Or perhaps not?"
Jill had to smile. He spoke so gravely, almost in a seventeenth-century style. This impression was strengthened by his hat, a tall cylinder sloping inward to the top and with a wide circular brim. It reminded her of the hats of the New England Pilgrims. It was made of dark-red leather from the scaleless redfish. Several aluminum alloy flies were snagged in its brim. A black cloth was over his shoulders, held together at the throat. A dark-green cloth served as a kilt, and his sandals were of redfish leather.
Over his shoulder was a bamboo rod. In the other hand was the handle of his grail. A newspaper was clamped by an arm to his body. A wicker basket hung by a strap from the other shoulder.
He was tall for a Japanese, the top of his head coming to her nose. And his features were attractive, not too Mongolian.
"I suppose you've read the paper?" she said.
"Unhappily, most of it," he said. "But don't be grieved. As Solomon says of scoffers, Proverbs xxiv. 9. They are an abomination to mankind."
"I prefer humankind," she said.
He looked puzzled. "But what . . .? Ah, I see, you obviously object to man in mankind. But man means man, woman, and child in this usage."
"I know it does," she said as if she were repeating this for the thousandth time, which she was. "I know it does. But the use of man conditions the speaker and the hearer to think of man as the human male only. The use of humankind, or personkind, conditions people to think of Homo sapiens as consisting of both sexes.''
Piscator drew breath in through his teeth. She expected him to say, "Ah, so!" but he did not. Instead, he said, "I have in this basket three of the savory tench, if I may call them that. They are remarkably similar in appearance and taste to Terrestrial fish of that name. They are not quite as delicious as the grayling, if I may call them that, which are caught in the mountain streams. But they are much sport, a cunning and lusty fish."
She decided that he must have learned his English from The Compleat Angler.
"Would you care to share some of the fish with me tonight? I'll have them baked piping hot at 16:00 by the waterclock. I will also have a plentiful supply of skull-bloom."
This was the local name for alcohol made from the lichen scraped off the mountain face. It was watered down, three parts to one, and then blossoms from the irontree vines were dried, crushed, and mixed with alcohol. After the blossoms had given a purplish color and a roselike fragrance to the liquid, it was ready to be served.
Jill hesitated for several seconds. She did not mind being alone- most of the time. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she did not get desperate, panicked, if she were thrown on her own resources. But she had been her only company for too long. The voyage up The River had taken four hundred and twenty days, and during most of that time she had been utterly alone by day. At night, she had eaten and talked with strangers. She had passed an estimated 501,020,000 people and had not seen one face she had known on Earth or Riverworld. Not one.
But then she had seldom gotten close enough to the banks during the day to have recognized facial features. Her socializing at night was limited to a few people. What was mental agony, or would have been if she permitted herself such an emotion, was that she might have passed by some people, she had loved on Earth, or, at least, liked. There were some she wanted very much to see again.
Perhaps the one she most longed to talk to was Marie. What had Marie felt when she learned that her senseless jealousy had been responsible for the death of her lover, Jill Gulbirra? Would she have been grief-stricken, perhaps have taken her own life because of guilt? After all, Marie was suicide-prone. Or, rather, to be exact, prone to taking just enough pills to endanger her but not enough so that she could not get medical assistance in time to save her. Marie had come close to death at least three times that Jill knew about. But not very close.
No, Marie would have been plunged into gloom and self-reproach for about three days. Then she would have swallowed about twenty phenobarbitols and called her closest friend, probably another lover, Jill thought, her breast hurting-the bitch!-and the lover would have called the hospital, and then there would be the stomach pump and the antidotes and the long, anxious waiting in the lobby and then the attendance by the bed while Marie rambled on half-mindlessly, still fogged by the drug but not so fogged that she would not be deliberately working on her lover's emotions. It would not just be sympathy that she would be evoking. The sadistic little bitch would also make a few wounding remarks to her lover, getting across some criticisms which she would claim later that she did not remember making.
Then Marie would be taken to her apartment by her lover, and tenderly taken care of for a while, and then . . . Jill could not bear fantasizing that then.
At these times she had to laugh, though grimly, at herself. It was thirty-one years after she had stormed out of the house and driven off, tires screaming, rubber burning, and raced recklessly through three stoplights and then . . . then the blinding lights and the blaring horn of the huge lorry and the savage wrenching at the wheel to rum the Mercedes-Benz, the frozen sickness inside her, the looming of the juggernaut, and ...
And she had awakened with countless others, naked, her thirty-year-old body restored to a twenty-five-year-old state-minus certain blemishes and imperfections-on the banks of the Rivervalley. Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on making a hell of it.
Thirty-one years ago. Time had not mended all hurts, not, at least, this one. By now she should have gotten over the mingled fury and grief. It should have receded beyond the horizon of things that mattered now. She should have no slightest emotion about Marie now. But she did.
She was suddenly aware that the Japanese was looking at her. He evidently expected her to reply to something he had just said. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sometimes, I get lost in the past." "I am sorry, too," he said. "Sometimes ... if one is using dreamgum as a means to rid oneself of painful or crippling memories or undesirable psychic states, one instead . . . gets lost." "No," she said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. "It's just that I have been alone so long, I have fallen into the habit of reverie. Why, when I was sailing the canoe up The River, I would do so automatically. Sometimes, I would realize that I had put ten kilometers behind me and not even been aware, consciously anyway, of what had happened during that time.
"But now that I'm here, where I have a job that requires constant mental alertness, you will see that I can be as much on my toes as anyone."
She added that because she knew that Piscator might report her to Firebrass. Absentmindedness was not to be tolerated in an airship officer.
"I am sure you will," Piscator said. He paused, smiled, and said, "By the way, do not be worried about competition from me. I am not ambitious. I will be satisfied with whatever rank or position I am given, because I know that that will fit my abilities and experience. Firebrass is fair.
"I am curious about our goal, the so-called Misty Tower or Big Grail or the dozen other titles it bears. In fact, I am eager to journey there, to inquire into what may hold the secret of this world. Eager but not anxious, if you understand what I mean. I readily admit that I do not have your qualifications, and so I anticipate being ranked under you."
Jill Gulbirra was silent for a moment. This man belonged to a nation which practically enslaved its women. At least, in his own time (1886-1965), it had. It was true that after World War I there had been a certain amount of liberation. He would, theoretically, still have the attitude of the old-fashioned Japanese man toward women. Which was a terrible attitude. On the other hand, The Riverworld did change people. Some people.
