Riverworld Short Stories

by Philip José Farmer

  He straightened up to check on Simons and Tashent. They were under the branches of the tree now, standing near the hut.

  He stooped and slashed the man’s jugular vein. Having made sure that he was dead and having collected the valuable weapons, he walked toward the tree. The fellow would be resurrected in a whole body somewhere along The River far from here. Maybe someday Mix would run into him again, and he could tell him about his act of mercy.

  Halfway toward the tree, he halted. From above, somewhere on the mountain, the wild skirling of a bamboo syrinx floated down.

  Who could be up there wasting time when everybody was supposed to be working hard? Another pair of lovers, one of whom was entertaining the other with music between the couplings? Or was the skirling some sort of signal by a spy? Not very likely but he had to consider all possibilities.

  The blonde and the redhead still had their hands up. Both were naked. The woman certainly had a beautiful body, and her thick pubic hair was just the red-gold that especially excited him. She reminded him of a starlet he’d run around with just after his divorce from Vicky.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  Simons said, “Why?” But he obeyed.

  “Okay,” Mix said. “You can put your hands down now.”

  He didn’t tell them that he’d once been stabbed by a naked prisoner who’d gripped a knife between the cheeks of his buttocks until he was close to his captor.

  “Now, what happened?”

  Events had been much as he’d thought. The two had sneaked off from a work-party to make love in the grass. While lying in the grass between bouts, getting ready to light up cigarettes, they’d heard the spy walking nearby. Picking up their weapons, they’d started to trail him. They were sure that the stranger was up to no good.

  Then they’d seen Mix following de la Reina and were just about to join him when the Spaniard had seen them. He’d been a quick thinker in trying to deceive Mix into believing that they were the spies.

  “He might’ve succeeded if he hadn’t tried to kill me at once instead of waiting for a better time,” Tom said. “Well, you two get back to your duty.”

  Guindilla said, “You aren’t going to tell anybody about this, are you?”

  Tom said, grinning, “Maybe, maybe not. Why?”

  “If you keep quiet about this, I could make it worth your while.”

  Eric Simons snarled, “Guin! You wouldn’t, would you?”

  She shrugged, causing intriguing ripples.

  “What could it hurt? It’d be just this once. You know what’ll happen if he turns us in. We’ll be put on acorn bread and water for a week, publicly humiliated, and…well, you know how Robert is. He’ll beat me, and he’ll try to kill you.”

  “We could just run off,” Simons said.

  He looked very nasty. “Or would you like to tumble this man, you slut!”

  Tom laughed again, and said, “If you got caught while deserting, you’d be executed. Don’t worry. I’m not a blackmailer, a lecherous hard-hearted Rudolf Rassendale.”

  They looked blank. “Rassendale?” Simons said.

  “Never mind. You wouldn’t know. You two get going. I’m not telling anybody the whole truth. I’ll just say I was alone when I discovered the Spaniard. But tell me, who’s playing the syrinx up there?”

  They said they had no idea. As they walked away into the grass to retrieve their weapons and clothes, they quarrelled loudly. Mix didn’t think their passion for each other would survive this incident.

  When their wrangling voices faded out, Tom turned to the mountain. Should he go back to the plain and report that he’d killed a spy? Go up the mountain to check out the syrinx player? Or do what he had come here for, that is, sleep?

  Curiosity won out. It always did with him.

  Telling himself he should have been a cat, one who’d already used up one of his nine lives, he began climbing. There were fissures along the face of the mountain, ledges, little plateaus, and steep narrow paths. Only a mountain goat or a very determined or crazy person would use these to get up the cliff, however. A sensible man would look up it and perhaps admire it, but he’d stay below and loaf or sleep or roll a pretty woman in the grass. Best of all, he’d do all three, not to mention pouring down some good bourbon or whatever his copia gave him in the way of booze.

