Riverworld Short Stories

  “Yet somewhere there is the Holy Grail! Seek it, find it, seize it! Be redeemed thereby and by It! In the Grail you have the greatest fountain of Power! But it renders all other Powers powerless!”

  Ivar’s counselors had been babbling while Faustroll spoke, but they fell silent when their leader lifted his hand. From a distance, not far enough away to damp the writhing of Davis’s nerves, came the yells of Thorfinn’s men as they ran toward the fugitives.

  “For God’s sake!” Davis murmured. “Let’s get into the boats and get away!”

  Ivar shouted, “You are a strange man, Doctor Faustroll! One touched by whatever gods may be! You may have been sent by them! Or by Chance, of which I have heard so much from men of the latter days since I came to this world. Either way, you may have been sent to me. So, instead of slaying you, which would do little good except to get rid of your presence, and I might run into you again, I will go with you! Perhaps…”

  He was silent for a moment while the others about him looked more than uneasy. Then he soared, “Into the boats!”

  No one protested, though a few of the more aggressive warriors sighed. They scrambled, though nor in a panicky manner, into the vessels. Ivar roared orders, assigning each to a particular craft. Davis was commanded, along with Faustroll and Ann Pullen, to get into the largest craft, a single-roasted merchant boat with oarlocks for fourteen rowers. Ivar took the helm while the rowers began pulling and the big sail was unfurled.

  He laughed uproariously and said, “The Norns have smiled on me again! These must be the boats Arpad’s men used to bring them to this bank for the flanking attack!”

  Davis, Pullen, and Faustroll were sitting on a bench just below the helm deck. The Frenchman called up, “Perhaps it’s a sign from them that you should leave this area forever!”

  “What! And allow the troll-hearted Thorfinn to crow that he defeated Ivar Ragnarsson?”

  He shouted in Norse at the warriors who had not yet gotten into a boat. “You there! Helgi, Ketil, Bjorn, Thrand! Push the empty boats into the stream! We will jeer at our enemies while they dance frustrated and furious on the bank and utter threats that will harm us no more than farts against the wind!”

  Helgi the Sharp yelled back,

  “Boatless will they be.

  Boneless makes them bootyless.

  Boneheaded Thorfinn,

  Bare is your bottom!”

  Those within hearing broke into laughter. And Ivar laughed until he choked, which relieved Davis, who had become even more anxious on hearing the stanza. The Dane became very angry when someone slipped up and used the surname he did not care to hear.

  “I love the words,” Ivar called our. “But, Helgi, your meter is blunted. Wretched. However, considering our haste and that your meter always scans as if it were a newborn foal trying to walk…”

  He laughed again for several seconds. Then, recovering, he bellowed, “Row as if Loki’s daughter, the hag Hel, clutches your ankles with corpse-cold hands to drag you down into Niflheim! Bend your backs as if you are the bow of Ull and your arms are the god’s hundred-league arrows! Row, row, row!”

  There might have been rowers as mighty as the Norse, though none was better. However, these men had been in face-to-face battle, and nothing funneled the energy out more swiftly. Nevertheless, they dug in as if they had had a long night’s sleep. Their enemies on shore were left far behind. But the starlight glimmered on a large mass along the eastern bank moving up-River. It was about a half-mile behind them. Thorfinn’s fleet, part of it, anyway, was hot on their trail. Not so hot, perhaps, since his men would also be battle-weary.

  “We make for the kingdom of my brother, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye!” Ivar said loudly. “It’s a long long way off, but our pursuers will tire before we do. We’ll be safe then, and we can loll around, drink all the thickly sugared lichen bar and the grail-given liquor we want. We will also have our fill of the beautiful women there. Or vice versa.”

  The rowers had no breath to laugh, though some tried. Sigurd was one of the few men Ivar trusted and was probably his only trusted brother. He had been a mighty Viking when young. But, in his middle age, he had hung up his sword and become a peaceful and just ruler of Sjæland, Denmark’s largest island. The kingdom he had established since coming to the Riverworld was four hundred miles from Ivar’s. He had visited his brother once, and Ivar had visited him twice. Davis had seen Sigurd every time. The slender, wriggly, and red birthmark on the white of his right eye had given him his Terrestrial surname. Though it was gone when he was resurrected, the nickname stuck.

