Riverworld Short Stories

by Philip José Farmer

  “But then, we don’t know that this story is true,” she said. “Or it may be a half-truth. Perhaps the child was male. But evil people have distorted the story, changed it to make the baby a female. It’s a lie which the Devil beget. He used many devices to lure the faithful into error.”

  “I don’t like to think that,” Davis said. “But you could he right. Whatever the truth, we must try to find it.”

  Faustroll said that he would go with them. “This virgin birth could be a pataphysical exception. Pataphysics, as we have remarked more than once, is the science of exceptions. We doubt that it happened since we do not remember having done it. We will be pleased to expose the charlatans who claimed that it did happen.”

  Ann Pullen said that she was staying in Jardin. No one, however, had asked her to accompany them. Davis thought that he should have rejoiced when he heard the news. But he felt a pang. He did not know why he was disappointed or why he felt a hurt in his chest. He detested the woman.

  A month later, the boat was complete, a fine ship with a single mast and twenty oars. Ivar had picked the crew, brawny men and their battle-tested women, all eager to put the soft life behind them. Only two of Davis’s disciples had been allowed to go on Ivar’s boat, and that was because they did not object to fighting in self-defense. The others, pacifists all, would follow in a smaller vessel.

  At dawn of the day set for their departure, they gathered at a grailstone. After the stone had shot its thundering and white flash upward, they removed their grails, now filled with food of various kinds, beer, cigarettes, and dreamgum. Davis would pass out the tobacco, beer, and gum to the crew, though he would have preferred to throw them into the River. Since they would eat breakfast on the vessel later in the morning, they began boarding from the pier. The air was cool, but Davis was shivering with excitement. For a long time, he had been aware that something was missing from his life. Now he knew that it was the desire to explore and to find adventure. On Earth, he had been a traveler over much of the United States, lecturing and founding colleges of osteopathy. He had been faced with the hostility of local doctors and of the crowds provoked by the M.D.s. He had charged head-on into the jeers, boos, death threats, and rotten eggs thrown at him. But he had persisted in a campaign he and his colleagues had finally won.

  On the Riverworld, he had seldom stayed long in one place except when detained in slavery. He was a walker-to-and-fro of the earth and a far-venturing sailor, too. Real happiness was not his unless he had a quest beckoning him to far lands.

  Ivar stood on the rear deck by the steersman and bellowed orders. He, too, was happy, though he complained of the crew’s slowness and clumsiness.

  Two burly Norsemen began to loosen ropes securing the vessel to the pier. They halted when Ivar bellowed at them to wait a moment. Davis heard a man shouting, and he looked shoreward. The top of the sun had just cleared the mountains; its rays swept away the grayness and shone on the stranger. He was running across the plain, waving his arms and yelling in Esperanto.

  “Don’t go yet! Wait for me! I want to go with you!”

  “He’d better have a good reason for delaying us,” Ivar said loudly. “Otherwise, into the water he goes!”

  Davis was curious about the mysterious stranger, but he also felt something unaccountable. Was it a premonition of dread? Did this man bring unsettling news? Though Davis had no reason to suspect this, he felt that he would be happier if the man had never showed up.

  The fellow reached the pier and halted, breathing hard, his grail dangling from one hand. He was of middle height and rangy. His face was strong and handsome, long, narrow, though partly obscured by his black, wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat. Under the shadow of the hat were dark eyes. The long hair falling from under the hat was glossy black. A black cloak covered his shoulders. A black towel was around his waist. His jackboots were shiny black fish-hide. His black belt supported a wooden scabbard from which stuck the fish-hide-bound hilt of a rapier. If the weapon was made of iron, it was unique in this area.

  “What brings you croaking like a raven of ill omen to us?” Ivar yelled.

  “I just heard that you were leaving for up-River,” the man said in a deep voice. His Esperanto was heavily tainted by his native language, which must have had many harsh sounds. “I’ve run all the way down from the mountains to catch you. I would like to sign up. You will find me handy. I can row with the best, and I am an excellent archer, though recent events have robbed me of my bow. And I can fight.”