  Sweating despite the shade, he pulled himself over the edge of one of the small plateaus. A building that was more of an enclosed leanto than a hut was in the middle of the tablerock. Beyond it was a small cascade, one of the many waterfalls that presumably originated from unseen snows on top of the mountains. The cascades were another mystery of this planet, which had no seasons and thus should rotate at an unvarying 90 degrees to the ecliptic. If the snows had no thawing period, where did the water come from?

  Yeshua was by the waterfall. He was naked and blowing on the pan’s pipe and dancing as wildly as one of the goat-footed worshippers of The Great God. Around and around he spun. He leaped high, he skipped, he bent forward and backward, he kicked, he bent his legs, he pirouetted, he swayed. His eyes were closed, and he came perilously close to the edge of the plateau.

  Like David dancing after the return of the ark of God, Mix thought. But Yeshua was doing this for an invisible audience. And he certainly had nothing to celebrate.

  Mix was embarrassed. He felt like a window-peeper. He almost decided to retreat and leave Yeshua to whatever was possessing him. But the thought of the difficulty of the climb and the time he had taken made him change his mind.

  He called. Yeshua stopped dancing and staggered backward as if an arrow had struck him. Mix walked up to him and saw that he was weeping.

  Yeshua turned, kneeled and splashed the icy water from a pool by the side of the cataract, then turned to face Mix. His tears had stopped, but his eyes were wide and wild.

  “I was not dancing because I was happy or filled with the glory of God,” he said. “On Earth, in the desert by the Dead Sea, I used to dance. No one around but myself and The Father. I was a harp, and His fingers plucked the strings of ecstasy. I was a flute, and He sounded through my body the songs of Heaven.

  “But no more. Now I dance because, if I do not, I would scream my anguish until my throat caught fire, and I would leap over the cliff and fall to a longed-for death. What use in that? In this world, a man cannot commit suicide. Not permanently. A few hours later, he must face himself and the world again. Fortunately, he does not have to face his god again. There is none left to face.”

  Mix felt even more embarrassed and awkward.

  “Things can’t be that bad,” he said. “Maybe this world didn’t turn out to be what you thought it was going to be. So what? You can’t blame yourself for being wrong. Who could possibly have guessed the truth about the unguessable? Anyway, this world has many good things that Earth didn’t have. Enjoy them. It’s true it’s not always a picnic here, but when was it on Earth? At least, you don’t have to worry about growing old, there are plenty of good-looking women, you don’t have to sit up nights wondering where your next meal is coming from or how you’re going to pay your taxes or alimony. Hell, even if there aren’t any horses or cars or movies here, I’ll take this world anytime! You lose one thing; you gain another.”

  “You don’t understand, my friend,” Yeshua said. “Only a man like myself, a man who has seen through the veil that the matter of this physical universe presents, seen the reality beyond, felt the flooding of The Light within…”

  He stopped, stared upward, clenched his fists, and uttered a long ululating cry. Mix had heard only one cry like that—in Africa, when a Boer soldier had fallen over a cliff. No, he hadn’t really heard any Boer soldier. Once more, he was mixing fantasy with reality. “Mix” was a good name for him.

  “Maybe I better go,” Mix said. “I know when there’s nothing to be done. I’m sorry that—”

  “I don’t want to be alone!” Yeshua said. “I am a human being; I need to talk and to listen, to see smiles and hear laug
hter, and know love! But I cannot forgive myself for being…what I was!”

  Mix wondered what he was talking about. He turned and started to walk to the edge of the plateau. Yeshua came after him.

  “If only I had stayed there with the Sons of Zadok, the Sons of Light! But no! J thought that the world of men and women needed me! The rocks of the desert unrolled before me like a scroll, and I read therein that which must come to pass, and soon, because God was showing me what would be. I left my brothers in their caves and their cells and went to the cities because my brothers and sisters and the little children there must know, so that they would have a chance to save themselves.”

  “I got to get going,” Mix said. “I feel sorry for whatever’s riding you, but I can’t help you unless I know what it is. And I doubt that I’d be much help then.”

  “You’ve been sent to help me! It’s no coincidence that you look so much like me and that our paths crossed.”

  “I’m no brain doctor,” Mix said. “Forget it. I can’t straighten you out.”