"You really wouldn't mind?" she said. "Not really, deep down!"
"I seldom lie," he said. "And that only to spare the feelings of someone or to keep from wasting time with fools. I think I know what you are thinking. Would it help you to know that one of my masters in Afghanistan was a woman? I spent ten years as her disciple before she decided that I was not as stupid as when I had come to her and that I could go on to my next sheik."
"What were you doing there?"
"I would be happy to discuss that some other time. As of the moment, let me assure you that I am not prejudiced against women or against non-Japanese. I was, but that foolishness was emptied out of me a long time ago. For instance, at one time, for some years after World War I, I was a Zen monk. First, though, do you know anything about Zen?"
"There were many books written about it after 1960 or thereabouts," Jill said. "I read a few."
"Yes. Did you know any more after reading these than you did before?" he said, smiling.
"A little."
"You are truthful. As I was saying, I retired from the world after I resigned from the Navy and I resided at a monastery in Ryukyu. The third year, a white man, a Hungarian, came to the monastery as a humble novitiate. When I saw how he was treated, I suddenly acknowledged what I had known unconsciously but had resisted bringing to light. That was that many years in the discipline of Zen had not rid either the disciples or masters, no one in the monastery, except myself, of their racial prejudices. Their national prejudices, I should say, since they showed hostility and even contempt for Chinese and Indo-Chinese, fellow Mongolians.
"After being honest for the first time with myself, I acknowledged to myself that the practice of Zen had not resulted in anything deeply worthwhile in myself or the others. Of course, you must realize that Zen does not have goals. To have goals is to frustrate the attaining of goals. Is that contradictory? It is.
"It is also nonsense, as is that business of emptying oneself. Perhaps the state of being empty is not nonsense, but the methods used to achieve it were, as far as I was concerned. And so, one morning, I walked out of the monastery and took ship to China. And I began my long wanderings, called by some inaudible voice toward Central Asia. And from thence . . . well, that is enough for the time being. I can continue this later if you wish.
"I see that we are getting close to our homes. I bid you adieu then until tonight. I will set out two torches, which you may see from your window, to announce when our little gathering begins."
"I did not say that I was coming."
"But you had nevertheless accepted," he said. "Is that not true?"
"Yes, but how did you know?"
"It's not telepathy," he said, smiling again. "A certain posture, a certain relaxation of muscles, the dilation of your pupils, an undertone to your voice, undetectable except to the highly trained, told me that you were looking forward to the party."
Jill said nothing. She had not known herself that she was pleased with the invitation. Nor was she sure now. Was Piscator conning her?
A kontree grew from the top of a hill 200 meters from Jill's hut. Piscator's hut was near the top, nestled between the upper parts of two roots. Its back rested upon a shelf of earth; its front was held up by bamboo pylons to keep it from slipping down the steep slope.
Jill went up the hill without Jack, though there would be Jackasses at its top, she thought. She went under the house and up a bamboo staircase which entered the structure through the floor halfway along its length.
The building was larger than most of those in this area, three rooms on the ground floor and two on the first story. According to a neighbor, it had once housed a commune. Like all such nonreligious organizations composed of Occidentals, it had dissolved after a while. Piscator had moved in then, though Jill did not know why one man wanted such a large house. Was it because it was a prestige symbol? He did not seem to be the sort of man who would care for such things.
Along the railing were bright acetylene lamps behind white, green, or scarlet shades made from fish intestines. Piscator, at the top of the steps, smiled and nodded at Jill. He was wearing a kimonolike arrangement of varicolored towels. In his hand he held a bouquet of huge blooms plucked from the vines entwining the upper reaches of the iron tree.
"Welcome, Jill Gulbirra."
She thanked him, breathing deeply the strong odor of the flowers, reminiscent of honeysuckle with a very slight scent of old leather. A peculiar but pleasing combination.
Gaining the top of the steps, she found herself in the largest room of the house. Its ceiling was about three times her height; from it hung a score of Japanese lamps. The bamboo floor was covered here and there with throwrugs made from bamboo fiber. The furniture was of bamboo, light, simple forms the seats of which were softened with cushions. Some of the chair arms and table legs and the posts supporting the ceiling were, however, of oak or yew. Heads of animals, demons, Riverfish, and human beings had been carved from these. They did not look as if they had been done by a Japanese. Probably, a previous occupant had sculptured them. Tall, wasp-waisted bell-mouthed vases stood on the floor. Shorter versions stood on top of spindly legged round-topped tables. These were formed on a potter's wheel, baked, and glazed or painted. Geometrical designs were on some vases; others bore marine scenes from Earthlife. The boats were lateens; the sailors, Arabs. Blue dolphins leaped from a blue-greenish sea; a monster opened its mouth to swallow a ship. However, since there were large fish called dolphins in The River, and the colossal Riverdraon did bear a faint resemblance to the monster, it was possible that the artist had represented Riverlife.
The doorways to the neighboring rooms were filled with dangling strings of white and red hornfish vertebrae; these emitted a tinkling when disturbed. Mats of woven fibers from irontree vines hung on the walls, and transparent intestines of Riverdragons, stretched on bamboo frames, were above each window.
All in all, though there were some things, such as the acetylene lamps, not found elsewhere, the room was a variation of what many called Riparian Culture; others, Riverine Polynesian.
The lamp lights strove to pierce the heavy clouds of tobacco and marijuana. A band played softly on a small podium in a corner. It was providing its services in return for booze and a chance to please itself with useful work. The musicians were beating or brushing drums, blowing on a bamboo flute, a clay ocarina; stroking a harp made of a turtlefish shell and fish guts; sawing on a fiddle of fish intestines and English-yewlike wood with a yew bow fitted with the horsehairlike mouth cilia of the blue dolphin; hammering a xylophone; blowing a saxophone, a trumpet.
The music was unrecognizable, at least for Jill. But she thought that it was derived from a Central or South American Indian piece.
"If this were tete-a-tete, instead of a large party, I would be able to give you tea, my dear," Piscator said. "But it is not possible. My grail does not provide me with tea daily, but only one small bagful once a week."
He had not changed so much that he did not miss the ceremony of tea, so beloved by all Japanese. Jill regretted the scarcity of the herb, too. Like most of her nation, she felt that something vital was missing if she didn't get, her tea at the proper time.
