Riverworld and Other Stories

Faustroll put his hands under the man’s arms and hoisted him. “Uh! Why does gravity increase its strength when we lift a corpse or a drunk or a drug-sodden? Answer us that, our Philistine friend. We will answer for you. It is because gravity is not an unvarying force, always obeying what we call the laws of physics. Gravity does vary, depending upon the circumstances. Thus, contrary to Heraclitus, what goes up does not always come down.”

  “You chatter on like a monkey,” Davis said. “Here we go! One, two, three, heave!”

  The man splashed into the water on his side, sank under the surface, then came up sputtering. Waist-high in the River, he began walking to the bank.

  “Thank us for your much-needed bath!” Faustroll said, and he laughed. Then he began hauling up the anchor-stone.

  But Davis pointed inshore and said, “Here they come!”

  Ten soldiers, wooden-helmeted and carrying spears, were running toward them.

  “Someone’s reported us!” Davis said, and he groaned. Two minutes later, they were being marched off to jail.

  4

  Ivar and Ann had not been killed. The Viking had fought through many soldiers, slaying and wounding many, yet had somehow reached his goal though he was bleeding from many wounds. His bloodstained ax had crashed down upon the head of the Inca, and Pachacuti had ceased to be the emperor. Ivar had made no attempt to kill Ann. That he was knocked out just after smashing the Inca’s skull in may been the only reason he did not slay her.

  Under the law of the Western Sun Kingdom, Ivar should have been kept alive to be tortured for days until his body could take it no longer. But the man who seized power had another idea. Tamcar, was the general of a regiment but was not next in line for the throne. He immediately launched his soldiers against Pachacuti’s, killed them, and declared himself the Inca. His assassins murdered the other generals, and, after some fighting, the survivors of the regiments surrendered to the new Inca. So much for the tradition of an orderly succession.

  Though Tamcar publicly denounced Ivar, he must have been secretly grateful to him. He sentenced him to the Leap of Death, but that gave Ivar a thin chance to win his freedom and exile from the kingdom. Ann Pullen, Faustroll, and Davis had had no part in slaying Pachacuti, yet they were judged guilty by association with the Viking. Actually, the new Inca was just ridding himself of all those he considered dangerous to him. He rounded up a score of high-placed men and sent them out onto the gangplank. All but two fell. This pleased the people, though some were disappointed because not all failed. Tamcar sought out others whom he suspected might want to take the throne away from him. They, along with criminals, were forced to make the Leap. The mob loved the spectacles. After these warm-ups, the main event came. Ivar and his companions now had their opportunity to thrill the populace. Not to mention themselves.

  Two weeks after Pachacuti’s death, Davis and his fellow prisoners were taken to the tower at high noon. They had been held in a stockade, thus had had the space in which to exercise vigorously. Also, they had practiced long jumping on the runway and the sand pit provided for those who had to make the Leap of Death. The Emperor wanted his gamesters to come as near as they could to the receiving gangplank before falling. The people loved a good show, and the Emperor loved what the people loved. He sat on a chair on the platform from which projected the “freedom” plank.

  The drums beat and the unicorn-fish horns were blown. The crowd below cheered at the announcement of the first jump.

  Faustroll, standing behind Davis, said, “Remember, our friend. The degree of force of gravity depends upon the attitude of the one defying it. If there were such a thing as good luck, we would ask that it be given to you.”

  “Good luck to you, too,” Davis said. He sounded very nervous, even to himself.

  The captain of the royal guards shouted that he would begin the count. Before the two minutes were up, Davis had sped down the thirty-foot-long plank, brought his right foot down hard on its end, and soared up. It was then that the rapture seized him. Afterward, he believed that that was the only thing that bore him to safety. It had been given to him by God, of course. He had been saved by the same Being who had saved Daniel in the lion’s den.