  He paused, then said, “Though I was once a peaceful man, I now live by the sword.”

  He drew out his rapier. It was indeed of steel. “This has pierced many a man.”

  “Your name?” Ivar shouted.

  “I answer to Newman.”

  “I expect and get immediate obedience,” Ivar said.

  “You have it.”

  “What is your mission?”

  “The end of the River, though I am in no hurry to get to it.”

  Ivar laughed, then said, “We have something in common, though I suppose that many are also trying to get there. We have room for you as long as you pull your weight. Come aboard. You will take your turn at the oar later.”

  “Thank you.”

  The boar was pushed from the pier, and the two Norsemen jumped onto the vessel. Presently, it was making its way up the River. When the morning breeze came, the rowers shipped their oars, and the fore-and-aft sail and the boom sail were hoisted. The crew sat down to eat from their grails.

  Ivar came down from the deck to talk to people amidships. He stood above the newcomer. “What tale of interest do you bring?”

  The man looked up.

  “I have many.”

  “We all do, Ivar said. “But what have you found most amazing?”

  Newman half-lidded his eyes as if to shut out the light while he searched his inner darkness. He seemed to be feeling around for some treasure.

  Finally, he said, “Perhaps the most amazing is a man who claimed to be Jesus Christ. Do you know of him or did you live in a time and a place on Earth where he was unknown?”

  “My gods were Odin and Thor and others,” Ivar growled. “I have sacrificed many Christians to him on Earth. But, near the end of my life, I became a Christian. More from a desire to hedge my bets, you might say, than from true faith. When I came to this world and found that it was neither Valhalla nor Heaven, though much more like Valhalla than Heaven, I renounced both beliefs. But it is hard not to call out for my native gods when I need them.”

  “Those who had never heard of Jesus on Earth have heard of him here,” Newman said. “But you know enough about him so that I do not have to explain who he is.”

  “I could not escape knowing more of him than I care to hear,” Ivar said. He pointed at Davis. “That man, Andrew the Red, is constantly prating about him.”

  Davis had been inching closer to Newman. He said, “I’m eager to hear your story, stranger. But this man who claimed to be Jesus cannot be He. He is in Heaven, though He may have been reincarnated as a woman on this world. Or so some say. My wife and I are going up-River to find her.”

  “Good luck, what with all the many billions here and the chance that she might now be down-River,” the man said. “But you will not be offended, I hope, if I say that you will be disappointed even if you find the woman.”

  “Enough!” Ivar said. “The tale!”

  “I came to a certain area shortly after the man calling himself Jesus was crucified by a fanatical medieval German monk. He was called Kramer the Hammer. The crucified man was still living, so you will see how soon after the event I arrived. The short of it is that I talked to him just before he died. And then I talked to a man who had lived in the dead mans time and place on Earth and knew him well. This man confirmed that the dead man had indeed been Yeshua, as the witness called him.

  “I was very near him when he spoke his last words. He cried out, ‘Father! They know what they’re doing! Do not forgive them!’
He sounded as if his experiences on this world had stripped him of the faith he had on Earth. As if he knew that mankind was not worth saving or that he had failed in his mission.”

  “Impossible!” Davis said.

  Newman stared coldly at Davis, “I’m lying?”

  “No, no! I don’t doubt your story of what happened. What I don’t believe is that the man on the cross was really Jesus. He’s not the first nor the last of those who said that they were the Savior. Some may have genuinely believed that they were.”

  “How do you account for the testimony of the witness?”

  “He was lying.”

  Newman shrugged. “It makes no difference to me.”

  Rachel touched Davis’s shoulder. “You look troubled.”

  “No. Angry.”

  But he was also downcast, though he knew he should not be.

  That evening, the boat was moored near a grailstone. After the stone thundered, the crew ate the offerings of the grails. They also devoured the freshly caught and cooked fish offered to them by the locals. Davis sat in a circle around a bamboo wood fire. Faustroll was at his side.

