Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 10

"Even birds have feet," noted Selous.

"True," said Caligula. "You are a very wise man. In a way, I will be almost sorry to rip you open and eat your innards."

And then, chirping very quietly to himself, the Roman began leading the Englishman across the savannah toward the distant cl.u.s.ter of men.

Hie command had seemed to come from inside him, as it always did when a real stemwinder was building.

"Here I stand my ground," said Huey Long. "Come around! I want to talk to you!"

In the dim light of the infernal sun, Huey thought he could see them beginning to stumble before him, but then again it might have been only an illusion. He had Beethoven's attention, though; the musician was crouched in place, squatting there, looking at Huey with those odd and flickering eyes, a crazy man's eyes.

"Let me tell you about my friend the great musician here," continued Huey. "He had plans. He wanted to enter the city and find the emperor, to settle old accounts129.with him, but he has changed his plans. Do you know why? Do you?"

There was no response to the question, just the sound of empty breathing and perhaps a rumble in the distance. You had to have confidence, however; then you could draw them in.

"He gave it up," said Huey, "because, like you, he thought that there was nothing in the city, that it was all random, that some would come and some would go, but that the reincarnation made no sense at all and there was no way that the emperor could be found because the emperor could be a thousand miles down the other way. And he grew discouraged, tired of the noise, the heat, the feeling that nothing at all could be changed, nothing could be done." Huey paused and looked around him, measuring their response. "But now I am here to tell you that my friend has seen differently, that he has understood the nature of his portion and he must recant his obstinacy, for the emperor is there, he is there for all of us and everything that we want can be found in that city of desires. The truth of Riverworld has been launched upon us."

Now he knew that he had their attention. "Do you know what the truth is?" he continued. "It is here for all of us. That is the truth. We have been granted all power, all possibility, all fundamental circ.u.mstance in this bedevilled place. Every man a king, every woman a queen! We can do anything we want, all of us kings and queens of our domain, waiting for that ent.i.tlement, for the cloak of possession to be put upon us. And that is why we are going to change our ways." He paused dramatically. "We are going to go back. We are going to reclaim the city."130."What are you talking about?" someone said. It was a British accent, clipped and almost indecipherable in the thick haze, but Huey could infer the message. "You're out of your mind," the voice said. "You Americans don't know s.h.i.t!"

"Where is that man?" shouted Huey. "Let me see the man who said that! Bring yourself forward and confront me! If you have the courage to do that, then you have the courage to go back to the city."

"Not courage," the voice said, attached to a spindly figure who came through the haze and dropped to one knee before him, crouching in the mud beneath the tree stump upon which Huey stood. "Hey, mate, why don't you give it up and just face the truth? We are lost. We are as lost as we all have ever been. We are so lost that we don't even know the wood. Why don't you let us sleep? Why don't you let us buy out of this terrible place?"

"If you have the courage to say this," answered Huey, "then you have the courage to move on from here. We can take back the city. We can find our souls within that place. We can reclaim ourselves and we can begin anew."

He was sure of this, Huey thought. It was not only the sound of his own voice pounding that realization into him, but indeed some intimation of what they had become. He clambered down off his perch on the tree stump, staring at the Brit who had baited him, and behind that Brit the ragam.u.f.fin crowd that had a.s.sembled, the worst army he had ever seen-and yet it was an army, it could be taken in that direction.

"Beethoven," he said, "stand up and give us a march! Give us a march, do you hear me? We are going to take back the city!"131.And without thinking about it further, without stopping to consider the amazing and preposterous dimensions of what he had somehow suggested, Huey Long pushed his way through them and began to advance upon the city.

Suddenly a voice rang out: "It's a very big city, and you're a very small army. If you're going to take it, then you're going to need an advantage, something to even the odds."

"Yeah?" said Huey, turning to face the lean, bearded newcomer. "What have you got in mind?"

Selous smiled and displayed a youthful blond man who struggled against the rope that bound him. "A G.o.d," he said. "A genuine gold-plated G.o.d."

Caligula looked up at the man and said, "He's right. That's exactly what I am. You will unbind me immediately. You will release me from these ropes or I will strike a curse-"

"He talks like that," interjected Selous. "Up and down, like nothing you have ever heard. You might as well give him a try. After all, not only does he have plans, big plans for reckoning, but how can you be defeated with a G.o.d at your fore? In any event," Selous concluded with a sweeping gesture, "I turn the situation over to you. Deal with him as you will."

