Gods of Riverworld (22 page)

Frigate shrugged and said, “Yes, I know. So … what is their excuse now? They have none; they have chosen their attitudes through their own free will. They and they alone are responsible.”

“That may be,” Nur said, “but it is not up to you to destroy them, to cut their alloted time short. Who knows? They might, at the very last moment, undergo a radical change of character. See the light, as it were. Remember Göring.”

“Göring started suffering remorse and guilt years ago. These … creatures … Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ivan the Terrible … are still ready … eager, in fact … to kill anyone who stands in their way. Which way, by the way, is a steady advancement toward power, supreme power, the power to dominate and control others and crush all who oppose them. Or who they think oppose them. They’re all genuinely paranoiac, you know. Though they strive to shape reality, and often do, they’re not connected with reality. I mean that they don’t truly perceive things as they are. They’re driven by their lust to shape reality into what they think it is or should be.”

“Most people are driven by the same desire.”

“There are great evils and little evils.”

“Great evildoers and little evildoers, you mean. There is no such thing as abstract evil. Evil always consists of concrete acts and concrete actors.”

Burton, who had been listening, became impatient.

“The true philosophy is not in talk, which most philosophers think is philosophy, but in action. Pete, you’re doing a lot of talking about what you’d like to do. Why? Because you’re afraid to act, and your fear comes from your feeling not self-justified?”

“I keep thinking,
Judge not lest ye be judged.
”

“Do you think for one moment that you won’t be judged even if you refrain from judging others?” Burton said scornfully. “Besides, it’s impossible for anybody not to judge others. Even saints can’t keep from judging, try though they might not to. It’s automatic and takes place in both the conscious and unconscious mind. So, I say, judge right and left, fore and aft, up and down, in and out!”

Nur laughed and said, “But don’t pass sentence.”

“Why not?” Burton said, grinning fiendishly. “Why not?”

“I’ve located a real judge, I mean a judge in the legal sense,” Frigate said. “A man who sat in the circuit court of my hometown, Peoria, during the Prohibition era. I remember reading about him when I was a kid; I also remember what my father and his friends said about him. He was part of the very corrupt municipal system then, he sent many a bootlegger to prison or fined those found with booze in their homes or in speakeasies. Yet he had a cellar full of whiskey and gin he purchased from bootleggers. Some of whom, by the way, he let off because they were his direct suppliers.”

“You’ve been very busy,” Nur said.

“I can’t resist it,” Frigate said.

Burton understood Frigate’s fascination, or, at least, thought he could. Evil people did have a certain magnetism that drew everybody, evil or good or gray-shaded, toward them. First, attraction, then repulsion. In fact, paradoxically, it was the repulsion that caused the attraction.

“The curious thing is,” Frigate said suddenly, as if he had been thinking about it for a long time but had thrust it back down, “the curious thing is that none of these, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tsar Ivan, the Peoria judge, and the baby-rapist I told you about, none of these thinks of himself as evil.”

“Göring did, and that was his first step away from his evil,” Nur said. “These men … Hitler, Stalin, and others … what do you intend to do about them?”

“I’ve put them
On Hold,
” Frigate said.

“You haven’t made up your mind yet what to do with them?”

“No. But if the Computer starts releasing the eighteen billion people back into The Valley, it won’t do it for those men. Look! I’ve seen what they’ve done. Seen it through their own eyes, seen it through the eyes of the people they did it to!”

Frigate’s eyes were large and wild, and his face was red.

“I don’t want them to keep on doing those evil things! Why should they escape justice now! They did it on Earth, but things are different here! There is some reason why they’re locked in the files and why we are in a position to judge. And to convict and execute if need be!”

“It’s not divine intervention or intention that caused the lockup,” Nur said. “It’s an accident.”

“Is it?” Frigate said.

Nur smiled and shrugged. “Perhaps not. All the more reason for us to act discreetly, reasonably, and carefully.”

“Why should we?” Burton roared. “Who cares?”