  Davis’s thoughts were broken by cries behind him. He stood up and looked around the raised helmsman’s deck. The boat holding Helgi and three men was passing by a man in the water. Though Davis could not see the swimmer’s face, he knew that he had to be Sharkko. Apparently, he was asking to be taken into the boar. But they were laughing as they rowed, and presently, Sharkko, still screaming, was left behind them.

  A thrill of sympathy, though fleeting, ran through Davis. Sharkko was a liar, a cheat, a blusterer, a coward, and a bully. Yet the man could not believe that there were people, and they were many, who did not like him. It was pathetic, which was why Davis pitied him at that moment.

  He sat down and looked sidewise at Ann, who was sitting near him. A small thin blue towel was draped over her head like a scarf that women wore in church on Earth. She had a strange expression, a mixture of sweetness and longing. Or so it seemed to him, though who knew what the bitch was thinking. Yet she looked like a madonna, mother of the infant Jesus, in a painting Davis had seen in a cathedral.

  He wondered if that was what she had looked like when an infant. What had erased that sweetness, that goodness?

  Then she turned her head and said, “What in hell are you staring at, you lascivious lout?”

  Davis sighed, relishing the moment when he had pitied her because of her lost innocence. And he said, “Not much.”

  “You may think you can talk to me like that because of the situation,” she said. “But I won’t forget this.”

  “Your Majesty is like King Louis XIV of France, of whom someone said that he never forgot anything,” he said. He added, under his breath, “And who also said that he never learned anything.”

  “What?”

  Most un-Christian of me, Davis thought. Why can’t I learn to turn the other cheek? I should have said nothing to her. The silence of the martyrs.

  Later, Ivar transferred the four men from the rear boat to his. By late morning, the lead boat in Thorfinn’s fleet was far ahead of the rest of the pack. An hour before high noon, it was within arrow range of Ivar’s craft. Ivar turned his vessel around, picked off seven men with his arrows, rammed the enemy, and then boarded him. Davis and Faustroll sat in the boat while the battle raged. Ann Pullen used her woman’s bow to wound several men. Whatever she may be, Davis thought, she has courage. But I hope she doesn’t turn around and shoot me, too.

  Ivar lost six men but killed all of the enemy except those who jumped into the River. Thorfinn’s other boats were still our of sight. Ivar took over the enemy’s vessel and abandoned his own. He and his crew sailed on while they sang merrily.

  By the time they got near to Sigurd’s realm, they had passed through at least forty waking nightmares. Or so it seemed to Davis, though the Norse obviously enjoyed it. There was one fight after another and one flight after another. The states for hundreds of miles up-River from Ivar’s ex-kingdom and probably down-River, too, were in a state of bloody flux. The invasions of Ivar’s land seemed to have had a violent wave effect on others, none of which was very stable. Slaves were revolting, and kings and queens were trying to take advantage of the deteriorating situations to attack each other. Davis believed that only this semi-anarchy enabled Ivar’s fleet to get this far. Even so, all but four vessels of the original fleet had been sunk or abandoned. The survivors had lived chiefly on the fish they trolled for while sailing up-River. Now and then, they had been allowe
d to go ashore and fill their grails. But even when the people seemed peaceful and cooperative, the Vikings were nervous. Behind the smiles of their hosts might be plans to seize the guests as slaves.

  “Oh, Lord,” Davis prayed, “I beseech you, stop this killing, torturing, robbing, and raping, the heartbreak and the pain, the hatred and viciousness. How long must this go on?”

  As long as men permit themselves to do all the horrible deeds, he thought, God wasn’t going to interfere. But, if He didn’t, then He had a good purpose in His mind.

  A few hours past dawn, the fleet arrived at Sigurd’s kingdom. Or what had been his. It was obvious that it, too, had been torn apart by the strife that seemed to have been carried by the wind. Men and women capered drunkenly while waving weapons and severed heads. Most of the bamboo huts and wooden buildings were blazing, and bodies lay everywhere. As the fleet drew near the bank, a horde climbed into boars and began paddling or rowing toward Ivar’s boats.

