“I like to be challenged,” Faustroll said. “By the way, what is an osteopath?”
“You’ve never heard of osteopathy?” Davis said, raising his reddish eyebrows. “When did you die?”
“All Saints’ Day, though I’m no saint in the Catholic sense, in 1907. In Paris, which you may know is in France, who knows how many light-years away?”
Davis said only, “Ah!” That explained the man’s madness and decadence. He was French and probably had been a bohemian artist, one of those godless immoral wretches roistering in the dives of Montmartre or the Left Bank or wherever that kind of low life flourished. One of those Dadaists or Cubists or Surrealists, whatever they were called, whose crazed paintings, sculptures, and writings revealed that their makers were rotten with sin and syphilis.
There wasn’t any syphilis on this world, but there was plenty of sin.
“My question?” Faustroll said.
“Oh, yes! One, osteopathy is any form of bone disease. Two, it’s a system of treatment of ailments and is based on the valid belief that most ailments result from the pressure of displaced bones on nerves and so forth. Osteopaths relieve the traumatic pressure by applying corrective pressure. Of course, there’s much more to it than that. Actually, I seldom have to treat the king for anything serious, he’s in superb physical health. It could be said that he retains me—enslaves me would be a better term—as the royal masseur.”
Faustroll lifted his eyebrows and said, “Bitterness? Discontent? Your soul, it vomits bile?”
Davis did not reply. They had gone through the large foyer and up the stone steps of a narrow winding staircase to the second floor. After passing through a small room, they had stepped into a very large room, two stories high and very cool. Numerous wall slits gave enough light, but pine torches and fish-oil lamps made the room brighter. In the center, on a raised platform, was a long oaken table. Placed along it were high-backed oaken chairs carved with Norse symbols, gods, goddesses, serpents, trolls, monsters, and humans. Other smaller tables were set around the large one, and a huge fireplace was at the western wall. The walls were decorated with shields and weapons and many skulls.
A score or so of men and women were in a line leading to a large man seated in a chair. The oaken shaft of a huge bronze-headed ax leaned against the side of the chair.
“Petitioners and plaintiffs,” Davis said in a low voice to Faustroll. “And criminals.”
“Ah!” Faustroll murmured. “The Man With the Ax!” He added, “The title of one of our poems.”
He pointed at a beautiful bare-breasted blonde sitting in a high-backed chair a few feet from the king’s throne.
“She?”
“Queen Ann, the number-one mare in Ivar’s stable,” Davis said softly. “Don’t cross her. She has a hellish temper, the slut.”
Ivar the Boneless, son of the semilegendary Ragnar Hairybreeches, who was the premier superhero of the Viking Age, stood up from the chair then. He was at least six feet six inches tall. Since his only garment was a sea-blue towel, his massive arms, chest, legs, and flat corded belly were evident. Despite his bulk, his quick and graceful movements made him seem more pantherish than lionlike.
His only adornment was a wide bronze band around the upper right arm. It bore in alto-relief a valknut, three hunting horns meeting at the mouthpieces to form a triskelion, a three-legged figure. The valknut, the knot of the slain, was the sacred symbol of the greatest of the Norse gods, Odin.
His long, wavy, and red-bronze hair fell to his very broad shoulders. His face would have been called, in Davis’s time on Earth, “ruggedly handsome.” There was, however, something vulpine about it. Though Davis could not put a verbal finger on the lineaments that made him think of Brer Fox, he always envisioned that character when he saw the king.
Ivar was not the only general in the ninth century A.D. Danish invasion of England. Many native kings ruled there, but the king of Wessex would be the only one whose name would be familiar to twentieth-century English speakers. That was Alfred, whom later generations would call The Great, though his son and grandson were as deserving of that title. Though Alfred had saved Wessex from conquest, he had not kept the Danes from conquering much of the rest of England. Ivar had been the master strategist of the early Dane armies. Later, he had been co-king of Dublin with the great Norwegian conqueror, Olaf the White. But Ivar’s dynasty had ruled Dublin for many generations.