Caligula examined the others carefully: the wild-haired man with the poisoned features of a Claudius, the somewhat younger, smooth-faced man with funny hands and strange gestures. They were not the kind of troops he would have envisioned, but on the other hand, you had to use what you had. In court, out of court, in or out of the city, surrounded by fools or madmen, you lived as you132.must, transcendent, and you brought order from the sinister.

"Well," said Caligula with a haughty tilt of his head, fixing his attention on the smooth-faced man who seemed the most reasonable, perhaps the most reverent of them all, "are you going to release me? Are you going to serve my powers? Or will you defy me and bring down my terrible curse?"

"He talks that way," said Selous. "Almost all the time. I can't do anything with him; maybe you can."

"Yes," said the smooth-faced man, his eyes filled with reverence, or at least a decent sense of the occasion. "Yes, I think we can do that." He reached out, began to tug on the ropes. "Stand clear," he said, "and let me release this G.o.d from his altar." He smiled at Caligula. "My Latin ain't all it used to be, and truth to tell, it was never that good. What did you say your name was?"

"Quickly unbind me," said Caligula, "and you will know my name and my curse, all of my circ.u.mstances...."

"He talks that way all the time," Selous said again. "I'm a solitary man, used to the silent places. You deal with him; I've had quite enough, thank you."

"We've all had enough," said the smooth-faced man. "It's amazing how much you can take, though." He stared at Caligula intently, knelt, tugged at a knot. "Every man a G.o.d, that's my philosophy," he said. "What else would have brought us here?"

"G.o.dhood is restricted," said Caligula. "It becomes only one of us."

"Oh, calm down," said his rescuer. "Calm down and stop babbling, at least for a moment. Beethoven, come and step on this cord, will you? We're never going to get him loose at this rate."133.They bent intently to minister to him. Caligula crouched proudly, his head inclined at an angle, seeking the sun, the thin blades penetrating the heavy rolling clouds. An image pressed upon his mind, an image that inserted itself, unbidden, and that he could not remove. Hunched as if in this position, clinging to the stones, his belly heaving and inverted, his knees feeling the cold damp of the stones as he clutched the handles.

The vomitorium.

. Without instruments he could not carry a tune, and this place yielded not even percussion, but Beethoven gave them a march anyway as they laboured up and down with the one called Caligula at their head. It was the Turkish March from The Ruins of Athens, not his favourite, but good enough for this rabble with its piercing woodwinds and rattling snare drums, effects that he could reproduce in his head if not his muttering, groaning voice.

Take the city, that was Selous's idea too, take back the city. Not that they had ever had it in the first place, not that the city was anyplace to take. What could you do with it? But the Roman emperor, the strange youth with the glaring eyes, seemed to know his business: he had the a.s.surance of Napoleon and the madness of an archbishop, moving out at the end of them in a curious, shuffling stride that conveyed, if not regality, then a kind of determination that Beethoven could appreciate.

Selous and Huey Long seemed deep in conversation as they shuffled along. From time to time some form would leap from the crowd that streamed alongside them and slap at the Roman emperor, then fall back with a roar.

It was a procession unlike any Beethoven had ever known. He had written his share of marches and134.contradances in his time, junk and diversions for the rabble, but he had never seen a group such as this. He could tell that things had changed since they had come upon Selous and Caligula, had released Caligula from his bondage and started back toward the place from which he had come. Matters were not at all as they had been. The air was thicker, clotting his nostrils, and the crowds pressed with an insistence he had not known before. Every man a G.o.d, Huey Long had said, and indeed attention was being paid to this Caligula unlike anything Beethoven had ever seen. Maybe there really was something at the end of this trek; Beethoven did not know, and it was not worth thinking about. What you did was take the staff and make your way with the rest of it: Roman emperors, Gallic emperors, democrats, freedmen, archbishops or slaves, they were all the same. There was almost an insight there, but he would not think about it. Not with the music roaring in his head, the cymballo rattling, the pedal of the snare drum furious against the screen of his consciousness.

When they came to the rise and looked down upon the enclosure, the huts erected along the River, Selous felt a sense of triumph, of vindication.

"You see?" he said, turning to Huey Long. "I told you we could get here. I knew it was just a matter of turning around and coming back, that no one would stop us!" Indeed, no one had stopped them, and they had in fact gathered a considerable group that was not discouraged by the heat and the brutality of the conditions, nor by Caligula's ravings. "Now we go on to the next step."