  Abruptly, Yeshua dropped the hand held out to Mix, and he spoke softly.

  “What am I saying? Will I never learn? Of course you haven’t been sent. There’s Nobody to send you. It’s just chance.”

  “I’ll see you later.”

  He began climbing down. Once he looked upward, and he saw Yeshua’s face, his own face, staring down at him. He felt angry then, as if he should have stayed and at least given some encouragement to the man. He could have listened until Yeshua talked himself into feeling better.

  By the time he had reached the hills and started walking back, he had a different attitude. He doubted that he could really aid the poor devil.

  Yeshua must be half cracked. Certainly he was half baked. And that was a peculiar thing about this world and the resurrection. Everybody else had not only been awakened from the dead with the body of a twenty-five-year-old—except, of course, for those who had died on Earth before that age—but all who had suffered a mental illness on Earth had been restored mentally whole.

  However, as time passed, and the problems of the new world pressed in, many began to sicken again in their minds. There wasn’t much schizophrenia; but he understood from talking to a twentieth-centurian that at least three-quarters of schizophrenia had been proved to be due to a physical imbalance and was primarily genetic in origin.

  Nevertheless, five years of life in the Rivervalley had produced a number of insane people, though not in the relative proportions known on Earth. And the resurrection had not been successful in converting the majority of the so-called sane to a new viewpoint, a different attitude, one that phased in with reality.

  Whatever reality was.

  As on Earth, most of humanity was often irrational, though rationalising, and was impervious to logic it didn’t like. Mix had always known the world was half mad and behaved accordingly, usually to his benefit.

  Or so he had thought then. Now, since he had time sometimes to contemplate the Terrestrial past, he saw that he had been as half-mad as most people. He hoped he’d learned his lessons, but there were plenty of times when he doubted it. Anyway, except for a few deeds, he’d been able to forgive himself for his sins.

  But Yeshua, miserable fellow, could not forgive himself for whatever he had been or had done on Earth.

  Chapter 10

  After telling Stafford about de la Reina, he went to his hut, and he drank the last of his whiskey, four ounces.

  Whoever would have thought that there’d be a dead ringer for Tom Mix, and an ancient Jew at that, for Christ’s sake? It was too bad Yeshua hadn’t been born at the same time as he had. Yeshua could have made good money as his stand-in.

  Despite the noise still swirling around the hut, he managed to sleep well. The rest didn’t last long, though. Two hours later, Channing woke him up. Torn told him to shove off. Channing continued to shake his shoulder, then gave up on that method of wakening, and emptied a skin-bucket full of water on his face. Sputtering, swearing, striking out with his fists, Mix came up off the bed. The sergeant ran out of the hut laughing.

  The council lasted an hour, and he went back to the hut for some more shut-eye. He was roused momentarily when the copiastones thundered. Fortunately, he’d promised some cigarettes to a man if he’d place Mix’s copia for him so he wouldn’t go supperless.

  Sometime later, Delores came in, set down their copias, and then tried to wake him up for their first, and possibly last, love-making. He told her to go away, but she did something that very few men could ignore. Afterward, they ate and then smoked a couple of cigarettes. Since he might not come out of the invasion alive, one coffin nail wouldn’t hurt him. Anyway, Delores didn’t like smoking alone after being plumbed.

  The cigarette, however, made him cough, and he felt dizzy. He swore off again though the tobacco certainly had tasted delicious. A moment later, having forgotten his resolve, he lit up another.

  A corporal came after him then. Tom kissed Delores. She cried and said that she was sure she’d never ever see him again.

  “I appreciate your sentiments,” Tom said. “But they aren’t exactly comforting.”

  The fleets of Anglia and New Cornwall, a neighbouring state which had decided at the last minute to join the invasion, were approaching the New Albion shores. Tom, dressed in his ten-gallon hat, cloak, vest, kilt, and Wellington boots, got onto the flagship. It was the biggest man-of-war in New Albion, three-masted, carrying ten catapults. Behind it came the other largest boats, four men-of-war. After it trailed twenty frigates, as the two-masters were called, though they looked little like the frigates of Earth. After them came forty cruisers, single-masted warcanoes, hollowed out of giant bamboo logs.