As Davis and Faustroll approached the king, Davis said softly, “Don’t call him Boneless. Nobody does that to his face without regretting it. You can call him Ivar, though, from what he’s told me, it was Yngwaer in the Norse of his time. Languages change; Yngwaer became Ivar. His nickname in Old Norse was The Merciless, but it was close in sound to a word meaning “boneless.” Later generations mistranslated the nickname. But don’t call him Merciless either.
“If you do, you’ll find out why he was called that.”
3
Doctor Davis was surprised.
He had been sure that the king would hustle the grotesquely painted and nonsense-talking Frenchman to the slave stockade at once. Instead, Ivar had told Davis to get quarters in the tower for Faustroll, good quarters, not some tiny and miserable room.
“He’s been touched by the gods and thus is sacred. And I find him interesting. See that good care is taken of him, and bring him to the feast tonight.”
Though this duty was properly the province of the king’s steward, Davis did not argue. Nor did he ask Ivar what he meant by referring to the gods. On Earth, Ivar had been a high priest of the Norse god Odin until a few years before he died. Then he had been baptized into the Christian faith. Probably, Davis thought, because the foxlike Dane figured that it couldn’t hurt to do that. Ivar was one to make use of all loopholes. But, after being resurrected along the River, the Viking had rejected both religions. However, he was still influenced by both, though far more by his lifelong faith.
Ivar gave his command in his native language, instead of Esperanto. Ivar referred to it as “that monotonously regular, grating, and unsubtle tongue.” Davis had learned Old Norse well enough to get by. Two-thirds of its speakers in the kingdom came from Dublin, where Ivar had been king of the Viking stronghold when he had died in 873. But most of these were half-Irish, equally fluent in the Germanic Norse and Keltic Gaelic. Davis could speak the latter, though not as well as he could Norse.
Since the Franks made up one-fourth of the population of Ivar’s kingdom, having been resurrected in the same area as the Dane, Davis had some knowledge of that tongue. The Franks came from the time of Chlodowech (died A.D. 511 in Paris), known to later generations as Clovis I. He had been king of the western, or Salian, Franks and conqueror of the northern part of the Roman province of Gaul.
Andrew Davis and Ivar’s queen, Ann Pullen, were the only English speakers, except for some slaves, in the kingdom. Davis only talked to her when he could not avoid it. That was not often, because she liked him to give her frequent treatments, during which she did her best to upset him with detailed stories of her many sexual encounters and perversions. And she brazenly insisted that he massage her breasts. Davis had refused to do this and had been backed by Ivar, who seemed amused by the situation.
Ann Pullen had never told Davis that she was aware that he disliked her intensely. Both, however, knew well how each felt about the other. The only barrier keeping her from making him a quarry slave was Ivar. He was fond, though slightly contemptuous, of Davis. On the other hand, he respected the American for his knowledge, especially his medical lore, and he loved to hear Davis’s stories of the wonders of his time, the steam iron horses and sailless ships, the telegraph and radio, the automobile, the airplane, the vast fortunes made by American robber barons, and the fantastic plumbing.
What Davis did not tell Ivar was what the late-twentieth century doctors he had met had told him—to his chagrin. That was that much of his treatment of his patients on Earth had been based on false medical information. However
, Davis was still convinced that his neuropathic treatments, which involved no drugs, had enormously benefited his patients. Certainly, their recovery rate had been higher than the rate of those who went to conventional M.D.’s. On the other hand, the physicians had admitted that, in the field of psychiatry, the recovery rate of the mentally disturbed patients of African witch doctors was the same as that of psychiatrists’ patients. That admission, he thought, either down-valued twentieth-century medicine or up-valued witch doctors.
A few of his informants had admitted that a large number of physically sick people recovered without the help of medical doctors or would have done so without such help.
He explained this to the painted madman on the way to the room, though he was irked because he felt compelled to justify himself. Faustroll did not seem very interested. He only muttered, “Quacks. All quacks. We pataphysicians are the only true healers.”
“I still don’t know what a pataphysician is,” Davis said.
