Riverworld Anthology - Tales of Riverworld Part 9

How much could a man take? How much could a man truly understand? It was all too much for him. You did the best you could, after all, and you tried to make sense of the senseless, but this was really too much.

Beethoven began to cough, shudder, and shake.

I should never have done this, thought Huey. I should have stayed at fish fries, stayed in the back woods, aimed for the legislature. All right, maybe that wasn't enough for me, maybe I had to be governor. But that was enough, surely. I could have taken steamboats up and down the river and played with honeyed t.i.ts and taken casual graft forever.... But instead what did I do? I went to Washington and drove FOR crazy and then came back to the capitol to meet the bullet they had prepared for me. Every man a king, but sometimes even kings get killed.

Too late now, he thought, too late. They got me, they just G.o.dd.a.m.ned got me. h.e.l.l, maybe those were horses Beethoven heard in the distance, maybe Beethoven was right, maybe the whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned Napoleonic guard is heading toward us.

"Come on, Ludwig," he said. "Get up! Let's get the h.e.l.l away from the city. It was your idea, remember?"

Beethoven finally heaved himself to his feet, mumbling about betrayal and heroes and the brutal blows of fate, and Huey knew that he would be all right. As long as the man sounded like himself, he was himself. That was something you came to understand quickly on the Riverworld.

"Why have we stopped?" demanded Caligula. Selous squatted down, staring at the ground. "Someone pa.s.sed this way not too long ago."120."Doubtless it was your friend Burton."

"He's not exactly my friend," said Selous. "And it wasn't him. I lost his trail miles ago. This was someone who came by in a hurry, at kind of a half-run. Also, whoever it was has never worn shoes. The toes are all straight, not bunched together at the edge."

"What is that to us?"

"I don't know yet."

"Then why are we pausing?"

"There may be people ahead of us, and they may not be friendly."

"They will fall to their knees and worship me, and perhaps, in my magnanimity, I will let some of them live," said Caligula, striding confidently past Selous.

For a moment the Englishman was tempted to grab his arm and hold him back. Then he shrugged. What the h.e.l.l, if someone was going to take the first shot or the first arrow, far better this madman than himself.

He fell into stride behind the blond G.o.d.

Beethoven had turned to Huey Long in the first flush of their acquaintance, a few days earlier, and said, "They lied to us. From the beginning, from the very start, we were lied to."

"Lying is what it's all about," the politician had said. "Without lies, son, there woudn't be any politicos at all. There would just be a bunch of people hitting each other with clubs to see who came out on top. It's the lies that bring structure to the whole mess, you understand what I mean?"

"No," Beethoven had replied, "I don't understand what you mean." Everything seemed so clear in his mind until he started talking, and then it drifted away, simply121.left him. It was an embarra.s.sment, a disgrace of sorts to be out-talked and out-thought by this fool of an American. "How could I understand?" he continued bitterly. "But surely you see they are not telling the truth about this place. It is not like something we have seen before, but is something else."

"That's true, son," Huey agreed. "Everything is something else, which is why we must apply our higher reasoning powers to the situation."

"But the situation is not as you think," Beethoven said, and wanted to continue in a long speech to the politician about the nature of thought and the different kinds of liars with whom he had had to struggle all his life, but a shocking C Minor triad directly out of the first movement of the C Minor Symphony, the loudest he had heard since the deafness had been stripped from him in this place, came thundering through with the force of light and left him surprised and numb.

"C Minor, C Minor!" he said wildly. "That's all of life, don't you understand, tonic to dominant C and back again!" He remembered how it had been in the last years * before the deafness struck, when the music had seemed so absolute in its purity and force that even the Hammerklavier had seemed to be only a preparation for what he might do. And then to lose hearing, lose patience, lost all of the fawning, miserable dilettantes who had made ease possible, all of the time understanding that he was sinking slowly beneath his own shame.

"Enough!" he shouted suddenly. "Enough!" He heard the triad shift to the major, now a clashing C major triad signaling the opening of the final movement after the crawl through the ba.s.si.