Piscator dipped a glass in a huge glass bowl full of skull-bloom and handed it to her. She sipped on it while he told her how happy he was to see her here. He sounded as if he really meant it. She found herself warming to him, though she did remind herself that he came from a culture which conditioned males to regard females as pleasure and work objects. Then she warned herself-for the ten thousandth time?-that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.
Her host led her around, introducing her briefly. Firebrass waved at her from a corner. Cyrano smiled thinly and bowed. They had encountered each other a number of times since that morning, but each had been aloof though polite. She did not want it that way. After all, he had apologized, and she was very curious about this flamboyant seventeenth-centurian.
She said hello to Ezekiel Hardy and David Schwartz, whom she saw every day in the office inside the hangar and in the factories nearby. Hardy and Schwartz were friendly enough; they had learned by now that she was thoroughly knowledgeable in her field. In many, in fact. She had bridled her impatience and anger at their ignorance and their assumed superiority. It had paid off, though she did not know how long she could repress herself.
"Don't bottle up," she told herself. "Empty yourself."
How many times had she done that, or tried to do that? And it had seemed to work so many times, though not always by any means. Yet, here was this Japanese, Ohara, calling himself by the goofy name of Piscator-how weird-telling her than Zen was nonsense. Well, not exactly nonsense. But he had certainly indicated that it was overrated. She had not liked to hear that. It struck her below the belt of her self-image; it injured her. Which it should not have done. She should have laughed at him, even if only inwardly. But he had seemed so sure.
One of the women she was introduced to was Jeanne Jugan.
Piscator mentioned that she had once been a servant in her native France but then had become one of the founders of the Roman Catholic religious order of the Little Sisters of the Poor, established in 1839 in Brittany.
"I am his disciple," Jugan said, nodding at Piscator.
Jill's eyebrows rose. "Oh!" She had no chance to continue the conversation. Piscator steered her away with a light touch on the elbow.
"You may talk to her later."
Jill wondered what particular religion, sect, or mental discipline Piscator belonged to. He wasn't a member of the Church of the Second Chance. A Chancer always wore a hornfish spiral vertebra or its wooden facsimile on a string from his neck.
However, the next person she met did wear that emblem, three, in fact, indicating that he was a bishop. Samuelo, short, very dark, and hawk faced, had been born sometime around the middle of the second century A.D. He had been a rabbi of the Jewish community at Nehardea in Babylonia. According to Piscator, he was somewhat famous in his time for his knowledge of traditional law and for some attainments in science. One of his feats was the compilation of a calendar of the Hebrew year. His chief claim to fame, however, lay in his efforts to adjust the Jewish law to the law of the land in which the Jews of the Diaspora lived.
"His principle was The law of the state is the binding law," Piscator said.
Samuelo introduced his wife, Rahelo. She was even shorter, though not as dark, and she had very broad hips and heavy legs, but a face of startling sensuality. Replying to Jill's questions, she said that she had been born in the Krakow ghetto in the fourteenth century a.d. Piscator would tell Jill later that Rahelo had been abducted by a Polish nobleman and imprisoned for a year in his castle. Tiring of her, he had then kicked her out, though not without a fat purse of gold coins. Her husband had murdered her because she had not had the grace to kill herself because of her dishonor.
Samuelo sent Rahelo running several times to get him a drink from a bowl filled with nonalcoholic bloom juice. He also gestured for her to light his cigar. She obeyed quickly and then resumed her position behind him.
Jill felt like kicking Rahelo for putting up with her ancient degradation and Sanmuelo for his ancient complacency. She could visualize him at prayers, thanking God that he was not born a woman.
Later, Piscator said to feet, "You were furious with the bishop and his wife."
She did not ask him he he knew. she said, ''It must have been a hell of a shock for him to wake up here and find out that he was not one of God's chosen people. That everybody, idol worshipper, cannibal, swine eater uncirmcumcised dog of an infidel, all God's children, were here, all were chose."
"We were all shocked," Piscater said. "And terrified. Weren't,
you?"
She stared at turn for a moment, then laughed, and said, "Of course. I was an atheist, and still am. I was sure that I was just so much flesh that would become so much dust. And that was that. I was horribly frightened when I awoke here. But at that same time, well, not at first but a little later, I was relieved. So, I thought, there is eternal life; Then, even later, I saw such strange things, and we were in such a strange place, nothing like heaven or hell, you know ..."
"I know,'' he said. He smiled. "I wonder what Samuelo thought when he saw that the uncircumcised goyim of Earth had been resurrected without their foreskins? That must have been as puzzling as the fact that men could no longer grow beards. On the one hand, God had performed a briss upon all the Gentiles who needed it and so He must be a Jewish god. On the other band, a man could no longer sport the full beard demanded by God, so He surely could not be a Jewish god.
"It was, and is, such things that should have and should be changing our patterns of thinking," Piscator said.
He came close, looking up at her with dark brown eyes set in fleshy slits. "The Second Chancers have some excellent ideas about why we have been raised from the dead and who has done it. They are not too far wrong about the way, or ways, one must take to attain the goal. A goal which mankind should desire and the gate to which our unknown benefactors have opened for us. But exactness is tightness. The inexact Church has wandered off the main road, or, I should say, the only road. Which is not to say that there is not more than one road."
"What are you talking about?'' she said. "You sound as weird as those Chancers."
"We shall see-if you care to see,'' he said. He excused himself and walked to the big table, where he started talking to a man who had just entered.
Jill sauntered toward Jeanne Jugan, intending to ask her what she meant by calling herself Piscator's disciple. De Bergerac, however, placed himself in front of her. He was smiling broadly now.
"Ah, Ms. Gulbirra! I must beg your pardon for that unfortunate incident again! It was the liquor which caused me to behave so unforgivably, well not unforgivably I hope, but so barbarically! It is seldom that I drink more than an ounce or two, since I abominate the dulling of my senses. Alcohol makes one a swine, and I do not care for the beast on the hoof, though I adore him sliced and fried in a pan or roasted on a spit. But that night we were fishing . . ."
"I didn't see any fishing equipment," she said.
"It was on the other side of the grailstone. And the fog was thick, remember, mademoiselle ?"'
"Ms."