"And what is the next step, son?" asked Huey Long. The walk had not winded him, nothing on the Riverworld135.seemed to have the effect that it might have had in what he had come to think of as civilian life. "Am I supposed to make a speech? Is there a place we're supposed to occupy? Are we empowered to take something?" His eyes twinkled with a mad light, and he suddenly seemed to Selous to be not only an odd but possibly a dangerous man. Then the intimation pa.s.sed and he was just a fat American politician with no const.i.tuency.

"I'm quite sure that matters will resolve now," said Selous. "Once they see us, once they know we've returned here, they will make arrangements for us."

Huey Long stared at him with that odd, kindly expression that could so suddenly and awkwardly shift to brutality, and said, "I don't know what you're talking about, son. I truly do not."

Selous shrugged. "Do any of us? Do any of us really know what is going on in this d.a.m.nable place?"

"I do," said Caligula. "I know exactly what is going on." He turned to them, his body at attention, his eyes ferocious and insistent. "Now," the emperor said, "now we will bring this to an end." He raised his hand, stared at Selous, then Long, then pa.s.sed his gaze along the thin ranks that had staggered to surround them.

"Bring me a virgin," he said. "Bring me a virgin at once!"

But, of course, he had known that this was their mission, that this was what had been waiting for them all along. Caligula felt the G.o.dhood coursing within him, felt in these burning moments the fullness of his need, and as he cast his eyes slowly down the line of followers he sought out the women in the ranks. He could feel the familiar power of his s.e.x stirring deep within him. They136.would not dare to refuse, for soon they would know his true power.

"Bring me a virgin," he repeated, "or soon all of you will be dead. I will p.r.o.nounce a curse upon you that will bring you to the dung that you are." He reached out, snagged Selous in a surprising and huge grasp, then flung the man out of his way with a power born of the madness now inside him, and ran toward the dim line he saw before him.

"I'll have you!" he yelled. "I'll have you all!" Destiny filled his loins as gracefully as if it had been the blood and s.e.x of the virgin he craved. "You will acknowledge my G.o.dhood!" he cried. "I will open the gates of this city in the game of the anointment and I will have you all, just as it was decreed!"

He reached out, snared a body, ran his hands cruelly up and down it, seeking b.r.e.a.s.t.s, seeking the familiar pudenda, an amazing sense of destiny overwhelming him. Why, this place was splendid! He had not judged its splendour until this very moment. For he was truly a G.o.d here. He could do as he wished to any of them. Why had he not understood this before? They were all G.o.ds.

He started to mount the body, his needs urgent. He had never dreamed there could be a place such as this, but here it was. This was surprising, enormous, absolutely astonishing to him. In his head there was a ribbon of screaming, and he seized on to it, held it, and let the screaming drag him home.

Beethoven stared in despair. He had never seen such things. Even when the mobs had stormed the gates of Paris in 1789 there had not been anything like this, he was sure. But here it was. Huey Long was staring,137.laughing. Selous was rubbing his hands and yelling at Caligula in Victorian outrage... but no one moved on the young emperor in the small s.p.a.ce that he had opened as he continued his cruel and amazing act.

The cymbals in Beethoven's head had stopped, the piccolo too, and all that was left was the droning of the ba.s.si in the trio of the C Minor Symphony, that grotesque dance toward h.e.l.l.

"What are we doing?" he said to Huey Long. "Is this what we have become? Is this the end for us?"

He had a sudden blazing insight: Long and Selous had talked them back to the gates of the city for precisely this reason, so that pillage and rape could be undertaken, and Caligula had been unbound to lead them because only Caligula could manage what was necessary without hesitation.

"Aren't you going to stop this?" continued Beethoven. Long bit his lip, shook his head, smirked a negative. Selous shrugged; he seemed fascinated with what was going on, engaged but disengaged.

"From here I can't even tell if it's a man or a woman," said Selous.

"Does it make any difference?" said Long.

"Then I'll stop it!" Beethoven, without quite realising what he was doing, flung himself at the rounded, heaving flanks of the emperor, feeling a revulsion such as he had never known. That other emperor, Napoleon, had betrayed him, but that had been impersonal, it had not been like this. This was revolting. It was obscene, disgusting, it was the revocation of all that he had lived his fifty-seven years to negate. Freedom, yes, but freedom for all, not just the insane and the wicked.

"Stop!" he shrieked, lunging toward them. Then he138.felt Huey Long's hands upon him, enormous, pulling him back.