  “Who are they?” Ivar said. Then, “It doesn’t matter. Sail on!”

  “What about your brother?” Davis said.

  “He may have escaped. I hope so. Whatever happened to him, I can’t save him. We are too few.”

  After that, he was silent for many hours, pacing back and forth on the small afterdeck. He frowned much, and, several times, he smote his breast with an open hand. Once, he startled all on his boats when he threw his head back and howled long and mournfully.

  Bjorn the Rough-footed, standing near Davis, shivered and made the sign of Thor’s hammer. “The cry of the great wolf Fenris himself comes from his throat,” he said. “Ivar acts as if he’s about to go berserk! Get ready to defend yourself! Better yet, jump into the River!”

  But Ivar quit howling, and he stared around as if he had suddenly been transported here from a million miles away. Then he strode to the forward end of the deck, and he called down.

  “Osteopath! Clown! Come up here!”

  Reluctantly, knowing that the Dane’s actions could never be predicted and were often to be dreaded, Davis went up the short ladder with Faustroll. Both halted several feet away from Ivar. Davis did not know what Faustroll was thinking, but he himself was prepared to follow Bjorn’s advice.

  Ivar looked down at them, his face working with some unreadable expression.

  “You two are of lowly rank, but I’ve observed that even a slave may have more brains than his master. I’ve heard you speak of your quests, the spirit of which I admit I don’t quite understand. But you’ve intrigued me. Especially when you spoke about the futility and emptiness of always striving to gain more land, more property, and more power. You may be right. I really don’t know. But, a few minutes ago, I was seized by some spirit. Perhaps I was touched by whatever god made us, the unknown and nameless god. Whatever strange thing happened. I suddenly felt emptied, my mind and blood pouring out of me. That terrible feeling was quickly gone, and I saw the sense in your wisdom, I also was overwhelmed, for a moment, with the uselessness of all I had done. I saw the weariness of forever fighting to get power and then fighting to keep it or to get even more power. Glory seems golden. But it’s really leaden.”

  He smiled at them, then looked past them toward the north. When he resumed talking, he kept on staring past them. It was as if, Davis thought, Ivar was envisioning something really glorious.

  Faustroll murmured softly. “He sees, however dimly, the junction point of zero and infinity.”

  Davis did not speak, because Ivar was glaring at him and the Frenchman. When Ivar spoke, he wanted your complete attention, no interruptions. But Davis thought, No, it’s not that, whatever that means. It’s…can’t remember the Greek theological term…it means a sudden and totally unexpected reversal—a flipflop—of spirit. Like the reversal of attitude and of goal that Paul of Tarsus experienced on the road to Damascus…he had been fanatically persecuting the Christians…the great light came even as he was plotting death tor all Christians…he fell paralyzed for a while…when he arose, he had become a zealous disciple of Christ. Sudden, unexpected, unpredictable by anyone. Your spirit, hastening you toward the South Pole, turns you around without your will and shoots you toward the North Pole. There were records of similar mystical or psychological reversals of spirit.

  He felt awed. It was several seconds before the cold prickling of his skin faded away.

  However, he reminded himself, this sudden turnabout was not always for the good. Though it was rare, a flipflop from good to evil occurred. As if Satan, imitating God, also touched a man with his spirit.

  “The god did not speak with words,” Ivar said. “But he did not have to do so. He said that I should go up the River until I came to its source, no matter how far away that is. There I will find a Power beyond power.”

  “Always power,” Faustroll murmured. He spoke so softly that Davis could barely hear him, and Davis was sure than Ivar could not.

  “You, kneader of sore flesh, and you, the mocker of all that men hold to be good sense,” Ivar said, “also have your quests. One wants to find the baby born of a virgin. The other hopes to find the truth that has eluded all men from the birth of mankind.”

  He paused, then said, “Though you are no warriors and have some strange attitudes, you may be the kind of companions I need for the long journey. What do you say?”

  His tone implied that he was condescending to give the invitation. Yet he intended it as a compliment.

  Faustroll said. “King Ubu and his two fools looking for the Holy Grail? Ah, well, I will he pleased to go with you.”

