R.W. III - The Dark Design

by Philip José Farmer

  The Snark came to an area where the current of The River slowed down considerably. The boat had encountered many of these, places where a river should no longer be able to flow downward. On Earth this would have meant that The River would have spread out into a lake, deluging the Valley.

  However, after passing through the almost dead current, the cutter came to an area where the water picked up speed. Once again, it was running toward the faraway mouth, that legendary great cavern leading to the north polar sea. There were a number, of explanations for this phenomenon, none of which had so far been proved valid.

  One was that there were enough variations in local gravity to permit the impetus of The River to overcome the lack of downward gradient. Those who favored this theory said that the unknown makers of this world might have installed underground devices which caused a weaker gravity field in appropriate areas.

  Others suggested that water was pumped under great pressure from pipes deep beneath The River.

  A third school speculated that the ceaseless current-flow was caused by a combination of pressure pumps and "light-gravity" generators.

  A fourth maintained that God had decreed that the water go uphill and so there was no use wondering about the phenomenon.

  The majority of people never thought about it.

  Whatever the cause, The River never stopped rolling along its many-million-meter course.

  At the end of the second day, the Snark docked in the locality where the great metal boat should stop. The news here was that the Rex had stopped traveling for several days. Its crew was taking a short shore leave.

  "Excellent!" Burton said. "We can get to it by tomorrow and have a whole day to talk Captain John into enlisting us."

  Though he sounded cheerful, he did not feel so. If his plan did not work, he'd have to take the Snark through Oskas' area in daylight since there was little wind at night. Warned by the signal system that it was coming, the chief would be waiting for it with his full force. Burton felt that he should have turned back up-River after getting rid of the. Indians and sailed far past their land. However, the paddle-wheeler might then have passed by the Snark, and Burton would have had no chance to talk to its commander.

  Sufficient unto the day is .the evil thereof, and the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. He'd enjoy tonight and take care of tomorrow tomorrow. Despite which reassurance, he worried.

  The locals here were a majority of sixteenth-century Dutch, a minority of ancient Thracians, and the usual small percentage of people from many places and many times. Burton met a Fleming who had known Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, among other famous persons. He was talking to him when a newcomer joined the crowd sitting around a bonfire. He was a Caucasian of medium stature, thin bodied, black haired, and blue eyed. He stood for a minute, looking intently at Frigate. Then he smiled broadly and ran up to him.

  He cried out in English, "Pete! For God's sake, Pete! It's me, Bill Owain! Pete Frigate, by the Lord! It is you, isn't it, Pete?"

  Frigate looked startled. He said, "Yes? But you, you're ... what did you say your name was?"

  "Bill Owain! For Christ's sake, you haven't forgotten me, Bill Owain, your old buddy! You look a little different, Pete. For a moment, I wasn't sure! You don't quite look like I remember you! Bill Owain! I didn't recognize you at first, it's been so long!"

  They embraced then and both talked swiftly, laughing now and then. When they let loose of each other, Frigate introduced Owain.

  "He's my old schoolmate. We've known each other since fourth grade in grammar school. We went to Peoria Central High together and buddied around for some years afterward. When I finally settled down in Peoria after working around the country, we used to see each other now and then. Not very often, since we had our own lives to live and belonged to different circles."

  "Even so," Owain said, "I don't see how you could have failed to recognize me right off. But then I wasn't quite sure about you either. I remembered you differently. Your nose is a little longer and your eyes are greener and your mouth isn't quite as broad and your chin seems bigger. And your voice – you remember how everybody kidded you because it was a dead ringer for Gary Cooper's? It doesn't sound like it used to, like I thought it did. So much for memory, eh?"

  "Yeah, so much for memory. You know, Bill, mine was never very good. Besides, we remember each other as middle-aged and old men, and now we look like we did when we were twenty-five. Also, we're not wearing the clothes we did then, and it's a shock, a real shock, to run across somebody I knew then. I was stunned!"

