Gods of Riverworld (34 page)

Under a giant oak at the edge of the field was a house with chimneys shaped like a rabbit’s ears and with a roof covered with rabbit fur. Before it was a large table set for teatime and many chairs around it. A man-sized March Hare and Mad Hatter and a little girl sat at the table. Though she was dressed as Tenniel had illustrated Alice, she did not have her long blonde hair. Alice had ordered an android that looked as she did when she was ten.

“Alice has certainly done herself proud,” he muttered as he steered the chair toward the foot of the hill.

She stood there by a chair that looked like the coronation chair in Westminster Hall. There was another and similar chair by it; a tall yellow-haired man stood by it.

“Her surprise!” he said. “I knew it!”

He was hurt, and he was also angry with himself because he could be hurt. So, he had been lying to himself when he had told himself that he felt nothing for her anymore.

She certainly looked beautiful. She was wearing her favorite, the flapper’s garments of the 1920s. She should have been wearing a hat, since this was an afternoon affair, but Terrestrial rules did not hold now. Her bobbed hair shone black and glossy in the sun. The man, judging by Alice’s height, was about six feet four inches tall. He wore the uniform of a Scots chief, kilt, tartan, sporran, and all. As Burton descended, he could make out the black and red checks of the Rob Roy clan on the kilt. The man was a descendant of the famous Scots outlaw, which made him a distant relative of Burton’s. He was broad-shouldered and well-muscled, and his face was handsome but very strong. He smiled on seeing the turbaned and robed Burton, and, like a sword cutting a rope and releasing a drawbridge, the smile opened Burton’s memory. He was Sir Monteith Maglenna, a Scots baronet and laird. Burton had met him in 1872 when Burton spoke in London before the British National Association of Spiritualists. Burton had upset his audience because of his firm declaration that he did not believe in ghosts and would have no use for them if they did exist. The young baronet had talked with him for a while at the party following the lecture. Both had traveled in the American West, and the Scot was, like Burton, an amateur archaeologist. They had spent an interesting halfhour while others, hoping to get a chance to defend spiritualism, fretted by them.

Alice, smiling—was there some malice in it?—introduced Burton and Star Spoon. Burton shook his hand and said, at the same time that Maglenna did, “We’ve met.”

They talked for a few minutes, recalling their old acquaintanceship while the line of people waiting to greet the hostess or be introduced grew longer, and then Burton said, “I say, Alice, how did you know of him?”

“Oh, I met Monty in 1872 when I was twenty years old and he was thirty, at a ball given by the earl of Perth. We danced together quite a few times…”

“Did we ever,” Monteith said.

“… and I saw him several times after that. Then he went off to the States, where he came close to dying, an outlaw shot him, quite accidentally, though, and he did not return until 1880. By then, I was married.”

“I was unable to keep up our correspondence,” Maglenna said. “I did write her about my disability, but my letter never got to her. And so…”

Some androids, at a signal from Alice, picked up the chairs in which Burton and Star Spoon had arrived and carried them across the field to the east end. It would have been quicker and more efficient for them to have flown the chairs to the parking area, but Alice had not had the time or had not wished to take the time to program them to operate the chairs.

Burton listened as Alice told Star Spoon in detail how grief-stricken she had been when she had believed that Maglenna had lost interest in her. Partway through her story, he decided that he had heard more than enough of that. He excused himself and wandered around until Star Spoon rejoined him.

“Did you know about Mr. Maglenna?” she said.

“No!” he said savagely. “She never mentioned him in all the many years that she was with me!”

“It’s very fortunate that they’ve finally been reunited. Just think, if it weren’t for you, they would have never found each other.”

She was smiling as if she were very pleased. Was that because Alice was happy? Or, unhappy creature that she was, did Star Spoon get satisfaction from knowing that he was anything but glad about Maglenna? Some people were so abysmally wretched that their only joy was that others also suffered.

31

They took a ride on the roller coaster, but Star Spoon got sick during the up-and-down-and-arounding and threw up in the seat. The android operating the ride called two others to clean up the mess after Burton had told him to do so.

“You seem even more nervous today,” Burton said.

