Gods of Riverworld (24 page)

Burton knew that the lives of the East Enders had been wretched, but not until he had lived in it, even if in a secondhand manner, was he made sick and guilty by the mere existence of that hellhole. Guilty because he now understood that he and all others who had ignored it were responsible.

From one viewpoint, perverted but nevertheless valid, the Ripper had done a deed of mercy when he had put those hungry, gaunt, diseased, and hopeless whores out of their deep misery.

Also, unwittingly, he had forced the England outside of the East End to look at the inferno they had turned their eyes away from. The result had been a great cry for change, and many buildings had been torn down to make way for better housing. But in time the poverty and pain had resumed its former level—it had never subsided much—and the East End was forgotten by those who did not have to live there.

Frigate, when told by Burton of the results of his investigation, was intrigued. He said, “What you should do is track down those absentee landlords who made money from the horribly poor and deliver them to oblivion.”

“That’s Marxism,” Burton said.

“I despised the practice of communism, but it had some great ideals,” Frigate said. “I also despised the practice of capitalism, many aspects of it anyway.”

“But it had its ideals,” Burton said.

He had looked at Frigate and then laughed. “Has any social-political-economic system ever gotten anywhere near its ideals? Haven’t they all been corrupted?”

“Of course. So … the corrupters should be punished.”

Nur el-Musafir had pointed out what they knew but had ignored.

“It does not matter what they … we … did on Earth. What matters is what we’re doing now. If the corrupter and the corrupted have changed for the better, then they should be rewarded as much as those who have always been virtuous. Now, let me define virtue and the virtuous…” He smiled.

“No, I think not. You are tired of the sage of the tower, as you sometimes call me. My truths make you uneasy even though you agree with me.”

Frigate said, “About this business of wondering whom to resurrect to be our companions. Take Cleopatra, for instance. You and I would like to see her in the flesh and hear her story, find out the truth of what went on then. But she liked to stick sharp pins in her slave-girls’ breasts, and she could enjoy their screams and writhings. Shakespeare ignored that when he wrote
Antony and Cleopatra.
So did George Bernard Shaw in his
Caesar and Cleopatra.
From a literary viewpoint, they were right. Could you believe in or care about the genius and greatness of Cleopatra and Caesar or sorrow over their tragedy if you saw their barbaric sadism and callous murderousness? We, however, live in the real world, not that of fiction. So, would you want Cleopatra or Caesar or Antony as your neighbor?”

“Nur would say that depends upon how they are now.”

“He’s right, of course. He’s always right. Nevertheless…”

He spoke to Nur.

“You’re an elitist. You believe, and you’re probably right, that very few have the inborn ability to become Sufi or its philosophical-ethical equivalent. You maintain that even fewer will Go On. The majority just don’t have it in them to attain the ethical level to do that. Too bad, but that’s the way it is. Nature is wasteful with bodies, and she is just as wasteful with souls. Nature has arranged that most flies will become food for birds and frogs, and she has also arranged that most souls will not achieve salvation but will, even though they don’t die like the flies, fail to reach the level set for them. A few Go On, but most are like the flies who become food.”

“The difference,” Nur said, “is that flies are brainless and soulless but human beings are sentient and are aware of what they must do. Should be aware, anyway.”

Burton said, “Would Nature, God, if you will, be that wasteful, that callous?”

“He gave mankind free will,” Nur said. “It is not God’s fault that there is such a waste.”

“Yes, but you yourself have said that genetic defects, chemical imbalances, accidents to the brain, and social environment can influence a person’s behavior.”

“Influence, yes. Determine, no. No. I must qualify that. There are certain situations and conditions where a person cannot use his free will. But … that is not so here, not in the Riverworld.”

“What if the Ethicals had not given us a second chance?”

Nur smiled and held up his palms outward.

“Ah, but He
did
arrange it so that the Ethicals
did
give us another chance.”

“Which, according to you, most people are blowing.”

“You believe it, too, don’t you?”

Burton and Frigate felt uncomfortable. They usually did when they talked with Nur about serious subjects.

