Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 15

The first thing I smelled was the rain, the clean chill scent of it on the heavy green foliage along the River, and the dull tamping sound it made on the roof of the jerry-rigged wooden cabin where I lived.

I got one eye open and pulled myself up to one elbow for support and looked at the rabbity little man shaking me.

I hadn't liked him much back on earth-his work, I208.

209.mean; I obviously hadn't known him personally-and I didn't like him any better here on the Riverworld.

All the biographies have him as this tortured, romantic soul, but, like most people unfortunate enough to fit that description, he was a whiner, a schemer, and a tireless narcissist.

"I'm sorry I woke you up, Mr. Hammett."

"Yeah. I'll bet you are."

"I need your help, Mr. Hammett. Need it badly."

He always called me "Mr. Hammett." I suppose it was because of the hair. It went silver on me when I was young and no matter how much the ladies insisted it made me look "distinguished," it also made me look older than my years. Even now, even though like most folks on Riverworld I was only twenty-five, my hair was once again turning white.

I sat up on the blanket. I rubbed my eyes and allowed myself an expansive yawn. And then I punched him. Oh, it wasn't much of a punch, no teeth broken, no nose flattened, but it stunned him and pushed him back a foot or two, and that was good enough for me.

He touched his mouth tenderly, the tip of his tongue tasting the blood on his lower lip. "Why did you do that, Mr. Hammett?"

I've never been especially pleasant in the morning. My father was like that and so was my grandfather. I'm willing to blame it on my genes and not my soul. I'm especially unpleasant when somebody like my uninvited house guest wakes me up just at dawn.

I got to my feet, forgetting to duck in time. I raised the entire thatched roof with my white head.

He started to smirk, but I made a fist and his smirk dutifully vanished. I let the roof settle back down. I went over and sat Indian-legged in the corner and poured myself a drink of water. The rain still smelled clean and good. I wished I could say as much for my guest.

Now that I was awake, I took my first good look at him. He had an unpleasant reputation on Riverworld, always seducing young girls and then deserting them, the sort of woman-hating games Casanova the satyr always played. At least Casanova had been forthright: he'd wanted goaty s.e.x. Poe wrapped it all up in a fog of romance and dark feverish poetry.

"You stoned?"

"I resent that, Mr. Hammett."

"Knock off the theatrics and answer my question."

"No, I'm not stoned."

"You trying to tell me you're not a dreamgum addict anymore?"

"I use it occasionally."

"Occasionally. Uh-huh."

"I know you don't think much of me."

I sighed. I hate sanctimony, mine or anybody else's, and I realised suddenly that I was being awfully sanctimonious about this guy.

"Look," I said, "given the sort of life I led back on earth, I don't have any right to make moral judgements about anybody. And I sure as h.e.l.l don't want to put on the Roman collar and tell somebody he's a self-indulgent, profligate twit who uses everybody he comes in contact with."

He smiled. "I think there was a message for me somewhere in there."

"Yes, I suppose there was."

"I know what I'm like, Mr. Hammett."

"You do, eh?"210.

211."Believe or not, I'm not that way consciously. It just sort of-comes out that way. I mean, I don't really mean to use people... I just sort of... do."

I sighed again. "What can I do for you this fine, sunny morning, Mr. Poe?"

"I wish you'd call me Edgar. Everybody else does."

"I'll make a deal with you."

"What's that?"

"You call me Dashiell and I'll call you Edgar."

He smiled again. All the books have him as handsome, but he wasn't, not really; his mouth and his chin were too weak for handsome. But there was some force in the dark eyes that held real power, some kind of madness that was fascinating to observe. I'm sure it's a power he shared with snake charmers and wealthy ministers and politicians who wrap themselves in patriotism.

"All right, Dashiell," he said.

"You came here to tell me something."

"Yes."

"Then tell me."

"I'm afraid somebody is trying to kill Arda."

"That's an unlikely tale for the Riverworld. There not being any death here."

"No, not death as such, but if you kill a man, he's reborn elsewhere. And if you were to kill the woman a man loves and she's reborn elsewhere and he's never able to find her again because the Riverworld is so vast- well, that's just the same thing as her dying, isn't it?"

"I guess you're right about that." I looked down at his long, slender hands. Some people would call them artistic hands, I suppose. Anyway, his hands were trembling, and badly. "Why would anybody want to harm her?"

"I don't know.". But the way he said it, fast and dismissive, I knew he was lying.

"I don't really do this sort of thing anymore, you know."

"You were a Pink."

"Pinkerton is the proper name. Pink is what the press called us, and I never much cared for that." I took some more water and then took a deep breath. "Maybe you don't know this, Edgar, but I ended up being a writer too. Not as good as you, maybe, but good enough that I was able to quit being a Pinkerton and support myself up to the end. Or thereabouts, anyway."

"What're you saying?"

"I'm saying that I'm out of practice."

"Last night, she was out walking and somebody shot an arrow at her. Missed her by no more than this." He indicated a small amount of s.p.a.ce between thumb and forefinger. "And a week ago, somebody tried to drown her while she was bathing in the River. And a few days before that, somebody tried to push her off a mountain trail."

"Did she get a look at the person?"

"No. I wasn't there for any of it. But if I had been-" His messianic dark eyes looked away. "She has a hard time concentrating sometimes. And that can get dangerous when somebody is stalking you."