  Davis did not hesitate. He said, “Why not? Perhaps we are all seeking the same thing. Or, if we’re not, we’ll find the same thing.”

  Author’s Note:

  It’s obvious that the adventures of these three will continue and be concluded in volume 2 of the Riverworld shared-world anthology.

  I have a strong sense of historical continuity that was strengthened while I was researching into my genealogy. As of this moment, I have 275 confirmed American ancestors and several thousand European ancestors. So, I thought, why not use some on the Riverworld, where everyone who has lived and died now lives? And I did so.

  Thus, every named character in this story, except for Faustroll (Alfred Jarry) and Sharkko, is a direct ancestor of mine. Doctor Andrew P. Davis is my great-great-grandfather (1535-1919). He was an extraordinary man, an eccentric, a quester after the truth, and an innovator. Ann Pullen is my nine-times-great-grandmother. She was, according to the court records, a real hellraiser, spitfire, and liberated woman in an age when it was dangerous for a woman to be so. As for my remote forebears, Ivar the Boneless and the other Viking men and women herein, their living descendants as of 1991 would number many millions. It’s reasonable to assume that at least three-quarters or more of my readers will be descended from them.

  A HOLE IN HELL

  His pen had hurled many into Hell. Now he, who should be in Heaven with his adored Beatrice, was in a pit such as he had depicted in The Inferno.

  For years, he had searched along the River for the only woman he had ever deeply loved, the light of his life and his poetry. Now he was imprisoned by a man whom he deeply hated.

  The eight-feet-square and twelve-feet-deep pit was on top of a foothill. Its sides were oak logs that slanted inward. (This whole world, he thought, slants inward and imprisons me.) The pit was in shadow except when the sun was directly overhead. Oh, blessed sun! Oh, swiftly moving sun! Stay in your course!

  Ankle-deep in sewage, Dante Alighieri stood, his face turned upward. Dawn was an hour old. Soon, Dante’s accursed enemy, Benedict Caetani, Pope Boniface VIII from 1294 to 1303, would come. Dante would know when Boniface was nearing because he would hear the barking and the howling of dogs. Yet there were no dogs in this place, which might be Purgatory or might be Hell.

  A few minutes later, he stiffened. The yapping, barking, and howling sounded faintly. It was as if he had just detected the sounds erupting from the three heads of Cerberus, S
atan’s unnatural hound that guarded the entrance to Inferno. Presently, the noise became a clamor, and he saw the man who owned the dogs.

  “Another God-given morning,” Boniface said. “Time for my first piss. I baptize thee, Signor Alighieri, in the name of those whom you so hatefully consigned to Hell!”

  His eyes shut, Dante endured the rain that did not come from the heavens. A minute later, he opened them. The pope had shed his robes and his wooden beehive-shaped tiara. The dogs—naked men and women on hands and knees or on hands and toes—prowled around the edges of the pits. Their fish-skin collars were attached to leashes held by men and women of Boniface’s court. The male dogs, by the edge of the pit and parallel with it, lifted legs to piss into it.

  Boniface stuck his buttocks over the pit while two men held his hands to keep him from falling backward.

  “In the name of those whom you wrongfully put in Hell in your vicious poem, I give you the bread and wine of the unblessed! Eat thereof, and glory in the transubstantiation of your fallen god, Lucifer!”

  At the same time, a dozen dogs loosed their bowel contents. Only by standing in the center of the pit could he avoid being struck.

  After a year of this, Dante thought, he should have been suffocated by the filth daily expelled into the hole. But the many excrement-eating earthworms kept the level of filth down to his ankles. Boniface had been pulled erect but again bent over as a series of slaves spat water between the popes buttocks. Meanwhile, the dogs barked, howled, whined, and yipped.

  Dante shouted, “May God force you for eternity to wear an iron tiara as white hot as His wrath!”

  “Dante Alighieri never learns!” the pope screamed. “Does he get down on his knees, that stiff-necked Florentine, and beg forgiveness of those whom he has cruelly wronged? Not he! His mind is as the shit in which he lives!

  “You committed blasphemy when you wrote of me in your Inferno as being in Hell while I was still living! Even God does not put sinners in Hell before they die!”