  Nevertheless, he fell hard forward as his feet, just behind the toes, were caught by the end of the plank. His chest and face slammed into the hard yew wood near the edge of the plank. His hands gripped the sides of the plank, though he was not in danger of falling off. He lay for some time before getting up. Cheers, jeers, and boos rose from the mob on the ground. He paid no attention to them as he limped along the plank to the platform and was taken to one side by guards. His heart beat fast, and he did not quit trembling for a long time. By then, Faustroll was running down the gangplank, his face set with determination.

  He, too, soared, though Davis doubted that the Frenchman was caught in the ecstasy he had felt. He landed with no inch to spare but managed to make himself fall forward. If he had gone backward and thus sat on the air, he would have fallen.

  He was grinning when he got to Davis’s side. “We are such splendid athletes!” he cried.

  The drums beat, and the horn blew for the third time. Ann, as naked as her predecessors, her skin white with fear, ran along the gangplank. Bent forward, her arms and long slim legs pumping, she sprung over the void without hesitation.

  “What courage! What audacity!” Faustroll cried. “What a woman!”

  Davis, despite his dislike for her, admitted to himself that the Frenchman was right. But her bravery and strength were not enough to propel her to a good landing. The end of the plank struck her in her midriff and her elbows slammed onto the wood. Her breath whooshed out. For a moment, she hung, legs kicking over the emptiness. Her efforts to catch her breath were agonizing. Then she stretched out her arms, moving her hands along the edge of the plank. Her face was against the wood. She began to slip backward as her grip weakened.

  Ivar bellowed, his voice riding over the clamor of the mob and the cries of the men on the platforms. “You are a Valkyrie, Ann! Fit to be my woman! Hang on! You can do it! Pull yourself up and forward! I will meet you at the platform! If I should fall, I will meet you again somewhere on the River!”

  That surprised Davis. During the two weeks of their imprisonment, Ivar had not spoken a word to Ann. Nor she to him.

  Ann grinned then, though whether it was with despair or pain or with joy at Ivar’s words was a question. Sweating, her face even whiter, struggling hard, she pulled herself forward until her legs were no longer dangling. Then she rolled over and lay flat on her back while her breasts rose and fell quickly. Her midriff bore a wide red mark from the impact. Two minutes later, she got on all fours and crawled several feet. Then she rose and walked unsteadily but proudly to the platform.

  Faustroll embraced her, perhaps more enthusiastically than modesty permitted, when she joined him. She wept for a moment. Faustroll wept too. But they separated to watch Ivar when again the drums rattled and the horns blared.

  The huge man, his bronze-red hair shining in the sun, stepped onto the gangplank. As the other jumpers had done, he had been bending and flexing and leaping up and down in a warm-up. Now he crouched, his lips moving, counting the seconds along with the captain of the guards. Then he came up out of his crouch and ran, his massive legs pumping. The plank bent down under his weight, and it quivered from the pounding. His left foot came down just a few inches from the end. He was up, legs kicking.

  Down he came, a foot short of the end of the victory plank. His hands shot out and gripped the sides of the wood near the end. The plank bent, sprang up a little, and sank down again. It cracked loudly.

  Davis cried out, “Get on the plank! It’s going to break!”

  Ivar was already swinging himself backward to get momentum for a forward swing so he could get his leg up on the plank. Just as he did come forward, a sharp snapping noise announced that the wood had broken. Ann shrieked. Davis gasped. Faustroll yelled, “Mon dieu!”

  Roaring, Ivar hurtle
d out of sight. Davis rushed forward and pressed his stomach against the railing. The plank was turning over and over. But the Viking was not in sight.

  Davis leaned far out. There, thirty feet below him, Ivar was hanging by his hands from a slanting beam. His towerward swing had carried him far enough to grab one of the horizontal beams projecting beyond the main structure. Hanging from the beam with only his hands, he had managed to work closer to the building. But he must have slipped, and he had fallen. But, again, he had saved himself by clutching a cross beam slanting at a forty-five-degree angle in the exterior of the city structure. His body must have slammed hard against it, and his hands were slipping down along the slanting wood, leaving a trail of smeared blood.