"And we got to talking of things on Earth, places, people we had known, friends who had come to a bad end, children who had died, how our parents had misunderstood us, enemies, why we were here, and so on, understand? I became depressed, thinking of what might have been on Earth, especially what my cousin Madeleine and I might have done if I had been more mature or had not been so naive at that time. And so . . ."
"And so you got drunk," she said, her face grave.
"And offended you, Ms., though I swear that I did not believe that you were a woman. The fog, the baggy clothing, my own addled wits ..."
"Forget it," she said. "Only ... I believed you would never forgive me, since you would have lost face after a woman punched you out. Your ego ..."
"You must not stereotype!" Cyrano cried.
"And you are right," she said. "That is a failing I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often . . . well, most people are living stereotypes, aren't they?"
They stood there, talking for a long time. Jill sipped on the purple passion, feeling her belly slowly warm up. The marijuana fumes became thicker, and she added to their intensity by drawing on the burning joint between her fingers. The voices were becoming louder, and there was much more laughter. Some couples were dancing now, their arms around each other's necks, shuffling languorously.
Piscator and Jugan seemed to be the only ones who were not drinking. Piscator was smoking a cigarette now, the first, she believed, that he had lit up since she had entered.
The combination of liquor and pot had given her a pleasant halo now. She felt as if her flesh must be leaking a red-colored light. The smoke clouds were forming into almost-shapes. Sometimes, out of the corners of her eyes, she would glimpse a definite figure, a dragon, a smokefish, once, a dirigible. But when she turned her head toward them, she could see only amorphous masses.
When she saw a metal tub float by to one side, she knew that she had had it. No more booze and grass the rest of the night. The reason for the appearance of the tub was apparent, since Cyrano had been telling her about crime and its punishments in the France of his day. A counterfeiter, for instance, was stretched out upon a large wheel. The executioner then broke his arms and legs with an iron bar, sometimes pounding them to a pulp. Executed criminals were hung in chains in marketplaces and left to rot until the bodies fell through the chains. The guts of others were left in big open tubs so that they could remind the citizens of what happened to transgressors.
"And the streets ran with sewage, Ms. Gulbirra. No wonder that those who had the money drenched themselves with perfume."
"I thought it was because you seldom bathed then."
"True," the Frenchman said. "I mean, true that we did not bathe often. It was thought to be unhealthy, un-Christian. But one can get used to the stench of unwashed bodies. I was not often aware of it since I was, as you might say, immersed in it, as unconscious of it as a fish is of water. But here, helas! Where so few clothes are worn and where running water is so at hand, and where one encounters so many who cannot endure the odor of long-dirty humans, then one learns new habits. I, myself, now, I must confess that I saw no reason to be so fastidious, but then after some years I met a woman with whom I fell into love almost as passionately as I had with my cousin. She was Olivia Langdon ..."
"You can't mean Sam Clemens' wife?"
"But yes. Though of course that meant nothing to me when I first met her and still does not. I understood that he was the great writer of the New World-she told me much about what happened since I had died on Earth-but I do not think much about it. And then Olivia and I wandered down The River and suddenly we were confronted with that classical situation which so many people dread. We met the former, the Terrestrial, spouse, of one's hut mate.
"By then, though I was still fond of her, my passion had cooled off. Each of us did so many things to annoy, even enrage the other, and why not? Is that not something commonplace here, where man and woman may be not only from different nations but from different times? How can the seventeenth-century person mesh with the nineteenth? Well, sometimes such a mismatch can be reshaped to match. But add the temporal differences to those that naturally exist between individuals, and what do you have? Quite often, a hopeless case.
"Livy and I were far up The River when I heard about the boat that was being built. I had heard of the meteorite that fell here, but I did not know that it was Sam Clemens who had seized the meteorite. I wanted to be one of the crew, and especially I wanted to feel a steel rapier in my hand again.
"And so, my dear Ms. Gulbirra, we came to this place. The shock was powerful indeed for Sam. I felt sorry for him, for a while, and regretted having forced this reunion that was not a reunion. Olivia showed no inclination to leave me for Clemens even though our passion was not quite what it had been. She did feel guilt about not feeling love for him. This was all the stranger when it is considered that they were deeply in love on Earth.
"But there had been many frictions, deeply hidden hostilities. She said that when she was in her terminal illness she did not want to see him. This hurt him very much, but she could not help it. And why, I asked her, had she not cared to admit him into her sickroom? She replied that she did not know. Perhaps it was because their only son had died because of Sam's negligence. Criminal negligence, she called it, though she had never used, or even thought of, that word on Earth.
"I said that that was a long time ago and on another planet. Why did she still hold that fierce grievance within her breast? Did it matter now? Was not little ... I forget his name ..."
"Langdon," Jill said.
"... risen from the dead now? And she said, yes, but she would never see Langdon. He had died when he was two, and no one under five years of age at death had been resurrected. At least not here. Maybe on another world. In any event, even if he had been raised here, what chance would she have of running across him? And what if she did? He would be full grown now, he would not even remember her. She would be a stranger to him. And God only knew what kind of a boy he would be. He might have been resurrected among cannibals or Digger Indians and not even know English or table manners."
Jill grinned and said, "That sounds like something Mark Twain would say, not his wife."
Cyrano grinned back and said, "She didn't say that. I made that up, paraphrasing her. There was, of course, much more to-her feeling than the accidental death of her baby. Actually, I can't blame Clemens. Being a writer, he was very absentminded when he was pondering upon a story. I am that way myself. He did not notice that the coverings of the baby had slipped aside and that the icy air was blowing full upon the unprotected infant. He was automatically driving the horse which was drawing the sledge through the snows while his mind was intent upon that other, world-his fiction.
"However, Olivia was certain that he was not as absentminded as he believed. She insisted that he could not have been, that some part of his mind must have observed the baby's situation. He did not really want a son. Unlike most men, he preferred daughters. Besides , the baby was sickly from birth, a nuisance. To Sam, I mean.''
"That's one thing in his favor," Jill said. "I mean, that he preferred girls. Though I suppose, to be fair, that it is as neurotic to prefer a female infant as to prefer a male. Still, he did not have that male chauvinism ..."
Cyrano said, "You must comprehend that Olivia did not consciously acknowledge all this during her Terrestrial existence. At least, she claimed not to have done so, though I suspect that she had such thoughts, was ashamed of them, and so put them away in the deep, dark files of her soul. But it was here, in this Valley, when she became addicted to chewing the soi-disant, the so-called dream-gum, that she perceived her true feelings.