"I can't understand how this happened," he said to122.Huey Long. "Of this destiny there was not any indication at all. Not a hint of prayer or light. Even when I tore the curtain aside in the Missa Solemnis, it was nothing like this, it was acres and acres of the graveyard, the encased dead, the unwrapped dead, rising, singing, ascending slowly...."

"Oh, son," said Long, not unkindly, "you're really gonna have to stop with this nonsense. You're just tearing yourself up with the anxiety, and you ain't getting nowhere at all."

All this was before Beethoven realized that they must leave the city, that the way to redemption lay in the empty s.p.a.ces far beyond the enclosure, when he was still trying to piece some meaning out of these circ.u.mstances.

How foolish he had been then! He seemed years older now, though of course only a few days had elapsed. Conferring with the wretched Long, whom had he seen arriving in the same stunned and disastrous state that Beethoven remembered so well, he had felt not only sympathy but indeed a kind of necessity, a need to reach out and rescue this man from the horror embodied always in that first view of the Riverworld. As the peasant boy from Stockholm had done it for him before vanishing into the tablelands, so he had done it for Long, had soothed him, calmed him, eased the ferocity of the terror as his new situation first opened up before him, then conveyed him to a safer and more secluded s.p.a.ce where Long could finally make some sense of what had happened to him.

Beethoven had not understood much of the Riverworld then, either, but what he knew he tried to impart in short, gentle phrases that would give Long the little material he123.needed to somehow recover himself and move past that first point of terror.

Now here they were, and Long had slowly become acclimated.

"Son," said Long, touching Beethoven gently on the top of the head, propelling him gently forward, "we'll just stop and rest a spell now if you don't mind."

"But we are being followed! They'll be here any moment."

"I know," said Huey, "but I feel a speech coming on. I just want to make a little address to the troops. I was a mighty fine speechmaker in my day, and now I think it is time to make my position known."

They had finally come to the end of the forest. The trees had been thinning for the past mile, the scrub was spa.r.s.er, and now Selous stared out across a large clearing. He stood, hands on hips, trying to make up his mind which way to go next. Far in the distance to his left was a small lake.

Suddenly he heard a savage, almost inhuman scream behind him. He whirled around instantly, just as Caligula was swinging a huge log at his head. He raised a hand, slightly cushioning the blow, but fell backward before the Roman's onslaught.

"You're a brave man!" muttered Caligula, pummelling him with both hands. "I will take your bravery unto myself!"

Selous tried to roll free of the blond man's weight, but he was still dizzy from the blow to the head.

"Get off me!" he snapped. "You're crazy!"

"As I ate my unborn son, so shall I eat your heart!"

Selous felt consciousness slipping away from him, and124.then Caligula lowered his head to the Englishman's chest and took a huge bite of it.

It was the horror of what would happen should he pa.s.s out more than anything else that seemed to provide Selous with a fresh burst of adrenaline, and he brought his knee up hard into Caligula's groin. The Roman emitted a falsetto shriek, rolled over on the ground, and began screaming incoherently.

Selous, blood flowing down his torso onto his belly, leaped to his feet and examined himself as best he could. It really could use some st.i.tches, but wounds seemed to heal magically on this world. Besides, he'd received worse from lion and leopard; if Caligula's teeth weren't septic, and there was no reason to a.s.sume they were, it would be only a temporary annoyance.

Still, it hurt like the devil, and he walked over to the fallen G.o.d and kicked him again, this time on the side of the head. There was no further reaction from Caligula, who was still howling and hugging his groin, and all he got for his trouble was a sharp shooting pain in his foot.

He searched around for the rope that he had been carrying coiled over his shoulder, found it where he had fallen, and brought it over to Caligula. Before the Roman could resist, Selous had tied his hands behind his back and then wrapped the rope a few times around his neck, giving him about a ten-foot slack.

"All right," he grated. "On your feet!"

He jerked the rope, and Caligula, gasping and choking, rose awkwardly.

"You hurt me!" he said accusingly.

"You tried to kill me," answered Selous.

"But it is an honour to die for a G.o.d's pleasure," said Caligula, honestly puzzled by Selous's reaction.125."It's an honour I can do without."