That was the last conversation he had in the apartment. As soon as the screens had faded, Burton went into the corridor. He thought for a moment of canceling the codeword so that someone else could use the rooms. However, he might need a place to run to, a place where no one could find him.

Carrying no possessions except the beamer, wearing only a towel-kilt and sandals, he passed through the doorway. Immediately, a screen appeared on the wall across the corridor. Ignoring the picture—his father approaching him threateningly, for what reason Burton did not remember—Burton started to get into the flying chair parked by the wall. Then he turned away from it to face the length of the hall. A roaring was coming from that direction. His hand started toward his beamer but stopped as he recognized the sound.

Presently, a huge black motorcycle zoomed around the corner of the hall several hundred yards away. Its driver was leaning the vehicle deeply to take the turn at high speed. Then the machine straightened up, and, accompanied by a wall-screen displaying an event in the driver’s past, headed toward Burton. The rider, a big black man wearing a visored helmet and a black leather outfit, flashed big white teeth at him.

Burton stood by the chair, refusing to move even though the handlebar of the cycle missed him by only an inch.

“Watch it, motherfucker!” the man shouted, and his laughter dopplered back to Burton.

Burton swore, and he had the Computer form a screen for him so that he could put in a call to Tom Turpin. He had to wait for several minutes before Turpin’s grinning face appeared. He was surrounded by his entourage, men and women flashily dressed, talking loudly and laughing shrilly. Tom was wearing an early twentieth-century suit with a bright and clashing checked design and a scarlet derby with a long white feather. A huge cigar was in his mouth. He had gained at least ten pounds since Burton had last seen him.

“How you doing, baby?”

“I’m not having as good a time as you,” Burton said sourly. “Tom, I have a complaint, a legitimate one.”

“We sure don’t want no illegitimate gripes, do we?” Tom said, and he puffed out thick green smoke.

“You people are speeding through the halls on motorcycles and cars and God only knows what else,” Burton said. “I’ve not only almost been hit twice, but the stink of gas and horseshit is most obnoxious. Can’t you do something about them? They’re dangerous and offensive.”

“Hell, no, I can’t do anything about it,” Tom said, still smiling. “They’re my people, yeah, and I’m the king here. But I don’t have no police force, you know. Besides, the robots clean up the horsepoppy, and the ventilators clean up the smoke. And you can hear them coming, can’t you? Just stand aside. Anyway, it must be boring and lonely down there. Don’t they give you a thrill, make you feel like you ain’t alone? Tell you, Dick, you been living too long by yourself. It sours your milk. Why don’t you get a woman? Hell, get four or five. Maybe you won’t be so bitchy then.”

“You won’t do anything about it?”

“Can’t. Won’t. Them niggers are really uppity.”

He grinned. “There goes the neighborhood, right? Tell you what, Dick. You just shoot them next time they annoy you. Won’t nobody be hurt permanently. I’ll just resurrect them, and we’ll all have a good laugh. Course, next time, they might shoot you. See you, Dick. Have a good day.”

The screen faded out.

Burton was seething. There was, however, little he could do about the situation unless he wanted to start a miniwar. Which he did not. Nevertheless … He got into his chair and took off for his private world. There he would be disturbed by no one, and, when he populated it, he would make sure that his companions would be not only agreeable but sensitive. Yet he loved an argument, and he found verbally violent quarrels most satisfying.

Going around the corner from which the black rider had come, Burton almost hit the heads of five people. Startled, he moved the controls on the arm so that his chair lifted above them. They had ducked, but if the chair had been a little lower, it would have struck the group.

His heart pounding hard because of the unexpectedness of the encounter, he stopped the chair, revolved it, and set it down on the floor. The two men and three women were strangers, but they did not seem to be dangerous. They were naked and so had no place to hide weapons. Moreover, they were obviously frightened and unsure of themselves. They did not approach him, though they did call out to him in English. British English, one with the accent of a cultured man, one with a Cockney accent, one with a Scotch burr, one with an Irish lilt, and one with a foreign accent, probably Scandinavian.

Burton had taken two steps toward them when he stopped.

“My God!”

He recognized them now. Gull, Netley, Crook, Kelly, and Stride.

