Riverworld Short Stories

by Philip José Farmer

  The Order Book also said that Jane’s mother. Ann Pullen, had debauched her own daughter by encouragement to commit adultery and break the whole estate of matrimony.

  The daughter’s husband, Morgan Jones, had enjoined more than once (as the court had recorded) any man from entertaining or having any manner of dealing with Jane or transporting her out of the county or giving her passage over any river or creek.

  It was also recorded that Ann Pullen had declared that Jane had no husband at that time, Jones having died, and she (Ann) did not know why her daughter should not take the pleasure of this world as well as any other woman. Also, Ann did not care who the father of her daughter’s child was, provided one William Elmes would take her to England, as he had promised.

  Ann was a feminist ahead of her time, a lone pioneer in the movement in the days when it was dangerous to be such. She had also been a libertine, though Davis thought that automatically went with the desire for female equality.

  However, such Terrestrial attitudes should not apply on the Riverworld. Even he admitted that, though insisting that there were limits to that viewpoint. Ann had certainly overstepped them. With seven-league boots.

  Ivar’s kingdom was basically Old Norse. Since women (though not female slaves) in the pre-Christian era had had many more rights than those in the Christian countries, they had even more rights on the Riverworld. In this state, anyway. Theoretically, Ann could divorce Ivar with a simple statement that she wished it, and she could take her property with her. Not half of the kingdom’s, that is, the kings. Her grail, her towels, her artifacts, and her slaves were hers.

  But divorce didn’t seem likely. Ivar was greatly amused by her, even when she became angry at him, and he reveled in her uninhibited and many-talented lovemaking. He knew that she had lovers, bur he didn’t seem to care. He doubted that she would plot with a lover to assassinate him. She knew well on which side her vagina was buttered.

  So Andrew Davis had to suffer the indignities she piled on him. Meanwhile, he dreamed of the divinely begotten infant far up the River. He also tried to think of foolproof ways to escape this land. And how to prevent capture by the other slave-holding states between him and his goal.

  Doing his Christian duty, he had tried to pray for Ann. Bur he sounded so insincere to himself that he knew God would ignore his requests that she be forgiven and be made to see the Light.

  When her treatment was over, he left the chamber as he always did. He was angry, frustrated, and sweating, his stomach was boiling, and his hands were shaking.

  Oh, Lord, how long must I endure this? Do not, I pray You, continue to subject me to evil and the temptation to curse You as you did Job!

  At high noon, the grailstone in the tower courtyard erupted in lightning and thunder. He left the room in which he had been waiting until this happened. To stand in the yard near the stone was to be deafened. Though his grail was full of excellent food and drink, he had no appetite. What he did not eat, he shared with his cronies at the table in the big hall. The cup of brandy and the pack of mingled tobacco and marijuana cigarettes he put aside. He could have kept half of the booze and the coffin nails for himself, but he would give them all to Eysteinn the Chatterer, Ivar’s chief tax and tribute collector.

  Thus, he paid his taxes at a double rate. That enabled him halfway through the month to pour the daily quota of the liquor down a drain and to shred the cigarettes. He did this secretly because many would have been outraged at this waste. They would report to the king, who would confiscate the extra “goodies” and would punish him.

  He had never, during his two lives, tasted any alcohol or smoked. In tact, on Earth, he had not even drunk ice water because of its unhealthy effects. He loathed having to contribute to the king and his vices. But, if he didn’t, he would suffer the cat-o’-nine-tails or become a quarry slave. Or both.

  That evening, shortly after sunset, he went to the great hall built near the bank. This was where Ivar preferred to eat supper, to drink, and to roister among his cronies and his toadies. (Davis admitted that he was one of the latter. But he had no choice.) The hall was built in the old Viking style, a single huge room with Ivar’s table on a platform and at the head of the floor-level tables. The platform had not been used on Earth among the semi-democratic Vikings. It was an innovation adopted by Ivar. The support poles were carved with the heads of humans, gods, beasts, and symbols from the old religion. Among these and often repeated were gold-mining dwarfs, dragons, the Earth-encircling Midgard serpent, stags, bears, valknuts, frost giants, Thor and his hammer, one-eyed Odin with, sometimes, his ravens Hugin and Munin on his shoulders, right-handed swastikas, runic phrases, and Skidbladnir, the magical ship that could be folded and carried in a bag after use.