  When they were stopped where another angled beam met the one he was clinging to, he strove to pull himself up. And he succeeded. After that, he had to climb back up until he got to the platform on which Davis stood. If he did not do that, he would not be freed.

  By then, Tamcar had left his throne to look over the platform and down at the Viking. He grimaced when he saw Ivar slowly but surely making his way up the outside of the structure. But even Tamcar had to obey the rules of the ordeal. No one was allowed to interfere with Ivar. It was up to him to get to the platform or to fall. Ten minutes or so passed. And the bronzered hair of the Viking appeared and then his grinning face. After he hauled himself over the railing, he lay for a while to regain his strength.

  When he arose, he spoke to Tamcar. “Surely, the gods favor us four. They have destined us for greater things than being your slaves.”

  “I do not think so,” the Emperor said. “You will be freed, as the gods decree. But you will not go far. The savages just north of our state will seize you, and you will no longer be free. I will make sure of that.”

  For a moment, it looked as if Ivar were going to hurl himself at the Emperor. But the spears of the royal guard were ready for him. He relaxed, smiled, and said, “We’ll see about that.”

  Davis felt drained. The ordeal had been terrible enough. Now, after having survived it, they would again fall into the hands of evil. Here, at least, they had plenty of food. But, just beyond the upper boundary of the Kingdom of the West Sun, the land on both sides of the River was occupied by people whom it was best to avoid. They gave their slaves just enough food to keep them working; they enjoyed crucifying slaves and tying them up in agonizing positions for a long time; they relished eating them. If you were their captive and you suddenly were given much food, you knew that you were being fattened to be the main course.

  Davis thought that he wold have been better off if he had fallen to his death. At lest, that way, he would have had a fifty-fifty chance to rise again far north of here.

  He was still downcast when the boat carrying them brought them within sight of what the Incans called the Land of the Beasts. The two crewmen were starting to haul down the lateen sail. He was sitting with the other captives in the middle of the vessel. Their hands were bound before them with thin cords of fish-gut. They were naked and possessed only their grails. On both sides of them stood guards with spears.

  The captain of the guards said, “Within minutes, you will all be free.” He laughed.

  Apparently, the Emperor had sent word to the Beasts that they would soon have slaves as a gift. A group of dark-skinned Caucasians stood at a docking pier on the right bank. They waved flint-tipped spears and big clubs while they danced wildly, the sun flashing on the mica chips inset in their flaring, light-gray, fish-scale helmets, Davis had heard that they were supposed to be a North African people who lived sometime in the Old Stone Age. Seeing them made him sweat and sick at his stomach. But, so far, they had not put out on boats to meet them.

  Ivar, sitting close to him, spoke softly. “We are four. The guards are ten. The three sailors are not worth considering. The odds favor us. When I give the word, Faustroll and I will attack those on the sternside. You, Red-Hair, and you, Ann, will attack the others. Use your grails as hammers, swing them by the handles.”

  “The odds favor us!” Faustroll said, and he laughed softly. “That is a pataphysical view!”

  Ivar bent over and strained to separate the cord securing his hands together. His face got red; his muscles became snakes under the skin. The guards jeered at his efforts. Then their mouths dropped open as the cord snapped, and he shot up, roaring, his grail swinging out. The hard lower edge caught a guard under his chin. Ivar grabbed the man’s falling spear with his other hand and drove it into another guard’s belly.

  The Incans had expected no resistance. If they did get it, they were certain that the handicapped slaves would be easily subdued. But the Viking had removed two guards from the fight seconds after it had started.

  Davis and Ann swung their grails with good effect. His came up and slammed into the crotch of the nearest guard. After that, he had no time to see what his companions were doing. A spearhead gashed the front of his thigh, and then the man who had wounded him dropped when Davis’s grail smashed into the side of his head.

  It was all over within five seconds. The sailors leaped into the water. Ivar ran toward the steersman, who jumped overboard. Following the Viking’s bellowed commands, the woman and the two men hoisted the sail. A great shout went up from the savages on land, and they immediately manned boats. Drums sounded, apparently signaling those farther up the River to intercept the slaves’ boat.