"And so, though she still loved Clemens, in a manner of speaking, she hated him even more."
"Did she quit using the gum?"
"Yes. It upset her too much. Though she now and then had some ecstatic or fantastic visions, she had too many horrible experiences."
"She should have stuck with it," Jill said. "But under proper guidance. However ..."
"Yes?"
Jill compressed her lips, than said, "Perhaps I shouldn't be too bloody critical. I had a guru, a beautiful woman, the best and wisest woman I ever knew, but she couldn't keep me from running headlong into . . . well, no need to go into it here ... it was too . . . dismaying? No, horrifying. I chickened out. So I shan't be criticizing anyone else, shouldn't anyway. I have been considering taking it up again, but I don't trust the Second Chancers' use of it, even though they claim to have excellent, quite safe, techniques. I couldn't put full confidence in people who have their religious beliefs."
" I was a free thinker, a libertin, as we styled ourselves," Cyrano said. "But now . . . I do not know. Perhaps there is after all a God. Otherwise, how does one account for this world?"
"There are a score of theories," Jill said.'' And no doubt you've heard them all."
'' Many, at any rate,'' Cyrano said. " I was hoping to hear a new one from you."
At that moment, several people invaded the conversation.
Jill broke off from the clump and drifted around, looking for another clump, a temporary colony, to attach herself to. In The Riverworld, as on Earth, all cocktail or after-dinner parties were alike. You spoke briefly, trying to make yourself heard above all the chatter and music, and then changed partners or groups until you had made a complete circuit. If you were intrigued or even interested in someone, you could make arrangements to see him or her some other time, when you could have a chance for an uninterrupted and quiet conversation.
In the old days, long ago, when she was young in mind, she had often met men or women at such gatherings who enthralled her. But then she had been full of booze or pot or both and so wide open. It was easy to fall in love with a mind or body-or both at the same time. Sobering up usually meant wising up. A disappointment. Not always. Just most of the time.
Here was a gathering all of whom had the bodies of twenty-five-year-olds. Chronologically, she was sixty-one. Some here might actually be one hundred and thirty-two or even more. The youngest could not be under thirty-six.
The index of wisdom should be high, if it was true that age brought wisdom. She had not found that to be true about most people on Earth. Experience was something it was difficult to avoid, though many people had managed to keep it to a minimum. Experience did not by any means give-wisdom, that understanding of the basic mechanics of humanity. Most oldsters she had known had been as governed by conditioned reflexes as when they had been nineteen.
So it was expected that people would not have benefited much from their experiences here. However, the hammer blows of death and resurrection had broken open the seals of the minds of many.
For one thing, absolutely no one had expected this type of afterlife, if you could call this an afterlife. No religion had described such a place, such events. Though, to tell the truth, those religions which did promise paradises and hells were remarkably lacking in descriptive detail. Perhaps not so remarkably, since very few persons had actually claimed to have seen the postmortem world.
And there certainly was nothing supernatural about this place and the raising of the dead in it. Everything-well, not everything but almost everything-could be explained in physical, not metaphysical, terms. This did not keep people from originating religious theories or reshaping old ones.
Those religions which had no eschatology of resurrection or immortality in the Western sense, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism were discredited. Those which did have such, Judaism, Islamism, Christianity, were equally discredited. But here, as on Earth, the death of a major religion was the birth pang of a new one. And there were, of course, minorities who refused stubbornly, despite all evidence, to admit that their faith was invalid.
Jill, standing near Samuelo, ex-rabbi, present bishop of the Church of the Second Chance, wondered what his reaction had been that first year on this world. There was no Messiah come to save the Chosen People, nor, indeed, any Chosen People assembled together at Jerusalem on Earth. No Jerusalem, no Earth.
Apparently the shattering of his faith had not shattered him. Somehow he had been able to accept that he had been wrong. Although a superorthodox rabbi of ancient times, he had a flexible mind.
At that moment Jeanne Jugan, who was hostess, offered Samuelo and Rahelo a dish of bamboo tips and fileted fish. Samuelo looked at the fish and said, "What is that?"
"Toadfish," Jeanne said.
Samuelo tightened his lips and shook his head. Jeanne looked puzzled, since the bishop was obviously hungry and his fingers were only a few centimeters from seizing the tips. These, as far as Jill knew, were not tabu according to the Mosaic laws. But they were on the same plate as the forbidden scaleless fish and so contaminated.
She smiled. It was much easier to change a person's religion than his/her food habits. A devout Jew or Moslem could give up his creed but would still feel nauseated if offered pork. A Hindu whom Jill had known had become an atheist on The Riverworld, but he still could not abide meat. Jill, though of partial blackfellow descent, could not force herself to eat worms, though she had tried. Genetic descent had nothing to do with dietary matters, of course; it was social descent that determined food choices. Though not always. Some people could adapt easily enough. And there was always the individual taste. Jill had ceased eating mutton the moment she had quit her parents' house. She hated it. And she preferred hamburger to beef roast.
The whole point to this reverie, she thought as she emerged from it, shedding thoughts as a surfacing diver sheds water, the whole point was that we are what we eat. And we eat what we do because of what we are. And what we are is determined partly by our environment and partly by our genetic makeup. All my family except myself loved mutton. A sister shared my indifference to beef roast and my love for hamburgers.
All my brothers and sisters, as far as I know, are heterosexual. I am the only bisexual. And I don't want that. I want to be one way or the other, a gate that is latched, not swinging either way depending upon which way the wind is blowing. My internal wind which shifts from east to west or vice versa, twirling the windcock this way, or that way.
Actually, she did not want it one way or the other. If she had her choice-and why shouldn't she?-she would be a woman lover.
Woman lover. Why didn't she say to herself: lesbian? The English language was the greatest in the world, but it had its faults. It was often too ambiguous. Woman lover could mean a man who loved women, a man or woman who loved women, or a woman who was a lover.
There, .she'd said it. Lesbian. And she didn't feet any shame. What about Jack? She had loved him. What about . . . ?
She had come up from the reverie only to dive down again.
Across the room, Firebrass, though talking to others, was looking at her. Had he noticed her tendency to become a statue, slumped, her head slightly cocked to the left, her eyelids lowered, and the eyes slightly rolled up? And if he had, then had he decided she was too moody and hence untrustworthy?