“It’s all those strange creatures,” she said, waving her hand.

She was not, of course, familiar with the beings with which Carroll had populated the Alice books and which the real Alice had brought to life. They made her uneasy, because she had not been conditioned to them through the books. What made her especially nervous was the Jabberwock, which looked exactly like Tenniel’s illustration. Its scaly body was that of an attenuated dragon, and it had leathery dragon wings, but the exceedingly long and relatively thin neck, and the narrow face, which looked like a very evil old man’s, and the absurdly long toes of the front paws made it like no other dragon in myth, legend, or fictional literature. It was huge, its head reaching to thirteen feet when it stood upright. The Jabberwock, however, did not venture upon the field but prowled around within a confined area under a gigantic oak, its long tail always lashing.

“It frightens me,” Star Spoon said.

“You know that it’s been programmed not to hurt anybody.”

“Yes, I know. But what if something went wrong in it? Look at those terrible teeth. It has only four, two above and two below, but think what those teeth could do if they bit down on you.”

“You need a drink,” he said, and he steered her toward a table. The androids serving there were a Fish-Footman, a Frog-Footman, and a White Rabbit. The former two wore the eighteenth-century garments and white powdered wigs Tenniel had portrayed. The White Rabbit had pink eyes, a stiff white collar, a cravat, a checked coat, and a waistcoat. A gold chain inserted by a stud into a buttonhole in his waistcoat was attached at the other end to a large watch in a pocket of the waistcoat. From time to time, the White Rabbit took the watch out and looked at it.

“Excellent,” Burton said, grinning.

“I don’t like them,” Star Spoon whispered, as if it made any difference if they heard her. “Those huge goggly eyes.”

“The better to see you, my dear.”

He looked up as a shadow passed over him. It had been cast by the chair of de Marbot, who was leading a flight of thirty or more of his friends. He was dressed in a Hussar’s uniform; so were some of his friends. Others wore field marshals’ uniforms, though none had ever attained that rank. Most of the ladies were dressed in the style of the 1810s.

A few minutes later, Aphra and a dozen others arrived. Everybody who had been invited was here, Burton thought. He was wrong, though. Shortly after the last of Behn’s group had left the host and hostess, a motorcycle roared onto the field. Sitting in the front was Bill Williams and clinging to him was the black woman Burton had seen with him in the corridor. Williams wore a black astrakhan hat, very Russian, but his face was painted like a witch doctor’s, his torso was bare except for a necklace of human hand bones, and he wore black leather pants and boots. The woman had come-upped Sophie; she wore nothing except a necklace of huge diamonds and a complex painting of many bright-colored figures, which covered her front and back and her legs.

Burton had not known that Alice had invited Williams. Judging from her expression, she was sorry that she had. However, she smiled as a hostess should and introduced the couple to Maglenna. His eyes were as wide as his grin when he took the woman’s hand. Burton wished that he were near enough to hear their conversation.

Frigate strolled up to Burton and pointed at the late-comers. “Quite a sensation, right. The last shall be first.”

“Quite,” Burton said.

“Sophie doesn’t know if she should be delighted or furious.”

The White Knight rode by on his sorry white nag. His helmet was off, revealing a face that looked exactly like Carroll’s except for the very long drooping white moustache. A scabbard holding a huge straight two-edged sword was attached to a belt, and a big club with a wooden shaft and a knobbed end with spikes was stuck shaft-down in a boot hanging from the saddle. Attached to the back of the armor was a box, upside-down, its lid hanging. This was, in
Through the Looking-Glass,
supposed to have been the White Knight’s invention, a container for his sandwiches and clothes. But it was upside-down to keep the rain out of the box, and so its contents had fallen out.

Behind him rode the Red Knight on a roan stallion. It was a sinister figure with its crimson armor, horsehead-shaped helmet, and big spiked club.

A Walrus and a Carpenter in its paper hat and leather apron walked by, conversing. Trailing them on thin spindly legs were forty or so oysters, each with long antennae with eyes on the ends projecting from their shells.

“This must have taken Alice a long time to prepare,” Frigate said. “Think of all the details she had to put into the Computer.”

