Gods of Riverworld (8 page)

It must be vast indeed to be visible from where they stood, and through the glowing
wathans.
It was three miles below them, and they could see only a part of the top as a gray cloud. The rest of it occupied an expanded part of the well, a dome.

So far, the tenants had not ventured to the level where they could view the brain in its entirety. Nor did Burton plan on going there now. Instead, he returned to his chair and led his companion to the other side of the tower and down a shaft. Burton counted the levels passed—he had counted them during his first ascent from the level that was his destination—until he came to the one containing Loga’s hidden room.

Before reaching the room, Burton stopped his chair. The Frenchman pulled up alongside him and said, “What is it?”

Burton shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He could see no mobile wall-screen, but the unknown might have other ways to monitor them. Even if he was not watching them now, it was probable that the Computer was recording their actions for later viewing.

They entered a big laboratory containing equipment whose functions Burton did not know—except for four huge gray metal cabinets. These were energy-matter converters. Their walls held all the needed circuits. In fact, the walls were the circuitry. Their power came through orange circles on the floor, which were matched to the orange circles in the center of the cabinet bottoms. Two cabinets were permanently attached to the floor, but the others could be taken from the room. Not, however, by the muscle power of two men alone.

Burton turned his chair, and, followed by de Marbot, flew out of the room and through the corridor past the wall behind which was Loga’s hidden room. De Marbot must have wondered why Burton did not stop there, but he refrained from comment. By the time that they had returned to their suite level, after speeding up and down shafts and along corridors chosen at random, he no longer looked puzzled. He looked bored. But when they were in the hall, he pulled a notebook from the pocket on the outside of the chair and wrote on a sheet.

Burton took the note and held it close to his chest, his left hand partly covering it. He read:
How long must I wait before you tell me your plans?

Burton wrote with a pen taken from the container on the side of his chair.

Sometime this evening.

De Marbot read it and smiled. “I will have something to look forward to,” he murmured.

He tore the note into tiny pieces, placed them on the floor, and ignited them with his beamer ray. He ground the ashes with the toe of his sandal and blew them away.

They waited, and presently a recess in the wall opened and a wheeled, jointed, cylindrical machine rolled out. It headed for the ashes, a scooplike extension sliding out from its front. It sprayed the dirty area with a liquid that quickly dried into many tiny balls and then sucked the spheres onto the scoop and into an opening. A minute later, it had retreated into the cavity from which it had come, and the recess closed.

De Marbot spat on the floor just to see the robot in action again. As it rolled back to its lair after its cleanup job, the Frenchman kicked it. Unperturbed, the machine disappeared into the cavity.

“Really, I prefer the protein-and-bone robots, the androids,” de Marbot said. “These mechanical things, they give me the shivers.”

“It’s the flesh-and-blood ones that disturb me,” Burton said.

“Ah, yes, if one kicks them, not out of a desire to hurt, you comprehend, but a desire to evoke an emotion, one knows that, since they’re of flesh and blood, they do hurt. But they do not resent the insult or the injury, and that makes them nonhuman. Still, one does not have to pay them wages, and one knows that they will not go on strike.”

“It’s their eyes I don’t like,” Burton said.

De Marbot laughed.

“They look no deader than the eyes of my Hussars at the end of a long campaign. You are reading into them a lack of life that does not exist. The lack, I mean. You know that they are brainless, rather, to be exact, use only a tiny portion of their brains. But one can say that of certain humans we have met.”

“One could say a lot,” Burton said. “Shall we join the others?”

De Marbot glanced at his wristwatch. “An hour until supper. Perhaps I may be able to make Aphra jolly again. There is nothing that upsets one’s digestion like a sullen companion at the table.”

“Tell her that she’ll be in on the next phase of the project,” Burton said. “She’ll brighten up then. But don’t tell her what we did unless you use this.”

He indicated the notebook.

De Marbot grimaced and said, “That one, the watcher, must be wondering what we’re up to. How can we hide anything from him? One can’t fart without his knowing about it.”

Burton grinned and said, “Perhaps we’ll make him fill his pants. In a manner of speaking.”