  Tonight, as usual, the men and women drank too much, the talk was fast and furious, boasting and bombast thundered in the hall, people quarreled and sometimes fought. Ivar had forbidden duels to the death because he had lost too many good warriors to them. But the belligerents could go at each other with fists and feet, and the king did not frown on gouging of eyes, crushing of testicles, ripping off of ears, and hiring off of noses, Though it took three months, the eyes, noses, and ears would grow again, and the testicles would repair themselves.

  Davis had grown used to these nightly gatherings, but he did not tike them. Violence still upset him, and the air stank of tobacco and marijuana smoke and beer and liquor fumes. Also, the sickening odor of farts, followed by loud laughter and thigh-slapping, drifted to him now and then. Queen Ann, who was sitting on Ivar’s left, was one of the loudest in her laughter when this form of primitive humor erupted. Tonight she wore a towel around her neck, the ends of which covered her breasts. But she was rather careless about keeping them in place.

  Mingled with the other smells was that of the fish caught in the river and fried in one end of the hall.

  Davis sat at the king’s table because he was the royal osteopath. He would have preferred a table as far away as it could be from this one. That would give him a chance to sneak away after all were too drunk to notice him. Tonight, however, he was interested in watching and occasionally overhearing the conversation of Doctor Faustroll and Ivar the Boneless. The Frenchman sat immediately to the king’s right, the most favored chair at the table. He had brought an amazing amount of fish to the feast, far more than any other anglers. Once, during a lessening of the uproar, Davis heard Ivar ask Faustroll about his luck.

  “It’s not luck,” Faustroll lead said. “It’s experience and skill. Plus an inborn knack. We survived mainly on fish we caught in the Seine when we lived in Paris.”

  6

  Paris,” Ivar said. “I was with my father, Ragnar, son of Sigurd Hring, when we Danes sailed up the Seine in March, the Franks not expecting Vikings that early in the year. A.D. 845, I’ve been told. The Frankish ruler, Charles the Bald, split his army into two. I advised my father to attack the smaller force, which we did. We slaughtered them except for one hundred and eleven prisoners. These my father hanged all at once as a sacrifice to Odin on an island in the Seine while the other Frankish army watched us. They must have filled their drawers from horror.

  “We went on up to Paris, a much smaller city then than the vast city others have told me about. On Easter Sunday, the Christian’s most holy day, we stormed and plundered Paris and killed many worshipers of the Savior. Odin was good to us.”

  Ivar smiled to match the sarcastic tone of his voice. He did not believe in the gods, pagan or Christian. But Davis, watching him closely, saw the expression on his face and the set of his eyes. They could be showing nostalgia or, perhaps, some unfathomable longing. Davis had seen this expression a score of times before now. Could the ruthless and crafty hungerer for power be longing for something other than he now had? Did he, too, desire to escape this place and its responsibilities and ever-present danger of assassination? Did he, like Davis and Faustroll, have goals that many might think idealistic or romantic? Did he want to shed the restrictio
ns of his situation and be free? After all, a powerful ruler was as much a prisoner as a slave.

  “The One-Eyed One blessed us,” Ivar said, “though it may just have been coincidence that Charles the Bald was having serious trouble with other Frankish states and with his ambitious brothers. Instead of trying to bar us from going back down the Seine, he paid us seven thousand pounds of silver to leave his kingdom. Which we did, though we did not promise not to come back again later.”

  Faustroll had so far not interrupted the king, though disgust sometimes flitted across his face. He drank swiftly and deeply, and his cup was never empty. The slave behind him saw to that. He also gave the Frenchman cigarettes after he had smoked up his own supply. The slave was Sharkko, apparently delegated by the king to serve Faustroll tonight. Sharkko was scowling, and, now and then, his lips moved. His words were drowned out by the din, and a good thing, too, Davis thought. Davis could lip-read both English and Esperanto. If Ivar knew what Sharkko was saying, he would have him Hogged and then put into the latrine-cleaning gang.