“Ah,” the Moor said, holding up his index finger and looking at its tip as if it held the answer. “Who knows? Have you perhaps had the feeling, now and then, that we are still being watched? I do not mean by the Computer but by someone who is using the Computer.”

“And just whom could that be?”

“I don’t know. But have you had that feeling?”

“No.”

“I have,” Frigate said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve always had the feeling … all my life … that someone was watching me.”

“Who then is watching the watcher? Who then judges the judge?”

“You Sufis…” Burton said disgustedly.

“The thing is,” Frigate said, “these men, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible, and so on had immense power in their lifetime on Earth. They were exceedingly important historical figures. And now…”

“Now you, the insignificant, have them in your power,” Nur said.

“I wish I could have had them in my power when they were just beginning their criminal careers,” Frigate said.

“Would you have pushed the
Destroy
button then?”

“Jesus! I don’t know! I should have! But…”

“What if someone could have pushed a button to destroy you?” Nur said.

“My sins were not that great,” Frigate said.

“Their size would depend on the attitude of the button pusher,” Nur said. “Or in the minds of those injured by your sins.”

Burton left then, though he paused a moment to say goodnight to Li Po and his woman, Star Spoon, and his cronies. Li Po had located and resurrected seven of the poets and painters who had been his special friends.

As Burton turned toward the door, Star Spoon said, softly, “We must see each other again. Soon.”

“Quite,” Burton said. “Of course.”

“I mean alone,” she said, and she walked away before the others noticed that she had spoken to him.

Burton did not believe that she just wished to
talk
to him. Under other circumstances, he would have been delighted. But Li Po was a friend and was very jealous, even if he had had no right to be so possessive. It would not be honorable to meet her alone.

But she is a free agent, he told himself. Li Po gave her life again, but he does not own her. Not unless she thinks he does. If she wishes to see me and will do so openly, Li knowing all about it, ah, well …

The very egotistic Chinese would find it hard to believe that she could prefer another man. There would be a scene, much shouting and bombast and perhaps Li Po would challenge him to a duel. That challenge and his acceptance would both be stupid. Li Po had been born in
A.D.
701 and he in
A.D.
1821, but neither were any longer bound by the codes of those times and, in fact, never had been entirely creatures of their ages. To fight over a woman was ridiculous. Li Po would realize that. Surely. But Li Po would no longer be his friend. And Burton valued his friendship.

On the other hand, Star Spoon was not a robot, and Li Po must have known when he resurrected her that he could not control her. She was no longer a slave girl.

The swaying of her hips was the tolling of a fleshly bell. Ding, dong! Ding, dong! He sighed and tried to think of something besides his rigid and aching flesh. No use. It had been too long.

But, if he came to know her well, not in the Biblical sense, would he even like her? She was probably not worth the trouble she’d cause, and he was sure that she would.

Being an old man in a young man’s body causes conflict,
he thought.
My hormones rage upstream against my long experience. ’Tis true a stiff prick has no conscience. ’Tis also true it has no brains.

However, Star Spoon was not the only woman in the world. He had available, theoretically, anyway, about 9.5 billion. Unfortunately, at that moment, Star Spoon was the woman he wanted. He was not “in love” with her, he did not think that he would ever be “in love” again, no one who was 136 years old and was intelligent could be swept away by romantic love. Should not be, anyway.

Of the 8.5 billion plus males locked in the files, perhaps a sixteenth were as old as he. Of these, a sixteenth might be said to be intelligent enough to have slipped the moorings of romantic love. He did not have much company.

At the moment, his only companion was the memory-view-screen on the wall alongside his flying chair. The Computer had skipped to the age of thirty-nine and selected a very painful scene. He was in London then, getting ready for the secret journey to Mecca. Since there would be many times when his penis would be exposed before his Moslem fellow-travelers, he had to be circumcised. Otherwise, one look at his foreskin would show them that he was an infidel dog, and he would be killed, probably literally torn apart, on the spot. Though the Muslim men usually squatted to urinate, and their robes usually covered their penises, there would be times when he could not escape their view. Thus, he was being circumcised, and his only anesthetic was a half-quart of whiskey.

