R.W. V - Gods of Riverworld, Page 4

  One by one, the others showed their innocence.

  "But Loga could have passed the test while lying like a diplomat," Nur said. "It is possible that one of us has had access to his wathan distorter."

  "I don't think so," Turpin said. "Ain't none of us got the smarts to operate one of those. We ain't smart enough to override Loga's commands either. I think we're wasting time, besides insulting all of us."

  "If I interpret you correctly," Nur said, "you're saying that we're not intelligent enough. That's not true. We are. But we don't have the knowledge we need."

  "Yeah, that's what I meant. We just don't know enough."

  "Three weeks is long enough for a diligent person to get the knowledge from the Computer," Burton said.

  "No. The Computer ain't going to tell anyone how to override Loga," Turpin said. "I just don't believe that that could be done."

  "We could do a memory-strip of the past three weeks," Frigate said. "It'll take time, but it might be worth it."

  "No!" Alice said vehemently. "No! I'd feel violated! It would be worse than rape! I won't do it!"

  "I understand your feelings," Nur said. "But . . . "

  The Computer could unreel their memories back to conception and display them on a screen. The process had its limits, since it could not reproduce nonvisual and nonauditory thoughts except as electronic displays, the interpretation of which was still uncertain. It was capable of transmitting tactile, olfactory and pressure memories. But, memory was selective and apparently erased many events that the individual considered unimportant. However, it did show clearly what the subject had seen, heard and spoken. On demand, emotion-pain fields could be projected.

  "I won't want you seeing me when I went to the toilet," Alice said.

  "None of us want that, for you or for ourselves," Burton said, and he laughed. It sounded like a stone skipping across water. "All of us fart and belch and most have probably masturbated and picked our noses, and Marcelin and Aphra, I'm sure, would not care to have us see them in bed. But it's not necessary to show everything. The Computer can be ordered to be selective, to display only the events we're interested in. Everything else will be irrelevant and so will not be shown."

  "It's a waste of time," Frigate said. "Anyone clever enough to do what the unknown did wouldn't overlook the possibility of a memory-strip."

  "I agree with you," Burton said, "though I seldom do. But it is one of those routine things that have to be done. What if the guilty person — if there is one — had anticipated that we would think a memory-search was useless?"

  "He wouldn't take such a chance," Li Po said.

  "Nevertheless, I insist that we do it," Burton said. "If we don't, we'll all be wondering about one another."

  "We'll still be wondering when it's all done," Frigate said sourly. "But if it must be."

  The search could have been run simultaneously with each one in a separate cubicle, but who then would supervise each subject to make sure that he or she did not order the Computer to cancel the relevant events? Burton went first, and, after three hours, the time it took the Computer to strip three weeks of memory, he emerged. The screen had been blank during the entire strip.

  It was, as expected, empty while the others underwent the search.

  Twenty-five hours passed before the last one, Li Po, stepped out of the cubicle. Long before then, others had drifted off to bed one by one. Burton and Nur saw the work through from beginning to end. Some were getting up when the two decided they should sleep. First, though, Burton wanted to make sure that no one could enter the suite.

  "The unknown could override the codeword locking the door."

  "How do you suggest that we block the door?" Frigate said, and he yawned. "Do we shove a bed against it? Pile more furniture on top of that?"

  "The door swings inward, so that's not a bad idea. What I'm going to do, however, is to order the Computer to make a burglar alarm."

  Burton did just that. Five minutes later, he pulled out from an energy-matter converter cabinet a dozen pieces of equipment. He taped two boxes to the wall on each side of the door and secured several other boxes to these. Then he adjusted a dial on one of the large boxes.

  "There," he said, stepping back to admire the set. "No one can enter without setting off a hell of a loud siren. I think. We'd best test it. Pete, will you go outside, close the door, then come back in?"

  "Sure, but I hope I don't disappear while I'm standing in the hall."

