R.W. V - Gods of Riverworld

  Burton pushed the door in and sprang in, beamer ready. A large naked black man was lying face down on the thick Oriental rug, blood on the back of his head. A gold statuette, smeared with blood, lay by his side.

  He swore. She was naked, and her face and arms were blue with bruises. One eye was beginning to swell up. Her clothes were scattered in shreds over the room. She ran weeping and sobbing to him, and he held her shaking body close to his. But, seeing the man push himself up from the floor, Burton released her. He picked the .45 automatic up, reversed it, and slammed the man on the back of his neck. Without a sound, the man crumpled.

  "What happened?" Burton said.

  She had trouble getting the words out. He took her to a table and poured out a glass of wine. She drank, though most of it ran down her chin and neck. Still crying, she choked out a story, most of which he had guessed. She had been on her way to the stairwell when the man had stepped out of the door ahead of her. Smiling, he had asked her name. She had told him and then had tried to get by him, but he had grabbed her arm. He wanted to party, he said. He had never had a Chinese woman before, and she sure was a doll. And so on.

  Star Spoon had struggled as he pulled her into the room. The man's whiskey breath sickened her when he kissed her. When she had tried to scream, he clapped his hand over her mouth, slammed the door shut, hurled her so hard she fell on the floor, locked the door and ripped her clothes from her.

  By the time Burton arrived, she had been raped three times.

  He made sure that the man was tied up, got a tranquilizer from the converter, and gave it and a glass of water to her. He put her into the shower and then held the douche bag while, still trembling and weeping, she washed herself out.

  After he had toweled her dry, he ordered some clothes from the converter, helped her get dressed, and put her down on a sofa. He used the computer console to call Turpin. Turpin, hearing the report, scowled and said, "I'll fix that son of a bitch!"

  He looked at the man on the floor and said, "That's Crockett Dunaway. A real troublemaker. I've had my eye on him for some time. You wait until I get down there."

  A few minutes later, Tom Turpin, followed by the other members of the party, entered. Alice, Sophie and Aphra took Star Spoon in charge at once and carried her into the room next door. Turpin got a hypodermic full of adrenaline and injected it into Dunaway's buttock. After a minute, Dunaway groaned and got to his hands and knees. When he saw the others, his eyes widened. He croaked, "What you doing here?"

  Turpin did not answer. Dunaway got to his feet and staggered to a chair, sat down, bent over and held his head in his hands. "Man, I got a headache killing me!"

  "That's not all that's going to kill you," Turpin said harshly.

  Dunaway raised his head. His bloodshot, slightly crossed eyes looked at Turpin. "What you talking about? That bitch come on me, and when I obliged her, she started screaming for help. You can't blame me for what that slant-eyed whore done. She must've heard her man coming, and so she pretended like she wasn't having none of me."

  "She couldn't have heard me," Burton said. "I wasn't making any sound in the hall. If I hadn't heard her scream, I would've gone right on by the door. You're guilty as hell, man."

  "I swear 'fore God I ain't," Dunaway said. "That bitch asked me to give her a good time."

  "There's no use arguing about it," Turpin said. "We'll just run off your memory and get at the truth."

  Dunaway grunted and shot out of the chair. He was headed for the door, but his legs gave way, and he crumpled on the floor.

  "Uh, huh!" Turpin said. "I thought so. Dunaway, no one gets away with rape here. You've had it, man!"

  Dunaway raised his head. Saliva ran from his open mouth. "No, I swear to God . . .!"

  Turpin told his two bodyguards to set Dunaway in a chair before the computer console. "We'll know in a few minutes what's what!"

  Dunaway tried to struggle, but the two blows had sapped his strength. He was set down in the chair, and a bodyguard asked the Computer to extract Dunaway's memories of the past hour and display them. Dunaway sat trembling and gibbering while his guilt was shown.

  "I'm not only going to kill you," Turpin said, "I'm destroying your body-record. You ain't never going to get a chance to do this to a woman again. You've had it, Dunaway!"