"Then you are a fool."

Selous jerked the rope, and Caligula began gasping again.

"What about a G.o.d dying for my pleasure?" he asked.

"Blasphemy!" cried Caligula, charging at Selous with his head lowered.

Selous sidestepped him just as he would sidestep a rhino that had lowered its head to charge. Instead of putting a bullet in his ear, as he would then have done with the rhino, he simply waited until Caligula reached the end of the rope and gave it a quick, hard tug. The Roman did a complete flip in the air and landed heavily on his back.

"I think I broke my arms!" he wailed.

"I thought G.o.ds couldn't feel pain," said Selous sardonically.

"Help me!" whined Caligula. "I'm hurt!"

"I'll help you," said Selous, approaching him. "You've got three seconds to get up before I kick you in the groin again."

"No!" shrieked Caligula, jumping to his feet. "My person is sacrosanct! You can never touch it again!"

"Just so we understand each other," said Selous, approaching him and slapping his face.

He expected Caligula to curse, or cry, or perhaps even giggle. Instead the Roman looked at him as if nothing had happened, and said conversationally, "I think we're more likely to find a city by the River. Cities need commerce, and the lake doesn't afford much likelihood of that."

Once he got over his temporary surprise, Selous found126.

127.that he agreed with his prisoner. "All right," he said. "Let's start walking toward the River. You first."

"We could use some horses," commented Caligula as he headed off to his right.

"If we find any, I'll trade you for them."

"G.o.ds are not property to be traded by merchants," said Caligula, suddenly haughty.

"What makes you a G.o.d, anyway?" asked Selous.

"I am a G.o.d by proclamation."

"Whose proclamation?"

"My own," answered Caligula.

"That's all there is to it?"

"No one has ever challenged it."

"No one?"

"Well, no one who was still alive an hour later."

"Nice work if you can get it," commented Selous dryly.

"I am a G.o.d," insisted Caligula. "Without me there would be no night or day, no rain or sunshine. When I die the heavens will open up and pour forth a stream of black lava that will kill all living things and cover the earth."

"That must comfort you in times of need," said Selous.

"You don't believe me?"

"If you're a G.o.d, create a pair of horses for us. If not, stop talking; you'll need all your strength for the march that lies ahead of us."

"I can create horses," said Caligula with conviction. "I can bring them to life right here this instant."

"Then why don't you?"

"Because you dared to lay your hand on a G.o.d. You don't deserve to ride."

"Do you deserve to walk, too?" asked Selous.

"I am a G.o.d. I feel no pain, no fatigue. The sun is my brother; it cannot burn my skin. The gra.s.s is my lover; it renews me with every step I take."

"How very fortunate for you."

"I require no nourishment, no water, no sleep," continued Caligula. "Later tonight, when you finally can remain awake no longer, I shall change into a snake and squeeze the life from you. Then," he continued conversationally, "I will eat your heart, and very possibly your eyeb.a.l.l.s, for you have truly excellent vision, and I will go find my city."

"Since you are capable of all these things, I a.s.sume you won't mind if I tie you securely to a tree before I go to sleep?" said Selous.

"Not at all," said Caligula pleasantly. "I would expect no less of you... though of course it will do you no good."

They walked another mile in silence, and then Selous stopped, causing Caligula to choke when he reached the end of the rope.

"Are you tired already, mortal?" asked the Roman.

"Be quiet," said Selous, raising his free hand to shade his eyes from the sun.

"What do you see out there?" asked Caligula.

"I'm not sure. Something. It could be a group of men."

"Come to worship me, no doubt."

"Or to kill you."

"I cannot die."

"Try to stay sane long enough to remember that you are no longer an emperor and never were a G.o.d, and128.keep your mouth shut until I can find out if these people are friends or foes."

"I will turn myself into a hummingbird, so they cannot see me until I know why they are here," agreed Caligula promptly.

"A very quiet hummingbird," said Selous. "Start walking."

"Flying," corrected Caligula.

"Whatever."

"I can't fly," said Caligula suddenly. "You have bound my wings."