  Burton turned a knob on the box. Frigate spoke the codeword, the door swung open, and he walked out. He turned, spoke the word, and the door shut. Burton reset the dial on the box. A few seconds later, the door began opening. A bright orange light flashed from the box, and an ear-pummeling whooping filled the room. Aphra Behn and de Marbot came running through the doorway. Turpin, who had been eating breakfast and not paying Burton much attention, leaped up from the table, his mouth spewing food. "Go-o-o-d damn!"

  Burton turned the alarm off.

  "The unknown could learn what the combination for the alarm is from the Computer. So I asked for one that I could set myself. There's no way the Computer can know which I chose, not as long as I blocked the line of sight from its screen with my body when I set the alarm."

  "Admirable," Frigate said. "But our bedrooms are soundproofed. How are we going to hear the alarm from there?"

  The walls, floor and ceilings were several inches thick and packed with circuits and power lines, most of them unused. Burton could have ordered the Computer to set up a circuit that would set off alarms in all rooms when the door alarm went off. But the unknown could override these circuits.

  Burton was thinking about what to do when Frigate spoke.

  "We could have the Computer make mass detectors. These could be set inside the bedroom doors so that, even if we didn't hear the apartment door alarm, we'd hear anybody trying to get into our bedrooms. These should be activated and deactivated by some sort of hand signals. The unknown can eavesdrop on us through the Computer. He's probably doing it now. But, as far I as I know, he can't see us unless he turns on a screen. And we can see that."

  "You say, as far as we know," Burton said. "Isn't it possible that he could turn on a screen but make it invisible to us?"

  "I suppose so. I don't really know enough about Ethical science to be sure of what can or can't be done."

  "Then the unknown may be also watching us."

  "Yes. What we should do is erect some sort of tent in this room and write communications to one another inside it. Or the Computer could make us a soundproof cubicle. Even the floor would be soundproof. The trouble with that is that its walls might contain detectors put in by the order of the unknown. We'd have no way of checking that. Come to think of it, a tent made of cloth could contain detectors, too."

  Burton became angry. "Is there nothing we can do?"

  "We can do the best we can and hope that it'll be enough."

  "We'll keep the door alarm," Burton said. "I'll write the combination on paper. You'll memorize it, and I'll make sure that the papers are destroyed."

  "Destroy the papers with a beamer," Frigate said. "If you just burned them and crumbled the ashes before dropping them in a disposal hole, the Computer might be able to reconstruct the combination."

  Burton said that they would have to make hoods to put over them when they reset the combination. They could make sure that the hoods did not contain detectors by using their bed-sheets.

  "We can't trust the mass detectors," he added. "The Computer will make them for us, but the unknown might hide turn-off devices in them."

  "True," Frigate said. "He may have installed a turn-off in your burglar alarm, too."

  "Then anything the Computer makes for us could betray us?"

  "Sure. Including the food. The unknown could order poison put in it."

  "By God! There must be something we can do to fight this devil!"

  Nur, who had been standing near them and smiling slightly, spoke.


  "If the unknown had planned to kill us, he would have done it before now. I suggest that if the unknown can override even Loga's commands, then he or she must be an Ethical. If so, why hasn't he resurrected Monat and the others? That would be his first thought and his first duty, after he's immobilized us, of course. Which, I don't have to point out, he's accomplished. The only thing is . . . "

  He hesitated so long that Burton said, "Yes? What is it?"

  "Would any Ethical erase Loga's body-recording? I think not. So . . . the unknown can't be an Ethical. Unless . . ."

  "Unless what?"

  "Patience, my friend. We are not on schedule. Unless . . . it is Loga who's behind all this."

  Burton exploded. "We've been through that line of reasoning! Why would he do this?"

  Nur shrugged skinny shoulders and raised the palms of his long hands.

  "I don't know. I doubt that it is Loga. Would Loga erase his own body-recording? Of course not."

  "But he could have a secret resurrection chamber some place in the tower," Frigate said.