  They came close to doing it. But Ivar, a consummate sailor, evaded them and then left them behind. They sailed northward, free for the time being.

  5

  Eighteen years had passed since the flight from the Land of the Beasts. They had fought much, been imprisoned a few times, and had suffered several hundred mishaps and scores of wounds. But they had lived in this state, Jardin, for seven years with relative tranquility and content.

  Andrew Davis’s hutmate was Rachel Abingdon, a daughter of an American missionary couple. He had converted her to his belief that the Redeemer had been born again on the River and that they must find him someday. Meanwhile, they had preached to the locals, not very successfully, but they did have a dozen or so disciples. Materially, Davis thrived. Many men and women came to him daily to be massaged or manipulated osteopathically. They paid for their treatments with artifacts which he could trade for other goods, if he so desired, and with the gourmet foods their grails delivered. Life was easy. The citizens were not power-hungry, at least not politically. The days passed for Davis as if he were in the land of the lotus-eaters. Golden afternoons fishing and happy evenings sitting around the fires and eating and talking merged one into the other.

  Ivar the Boneless was general of the army, which was organized solely for defense. But the neighboring states for a thousand miles up and down the River were nonbelligerent. Militarily, he had little to do except keep the soldiers drilled, inspect the boundary walls, and hold maneuvers now and then.

  Ann had long ago quit living with Ivar. To Davis’s amazement, she had gotten religion. If, that is, the Church of the Second Chance could be called a religion in any true sense. The missionaries he had talked to and heard preach claimed to believe in a Creator. But they said that all Earth religions were invalid in stating they were divinely inspired. The Creator—they avoided the word “God”—had made a being superior to man shortly before the great resurrection of the Earth dead. These were a sort of flesh-and-blood angels, called Makers, whose mission was to save all of humanity from itself and to raise it to a spiritual level equal to that of the Makers. The man or woman who was not so raised was, after an indeterminate length of time, doomed. He or she would wander the void forever as conscious matterless entities without will.

  “The Chancers’ ethics are very high,” Davis had sneered one day while talking to Ann. “They pay no attention to sexual morality as long as no force or intimidation is involved.”

  “Sexual mores were necessary on Earth,” she had answered, “to protect the children. Also, venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies ca
used great suffering. But here there are no such diseases, nor do women get pregnant. Actually, the largest, the most powerful element of sexual morality on Earth was the concept of property. Women and children were property. But here mere is no such thing as property, no personal property, anyway, except for a person’s grail and a few towels and tools. Most of you men haven’t absorbed that idea yet. To be fair, a lot of women haven’t either. But all of you will learn someday.”

  “You’re still a slut!” Davis had said angrily.

  “A slut who doesn’t desire you at all, though you desire me. The day you realize that, you’ll be one more step closer to true love and to salvation.”

  As always, Davis, teeth and hands clenched, body quivering, had strode away. But he was unable to stay away from her. If he did not talk to her, he could never bring her to the true salvation.

  Faustroll, two years ago, had declared that he was God. “You need look no more, our friend,” he said to Davis. “Here before you is the Savior. The fleshly semblance of a man that we have adopted should not deceive you. It is needed to prevent you and the rest of us from being blinded by our glory. Accept us as your God, and we will share our divinity with you.

  “Actually, you are already divine. What I will do is reveal to you how you may realize this and how to act upon the glorious realization.”

  Faustroll was hopeless. His philosophy was blather. Yet, for some reason, Davis could not help listening to him. He did not do so for amusement, as he had once thought, or because he might make Faustroll see the Light. Perhaps it was just that he liked him despite his infuriating remarks. The Frenchman had something, a je ne sais quoi.

  Davis had not seen Ivar for months, when, one day, Ivar hove into his view. “Hove” was the appropriate word; the Viking was a huge ship, a man-of-war. Behind him was a much smaller man, a tender, as it were. He was short and thin, black-haired and brown-eyed. His face was narrow; his nose, huge and beaked.