"No!" said Huey Long. "Don't stop him! This is what we came here to see."

"Every man a G.o.d," said Huey Long. Selous stared at the American in shock and approval. "That is why we were taken to this place," continued Long; "so that we could do as we wished."

Beethoven struggled in his embrace, tried feebly to escape, but Long was much too powerful for him.

Selous looked upon the two of them in that embrace, looked further to see Caligula humping and scuttling away in the position of an insect, and thought: the man is right. The American is right, every man is a G.o.d, and we have come to this accursed place to make G.o.ds of ourselves, be they in the most despicable of fashion. That is the answer that lay in the heart of the city; that is what we have always understood. All of his life he had aspired, just as others must, to this position, and now that he had found it there was nothing to do but submit.

"Submit!" Selous screamed to Beethoven. "Let it be! Do as you will!" He scanned the land, the encampment in the distance, the near forms that in the intensity of Caligula's necessity had scattered to open ground. I'd do it myself if I could, thought Selous, and I will, I will. "Now I understand why we came back to the banks of the River," he said to Huey Long. "This was waiting for us all the time, wasn't it?"

Long smiled, shook his head, opened his hands to Selous. His expression was curious, abstracted. Beethoven, scrambling in Long's enormous hug, gave up sud-139.denly, sunk to his knees, then leaned over the ground and rubbed his forehead in the mud.

"You won't stop him," muttered Beethoven. "None of us will stop him. Nothing will ever be stopped again. That's the answer, isn't it? That's what you wanted me to know, why you brought me back to humiliate me."

"I don't know anything about that, son," said Huey Long. He smiled easily and stared at Selous. "But we think we know the answer now, don't we?"

"Yes," said Selous. There was a dim and insistent haze in front of him; he could have whisked it away with a few motions of his hand, but he chose not to. "Yes, I understand. Every man a G.o.d." He looked at the entrapped, sullen Beethoven. "Even you," he said. "And me, and the rest of them. That is for us to discover."

Caligula's voice bleated through the haze, through the shocking stillness of the Riverworld. Selous heard the chanting of the emperor and then the dull scream of his release. I'll be d.a.m.ned, he thought, and then, Yes, I guess I am. I guess we all are. Which is exactly the same thing as being free.

"He sure put that chicken in the pot, didn't he?" said Huey Long. "Look at the man put that there car in the garage." He cackled and wondered what Selous would say to that. "Say, there," he said to Beethoven, who was now softly weeping beneath him, "what do you think the Englishman would say?"

"Muss ess sein," Beethoven said. "Ess muss sein."

Magnificent in his duties, triumphant in his discharge, the G.o.d Caligula rolled from the inert form that had served him so well-adequately, anyway, enough for the140.time being, though of course there would be better-and looked at his subjects encamped in the distance, fallen to their knees to revere and serve him.

"Oh, yes," he said quietly. "Oh, yes, reverence and service, they are the same thing."

He readjusted his garments, stood, pushed the husk of his revenant to one side, and strode to the small place that had been made for him by the servants of the Riverworld, his parapet from which he would speak. He would gather them to him and give them his orders, and then the true and final nature of his reign would begin. In the distance he heard the shrieks of homage, Claudius himself soon to come, to bear witness, to bow down in service. Every man a G.o.d, yes- -But this G.o.d, granted the Riverworld, its indulgence, its folly and its treasure... this G.o.d a man.

BLANDINGS.

ON RIVERWORLD.

Phillip G. Jennings

"Has even death become unsure? Are we mockeries of ourselves? Are you the Mocker?"

The Big Cheese's voice echoed down from the throne. P.G. Wodehouse, Bart., was urged to his knees by the guards at his side, and the Grand Panjandrum-this "al-Hakim" chappie-took wind for another set-to in what Plum had to admit was exceptionally refulgent Arabic.

"To say that G.o.d speaks is to suggest he may ever be silent. This-this 'river world' is not reality, but a code, and therefore a message and not of G.o.d. But it implies a message very like the Druze da'wa, and therefore a thousand times deceitful. What do you know of the Deceiver?"

Hakim's mighty line of thought seemed almost logical. Some Oxford wallah might grasp how one sentence led to the next, each conclusion grimmer than the one before it. "Well now, dash it! I mean-codes and all!" Saddled with the habits of a myopic lifetime, Plum blinked about, trying to make something of a hall built of cyclopean slabs. His spirits certainly needed fortifying. A casual141.