  The night-sky blazed down on a River in which the traffic of tacking vessels was thick. There were a few unavoidable collisions, but little damage resulted, though they caused a lot of shouting and cursing. The danger increased as the Hunnish, or Scythian, fleets put out. Bull’s-eye lanterns burning fish oil signalled everywhere. An observer in the hills would have been reminded of the dance of fireflies on Earth. But if there were any spies left, they didn’t light signal fires or beat drums. They were lying low, still hiding from the search parties. All the male soldiers left behind were manning the forts and other important posts. Armed women were beating the hills now.

  The miles dropped by slowly. Then the Ormondian fleet sailed out to join them, the duke’s flagship in the van. More signals were rayed out.

  Just north of Ormondia was the determinedly neutral state of Jacobea. Stafford and Ormonde had debated inviting it to be an ally, but had finally decided against it. There was little chance of its joining, and even if it had, its security couldn’t be trusted. Now, as the fleet ventured into Jacobean waters, the cries of sentinels came to it. Its crews saw torchlights flare up, and they heard the booming of the hollow-log and fish-skin drums. The Jacobeans, fearing an invasion, poured out of their huts, their weapons in hand, and began falling into formation.

  Up in the hills, signal fires began building up. These were tended by Kramer’s spies, which Jacobea allowed to operate unmolested.

  However, the clouds were forming in the skies. Fifteen minutes later, they emptied their contents, drowning out the fires. If Stafford’s planning went as hoped for, there would be no relay of warning signals to Kramer.

  The signal-man on the duke’s boat flashed a message to the Jacobeans. It identified the fleets and said that they intended no harm. They were sailing against Kramer, and if Jacobea cared to join them, they’d be welcome.

  “They won’t do it, of course,” Stafford said. He laughed. “But it’ll throw them into a frenzy. They won’t know what to do, and they’ll end up doing nothing. If they follow us into battle, and we lose, God forbid, then Kramer will take his vengeance on them. If we win by God’s good will, then they will be in our bad graces, and we might invade them. ’Twould only be justice if we did, and it would serve the scurvy curs right. But we have no desi
re to bring more sorrow and bloodshed upon this land. They won’t know that, though.”

  “In other words,” Mix said, “they won’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

  “What? Oh! I see what you mean. It’s a powerful phrase but most distasteful. Just like the excrement you referred to.”

  Grimacing, he turned away.

  Whatever changes the Riverworld had made in Stafford, one had not been a tolerance for obscene language. He no longer believed in the god of the Old and New Testament, though he still used His name, but he reacted as strongly here as on Earth to “dirty” words. Half a Nonconformist still lived within him. Which must give him daily pain, Mix thought, since the ex-royalists and the ex-peasants in this area were not averse to earthy speech.

  The boats passed the state just below Deusvolens as the fog rose up from The River and rolled down from the hills on schedule. From then on, the men in the crow’s nests above the grey clouds directed the sailing by pulling on ropes. The men handling these on the decks told the steersmen which way to turn the tiller and when to expect the great booms to swing over. It was dangerous navigation, and twice Mix heard the crash of boats colliding.

  After what seemed an endless time, the signal was given that Deusvolens had been sighted. At least, they hoped that it was their destination. Sailing so blindly, with the plains as well as The River concealed in fog, they could not be sure.

  Shortly before the sky was due to turn pale under the greater blaze of the rising sun, the capital “city” of Fides was sighted. One of the watchmen came down to report.

  “There be great lights all over the place. Something’s stirring, my lord-mayor.”

  A moment later there was a cry from aloft.

  “Boats! Many boats! They’re heading straight for us! Beware, milord!”

  Stafford revealed that he could curse as well as any when under great pressure.

  “God’s wounds! It’s Kramer’s fleet! The goddamned swine! He’s setting out on his own invasion! What damnable timing! May he rot in the devil’s ass forever!”