  The Frenchman said, “Your wife was correct when she said you seemed troubled by Newman’s tale. You still seem so.”

  “My faith is not broken, not even shaken,” Davis said.

  “You say so. Your body, your voice declare that you are plunged into black thoughts.”

  “The Light will clear away the darkness.”

  “Perhaps, friend,” Faustroll said. “Here, have some fish. It’s delicious. It’s something you can have faith in.”

  Davis did not reply. The sight of Faustroll’s greasy lips and the thought of Faustroll’s shallowness sickened him. Or did the sickness come from another cause? He was far more disturbed than he had admitted to Rachel or the Frenchman.

  “The stranger, he talked as if with authority,” Faustroll said.

  “Of course, all crazies do.”

  “Crazies?”

  “There is something deeply disturbing in that man, though he has much self-control. Did you not perceive it? He is dressed in black as if he is in mourning.”

  “He just seemed like one more mercenary adventurer,” Davis said.

  Faustroll put his hand on Davis’s shoulder.

  “There is something we must tell you. Perhaps our timing is wrong, seeing that you are so melancholy. But, sooner or later, you who seek the Light must face it, though the Light may not be the color you expect.”

  “Yes?” Davis said. He was not very interested.

  “We speak of the time when you leaped across the void between Pachacuti’s gangplanks. You said that you were seized by a spiritual rapture as soon as your foot left the gangplank. The rapture lifted you as if it were a gas-filled balloon. You soared higher than you should have, higher than you were capable of leaping. It was, you said, given by God. But…” Davis sat up straighter. Some interest flickered in him.

  “Yes?”

  “You crossed the gap and landed upon the plank. But your feet struck its end. As a result, you landed hard and painfully. You might have fallen off the plank then if you had not grabbed its sides.”

  Faustroll paused. Davis said, “What about it?”

  “Rapture is fine. It carried you across safely. But then you struck the plank. Reality entered; the rapture was gone.”

  “What about that?”

  “We are making an analogy, perhaps a parable. Think about that leap, friend, while you journey in a quest for what may be imaginary. Rapture is nontangible and temporary. Reality is hard and long lasting and often painfully crippling. What will you do if you find that the woman did not conceive and that there is no child?

  “Reality may be a club which shatters your ability to ever feel that rapture again. We hope, and it is for your own good, that you never find that child.

  “Think about that.”

  CODA

  First I found Rabi’a. Then I found the artifact, which I think of as The Artifact. Which is more precious, Rabi’a or The Artifact? Rabi’a says that I do not have to choose between The Way or The Artifact. There is no choice in this matter between The Way and a machine.

  I am not so sure.

  My mind, the only truly time-traveling machine, goes back. And then back. And then it goes ahead of this very moment.

  Here I sit on the rock that rims the top of the monolith. The sun burns the right side of my head and body. My mind burns too, but all over, burns to its center.

  I am on the top of a two-thousand-foot-high granite monolith. It rises from the plain not more than a hundred feet from the Riverbank. The last hundred feet of the monolith flares out like a glans with the end cut off. That the monolith is phallus-shaped is, I think, accidental. But I am not sure that anything about this world is accidental. Even the contours of the mountains, which form the Rivervalley, and the course of the River may have both practical and symbolic meaning.

  I wish that I could discern the meaning. There are times when I almost have grasped it. But that is as elusive as the water that forms the River.

  The top of the monolith, my living space, my physical world, flares out to make a rough circle six hundred feet in diameter. Not much. But it is enough.

  You cannot see it from the ground, but that circle is a cup. Within it is a deep and fertile soil, fast-growing bamboo, bushes, and earthworms that eat rotting vegetable matter and human excrement.

  In the center of this cup grows a giant oak. At the foot of the tree is a spring, the water brought up through the monolith from the ground-level source by whatever devices the makers of this world concealed in the stone. The water flows northward from the spring in a shallow creek. This broadens out into a lakelet and then cataracts through a narrow gap in the stone of the cup. Rainbow-colored fish live in the creek and the lake. They are about eight inches long and are delicious when fried or baked.