142.viewer of these mustered ranks hi black robes and white turbans-said viewer might easily hop to the conclusion that he was "in for it."

It was not a conclusion Plum Wodehouse liked to embrace. Death may have lost much of its sting by the third or fourth inning, but his last incarnation he hadn't even gotten a chance to eat, and his faith in the better nature of humanity was taking a beating. "If you think I'm the Devil, or that I've met him, I have to answer not to my knowledge. No. I mean, I don't think so."

"Truth knows what it means."

"I suppose it does," Plum conceded. In moments of desperate anxiety his smile widened to the straining point and became almost horrible. "But I can't vouch for anyone but myself, and I've met a lot of strange coves and covesses these last few lives...." His eyes narrowed with sudden cunning. "Besides, didn't you say we might not be ourselves? Under the circ.u.mstances, I don't know how to prove my bona fides."

"We tolerate one people here, and one language. a.s.suredly I've never heard Arabic spoken as you do," al-Hakim thundered from his high and distant seat. "Nevertheless, it is Arabic-of a sort."

He pondered, and the flanking spear-carriers shifted in waiting, ready to extirpate this infidel at the crook of a finger. "You've lived several lives? After the feast, attend us privately in our garden, and we will hear your testimony."

Plum took this for good news, and breathed again. The four hours of this present existence might become eight, and then sixteen.... Socially inept, yes, but he'd always charmed-well, not everybody. In his last incarnation Hans Horbiger had it in for him, with bells on. Still, al-Hakim143.bi'Amr Allah would feel better for a few rashers under his belt, and in a tete-a-tete encounter...

Plum felt a tap on his shoulder. His travail was over, but the business of court went on-the business of recessing for lunch in conformity with the inexorable schedule of the local grailstones.

One of the spearmen sat him in an alcove with a few heterogeneous gents, and took his tiffin-tin. The usual magic was done offstage, and it came back not quite an hour later for Plum to open.

The fee for this service was all his cigarettes and alcohol. Plum hardly minded crossing the callused palm of the local IRS. At some date umbrage might set in, but for the nonce he took a larger view. Made affable by a melange of chicken, paprika, onions, and sour cream, he tried his French on the swarthy gang around him. French, language of diplomacy, perfect for the exchange of secrets- but his halting attempts ne marche pas.

German? Latin? Carpe diem might as well be a Vietnamese fish recipe. After some diffidence and throat-clearing, the Apache-looking customer ventured his English. "Don't use Jesus dates. He'll ask you. Subtract six hundred thirty from everything."

Plum beamed mutely, his mouth full. The Apache went on. "It's not always the same number, because they got shorter years. But if you lived on Earth after 1200 his time, he'll be interested in you."

Plum did the math. The six hundred part was easy: Thirteen dah-de-dah. Thirteen forty-two. He might round it upward-fifty, sixty, seventy. "Do I want to be interesting?" he asked.

The Apache laughed. He might have said touche, but the Norman conquest had never reached Arizona.144.

145.After the pudding, Plum tried to ease himself among this crowd: "Ah, an afterlife of leisure." The irony, apparent in the English, did not survive translation. He reconsidered his cheerfulness, adopting the general silence until a pair of black-robes-lots of kiltcloth wasted here-strode in and grunted him to his feet.

The local gendarmerie marched him left through an atrium and out a roofless corridor. Under a semitropic sun the corridor doubled on itself, stones like polished incisors on both sides. Giant chiclets, Plum thought, always keen to improve a metaphor. His way ramped into a shallow pool and out again. The three left wet footprints for a distance, and the labyrinth opened to compa.s.s a field just too small for a cricket match.

The man Hakim waited under a tree. Close up, he boasted a heroically Semitic face: like an a.s.syrian fresh off the frieze, minus the beard and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. A guard or two stood at wide distances, as unmenacing as they could get, but still Plum thought of those biblical stories-the ones involving wolves on the fold, and mountains of severed heads. He bowed, unsure of the protocol, and his escorts beetled away to join the others. "When did you die?" Hakim asked, getting straight to the point.

Plum took the plunge and exaggerated manfully. "The year 1380," he said. "after Mohammed did whatever it was."

"You've worked it out. Good." Good puppy, he might have said. Good infidel. Hakim paced a circle. "You shall have a hut. See that row? A hut to each of my historical consultants. I labour under a disadvantage, and you will help me. Who have you run into?"