  "I was, too! I wasn't quite sure! Listen, do you know you're the first person I've met that I knew on Earth?"

  Frigate said, "You're the second for me. And that was thirty-two years ago, and the guy I met wasn't one I cared to associate with!"

  That, Burton thought, would be a man called Sharkko. A publisher of hardcover science fiction books in Chicago, he had cheated Frigate in a rather complicated deal. The business had taken several years, at the end of which Frigate's writing career had been almost wrecked. But one of the first persons Frigate had encountered after being resurrected was Sharkko. Burton had not witnessed the meeting, but Frigate had recounted how he had avenged himself by punching the fellow in the nose.

  Burton himself had met only one person he had known on Earth, though his acquaintances had been numerous and worldwide. That was also a meeting he could have passed up. The man had been one of the porters on his expedition to find the source of the Nile. On the way to Lake Tanganyika (Burton and his companion Speke were the first Europeans to see it), the porter had purchased a slave, a girl about thirteen years old. She had become too sick to continue with them, so the porter had cut off her head rather than allow someone else to own her.

  Burton had not been present to prevent the murder, nor would it have been discreet to punish the man. He had the legal right to do with his slave as he wished. However, Burton would punish him for other things, such as laziness, thievery, and breakage of goods, and he laid the whip on him whenever the opportunity arose.

  Now Owain and Frigate sat down to drink lichen-alcohol and to talk of old times. Burton noticed that Owain seemed to remember incidents and friends much better than Frigate did. This was surprising, since Frigate had very good recall.

  "Remember how we used to see the shows at the Princess, Columbia, and Apollo theaters?" Owain said. "Do you remember the Saturday we decided to find out how many movies we could see in one day? We went to a double-feature at the Princess, then a double-feature at the Columbia, a triple-feature at the Apollo, and a midnight show at the Madison."

  Frigate smiled and nodded. But his expression showed that his recollection was faulty.

  "Then there was that time we took a trip to St. Louis with Al Everhard and Jack Dirkman and Dan Doobin. Al's cousin got some dates for us; they were nurses, remember? We drove out to the cemetery – what was it called?"

  "Damned if I remember," Pete said.

  "Yes, but I'll bet you haven't forgotten how you and that nurse stripped and you were chasing her around the cemetery and you jumped over a tombstone and fell smack into a wreath and got all torn up from the thorns and roses! Bet you haven't forgotten that!"

  Frigate grinned embarrassedly. "How could I?"

  "It sure took the wind out of your sails! And everything else! Haw, haw!"

  There was more reminiscence. After a while, the talk turned to their reactions on awakening along the banks of The River. The others joined in then, since this was a favorite topic. That day had been so frightening, so awe-inspiring, so alien that no one would ever forget that. The horror, the panic, and confusion were still with them. Burton sometimes wondered if people were still talking so much about that experience because the recapitulation was a form of therapy. They hoped to rid themselves of the trauma by a verbal discharge.

  There was a general agreement that everybody had acted somewhat silly that day.

  "I remember how absurdly formal and dignifie
d I was," Alice said. "Not that I was the only one. However, most people were hysterical. We were all in great shock. The wonder is that nobody died of a heart attack. You'd think that waking up in this strange place after you'd died would be enough to kill you again – at once."

  Monat said, "Perhaps, just before resurrection, our anonymous benefactors injected some sort of drug into us that eased the impact of the shock. Also, the dreamgum we found in our grails may have acted as a sort of postoperative anesthesia. Though I must say that its effect caused some terribly savage behavior."

  Alice looked at Burton then. Even after all these years, she still blushed at the memory. All their social inhibitions had been stripped off for a few hours, and they had acted as if they were minks whose sole diet was Spanish fly. Or as if their secret fantasies had taken control.

  The conversation then centered on the Arcturan. Previously, despite his warm manner, he had encountered the standoffishness he met everywhere at first from strangers. His obvious nonhuman origin made them shy or caused repulsion.