  The man's screams were snapped off by the ray from Turpin's beamer. Dunaway fell over in the chair, a narrow hole, cauterized at the edges, on each side of his head.

  "Throw him in the converter and incinerate him," Turpin said to the bodyguards.

  Nur said, "Are you really going to dissolve his recording?"

  "Why not? He won't ever be any different."

  "You are not God."

  Turpin scowled, and then he laughed. "You're insidious, Nur. You've been bending my ear so long with all that religious philosophical hoop- de- la you got me confused. OK. So I don't destroy him? And then, when he goes back to The Valley, he's going to rape and beat other women. You want that on your conscience?"

  "The Ethicals in their wisdom set it up so that anyone, no matter how vicious, will live until this project is ended. No exceptions. I trust them. They must know what they're doing."

  "Yeah?" Turpin said. "If they're so smart, how come they didn't catch on to Loga? Why didn't they make provisions for someone like him? He's wrecked their schedule and their program."

  "I am not certain that they didn't make provisions for someone like him," Nur said calmly.

  "Mind explaining that?" Turpin said.

  "I have no explanation now."

  Tom Turpin took his time lighting up a big cigar. Then he said, "OK. I'll go along with you. Up to a point. Just now, nobody's being sent back to The Valley, so Dunaway ain't going to do anybody any harm. But when . . . if . . . the Computer starts sending them back, it ain't going to send Dunaway back until I say so. Which may be never. I don't know just now what I'm going to do when that time comes."

  "There are millions of Dunaways waiting to be released like pent-up hyenas," Burton said. "What good is it going to do to judge just one?"

  "It's your woman that was raped!" Turpin said.

  "But she is not my property, and I won't speak for her," Burton said. "Why . . . since she is the victim, why don't you let her be the judge?"

  Alice, having just come from the bedroom, had overheard him. She said, "Well, Dick! So she isn't your property and she can speak for herself! Imagine Richard Burton saying that! You have changed!"

  "I suppose I have."

  "Too bad you didn't do it before, not immediately after, we parted," Alice said. "That doesn't make me feel very good, you know. You live with the Chinese woman for a very little while, and she works all sorts of changes in you."

  "She had nothing to do with it."

  "Who did then, God? Oh, you're impossible."

  Nur said, "How is she?"

  "As well as can be expected after . . . that. Aphra, Sophie and I will take care of her for a few days. If that's all right with you, Dick?"

  "Of course," he said, somewhat stiffly. "It is most generous . . . compassionate . . . of you."

  Star Spoon had fallen asleep under the influence of a drug recommended by the Computer. Burton and Frigate Carried her out on a stretcher through a side entrance and placed her in the back of a huge steam-driven Dobler automobile. Turpin drove it over the winding road to the entrance. Here Burton transferred her to his .chair, and, with her on his lap, flew the chair the short distance to his world's entrance and the long distance to the Arabian Nights castle in the center. The others followed him. After Star Spoon had been undressed and put in bed by the women, Alice and Sophie came out from her room.

  "She should be all right by the time she wakes up," Sophie said. "Physically, that is. Mentally and emotionally . . . ?"

  The women would take care of Star Spoon in shifts. As soon as she awoke, Burton would be called. He protested that that was not necessary. He would sit by her bed until she awoke and then do his best to c
omfort her.

  "Let us do something, too," Sophie said.

  Burton said that he would go along with them; he understood why they insisted. They empathized deeply with Star Spoon because they, too, had been raped more than once. They also needed to take care of her; that compulsion, if you could call it a compulsion, was part of their natures.

  "Born nurses," Burton said to Frigate.

  "How lucky can you get?"

  The American was not being facetious. He envied people who wanted to use themselves for the benefit of others.

  Star Spoon got up in time for breakfast. Though she drank only a little tea and ate part of a piece of toast, she was well enough to take some part in the conversation. She seemed glad to have the three women with her, and they even got her to laugh several times. However, she did not want Burton to hold her, and she responded to his attempts to talk with her with uncompleted sentences or nods or shakes of her head.