At that, she felt a slight panic. Oh, God, if he rejected her as a candidate just because she was pensive now and then! She was not that way when On duty! Never. But how could she convince Fire-brass of that?
She would have to be alert, always act as if she were on her toes, extroverted, prepared, trustworthy. As if she were a Girl Scout.
She walked up to a circle in the center of which was Bishop Samuelo. The dark little man was telling some stories about La Viro. Jill had heard a number of them, since she had attended many Second Chancer meetings and talked withjts missionaries. In Esperanto, the official language of the Chufch, La Viro meant The Man. He was also called La Fondinto, The Founder. Apparently, no one knew his Terrestrial name or else it was not considered important by the Second Chancers.
Samuelo's tale concerned the stranger who had approached La Viro one stormy night in a cave high in the mountains. The stranger had revealed that he was one of the people who had reshaped this planet into one long Rivervalley and who had then resurrected the people of Earth.
The stranger had instructed La Viro to found the Church of the Second Chance. He was given certain tenets to preach, and he was told that after he had spread these up and down the Valley, he would then be given more revelations. As far as she knew, these new "truths" had not yet been forthcoming.
But the Church had spread everywhere. Its missionaries had traveled on foot or boat. Some, it was said, had journeyed in balloons. The fastest means of transportation had been death and resurrection.
Actually, those who had killed the Chancer preachers were doing the Church a service. It ensured that the faith spread around The Riverworld in a much faster time.
Martyrdom was a convenient means of travel, Jill thought. But it took great courage to die for your religion now when once dead always dead. She had heard that there had been a great falling away from the Church recently. Whether that was caused by the permanency of death now, or it was just that the movement had lost its steam, she did not know.
One of the group was a man to whom she had not been introduced. Piscator had, however, pointed to him across the room and said, "John de Greystock. He lived during Edward I of England's reign. Thirteenth century? I have forgotten much of British history, though I studied it intensively when I was a naval cadet.''
"Edward ruled from about 1270 to very early 1300, I think," Jill said. "I do remember that he ruled thirty-five years and died when he was sixty-eight. I remember it because that was a long life in those days, especially for an Englishman. Those chilly, drafty castles, you know."
"Greystock was made a baron by Edward and accompanied him on his Gascon and Scottish expeditions," Piscator said. "I don't really know much about him. Except that he was governor of La Civito de La Animoj-Soul City in English-a little state some forty-one kilometers down-River. He came here before I did, not too long after King John stole Clemens' boat. He enlisted in Parolando's army, rose rapidly in rank, and distinguished himself during the invasion of Soul City ..."
"Why would Parolando invade Soul-City?" Jill said.
"Soul City had made a sneak attack on Parolando. It wanted to get control of the meteorite iron supply here and the Not For Hire too. It almost succeeded. But Clemens and several others blew up a big dam. This had been built to store water from a mountain stream so it could be used to generate electrical power. The blowing up of the dam released many millions of liters of water. The invaders were wiped out, along with thousands of Parolandans. It also swept the aluminum and steel mills and the factories into The River. The Riverboat, too, but that was recovered almost undamaged.
"Clemens had to rebuild almost from scratch. During our vulnerable situation, the Soul Citizens allied with some other states and attacked again. They were repulsed but with heavy losses. The Parolanders badly needed Soul City's bauxite, cryolite, cinnabar, and platinum. It had the only supply in the Valley. The bauxite and cryolite were needed to make more aluminum. Cinnabar is the ore of mercury, and platinum is used as electrical contacts for various scientific apparatuses, and as absolutely required catalysts in various chemical reactions."
"I know that," Jill said with some asperity.
"Forgive me," Piscator said, smiling slightly. "After the unsuccessful attack by the Soul Citizens, Greystock was made a colonel. And after Parolando's successful invasion of Soul City, he was made its governor. Clemens wanted a tough, ruthless man, and like most feudal lords, Greystock was that.
"However, several weeks ago Soul City voluntarily became one of the states in the United States of Parolando, fully equal with the mother state.
"Of course"-here Piscator smiled lopsidedly-"by now the supply of minerals in Soul City is almost exhausted. Project Airship doesn't need Soul City anymore. Also, through the process which Greystock calls attrition, a very euphemistic term, I fear, the original makeup of the population there has changed considerably. It was once a majority of mid-twentieth-century American blacks, with a minority of medieval Arabs-fanatical Wahhabis-and Dravidian speakers of ancient India. Because of the wars and Greystock's harsh governorship, its population became about half-white."
"He sounds so savage," she said. "With due apologies to the savages."
"He had several rebellions to put down. No one was forced to stay at Soul City, you know. Clemens would not permit slavery. Everybody was given a chance to leave, to go peacefully and with all his possessions elsewhere. Many citizens stayed there, swore loyalty to Parolando, but then became saboteurs."
"Guerrilla warfare?"
"Hardly," Piscator said. "You know that the topography just isn't fined for guerrilla activity. No. It seems that a number of Soul Citizens thought that sabotage would be a method of recreation."
"Recreation?"
"It gave them something to do. It was better than drifting on down The River. Besides, many of them wanted revenge.
"To give Greystock his due, he usually just kicked any saboteurs he caught out of the state. Actually, he threw them into The River. Well, that is history, and it happened before I came here. Anyway, Greystock has come here because he wants to be a member of the airship crew."
"But he has no qualifications!"
"True-in one sense. He does not come from a highly technological culture, relatively speaking. But he is intelligent and curious, and he can learn. And though he was once a baron of England and governor of Soul City, he is willing to be a lowly crewman. The idea of flying fascinates him. It's akin to magic-for him. Firebrass has promised him that he can go-if there are not enough qualified airshipmen. Of course, if by chance the crew of the Graf Zeppelin or the Shenandoah should just happen to come along ..." Piscator had smiled.
Greystock was about 1.8 meters, a very tall height during the medieval period. His hair was black, long, and straight; his eyes, large and grey; his eyebrows, thick; his nose, slightly aquiline. His features harmonized into a ruggedly good-looking face. His shoulders were broad; his waist, narrow; his legs, thickly packed with muscle but long.
At the moment, he was speaking to Samuelo, his grin and his tone both sarcastic. Piscator had said that Greystock hated priests, though he had been very devout during his Terrestrial existence. Apparently, he had never forgiven the clergy for falsely claiming to know the truth about the afterlife.