  "Just what I was going to say," Nur said. "We still don't have an explanation for such irrational conduct. But I keep thinking of the footfalls Frigate heard, or thought he heard, in the corridor outside the room where we were celebrating our victory over the malfunctioning Computer. Loga was disturbed when Pete told him about it. He ran out into the corridor and down to the intersecting hall, and he looked up and down the lift shaft. Then he asked the Computer some questions, but these were in his language, and he talked so fast we did not understand them."

  "I asked him what he was so upset about," Burton said. "He replied that he wasn't any more and that Pete's experiences had made Pete so paranoiac that he was hearing sounds that did not exist. Pete's suspicions were infectious. So Loga said."

  "That's like throwing a stone through your own window!" Frigate said. "There was nobody more paranoiac than Loga!"

  "If he was, then we've been on the wrong side," Nur said calmly. "Those who follow a crazy man are as crazy as he. However, talking about that is useless. What do we do now?"

  Frigate's sarcastic suggestion that they pile furniture by the door was, realistically, the best offered. It was an inconvenient arrangement if they were to use the door much, but, at the moment, they planned to stay within the suite.

  Moreover, there now seemed little chance that the unknown could poison their food and water. Frigate and Nur got simplified schematics of the e-m converters and studied them. The unknown could cut off the power to the converters and so starve them. But the food was produced by e-m conversion via preprogrammed circuits that the unknown could not change. He had no way of introducing poison into them. But their drinking and bath water came through pipes, and the unknown could put toxic substances into them.

  Frigate and Nur made arrangements whereby the water would be produced from the converters in the rooms. The Computer did not balk at producing the necessary plumbing for them to connect the water outlets to the converters. The eight had a plumbing job to do, but their inexperience was overcome by instruction books and tools furnished by the Computer. Meanwhile, the eight would get their water in bowls and pails from the converters.

  "This seems useless and stupid," Li Po said. "There are so many other ways the unknown could get at us."

  "Nevertheless, we must do what we can to avoid his tricks," I Nur said. "That is, if he has any up his sleeve. And if he does indeed exist."

  5

  * * *

  "I'm going to bed," Burton said.

  "I'll eat first," Nur said.

  The little Moor looked as fresh as if he had just had eight hours of very good sleep. By then, everybody but de Marbot and Behn was in the big room. Burton left it to Nur to explain the door blockade, and he walked down the hall a few steps and entered his apartment within an apartment. It consisted of three rooms: a living room twenty-four feet square, luxuriously furnished yet usable as a workroom, a bedroom and a bath. Burton unbuckled the belt holding the holster, which encased the beamer, and he shed his single garment, a scarlet kilt decorated by bright yellow male lion-shapes. The floor was covered with a thick carpet like that in the big community entrance room. The inwoven figures were different, each consisting of three interlocking circles. The walls were pale cream, but a word from Burton to the Computer could change the color to whatever he wished. He could also order any shape or symbol, anything, imposed on the basic color. Here and there were paintings that looked like oil originals but had been reproduced by the Computer. No art specialist could have distinguished the original from the copy, since the two were exactly alike down to the molecular level.

  Burton crawled into bed and was asleep at once. He awoke feeling drugged and with a vague memory of a nightmare. A hyena twice as tall as he had threatened him with fangs that were curving steel swords. He remembered parrying the scimitarlike teeth with a fencing foil and the hyena laughing at him. The cachinnations had been remarkably like his.

  "I've been called, quite unjustifiably, a human hyena," he murmured, and he rolled out of bed. He would have to make the bed himself, though androids — protein robots — were available to do it. For the time being, no androids would be admitted into the suite. They were a potential danger because the Unknown might have ordered them to attack the eight.

  Burton exercised vigorously for an hour, then ordered breakfast from the Computer. The coffee was the best that had ever been produced on Earth; the shirred eggs, the best; the brown bread toast, exquisitely heated and covered with the best butter Earth had ever known. There was also a jam to send the palate into ecstasy, and a fruit unknown to Earth but tasting somewhat of muskmelon.