“Oh, look,” Sophie said, pointing at a tree. “Can you believe it? The Cheshire Cat!”

As they walked toward the tree, the cat, which was the size of a large lynx, began to disappear. The tail vanished, then the hindquarters, then the front quarters, then the neck, then the head. Except for a cat’s grin hanging in the air above the branch on which it had sat, it was invisible. They walked underneath it, looking for a mechanism of some sort, but could find none.

“Have to ask Alice how this is done,” Burton said. “Probably, though, she won’t know. The Computer would’ve taken the order and done its scientific magic, no explanations needed.”

The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle walked by conversing. The Gryphon was a lion-sized creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The Mock Turtle had the body of a giant tortoise, weighing perhaps six hundred pounds, and the head and back legs of a cow. It crawled slowly but, once, halted, and pushed with its short but immensely powerful front legs, causing it to spring upright. While it teetered on the end of its shell, its bovine legs braced, the hoofs digging into the ground, tears flowing, it sang in a magnificent contralto, “Beautiful soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen!”

But when it reached the chorus, beginning with “Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!” it lost its balance and fell heavily on its back, still singing. There was some consternation then until six androids turned it over. After which it resumed crawling and singing.

Star Spoon said, “I think I’ll go sit down for a while, Dick. I’m tired, and these animals”—she nodded at the Gryphon—“look so dangerous. I know they’re not, but…”

“Very well, I’ll check on you later,” Burton said.

He watched her walk to the west end of the field and sit down in a very comfortable chair. A very fat, bald-headed and old-looking android—it had to be Father William—came to her side. It must have asked her if she wanted anything, because she nodded and her mouth moved.

Burton walked around and looked at the Queen of Hearts and the other androids fashioned to simulate the living pack of cards. From the front, they looked exactly like Tenniel’s drawings, but they presented a much thicker profile, about three inches wide, he estimated. The Computer could do only so much in making a reality of fantasy. The things had to have space for muscles and organs and blood. Their faces were painted on the oblong bodies, but, though the painted mouths did not move, voices issued from them.

“Marvelous!” Burton said.

Aphra Behn happened to be standing near him. She said, “Yes, aren’t they? It’s such a childish conceit, however. Not that I disparage Alice for all this. We’ve struggled so hard to get here, endured so many dangers and tribulations, that we’ve relaxed and become children again for a while. We have to play, don’t you think?”

“The playtime, unfortunately, is over,” he said. “What happened to Turpin and Frigate may happen to us.”

He went to a table and ordered a glass of Scotch from one of the living chess pieces, a Castle. He also got a fine Havana panatela. Cigar in one hand, glass in the other, he strolled over to the croquet field. The field was as in the book, ridges and furrows with bent-over card-androids serving as arches, flamingoes as mallets, and rolled up hedgehogs as balls. Since Alice was not cruel or callous, she must have made arrangements in the neural systems of the birds and animals that would prevent them from being hurt.

Turpin seemed to have forgotten his troubles; he was having a good time at croquet.

An hour passed. Burton had two more Scotches. He took rides on the merry-go-round and again on the roller coaster and watched the orchestra for a while. Most of the musicians were Frog- and Fish-Footmen, but the conductor was Bill the Lizard, a giant saurian smoking a cigar and wearing a flat cap. They had been programmed to play any kind of music from waltzes to dixieland to classical. At the moment, they were blasting out a wild barbaric piece that Burton thought must be the rock-and-roll described by Frigate. After listening for a while, he could understand why Frigate had been tempted to erase all of this type of music from the records.

An ugly Duchess and a Queen of Hearts waddled by him.

“Off with their heads! Off with their heads!”

“Beat him until he sneezes!”

Burton went back to the croquet field, played a game, wandered around, stopping to chat with several people, and then watched the Mad Tea Party for a while. The child-android playing Alice was charming; the large dark eyes had the real Alice’s dreaminess. Burton could understand why Mr. Dodgson had fallen in love with the ten-year-old girl.

When the Mad Hatter said, “And ever since that, he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now,” Burton walked away. It was amusing to watch them go through the whole scene once, but the repetition was boring.