Burton stopped the chair. The scene stopped with him. Burton, not knowing why he was doing so, told the Computer to project the neural-emotional field.

At once, he felt a searing pain as the doctor’s knife rounded the foreskin.

He clamped down on his teeth to keep from screaming, as he had clamped down on his cigar during the actual operation.

At the same time, he felt dizzy and sluggish. The field was enveloping him with his sensations as they had been at that time, and he had been drunk. Not as drunk as he should have been.

“Enough!” he cried. “Remove the NE field.”

Immediately, the pain was gone. Or was it? Was there not the ghost or the shadow of one slowly departing?

Burton was no masochist. He had inflicted pain only so that his desire for Star Spoon, for any woman, would go away. It worked. But not for long.

21

A long time ago, Frigate had said to Burton that it had been impossible on Earth to determine the identity of Jack the Ripper. But since the Ripper must be in the Rivervalley, he could be found there. However, the chances for running across him were extremely slight. Even less were the chances that he, if found, would confess. Also, a man who might admit to the murders might be a liar. Actually, the solution to the enigma was much more likely here than on Earth.

Frigate had stated that a long time before he and Burton had gotten to the tower. Now they were in a place where the odds for finding the man known as Jack the Ripper were high. Frigate knew who the candidates were, though it was possible that the true Ripper might not be among them, and it was likely that the Computer could locate all of these in its files.

Frigate had not gotten around to his suggested project because he was too busy with other lines of research, including tracing his genealogy. This tower, he said, was a genealogist’s paradise. He did not have to resort to the difficult-to-find and often-lost records: wills, tax and land deeds, probate and orphan court records, censuses, county histories, newspapers, tombstones, military and pension records, and all the other elusive traces of people who might or might not be your ancestors. Here you could set the Computer on the track, starting with yourself, and it could work backward through your parents. You could see on a screen what a parent looked like, where he or she was, see their lives through their own eyes and what they looked like through the eyes of others. Sometimes, he had to wait while the Computer used an ancestor’s
wathan
to search through its files for the matching
wathan
and then identified the
wathan
of that person’s parents. Where there was doubt about the paternity of a child, the Computer could compare the genetic makeup of the child and the parent in doubt and establish the relationship. If it proved that a certain child could not be the offspring of a certain adult, then the Computer could examine the genes of those suspected of being the true father. The suspects could be easily identified, since the Computer could review the mother’s past and determine exactly when and with whom she had had intercourse. After which, the physical recordings of the suspect or suspects would be examined for genetic identity.

Burton found this interesting but was not, for the moment, eager to establish his own lineage. He had always been enthralled by stories of murders, mutilations, and tortures, and he had read the newspaper accounts of the Whitechapel murders. Once he had decided that he would launch Operation Ripper, as he called it, he asked the Computer for a bibliography of all the books in English regarding the Ripper that its files contained. Whatever Ethical agent or agents had been assigned to obtaining the literature concerning the Ripper had been very thorough. Frigate took a few minutes off from his own work to check them and indicated the ones he thought Burton might find most profitable as starting points.

“I would read first a book by Stephen Knight,
Jack the Ripper, the Final Solution,
published in 1976. That impressed me as not only the most thoroughly researched and brilliant and convincing in its reasoning—would have made Sherlock Holmes proud—but also the only book that might have the true answers. However, some critics have pointed out flaws in it. Whether it’s wrong or right or only half-right, it’s a good one to use as your springboard to dive from into the incarnadined ocean of the mystery.”

It was strange to hold in his hands a book that was copied from a work published eighty-seven years
after
his death. He did not marvel long, since marvels were so many that each could be wondered at only briefly. He read the more than 270 pages in three hours. When he put the book down, he could have repeated without many errors long passages, which in total amounted to at least a fourth of the text.