Using Esperanto, Greystock said, "But surely you must have some idea of who and what La Viro was on Earth? What race was he? What nationality? When was he born, when died? Was he prehistoric, ancient, medieval, or what the later peoples called modern? What had he been on Earth, a religionist, agnostic, or atheist? What was his trade or profession? His education? Was he married? Did he have children? Was he a homosexual?
"Was he unknown during his time? Or was he, perhaps, Christ? And is that why He is remaining anonymous, knowing that no one is going to believe His lies a second time?"
Samuelo scowled, but he said, "I know little of this Christ; only what has been told me and that is not much. All I know of La Viro is what I have heard through word of mouth. They say that he is very tall, white skinned though very dark, and some say that they think he might have been Persian.
"But all this is irrelevant. It is not his background or his physical appearance that matters. What does matter is his message."
"Which I have heard from many preachers of your Church many times!'' Greystock said. "And which I believe no more than I do the stinking falsehoods the stinking priests offered me as God's own truths in my own time!"
"That is your privilege, though not your right," Samuelo said.
Grey stock looked puzzled. Jill did not understand what he meant either.
Greystock said loudly, "All you priests talk mumbo-jumbo!" and he walked away scowling.
Piscator, watching him, smiled. "A dangerous man. But interesting. You should get him to tell the story of his journey with an Arcturan."
Jill's eyebrows went up.
"Yes, he knew a being who came to Earth from a planet of the star Arcturus. Apparently, this being came with some others in a spaceship in 2002 A.D. But he was forced to kill almost all human beings. He died, too, though. It's a horrible story, but true.
"Firebrass can give you the details. He was on Earth when it happened."
Eager to talk to Greystock, Jill made her way through the crowd toward him. But she was stopped by Firebrass before she could reach the Englishman.
"A messenger just told me that radio contact's been made with the Mark Twain. Want to come along and get in on the pow-wow? You might get to talk to the great Sam Clemens himself."
"Too right I would!" she said. "And thanks for the invitation."
Jill followed Firebrass to the jeep, which was near the foot of the staircase. It was made of steel and aluminum and had pneumatic nylon tires. Its six-cylinder motor was fueled by wood alcohol.
There were five passengers: Firebrass, Gulbirra, de Bergerac, Schwartz, and Hardy. The jeep took off swiftly, following the narrow valleys among the hills. Its bright beams showed the grass, closely cut by machines, huts here and there, stands of the incredibly quick-growing bamboo, some 31 meters or over 100 feet high. Leaving the hills, it sped over the plain gently sloping to The River.
Jill could see the lights of the aluminum-processing factory, the steel mill, the distillery, the welding shop, the armory, the arms factory, the cement mill, and the government building. The latter housed the newspaper and radio station offices, and the top government officials had residences there.
The colossal hangar was down-River and hence downwind of the other buildings. Up in the mountains to the west were strings of lights. These were on the dam constructed to replace the one that Clemens had blown up.
The jeep passed the hangar. A steam locomotive, burning alcohol, chuff chuffed by, hauling three flatbed cars piled with aluminum girders. It entered the blazing interior of the hangar, stopped, and a crane hook swung down to the rear car. Workers gathered around it to connect hooks to the steel cables around the girders.
"City Hall" was the northernmost building. The jeep stopped before its porch. The riders got out and went between two massive Doric columns. Jill thought that the building was an abomination, architecturally speaking. Nor did it fit in with the surroundings. Seen from a distance, this area looked as if both the Parthenon and a section of the Ruhr had been teleported to a remote section of Tahiti.
Firebrass' suite of offices was to the left of the entrance to the immense lobby. Six men stood guard before its entrance, each armed with a single-shot rifle firing .80-caliber plastic bullets. They also carried cutlasses and daggers. The radio "shack" was a large room next to the conference hall and Firebrass' sanctum sanctorum. They entered the former to find several men standing around the operator. He was adjusting dials on the big panel before him. On hearing the door slam open under his commander's overvigorous shove, he looked up.
"I've been talking to Sam," he said. "But I lost him about thirty seconds ago. Hold on. I think I got him."
A series of squeals and crackles issued from the loudspeaker. Suddenly, the interference eased off, and a voice could be heard above the noise. The operator made a final adjustment and gave up his chair to Firebrass.
"Firebrass speaking. Is that you, Sam?"
"No. Just a moment."
"Sam here," a pleasant drawling voice said. "Is that you, Milt?"
"Sure is. How are you, Sam? And what's doing?"
"As of today, Milt, the electronic log says we've traveled 792,014 miles. You can convert that into kilometers if you wish. I prefer the old system, and that's what we're . . . well, you know that. Not bad for three years' travel, heh? But downright aggravating. A snail could go to the North Pole faster than we can, if it could go on a straight line. Or, pardon me, a great curve. It would have time to build a hotel for us and make an enormous fortune renting rooms to the walruses until we arrived. Even if the snail was traveling only a mile every twenty-four hours and we're averaging about eight hundred miles a day.
"As of . . ." sputter, crackle "... little trouble."
Firebrass waited until reception was clear before speaking again. "Is everything all-go, Sam?"
"Copacetic," Sam said. "Nothing unusual has happened. Which means that there are always emergencies, always trouble, but not mutinies, among the crew. I've had to boot a few out now and then. If this keeps up, by the time we get to our million-mile mark, I'll be the only person who was on the boat when it left Parolando."
More crackles. Then Jill heard a voice that was so deep, so bottom-of-the-well, that cold ran over her neck.
Sam said, "Yeah? Oh, all right, I forgot you, though that's not easy with you breathing booze down my neck. Joe says he'll still be here, too. He wants to say hellow to you. Joe, say hello."
"Hello, Milt."
Thunder in a barrel.
"How're thingth going? Thwell, I hope. Tham here, he'th kinda thad becauthe hith girl friend left him. Thye'll be back, though, I think. He'th been havingk bad dreamth about that Erik Bloodakthe again. I told him if he'd lay off the boo the, he'd be okay. He hathn't got any ekthcyuthe to drink, thinthe he hath me ath a thyining ekthample of thobriety."
Jill looked at Hardy, saying, "What the ..."