  After two days, the three women left. Star Spoon immediately quit staring into space for long periods and busied herself with various projects with the Computer.

  "She's withdrawing," Burton told Nur and Frigate. "I won't say it's just into herself. She seems to be burying herself with work with the Computer. She'll stop whatever she's doing — she won't talk about that much — and listen while I talk. But I've spent hours, days, trying to get her back to her old self, and I've failed."

  "Yet," Frigate said, "she's been raped before."

  "This may have been the final trauma. The last and the unendurable wound."

  He did not tell them that she had become animated and genuinely interested for a short time when he had asked her what she wanted to do to Dunaway. She had replied that she did not want to destroy his recording. He certainly deserved oblivion forever, but she could not bring herself to do that. Dunaway should be punished, if he would learn anything from it. She doubted that very much. Finally, she said that she was going to forget about any punishment or any kind of retribution. She wished that she could forget about him, but she just could not.

  The dullness came into her face and voice again, and she became silent.

  Nur talked to her but reported that he could find no wedge to open her and let in some light. Her soul had become darkened. He hoped that it would not remain so forever.

  "But you don't know if she'll . . . stay the same?" Burton said.

  Nur shrugged. "No one can know. Except perhaps Star Spoon."

  Burton was frustrated and, hence, angry. He could not take his anger out on her, so he vented it on Frigate and Nur. Understanding what was affecting him, they endured his insults for a while. Then Nur said that he would see Burton again when Burton was rational. Frigate seemed to feel that he should absorb more than Nur had, perhaps for old time's sake or perhaps because some part of him enjoyed the tongue-lashing. An hour after Nur had left, Frigate got up from his chair, threw his half-full glass against the wall, said, "I'm getting out of here," and did so.

  A few minutes later, Star Spoon entered. She looked at the spilled whiskey and his brooding face. Then, surprisingly, she went to him and kissed him on the lips.

  "I'm much improved now," she said. "I think I can be the cheery woman you want me to be, what I want to be. You'll have no reason to worry about me from now on. That is, except . . ."

  "I'm very happy," he said. "I think. There's something that is still bothering you?"

  "I . . . I am not ready to go to bed with you yet. I would like to, but I can't. I do believe, though, Dick, that the time will come when I can, and I'll be completely willing. Just bear with me. The time will come."

  "As I said, I'm very happy. I can wait. Only, this is so sudden. What caused this metamorphosis?"

  "I don't know. It just happened."

  "Very curious," he said. "Perhaps we'll know some day. Meanwhile, you wouldn't mind if we kissed just a little longer, would you? I promise not to get carried away."

  "Of course not."

  Life for Burton returned to the routine it had had before Dunaway's violation. Star Spoon was more talkative, even aggressive at times during the parties. Verbally aggressive, in that she was more willing to argue, to present her views. However, she spent as much time with the Computer as she had when she was deeply troubled. Burton did not mind. He had his own projects.

  28

  * * *

  All human beings, Nur thought, reported that time seemed to them to have gone much slower when they were infants. Time speeded up a little when they became prejuveniles, got a little faster when they were juveniles, and stepped up the pace even more when they became young adults. When you were in your sixties, what had been a smooth and slow stream, a leisurely flowing and broad river when one was young, became a narrow roaring channel. By the seventies, it was a short waterfall, time hurtling by. By the eighties, it was a deep mountain cataract, water, time itself, shooting by, disappearing over the edge of life, which was near one's-feet, a precipice over which time rushed by as if eager to destroy itself. And you, too.

  If you were an old man or woman of ninety, looking back, childhood seemed to be a long, long, long highway reaching to an unimaginably distant horizon. But the last forty years . . . how short they had been, how swift.