The eight had agreed that each would take turns hosting the others. Tonight was Alice’s, and she greeted them wearing a long, very lowcut, Lincoln-green evening gown of the style of 1890. Burton doubted that she was also wearing the numerous undergarments of that period. She was too accustomed to the comfortable cool clothes of the Rivervalley, a towel serving as a short skirt and a thin, light cloth serving as a bra. She did have elegant green high-heeled shoes on, and silk stockings, though the latter probably did not reach to her knees. Her jewelry, provided by an e-m converter, was an emerald set in a gold ring, small gold earrings, each with a single large emerald, and a string of pearls.

“You look lovely,” he said as he bowed and kissed her hand. “Eighteen-ninety, heh? The year of my death. Are you trying to tell me in a subtle manner that you are celebrating that occasion?”

“If I am, I am doing so unconsciously,” she said. “Let’s not have any wisecracks, right?”

“Wisecrack. Nineteen thirty-four word,” Frigate said to Alice. “The year of your first death.”

“The only one, thank God,” she said. “Must we speak of the Grim Reaper?”

Frigate bowed and kissed her extended hand.

“You are absolutely devastating. Say the word, and I’m all yours. No, you don’t have to say it. I’m yours anyway.”

“You’re very gallant,” she said. “Also, very pushy.”

Burton snorted and said, “That’s one thing he’s not. Except when he’s been drinking. Dutch courage.”

“
In bourbono veritas,
” the American said. “But you’re wrong. Not even then. Am I, Alice?”

“Alice is a well-garrisoned castle on a steep hill surrounded by a wide moat,” Burton said. “Don’t try to mine her. Take her by storm.”

The American flushed. Alice did not lose her smile, but she said, “Please, Dick. Let’s not be unpleasant.”

“I promise,” Burton said. He turned, and started. “My God! Who’re…?”

Two men in servant’s livery were standing near the dinner table. Not men. They were androids. One had the face of Gladstone; the other, of Disraeli.

“No one else has ever had two prime ministers of Great Britain wait on them,” Alice said.

Burton spun toward her, his face red and scowling.

“Alice! We talked about the danger! The Snark could program them to attack us!”

She met his fury calmly.

“Yes, we did. But you, or somebody, also said that the Snark has a thousand ways of getting at us. He hasn’t done anything yet, and if he were going to, he’d have done it. Two androids, a thousand, won’t make any difference.”

“Agreed!” Li Po said in his loud shrill voice. “Bravo, Alice, for taking the first step! I myself have some plans for androids! I may put them into effect tonight! Ah, tonight! You will suffer no more, Li Po!”

Burton had to admit, to himself, anyway, that she was right. She should not, however, have done this without getting the consent of the others. At the very least, she should have consulted him about it.

Perhaps, if the leader of this group had been someone other than him, she would have. It seemed to him that she took every opportunity to defy him now. Under that quiet soft demeanor, behind those large soft dark eyes, was a stubborn woman.

De Marbot and Behn arrived somewhat flushed and perspiring, as if they had just gotten out of bed or were in the midst of a quarrel. If the latter was the case, they were covering it up well. They smiled and joked and seemed perfectly at ease.

Burton greeted them and strode to a side table loaded with bottles and goblets and a huge bucket of ice. He waved away the android with Gladstone’s face, which had approached him and asked if he could pour him a drink. Alice had done a very good job if she had reconstructed the prime minister’s features from memory. She could have done so, since the man had dined a number of times at her house when her parents had been alive. More probably, though, she had asked the Computer to locate Gladstone’s photograph in the files and it had done so. Then she had given the Computer her specifications, and it had reproduced this living but mindless being.

“By the Lord,” he murmured, “it even has his voice!”

He sipped on the rye whiskey, smoother than any he had tasted on Earth, though it must be reproduced from some Terrestrial brand, and he went to talk with Nur. The little Iberian Moor was holding a glass of some pale yellow wine, which would last him for the evening.

“The Prophet did not forbid any alcoholic beverage except wine made from dates,” he had once told Burton, who already knew it. “His excessively zealous disciples later extended the ban to all liquor. Though I felt that I did not have to obey the dictates of those ignoramus fundamentalists, I just did not care for strong waters. However, I have acquired a taste for this Chinese wine. Besides, even if I were a drunkard, what would Allah do to me that I had not done to myself? As for Mahomet, where is he?”