Hardy grinned and said, "Yeth, he lithpth. Joe Miller is as big as two Goliaths put together but he lisps. Joe belongs to a species of subhuman .which Sam named Titanthropus clemensi, though actually I think Joe's kind is really just a giant variant of Homo sapiens. Anyway, it became extinct an estimated fifty thousand to one hundred thousand years ago. He and Sam met many years ago, and they've been real pals since. Damon and Pythias. Roland and Oliver."
"More like Mutt and Jeff or Laurel and Hardy," someone muttered.
Hardy said, "Hardy?"
Firebrass said, "Mute it. Okay, Sam. Everything's in orbit. We got a great new candidate, real first-class officer material. Australian, named Jill Gulbirra. She's got over eight hundred hours dirigible experience and she has an engineering degree. How do you like that?"
Crackle. Then, "A woman?"
"Yeah, Sam, I know they didn't have female riverboat pilots or railroad engineers in your day. But in my day we had women airplane pilots and horse jockeys and even astronauts!"
Jill unfroze and started forward. "Let me talk to him," she said. "I'll tell that son of a bitch . . ."
"He isn't objecting. He's just surprised," Firebrass said, looking up at her. "Take it easy. What do you care? He's all right. Even if he wasn't, he couldn't do anything. I'm Numero Uno here.
"Sam, she said she's pleased to meet you."
"I heard her," Sam said, and he chuckled. "Listen . . ." Crackle, hiss, sputter. "... when?"
"Static shot that all to hell,'' Firebrass said. "And you' re drifting off. I don't think we can keep contact much longer. So here goes, fast. I'm a long way from having a full crew, but it'll be a year before the big ship's finished. By then I might have enough. If not, what the hell? Airplane pilots and mechanics are a dime a dozen and they can be trained for dirigible operation.
"Listen."
He paused, looked around-though why Jill did not know-and said, "Heard from X? Have ..."
Static rolled over his voice, chewed it up, and wouldn't let go of the pieces. After trying for several minutes to get hold of Clemens again, Firebrass gave up.
Jill said to Hardy, "What is this about hearing from X?"
"I don't know," the New Englander said. "Firebrass says it's a private joke between Sam and him."
Firebrass turned off the radio and got up from his chair. "It's getting late, and we have a lot to do tomorrow. Do you want Willy to drive you home, Jill?"
"I don't need anyone to protect me," she said. "And I don't mind walking. No thanks."
Covered with the magnetically attached towels, she walked across the plain. Before she had reached the first hill, she saw clouds racing across the blazing sky. She took a stick of dreamgum from her shoulderbag, tore off half of it, and thrust it into her mouth. It had been years since she had chewed it.
Now, as she moved the coffee-tasting chicloid around in her mouth, she wondered why she had suddenly, almost involuntarily, decided to try it again. What secret motive did she have? It had been almost an unconscious act. If she had not gotten into the habit of closely observing herself, she might not even have been aware of what she was doing.
Lightning flashed to the north. Then the rain fell as if dumped from a ballast bag. She put her head down under her hood and hunched her shoulders. Her bare feet were wet, but the cloth over her body repelled the drops.
She unlatched the door of her hut. Inside, she put down the bag, opened it, and removed the heavy metal lighter provided twice a year by her grail. She groped toward the table which held an alcohol lamp, a gift from Firebrass. The lightning came nearer, and by its increasing brightness, she could see the lamp.
Something touched her shoulder.
She screamed and whirled, dropping the lighter. Her right fist struck out. A hand gripped her right wrist. Her knee came up, aiming at the groin she hoped was in its path. It slid by a hip, and another hand caught her other wrist. She sagged, and the attacker was deceived. He chuckled and pulled her close. She could see him vaguely now as flashes of light dimly illumined the interior of the hut. His nose was in front of her and close, though below her, since he was short.
She bent her head swiftly, bit down on the end of the nose, and jerked her head savagely. The man screamed and released her. He staggered backward holding his nose. She followed him, and this time her foot shot up between his legs. Though she had no shoes, her hard-driven toes sent him writhing to the ground, clutching his genitals.
Jill came up and leaped up and down, landing on his side. His ribs snapped loudly. Stepping off him, she bent down and grabbed both ears. He tried to reach up then, but she yanked outward. The ears came loose with a ripping sound.
The man, ignoring his injured genitals and broken ribs, came up off the floor. Jill caught the side of his neck with the edge of her palm. He fell, and she went to the table and lit the lamp with a lighter ' in a shaking hand. The wick took hold, and then the flame brightened as she turned the knob on the side of the lamp. After trimming it, she turned, and she yelled again.
He had risen and had seized a spear from its wall brackets and was thrusting it at her.
The lamp flew from her hand in unthinking but deadly reaction. It struck him in the face, shattered, and the alcohol spilled out.
Flames exploded. He screamed and ran blindly-his eyes were on fire-toward her. She screamed. Only now did she recognize him.
She shrieked, "Jack!'' and then he was on her, had wrapped his burning arms around her, knocked her upon her back, the breath coming out of her in a whoof. Unable to breathe for a moment, but in a frenzy to escape his fiery arms, she tore herself loose and rolled away. Her fireproof clothing had kept her from being burned.
Before she could get up, however, he had grabbed her garment hem and yanked on it. The magnetic tabs separated. Naked, she leaped to her feet and ran for the spear, lying where he had dropped it. She bent down to get it, and Jack was on her from behind, blazing hands grabbing her breasts, his blazing erection driving into her. Their screams bounced around the walls of the hut, seeming to mount in intensity with each echo. She was being fried, seared, inside her, on her buttocks, on her breasts, and in her ears-as if the echoes were flames, too. She could only roll over and over until brought up short against the wall.
Jack was on his hands and knees now, his hair burned off, his scalp black, crinkled, and ridged, his skin broken open to reveal reddish-black blood and grey-black bone. The only illumination was the fire still consuming his face and chest and belly and the penis-which was swollen as if with the passion of hate-and the lightning cracking into the earth outside.
She was up and running toward the door to get to the outside, where the blessed rain would put out the fire and soothe her external burns. Somehow, he grabbed hold of her ankle. She fell heavily, knocking her breath out again. Jack was on top of her again, muttering strange croaking sounds-his tongue was burned, too?- and both were enfolded in fire.
She slid down a scream of pure agony toward a hole far below, a hole which expanded swiftly and received her as she fell toward the center of this world and toward the heart of all things.