  Finally, he banged his wooden cup down, causing those around him, including Ivar, to look startled.

  “Your Majesty will pardon us,” he said loudly. “But you are still as you were on Earth. You have not progressed one inch spiritually; you are the same bloody barbarous pirate, plenty of offense meant, as the old hypocrite who died in Dublin. But we do not give up hope for you. We know that philosophy in its practical form of pataphysics is the gate to the Truth for you. And, though you at first seem to be a simple savage, we know that you are much more. Our brief conversation in the hall convinced us of that.”

  Many at the table, including Davis, froze, though they rolled their eyeballs at each other and then gazed at Ivar. Davis expected him to seize the war ax always by his side and lop off Faustroll’s head. But the Viking’s skin did not redden, and he merely said. “We will talk with you later about this philosophy, which we hope will contain more wisdom and less nonsense than that of the Irish priests, the men in women’s skirts.”

  His “we,” Davis knew, was a mimicking and mocking of Faustroll.

  Ivar rose then, and silence followed three strokes on a huge bronze gong.

  Ivar spoke loudly, his bass voice carrying to all corners of the huge hall.

  “The feast is over! We’re all going to bed early tonight, though I suppose many of you will not go to sleep until you can no longer get it up!”

  The crowd had murmured with surprise and disappointment, but that was followed by laughter at the king’s joke. Davis grimaced with disgust, Ann, seeing his expression, smiled broadly.

  “We haven’t run out of food or drink,” Ivar said. “that’s not why I’m cutting this short. But it occurred to me a little while ago that tomorrow is the third anniversary of the founding of my kingdom. That was the day when I, a slave of the foul Scots tyrant, Eochaid the Poisonous, rose in revolt with Arpad, also a slave, and with two hundred slaves, most of whom now sit in honored places in this hall. We silently strangled the guards around Eochaid’s hall. He and his bodyguards were all sleeping off their drunkenness, safe, they supposed, in their thick-walled hall on a high mound of earth. We burned the log building down and slaughtered those who managed to get out of the fire. All except Eochaid, whom we captured.

  “The next day, I gave him the death of the blood eagle as I did on Earth to King Aella of York and King Edmund of East Anglia and some of my other foes whom I sacrificed to Odin.”

  Davis shuddered. Though he had never seen this singular method of execution, he had heard about it many times. The victim was placed facedown, his spine was cut, and his lungs were pulled our and laid on his back, forming the rough shape of an eagle with outspread wings.

  “I have decided that we will go to bed early and get up early tomorrow. The slaves will be given the day off and given plenty of food and drink. Everybody will celebrate. We will all work to collect much fish, and that evening we will start the festivities. There will be games and archery and spear-casting contests and wrestling, and those who have grudges may fight to the death with then enemies if they so wish.”

  At this, the crowd shouted and screamed.

  Ivar lifted his hands for silence, then said, “Go to bed! Tomorrow we enjoy ourselves while we thank whatever gods made this world that we are free of Eochaid’s harsh rule and are free men!”

  The crowd cheered again and then streamed out of the hall. Davis, the handle of his grail in one hand, was heading for the tower and halfway up the first hill when the even-toned voice of Faustroll rose behind him. “Wait for me! We’ll walk the rest of the way with you!”

  Davis stopped. Presently, the Frenchman, in no hurry, caught up with him. Heavy fumes of whiskey mixed with fish enveloped him, and his words were somewhat slurred. “Mon ami? Mia amico! That which treads on day’s heels is beautiful, is it not. The beings that burn in the nocturnal bowl above in their un-Earth patterns, how inspiring! Wise above the wisdom of men, they will have nothing to do with us. But they are generous with their splendor.”

  “Uhmm,” Davis said.

  “A most observant remark. Tell me, my friend, what do you think is the real reason behind Ivar’s ending the feast?”

  “What?”