Burton and Nur talked of Mecca for a while, and then the android who looked like Disraeli announced that dinner was served. Since each guest had told Alice in the morning what he or she would like, the menus were in the Computer’s memory. It took one microsecond for the food to appear inside a giant e-m converter; the servants took longer putting the appetizers on the table. Burton had ordered a salad with devil’s-rain dressing followed by
sturgeon fumé a la muscovite
and for dessert two tarts with rhubarb filling. The appropriate wine was served with each course.

Burton, Behn, Frigate, and Li Po had cigars of the finest Cuban tobacco. Nur smoked his after-dinner cigarette, the only nicotine he allowed himself.

Burton approached the Frenchman, who backed away. “Spare my precious lungs that vile poison!” he cried.

“A man could die happy breathing this,” Burton said. “However, as you said,
non disputandum de gustibus.
Did you inform Aphra that she might join us in our next venture if she wished?”

“That, yes, I did,” de Marbot said. “Unfortunately, I could not tell her just what that venture was.”

Burton handed him a note. De Marbot read it and looked up. “What…?”

He came close to the Englishman and stood on his tiptoes to talk into Burton’s ear. Burton still had to lean over.

“We will, I will, anyway, be ready. But … you can give me no indication, no clue, as to what you have in mind?”

“It’s best not to.”

“Ah, how intriguing,” de Marbot said. “May the realization come up to my expectation. Danger, romance, skullduggery, an open charge upon the enemy or a silent stealth, apprehension, uncertainty, a task demanding all of one’s courage and a straining of one’s steel nerves.”

“All of those,” Burton said. “Perhaps.”

8

A few minutes after one in the morning, Burton parked his chair outside de Marbot’s and Behn’s apartment. The door, as he had required, was open. He went into the big living room, the shadowless illumination coming on just as he passed through the doorway. He went down the hall and knocked on the bedroom door. Sleepily, de Marbot called, “
Quelle?
”

“
C’est moi, naturellement
,” Burton said.

A moment later, the Englishwoman and the Frenchman stumbled through the doorway, rubbing their eyes.

“You owe me six hours of sleep,” the Frenchman said. “How does one repay such a debt?”

“With six hours’ loss on my part,” Burton said. “But this is for your benefit, also, so I owe you nothing.”

De Marbot had put on a towel-kilt, and Aphra was wearing a delicate black lace bra and black panties.

De Marbot said, “Hey, my cabbage, is that all you care to don?”

“It’s what I always wear for midnight assignations,” she said.

De Marbot laughed, hugged her, and kissed her cheek.

“My wild English rose. Always the unexpected, the delightful.”

She was, however, deceiving him. She went back into the bedroom and reappeared clad in a thin blouse, a short skirt, and ankle-length boots. By then Burton had ordered three large mugs of Brazilian coffee from the converter. They sipped while he told them that he would explain just what they would do when they got to their destination.

“Sealed orders,” de Marbot said. “But the enemy, he is watching and listening to us. We are like the cat with a bell around his neck.”

“By the time we get through, he won’t be able to see or hear us,” Burton said.

De Marbot’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled.

“Ah! I anticipate, I quiver, I revolve inside myself with excitement.”

“There’s a lot of work involved,” Burton said. “You’ll be tired before we’re done.”

“Not I. I am a man of iron, and Aphra, she is hard as platinum and twice the worth of that worthy metal in her weight.”

“Which is increasing,” she said, patting her hip.

Burton gestured impatiently, and they followed him to the corridor. They were armed with two beamers and knives, though they had no reason to expect to use them. They got into their chairs, and Burton flew in the lead. He steered the chair down the shaft to the level even with the surface of the cold dark sea surrounding the tower.

When Burton stopped the chair, de Marbot said, “This is not far from Loga’s secret room.”

Burton nodded and indicated that they should go into the nearest room, the laboratory that he had visited the day before. Aphra looked around it and said, softly, “He must be wondering what we’re up to. He’s no more puzzled than I.”