“No verbal explanation is needed. Just observe us, translate our physical motion and verbal expressions into the light of truth, vectors of four-dimensional rotations into photons of veracity.”
“Man, you must have a reasonable basis for your theory, and you should be able to express it in clear and logical terms!”
“Red is your face, yet cool is the room.”
Davis lifted his hands high above his head. “I give up! I don’t know why I pay any attention to what you say! I should know better! Yet …”
“Yet you apprehend, however dimly, that truth flows from us. You do not want to acknowledge that, but you can’t help it. That’s good. Most of the hairless bipedal apes don’t have an inkling, don’t respond at all. They’re like cockroaches who have lost their antennae and, therefore, can’t feel anything until they ram their chitinous heads into the wall. But the shock of the impact numbs even more the feeble organ with which they assumedly think.”
Faustroll waved his bamboo fishing pole at Davis, forcing him to step back to keep from being hit on the nose by the bone hook.
“I go now to probe the major liquid body for those who breathe through gills.”
Faustroll left the room. Davis muttered, “I hope it’s a long time before I see you again.”
But Faustroll was like a bad thought that can’t be kept out of the mind. Two seconds later, he popped back into the room.
“We don’t know what the royal osteopath’s history on Earth was,” Faustroll said, “or what your quest, your shining grail, was. Our permanent grail is The Truth. But the temporary one, and it may turn out to be that the permanent (if, truly, anything is permanent) grail or desideratum or golden apple is the answer to the question: Who resurrected us, placed us here, and why? Pardon. Not a question but questions. Of course, the answer may be that it doesn’t matter at all. Even so, we would like to know.”
“And just how will you be able to get answers to those questions here when you couldn’t get them on Earth?”
“Perhaps the beings who are responsible for the Riverworld also know the answers we so desperately sought on Earth. We are convinced that these beings are of flesh and blood, though the flesh may not be protein and the blood may lack hemoglobin. Unlike God, who, if It does exist, is a spirit and thus lacks organs to make sound waves, though It seems to be quite capable of making thunder and lightning and catastrophes and thus should be able to form its own temporary oral parts for talking, these beings must have mouths and tongues and teeth and hands of a sort. Therefore, they can tell us what we wish to know. If we can find them. If they wish to reveal themselves.
“It’s our theory, and we’ve never theorized invalidly, that the River in its twistings and windings forms a colossal hieroglyph. Or ideogram. Thus, if we can follow the entirely of the River and map it, we will have before us that hieroglyph or ideogram. Unlike the ancient Mayan or Egyptian hieroglyphs, it will be instantly understandable. Revelation will come with the light of comprehension, not with the falling of the stars and the moon turning blood-red and the planet cracking in half and the coming of the Beast whose number is 666 and all those delicious images evoked by St. John the Divine.”
Davis spoke more hotly than he had intended. “Nonsense! In our first life, faith and faith alone had the answers, faith in the divine work as recorded in the Bible. As on Earth, so here.”
“But there is no Holy Scripture here.”
“In our minds!” Davis said loudly. “It’s recorded here!” And he tapped a fingerpoint against his temple.
“As you know, no afterlife depicted in any religion faintly resembles this one. However, we do not argue. We state the truth and move on, leaving the truth behind us yet also taking it with us. But truth is arrived at when one ceases thinking. That’s hard to do, we admit. Yet, if we can think about abandoning thought, we will be able to quit thinking. Thus, with that barrier to mental osmosis removed, the molecules of truth penetrate the diaphragm.”
“Lunacy! Sheer lunacy! And blasphemy!”
Faustroll went through the doorway. Over his shoulder, he said, “We go, yet that is an illusion. The memory of this event remains in your mind. Thus, we are still here; we have not left.”
Andrew Davis sighed. He sure had a lot to put up with. Why didn’t he just take French leave and continue his quest up-River? Why didn’t he? He had compelling reasons not to. One, if he were caught sneaking out of Ivar’s domain, he’d be a slave and probably flogged. Two, if he did get out of the kingdom’s boundaries, he still would not be safe from recapture for several days. The kingdoms for a fifty-mile stretch up the River had an agreement to return slaves to the states from which they had run away. Three, he could take the guaranteed foolproof way of escape. But, to do that, he’d have to kill himself. Then he’d be resurrected far away, but the thought of killing himself was hard to contemplate.