There's only one way you consistently lose your concentration on Riverworld.

"You mean you introduced her to dreamgum."

"No!" He was almost shouting. "She did it all on her own. I didn't even know she was doing it until it was too late."

Dreamgum comes to everybody in the grail. Most of212.

213.us decline it, not wanting to spend our lives in a phantasmagoria. Waking up on Riverworld is fantastic enough for most folks.

But I was getting sanctimonious again, a trait of mine Lillian hadn't much liked. But then, there had been many traits of Lillian's I hadn't much liked either, especially when, near the end of my life on earth, I deduced the real nature of our relationship.

"Who would want to hurt her?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Or why?"

"I don't know that either."

"It couldn't be her imagination?"

"The arrow's in our cabin. I a.s.sumed you wanted to talk with her. I figured you could see the arrow then."

"I just can't help you, Edgar."

"Won't, you mean."

"If you like."

The tears were there, and they were so sudden that I didn't see how they could be fake, even given his theatrical nature.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," I said. "It's bad enough when a woman uses tears on me. But a man-"

"Do you have any idea how much I love her, Dashiell? Any idea at all?"

Now, in addition to the tears, his whole body had started shaking. I looked at him and hated him. He was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned weak. But then I realised how weak I was, just in a different way was all, and so I gave up my pulpit and said, "It's been a long time since I was a Pinkerton, Edgar. A long, long time."

"She really needs help, Dashiell. Otherwise, somebody will take her from me forever."

A nut-case poet and a dreamgum nymphette. Aren't they just the kind of clients all private ops dream of?

After swimming for twenty minutes or so, I climbed back to the bank and returned to my hut and got ready for the day.

By now, I was starting to like the idea of having a case. Riverworld is many things, but exciting is not one of them, at least not in my own particular little patch of it. Two cultures and historical eras are represented here, the first being a group of suburban businessmen and their families from the Baltimore area circa 1907, the second being a group of San Franciscans from the late 1950s. I was among the latter group when I died and was reborn on Riverworld, whatever and wherever Riverworld really is.

When I got back to the sh.o.r.e, I found the good Baltimore burghers engaged in carrying material for huts into the surrounding forest. Even here, even in this purgatory in which we found ourselves, the good industrious burghers wanted a suburb to themselves. They believed, and quite rightly, that half the people you found canoeing down the River were riffraff. How could I disagree when one of our last visitors had been Wyatt Earp, who very seriously proposed that we take the six prettiest women in camp and set up a wh.o.r.ehouse, which he of course would be happy to oversee for a goodly share of the action?

The rain didn't bother the good burghers. They had214.been seized with an idea and nothing was going to stop them. They performed their task with the ceaseless and uncomplaining att.i.tude of worker ants.

The San Franciscans were neither so robust nor so industrious. They sat beneath little canopies of leaves and fed on dreamgum and watched the River flow and waved to various folks floating by. One fellow told me that he'd once seen an entire UFO filled with little green Martians waving at him. Such are the rewards of dreamgum.

I waved to the burghers and I waved to the River watchers. I walked up the muddy, sloping hill to the small hut that sat on a bluff and overlooked-a deep ravine. This was where Poe lived.

There was no door, just a long rag that offered minimal privacy. From behind it, apparently hearing me approach, a young woman said, "Come in, Mr. Hammett."

The interior stank of mud. The floor was covered with large, heavy, spade-shaped leaves that the burghers had been bringing back from the forest and charitably sharing with others, proving that not all capitalists are bad folks, even to Communists like me.

She was a fetching one, she was. She crouched near the back of the hut wearing some kind of white dress made grubby from life along the River. But even so, her sweet-sad face and her small but rich body marked her as a true beauty. "I told him you'd come."

"Edgar?"

"Yes. He doesn't have much faith in humanity, I'm afraid. But then, I wouldn't either. Not with the kind of life he's led. His stepfather used to beat him mercilessly for one thing. Edgar still has nightmares about it."

She was succeeding in making me feel sorry for Poe.215.But he was easier to deal with when he came off as a self-indulgent artiste.

"What era are you from?" I asked.

"The 1930s. My father is a great admirer of yours. He's a judge and a very avid mystery reader." She reached out and touched a large pile of flowers that were dying inside the hut. Even their scent was gone here in the rain and the chill and the shadowed interior.

Then her face changed. Here she'd been this fetching young girl-the impolite name, in my time, being "jailbait" -and then she abruptly became this drawn, anxious young woman. "Look."

From somewhere among the leaves that gave the mud hut its floor, she produced a long arrow with a metal tip. Metals being as precious as they are on this world, I was impressed despite myself.

She handed it over. I rolled it around in my fingers and examined it, not worried about getting prints on it. Riverworld has a lousy crime lab.

The workmanship was very good, point, shaft, and nock perfectly designed. Having been an informal student of medieval history, I recognised the arrowhead as made of iron pile, the same metal an arrowsmith of the 1300s would have used.

"Edgar told you what happened?"

"Yes."

"Somebody's trying to kill me, Mr. Hammett."

"You could always call me Dashiell."

Her shy response was to tilt her head down in such a way that she looked younger and even more vulnerable.

She said, "I'm afraid. I don't want somebody to send me to some other time."

"I don't blame you."216.She raised her eyes. "I think it's...o...b..ien."

"Who?"