  He brushed his teeth and took a medium-warm shower despite the possibility that the water could be poisoned. As Frigate had said, if the unknown had intended to kill them off, he could have done it by now.

  He selected a dark green kilt and a long flowing robe of green decorated with a design of yellow birds of an unknown species. Then he activated a wall-screen to see what was going on in the main room. Li Po, Nur, Behn, and Turpin were sitting in chairs and reading the lists of control limits. The furniture was still stacked in front of the door.

  Burton went into the main room, greeted them, and said, "Have the others reported in?"

  Nur said that they had. Burton went to an auxiliary computer and activated the screens in the bedrooms of those absent. He could not see them, but he could hear their voices as they said that they would be right out. A few minutes later, Alice, Frigate and de Marbot appeared. Alice was wearing a loose Chinese-looking robe, scarlet with green dragons, and brocade slippers with turned-up toes. Her short dark straight hair shone as if it had been brushed many times. Her only makeup was a light-red lipstick. She could have used some powder to cover the dark smudges under her eyes.

  "I didn't sleep well at all," she said as she sat down in a chair. "I couldn't get it out of my mind that someone might be watching me."

  "If we could trust the androids, we could have them paper over the bedrooms," Frigate said. "That'd block out the screens."

  "If . . . if," Burton growled. "I'm getting sick of these almighty ifs. I'm fed up with being in a cage. As soon as we find out what we can and can't do, we'll conduct a manhunt. It'll be dangerous, but I, for one, will not keep on hiding like a rabbit in its burrow. We're not rabbits. We're human. And human beings are not meant to be cooped up like pigeons."

  "Rabbits and pigeons," Frigate muttered.

  Burton swung around to face him. "What the devil do you mean by that?"

  "The rabbits and the pigeons don't have the slightest idea why they're caged. They don't know they're being fattened up to be eaten. But we, we don't know why Loga was done away with or what's planned for us. We're worse off than the rabbits and pigeons. They, at least, are dumb but happy. We're dumb but unhappy."

  "Speak for yourself," Nur said. "I would like to point out to those who may not have thought of it that this list may be incomplete. Th
e unknown may have kept certain powers from the list. Even if he has not done so, he can eliminate almost any of those he wishes to eliminate."

  There was a long silence. The Chinese rose, went to a converter, and ordered a huge goblet of rye whiskey. Burton grimaced but said nothing to him. It would have been useless, and Li Po's defiance would lessen Burton's authority.

  Li Po sipped the rye, belched to indicate his appreciation, and went back to his chair. He said, "I need a woman!"

  Burton had thought that Alice was past blushing, but the Victorian in her was a long time dying.

  "You'll just have to keep jacking off," Burton said. "We have enough problems without resurrecting a woman just so she can drain off your lust."

  Alice's face became redder. Aphra Behn laughed.

  "It's unnatural," Li Po said. "My yang needs its yin."

  Burton laughed because "yang" meant "human excrement" in a West African language. Po asked him why he was laughing. When Burton explained, the Chinese laughed uproariously.

  "Well, if I can't have a woman, I'll work out my desire with exercise. What say we fence for an hour or so, rapiers or sabers?"

  "I need it, too," Burton said, "but you're drunk. You'd be no match."

  Li Po protested loudly and shrilly that he could have drunk twice as much and still beat Burton with any weapon Burton cared to choose. Burton turned away from him, and the Chinese staggered to his chair, fell into it, and began snoring. Frigate and Turpin carried him to the bedroom door. This, however, was locked with Po's codeword, which his bearers did not know. They placed him on the hall floor and returned to the big room.

  "We'll all be behaving like Po if we have to stay here," Turpin said. He went to a converter and ordered a tall glass of gin with a lemon twist. Aphra, who had a glass of the same, raised it and said, "A toast to craziness! This may be a gaol, but it beats Newgate."