  “I do not trust the goat who leads the woolly ones. Statesmen and politicians, generals and admirals, they seldom reveal their real intentions. The Boneless is up to something his enemies won’t like. Nor will his people.”

  “You’re very cynical,” Davis said. He looked across the River. The plains and the hills in Arpad’s kingdom were dark except for the scattered fires of sentinels. There were also torches on the tops of the bamboo signal towers a half-mile apart and forming a ten-mile-long line.

  “Cynical? A synonym for experience. And for one whose eyes have long been open and whose nose is as keen in detecting corruption as the nose of the hairy one some claim is man’s best friend. Remember, our leader comes from the land where something is rotten, to paraphrase the Bard of Avon.”

  They had resumed walking. Davis said, “What did Ivar say to make you suspicious?”

  “Nothing and everything. We do not accept anything at face value. The meaning of words and of facial expressions, the hardness of objects, the permanence of the universe, that fire will always burn skin, that a certain cause always leads to a certain result, that what goes up must come down. It isn’t always necessarily so.”

  He swung the cylinder of his grail around to indicate everything.

  Davis did not feel like talking about metaphysics or, in fact, anything. Especially not with this fellow, who made no sense. But he accepted Faustroll’s invitation to sit down in the tower courtyard and converse for a while. Perhaps he might find out just why Faustroll suspected that Ivar was up to something. Not that it made any difference. What could he do about anything here?

  There was a table near a row of torches in wall brackets. They sat down. The Frenchman opened his grail and drew out a metal cup half filled with whiskey. Davis looked at the formula painted on the man‘s forehead. He had attended lectures on calculus at Rush Medical College, and he was familiar with the markings. But, unless you knew the referents of the symbols, you could never know what they meant or how to use them. He read: - 0 - a - + a + 0 =

  Faustroll said, “The significance of the formula? God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.”

  “Which means?”

  Faustroll spoke as if he had memorized this lecture. “God is, by definition, without dimension, but we must be permitted…”

  “Is this going to be long?” Davis said.

  “Too long for tonight and perhaps for eternity. Besides, we are rather drunk. We can visualize all clearly, but our body is weary and our mind not running on all eight cylinders.”

  Davis rose, saying, “Tomorrow, then. I’m tired, too.”

  “Yes, you can understand better our thesis if we have a pen and a piece of paper on which to lay it out.”

  Davis sai
d good night, leaving the Frenchman sitting at the table and staring into the dark whiskey as if it were a crystal ball displaying his future. He made his way up to his tiny room. It was not until he was at its door that he remembered how astray his conversation with the Frenchman had gone. Faustroll had not told him what he had concluded from his suspicions about Ivar.

  He shrugged. Tomorrow he would find out. If, that is, the crazy fellow’s tongue did not wander off again. To him, a straight line was not the shortest path between two points. Indeed, he might deny the entire validity of Euclidean geometry.

  Davis also had an uneasy feeling that Faustroll’s near-psychopathic behavior hid a very keen mind and a knowledge of science, mathematics, and literature far exceeding his own. He could not be dismissed as just another loony.

  Davis pushed in the wooden-hinged and lockless door. He looked out through the glassless opening into the darkness lit only by the star-crowded sky. But that light was equal to or surpassed that of Earth’s full moon. At first, it seemed peaceful. Everybody except the sentinels had gone to bed. Then he saw the shadows moving in the valley below the tower. As his eyes became more adjusted to the pale light, he saw that a large body of men was in it.

  His heart suddenly bear hard. Invaders? No. Now he could see Ivar the Boneless, clad in a conical bronze helmet and a long shirt of mail and carrying a war ax, walking down the hill toward the mass of men. Behind him came his bodyguard and counselors. They, too, were armored and armed. Each wore two scabbards encasing bronze swords, and they carried spears or battle-axes. Some also bore bundles of pine torches or sacks. The containers would, he knew at once, hold gunpowder bombs.

  Faustroll had been right. There would be no celebration tomorrow unless it was a victory feast. The king had lied to cover up a military operation. Those not involved—as yet—in the military operation had been lied to. But selected warriors has been told to gather secretly at a certain time.