  Now they questioned him about his life on his native planet and his experience on Earth. A few had heard tales of how the Arcturans had been forced to slay almost all the people on Earth. No one present, however, except Frigate, had been living when the Arcturans' ship had arrived on Earth.

  Burton said, "You know, that is peculiar, though I suppose it's to be expected. There were, according to Pete, eight billion people living in 2008 A.D. Yet, aside from Monat and Frigate here, and one other person, I've never met anyone who lived then. Did any of you?"

  Nobody had. In fact, the only locals who had lived past the seventies of the twentieth century were Owain and a woman. She had died in 1982; he, in 1981.

  Burton shook his head. "There must be at least thirty-six billion along The River. The biggest majority should be those who lived between 1983 – I choose that date because I've met only three who lived past it – those who lived between 1983 and 2008. Yet, where are they?"

  "Maybe there are some at the next grailstone," Frigate said. "After all, Dick, nobody's taken a census. What's more, nobody is able to do that. You pass hundreds of thousands every day, but how many do you get to talk to? A few dozen a day. Sooner or later you're bound to run into one."

  They speculated for a while about why and how they had been resurrected and who could have done it. They also talked about why the growth of facial hair in men was inhibited, why all males had awakened circumcised, and why women had their hymens restored before resurrection. As for not needing to shave, half the men thought it a good thing while the other half resented not being able to grow moustaches and beards.

  There was also some wonder about why the grails of both men and women occasionally yielded lipstick and other cosmetics.

  Frigate said that he thought that their benefactors probably did not like to shave and that both their sexes painted their faces. That was, to him, the only reasonable explanation.

  Then Alice brought up Burton's experience in the preresurrection bubble. This got everybody's attention, but he told them that he had no memory of that. He'd suffered a blow on his head which had wiped out all recollection of it.

  As always, when he told this lie, he caught Monat smiling slightly at him. He suspected that the Arcturan guessed that he was prevaricating. However, the fellow had never said so. He respected Burton's reasons for concealment even if he did not know what they were.

  Frigate and Alice recounted Burton's tale as they remembered it. They made several mistakes, which he, of course, could not correct.

  "If that is so," a man said, "then the resurrection isn't a supernatural thing. It was done through scientific means. Amazing!"

  "Yes, it is," Alice said. "But why are we no longer resurrected? Why has death, permanent death, returned?"

  A gloomy pensiveness fell upon them for a minute.

  Kazz broke it by saying, "There is one thing which Burton-naq has not forgotten. That's the business with Spruce. The agent of the Ethicals."

  That brought forth more questions.

  "What are Ethicals?"

  Burton took a long drink of scotch and launched into the story. At one time, he said, he and his party had been captured by grail-slavers. There was no need to explain this word. Everybody had had some experience with grail-slavers.

  Burton told them how his boat had been attacked and how they had been put into a stockade. Thereafter, they had left it only to work under a heavy guard. All of their tobacco, marijuana, dreamgum, and liquor were taken by their captors. Moreover, these kept half of the food for themselves, leaving their prisoners on a bare-minimum diet.

  After a few months, Burton and a man named Targoff had led a successful revolt against the slavers.

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  "A few days after we'd won our freedom, Frigate, Monat, and Kazz came to me. They greeted me, and then Kazz spoke excitedly.

  "A long time ago, before I could speak English good, I see something. I try to tell you then, but you don't understand me. I see a man who don't have this on his forehead.'

  "My friend here, my naq, as he calls it in his speech, indicated the center of his forehead and that of all of us.

  "Kazz then said, 'I know you can't see it. Pete and Monat can't either. Nobody else can. But I see it on everybody's forehead. Except on that man I try to catch long time ago. Then, one day, I see a woman who don't have it, but I don't say nothing to you. Now, I see a third who don't have it.'

  "I still did not understand. Monat, however, explained.

