Riverworld and Other Stories

by Philip José Farmer

  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 had 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 restrictions 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 flogged 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 out 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 their 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: - O - a - + a + O =

  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 said 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 beat 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 bed 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.

  Suddenly, the starlight was thinly veiled by light clouds. These became darker quickly. Davis could no longer see Ivar or, in fact, any human beings. And now the sound of distant thunder and the first zigzag of lightning appeared to the north.

  Soon, the raging rain and the electrical violence that often appeared around midnight would be upon the kingdoms of Ivar and Arpad. Like the wolf on the fold, Davis thought. And Ivar and his army would be like the ancient Assyrians sweeping down from the hills on the Hebrews as that poet—what was his name?—wrote.

  But who was Ivar going to assault?

  7

  The wind spat raindrops through the window into Davis’s face. Another layer of darkness slid in and cut off his view of the men. Thunder rolled closer like a threatening bully. A lightning streak, brief probing of God’s lantern beam (looking for an honest man?), noisily lit up the scene. He glimpsed Ivar’s group running over the top of the nearest hill to the River. He also saw other dark masses, like giant amoebae, flowing onto the plains from the hills. These were warriors hastening to join Ivar. The larger body of plains dwellers waiting for the king was, as it were, the mother amoeba.

  Another blazing and crashing streak, closer this time, revealed a great number of boats in slips that had been empty for a long time. These had to have come in recently from upstream. Just off the bank many vessels: rowboats, dugouts, catamarans, dragonships, and the wide-beamed merchant boats called dromonds. Their sails were furled, and all bristled with spears.

  Under cover of the night, Ivar’s warriors from every part of the kingdom had slipped down here. Of course, there would be other parties who would attack the opposite bank, Arpad’s domain, up-River. The attack had to be against the Magyar’s kingdom. Davis did not know why he had wondered what the king was up to. However, Ivar was unpredictable, and it was chancy to bet on any of his next moves.

  The secrecy with which the operation had been carried out impressed Davis. He had had no inkling of it, yet he was often in the king’s company. This operation, though it involved thousands of men who had somehow not revealed the plans to their female hutmates, had been exceedingly efficient.

  But the lightning was going to display the invaders to Arpad’s sentinels. Unless, that is, some of Ivar’s men had crossed the River earlier and killed the guards.

  After a while, the heart of the storm raged over the area within his sight. Now the warriors were grouped on the hank and embarking. So frequent and vivid were the bolts, he could see the invaders moving. They were many-legged clumps the individuals of which were not visible from this distance in the rainy veil.

  He gasped. A fleet was putting out from the opposite bank.

  A few seconds later, more groups began to gather behind Ivar’s forces on the bank. He groaned, and he muttered, “Arpad has pulled a sneak play!” His force had come ashore farther up the River and sneaked along the banks to come up on the Ivarians’ flank. And now the Arpadians were charging it. The surpriser had been surprised; the fox had been outfoxed. The Magyar was going to grind his former ally between two forces. But that was easier planned than done. Ivar’s men on shore, though taken by surprise, had not fled. They were fighting fiercely, and their shore force outnumbered the enemy’s. Soon, Ivar’s warriors in the boats would join those on the bank. As quickly as the oars could drive the boats, they were driving toward the slips and the open bank. Though the boatmen could not get back to the bank to disembark swiftly, they should be able to get all ashore before the enemy’s second force arrived from the opposite bank. And they would overwhelm the ambushers—if Ivar had anything to do with it. He was a very cool and quick thinker. His men, veterans of many battles, did not panic easily.

  Meanwhile, Arpad’s fleet was about a quarter of a mile from their destination. Its commander, whom Davis assumed was Arpad, n
ot one to hang back behind his army, would be considering two choices. He could order the boats back to his shore and there await the inevitable assault from Ivar’s forces. Or Arpad could keep on going straight ahead, hoping that the ambushers would keep Ivar’s men entangled long enough for him to land his army.

  The rain thickened. Davis saw the conflict now as if through distorted spectacles. And then, five or six minutes later, the downfall began to thin. The worst of the storm had passed over, but thunder and lightning still harried the land. Intermittently, starlight between masses of clouds revealed that a third force had entered the fray. It was a large fleet that must recently have come around the River’s bend a half-mile to the north. Davis could not identify who its sailors were. But the only ones liable to come from the north were the men of Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter.

  Thorfinn had been on Earth the earl of the Orkney Islands and part of northern Scotland. Though a mighty warrior, as his nickname testified, he had died in A.D. 963 in bed. The “straw death,” as the Norse called it, was not the fate he wanted. Only men who were killed in battle went to Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, where the heroes fought each other during the day and those killed were resurrected to fight the next day, where the mead and the food was better than anything on Earth, and where, at night, Odin’s Valkyries screwed the drunken heroes’ brains out.

  But Thorfinn had awakened in the Rivervalley along with everyone else: the brave and the cowardly, the monarchs and the slaves, the honored and the despised, the honest and the crooked, the devout and the hypocrite, the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, and the lucky and the unlucky.

  However, the Riverworld was, in many respects, like Valhalla. The dead rose the next day, though seldom in the place where they had died; the drink and the food were marvelous; nonfatal wounds healed quickly; a chopped-off foot or a gouged-out eye grew back again; women with the sexual drive of a Valkyrie abounded. Of course, Valkyries never complained or nagged, but they were mythical, not real.