  Not far from the tree is a grailstone.

  I never needed much on Earth. Here I need even less, though, in a spiritual sense, I require more.

  I am like the Dark Age Christian hermits who sat alone on high pillars for years in the African desert. They meditated most of the time, or so they claimed. They seldom moved from their sitting position. If so, they must have had running sores on their asses. I often get up and walk and sometimes run along the very limited circumference of my world. Other times, I climb this three-hundred-feet-high tree, leap from branch to branch, and run back and forth on the largest branches.

  Mankind, it is claimed, is descended from the apes. If so, I have, in a sense, regressed to the apes, What of it? There is deep joy in playing on a tree. And it seems fitting to complete the circle from ape to man to ape. It also symbolically matches the circling of the River from North Pole to South Pole and back to the North Pole. What comes out must go back in. In a different form, perhaps. But its essence is matter. Spirit forms from matter. Without matter, spirit has no vessel. Of course, I do not mean The Spirit. Then the time comes when matter dies. Does the spirit also die? No more than a butterfly dies when it changes from pupa to imago. The spirit must go to a place where, unlike this universe but like The Spirit, matter is not necessary.

  Or is this kind of thinking born of hope fathered by fear of death? Therefore, without validity.

  Ten wishes do not make one piece of pie.

  It seems, now and then, strange to utter “I,” the first person singular. For so many years on this world, I called myself Doctor Faustroll, and everybody I met thought that was my true name. Many times, I truly forgot that my natal name was Alfred Jarry. The literary character I had created on Earth became me. And I had no individuality. Faustroll was just a piece of the all-embracing “we.” But here, at this place on the River, somewhere in the north temperate zone of this planet, “we,” which had been “I” in the beginning and then became “we,” metamorphosed back into “I.” It’s as if the butterfly had regressed into the pupa, then again became the butterfly.

  Is th
e second “I” superior to the first one?

  I don’t know.

  Is any one place along the River better than any other place?

  I don’t know.

  But I do know that we, my companions and I, traveled and fought for many years along many millions of miles of the River, going ever upstream, though often that way was from north to south or east or west as the River wandered and wound and writhed. But always, we went against the current.

  Then we stopped to rest for a while, just as we had done throughout the journey when we were weary of the fighting and of sailing and of each other’s company. Here, I met Rabi’a. Here, I stayed.

  Ivar the Boneless, our leader, the huge bronze-haired Viking, did not seem surprised when I told him that I would not sail out with him in the morning.

  “Lately, you seem to be thinking much more than is good for a man,” he said. “You were always strange, one seemingly touched by the gods, a man with his brain askew.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me, grinned, and said, “Have you become faint-hearted because of the allure of this hawk-nosed, doe-eyed, dark-skinned woman you met here? Has she fired up your passion for woman? Which, I have observed, has never been fierce. Is that it? You would abandon our quest for a pair of splendid breasts and hot hips?”

  “The physical has nothing to do with it,” I said. “In fact, Rabi’a was a celibate all her life on Earth, a virgin, a saint. Resurrection here did not change her mind about that. No, it is definitely not passion for her body that keeps tree here. It is passion for her mind. No, not really that. It is passion for God!”

  “Ah!” the Viking said, and he spoke no more of the matter. He wished me good luck, and he walked away.

  I watched his broad back, and I felt some regret and some sense of loss. But it seemed to me that his loss was far greater than mine. Many years ago, he had experienced what I can only call a mystic moment. Out of the dark sky, while we were fleeing on a boat from enemies bent on killing us, something bright had seized him. That was evident though he would never talk about it. But, from that moment on, he lost his desire to conquer a piece of the Riverworld, rule it, and expand his holdings as far as his wits and his weapons would allow him. Nor did he ever attack a man or an entire state again. He fought only in self-defense, though there was much aggression in that.