23

Burton usually reacted swiftly to any situation and was seldom jellied with astonishment or fear. But seeing these five here was so unexpected and so impossible that he could only stare at them for a few seconds. If they had been unknown to him, he would have been surprised, but that he knew them so well, and thought them locked up in the recordings, locked his brain.

They, of course, were in a far worse state than he. They had no idea of where they were or why they had been raised. At least, judging from their expressions, they had not been told anything. Whoever had resurrected them here must have left them to their own devices.
Probably,
thought Burton, his brain beginning to flicker with a little fire,
probably it’s no coincidence that they were placed near me. But who … who in the name of God?… could have done this? And why?

Gull was now on his bare knees, looking upward, his hands together in a praying position, his mouth moving. Netley looked like a cornered animal, snarling, crouching, ready to spring at some unknown danger. The three women were looking at him with wide-open eyes. He could read both fear and hope in their faces, fear that he might be some horrible creature, hope that he might be their savior.

He got out of the chair and, smiling, approached them slowly. When he was five feet from them, he stopped. He raised his hand and said, “There’s nothing to worry about. Quite the contrary. If you will please stop babbling and follow me, I’ll tell you what’s happened to you. And I’ll make you comfortable. My name, by the way, is Richard Francis Burton. No need to introduce yourselves. I know who you are.”

He went to an open door, possibly that from which they had just exited. They started toward him just as he heard a faint roaring. Burton recognized the sound of the motorcycle motor. Instead of seating them as he had planned, he stood by the doorway. The others huddled behind him. Presently, the corridor throbbed with noise, and the cycle leaned around the corner, straightened, and shot by them. The black rider waved a gauntleted hand. “How you like that, motherfucker?”

Burton turned and saw that they were puzzled and even more scared. No wonder. None of them had ever seen a motorcycle before, any internal combustion machine, in fact. Neither had he when he died, but he had become familiar with them through his viewing of films and reading of books since he had come to the tower.

“I’ll explain that later,” he said. He told them to sit down, and they did so, but all tried to speak to him at once.

He said, “I know you have many questions, but please restrain them. We’ll get them in a while. First, though, you might like a drink.”

No, first, he would get kilts, bras, and blankets from the converter. For a moment, they were too shocked to be concerned about their nudity. Anyway, after their exposure to naked people on the Riverbanks, they would not be overly anxious about it. They were glad to get the clothing and blankets, and they murmured their thanks before putting them on. Though Netley had lost his wild look, he still seemed suspicious of Burton.

“You must need a drink,” he said. “What would you like?”

None seemed to have taken an abstainer’s vow. Netley, Stride, and Kelly wanted gin straight. Gull ordered Scotch with water; Annie Crook, wine. After Burton had served them, he said, “Your stomachs’ll be empty, but I imagine that you’re not hungry just now. When you are, you may have anything and as much as you like. Unlike your situation on The River, you don’t have to take what the grail delivers.”

They downed their liquor so swiftly that Burton gave them another round. They now looked less pale and disturbed and seemed eager to listen to him.

Gull spoke with a rich baritone. “You are not by any chance Sir Richard Burton, the famous African explorer and linguist?”

“At your service.”

“By God, I thought so. You look like him, younger of course. I attended several of your lectures at the Anthropological Society.”

“I remember,” Burton said.

Gull waved the hand that held the cut-quartz goblet, spilling some Scotch. “But … all this … what…?”

“All in good time.”

Gull and Netley would know each other, of course, even though it had been more than forty years since they had seen each other. Burton doubted that the two recognized the three women. Gull had seen Crook for a brief time when he certified her insane, and she was not now in Victorian garments and had cut her dark hair short. (She did resemble somewhat Princess Alexandra, Eddy’s mother, which might be why Eddy, who had obvious Oedipal tendencies, had fallen in love with her.) John Netley had seen Annie Elizabeth Crook, Prince Eddy’s lover, many times, but if he knew her now he certainly was not acting as if he did. Perhaps he did not want to acknowledge it. If she did not know him, so much the better. On the other hand, why had Crook not recognized him? His moustache was missing, but even so … Perhaps the shock and the lack of Victorian clothes and the long time since their last encounter accounted for her lack of memory.