  " 'He means that he is able to perceive certain symbols of characters on the forehead of each and every one of us. He can see these only in bright sunlight and at a certain angle. But everyone he's ever seen has had those symbols – except for the three he's mentioned.'

  "Frigate added that Kazz somehow could see a little further into the color spectrum than non-Neanderthals could. Into the ultraviolet, as a matter of fact, since the symbols were bluish. At least that is the way Kazz described them. All of us, except certain individuals, seem to bear this mark. As if we're branded cattle. Since that time, Kazz, and his woman Besst, have observed these on people's foreheads, when the lighting conditions were right, of course."

  This news, as always, resulted in astonishment, indignation, and even shock. Burton waited until the furor died down before speaking.

  "Some of you late-twentieth-centurians may know that the so-called Neanderthal man was reclassified. The anthropologists decided that he was not a separate species but a variant of Homo sapiens. Nevertheless, just as he differed somewhat in physical build and teeth from us, he also has the ability to see into the ultraviolet."

  Besst said, "I am not a Neanderthal man but a woman, and I, too, have this ability."

  Burton grinned and said, "Women's lib has penetrated into the Old Stone Age. However, let me point out that events will show that Whoever made this world and stamped us with, in a manner of speaking, the mark of the beast, did not know that Homo neanderthalis had a special visual ability. This means that Whoever is not omniscient.

  "To resume my narrative. I asked for the identity of the person who lacked the symbol. Frigate replied, 'Robert Spruce!'

  '' Spruce had also been a grail slave. He claimed to be an Englishman born in 1945. That was about all I knew of him.

  "I said that we would get him and question him. Frigate told me that we'd have to catch him because he was probably long gone. It seems that Kazz told Spruce he'd noticed Spruce lacked the mark on his forehead. Spruce had turned pale, and a few minutes later he left hurriedly. Frigate and Monat sent search parties out, but at the time they reported to me he hadn't been found.

  "It seemed to me that his flight was an admission of guilt, though I didn't know what he was guilty of. A few hours later, he was discovered hiding in the hills. He was brought before the newly formed council of our newly formed state. Spruce was pale and trembling, though he looked us straight in the eye defiantly enough.


  "I informed him that we suspected that he was an agent for the Ethicals if not an Ethical himself. I also told him that we would go to any lengths, including torture, to get the truth from him. This was a lie, since we would have been no better than the men who'd enslaved us if we had resorted to torture. Spruce, however, did not know that.

  "Spruce said, 'You may be denying yourself eternal life if you torture me. It will at least set you far back on your journey, delay your final goal.' "

  "I asked him what that final goal was, but he ignored that question. Instead, he said, 'We can't stand pain. We're too sensitive.' "

  "There was some more exchange, but he would not answer our questions. Then one of the councillors suggested that he be suspended above a fire. Monat spoke up then. He told Spruce that he was from a culture somewhat more advanced than that of Earth's. He felt he was more qualified to make guesses about the truth than the rest of us, and no one argued with him about this. Monat said that he would like to spare him the pain of the fire and also the pain of betraying his trust. Perhaps Monat could make some speculations about the Ethicals and their agents, and Spruce could merely affirm or deny the speculations. In this way, Spruce would not be making a positive betrayal of his trust, whatever that was."

  Bill Owain said, "That was a peculiar arrangement."

  "True. But Monat hoped to get him to talking. You see, we were not going to use any brutal methods of inquisition. If we couldn't scare him, then we were going to try hypnosis. Both Monat and I are skilled mesmerists. However, as it turned out, we didn't have to resort to that.

  "Monat said, 'It's my theory that you are a Terrestrial. You come from an age chronologically far past 2008 A.D. In fact, you are a descendant of the few people who survived the death beam projected from our orbital ship.' Monat guessed that the technology and energy required to reconstruct this planet into one vast Rivervalley was very advanced. He suggested that Spruce was born in the fiftieth century A.D.