But, though his mind knew that he’d live again, his body didn’t. His cells fiercely resisted the idea of suicide; they insisted on survival. Furthermore, he loathed the idea of suicide, though it was not rationally based. As a Christian, he would sin if he killed himself. Was it still a sin on the Riverworld? He doubted that very much. But his lifelong conditioning against it made him act as if it were.
Also, if he did do away with himself, he had a fifty-fifty chance of being translated downstream instead of upstream. If that happened, he’d have to travel past territory he’d already covered. And he could be captured and enslaved again by any of hundreds of states before he even got to Ivar’s country.
If he awoke far up the River, he might have the goal of his quest behind him. Not until he had come to the end of the River would he know that he had skipped it. Then he would have to retrace his route.
What if the story of the woman who gave birth in the Valley was false? No, he would not consider that. He had not only faith but logic behind his belief. This world was a final test for those who believed in Jesus as their savior. Pass this test, and the next stage would be the true Paradise. Or the true Hell.
The Church of the Second Chance had some false doctrines, and it was another trap set by Satan. But the Devil was subtle enough to have planted some true doctrines among the false ones. The Second Chancers did not err in claiming that this world did offer all souls another opportunity to wash off their spiritual filth. What that church overlooked or deliberately ignored was that it also gave Satan a second chance to grab those who had eluded his clutches on Earth.
He looked through the wide, arched, and glassless window. From his height, he could see the hills and the plain and the River and the plain, hills, and mountains on the opposite bank. Arpad (died A.D. 907) ruled that twelve-mile-long area. He was the chief of the seven Mongolian tribes, called Magyar, who had left the Don River circa A.D. 889 in what would be Russia and migrated westward to the Pannonian Plains. This was the area that would become Hungary. Arpad had been resurrected among a population that was partly ancient Akkadian, partly Old Stone Age southeast Asiatics, and ten percent of mis
cellaneous peoples. Though he was a Magyar, a tiny minority in this area, he had become king. That testified to his force of personality and to his ruthless methods.
Arpad was Ivar’s ally and also a partner in the dam project. His slaves worked harder and longer and were treated much more harshly than Ivar’s. The Norsemen was less severe and more generous with his slaves. He did not want to push them to the point of revolt or of suicide. Arpad’s slaves had rebelled twice, and the number of suicides among them was far higher than among Ivar’s.
Nor did Ivar trust Arpad. That was to be expected. Ivar trusted no one and had good reason not to rely on the Magyar. His spies had told him that Arpad had boasted, when drunk, which was often, that he would kill Ivar when the dam was finished.
If the Dane planned to jump the gun and slay Arpad first, he had not said so. Though he drank deeply at times, he reined in his tongue. At least, he did so concerning matters of state.
Davis was convinced that one of the two kings was not going to wait for the dam to be completed. Sometime, probably during the next two years, one was going to attack the other. Davis, on the principle that the lesser of two evils was to be preferred, hoped that Ivar would win. Ideally, each would knock the other off. Whichever happened, Davis was going to try to flee the area during the confusion of the battle.
4
He must have been looking through the window longer than he had thought. Faustroll had left the tower and was walking downhill, the fishing pole on his shoulder. And, some paces behind him, was the inevitable spy, a woman named Groa. She, too, carried a fishing pole, and, as Davis watched, she called to the Frenchman. He stopped, and they began talking. A moment later, they were side by side and headed for the River.
Groa was a redheaded beauty, daughter of a ninth-century Norwegian Viking, Thorsteinn the Red, son of Olaf the White and that extraordinary woman, Aud the Deep-Minded. Thorsteinn had been killed in a battle after conquering the northern part of Scotland. It was this event that caused Aud to migrate to Iceland and become ancestress of most Icelanders of the twentieth century.
Riverworld and Other Stories Page 32