  Then you died, and you awoke on a bank of The River and your body was that which you had when you were twenty-five, except that any physical defects you had had then were repaired. It would seem then that, being young again, you would experience time as a slowed-down stream. Childhood would not seem so remote in your memory, nor would it seem to you as long as it had been before you became twenty-five again.

  Not so. The young body held a brain young in tissue but old with memory and experience. If you were eighty when you died on Earth and had lived forty years on the Riverworld, and thus were one hundred and twenty years old, in fact, then time was a series of rapids. It hurried you along, hustled and pushed you. Keep going, keep going, it said. No rest for you. You don't have the time. No rest for me either.

  Nur's living body had existed for one hundred and sixty-one years. And so, when he looked back at his childhood, he saw it as an ever-stretching length. The older he got, the longer childhood seemed to him. If he should live to be a thousand, he would think that childhood had lasted seven hundred years; young adulthood, two hundred; middle age, fifty-nine; time since then, a year.

  His companions had mentioned this phenomenon now and then, but they did not dwell on it. Only he, as far as he knew, had pondered about it. It shocked him when Frigate mentioned that they had been here only a few months. Actually, almost seven months had passed. Burton had put off going to his private world for a few weeks. Or so he had said. In reality, he had taken two months.

  What made it easier for them — himself, too — to be unaware of the passage of time was that they no longer watched the calendar. They could have told the Computer to display the month and day on the wall every morning, but here, where time meant no more than it had to Homer's lotus eaters, they had neglected to do so. They should have been shaken when Turpin announced that he was celebrating Christmas, but they had had no reference point to measure the passage of time.

  It was this failure to notice the passage of time, this super-mañana attitude, that had caused them to put off something they had been eager to do shortly after getting here. That was the resurrection of those comrades who had died while trying to get to the tower. Joe Miller the titanthrop, Loghu, Kazz the Neanderthal, Tom Mix, Umslopogaas, John Johnston, and many others. These had earned the right to be brought to the tower, and the eight who had made it had intended to do that. They spoke about it now and then, though not often. Somehow, for various reasons, they kept putting it off.

  Nur could not excuse himself for having been shot along with them in time's millrace. He, too, had neglected this very important deed. It was true that he had been even busier than they with various research projects, but it would not take the Computer more than half an hour to locate them — if they could be found —
and a few minutes to set up arrangements to raise them.

  If you lived a million years, would your childhood then seem to have lasted seven hundred and fifty thousand years? And would the last two hundred and fifty years seem only a century? Could the mind play that sort of gigantic trick on itself?

  Time, viewed objectively, flowed always at the same speed. A machine watching day- by- day activities of the people in the Rivervalley would see them as having, every day, the same amount of time to do whatever they did. But, inside these people, would not time have speeded up? And would they not be doing less and less with every day? Perhaps not in the outward physical actions such as eating breakfast, taking baths, exercising and so forth. But what about the mental and emotional processes? Would they be slower? Would not the process of changing themselves for the better, the ostensible goal set for them by the Ethicals, be slowed down, too? If this was so, the Ethicals should have given them more than a hundred years to achieve the moral and spiritual near-perfection necessary for Going On.

  There was, however, one undeniable realistic reason why one hundred years was the limit for this group of people. The energy needed to fill the grails, to run the tower and to resurrect the dead, was derived from the heat from this planet's molten nickel-iron core. The available energy was enormous, but so was the consumption of it. The Ethicals might have figured out that a hundred years for this group, people who had lived from 100,000 B.C. through A.D. 1983, and a hundred years for the next group, those who had lived after A.D. 1983, would eat up almost all the tappable energy. With all the heat that the thermionic converters drew, two hundred years' withdrawal would cool off the core to the point where it could no longer supply the requirements.

  Loga, the Ethical, had never mentioned this energy limitation. He must have known it, and it must have caused him anguish and guilt. Nur, having thought of this factor, had asked the Computer to give him the computation for the energy needed for the two projects. And the answer had been what Nur had expected. Yes, even the core of this planet, slightly larger than Earth's, would lose its white-hot glow and become red and dim within two centuries.