The boat headed straight through the choppy, fog-shrouded sea for the tower at a speed frightening to its passengers. Within two hours the image on the screen had become enormous. Then the image burst into a flame which covered the entire screen, and Akhenaten let the boat proceed very slowly. He punched a button, and they all cried out in fright and wonder as two round objects on the prow of the boat shot forth two bright beams of light.
Ahead lay a vast bulk—the tower.
Akhenaten punched a button indicated by the diagram. Slowly, a large, round door, a port, swung open from what had been a smooth, seamless surface. Light sprang into being. Inside was a wide hall, its walls of the same gray metal.
Akehnaten brought the boat alongside the entrance. Some of the crew grabbed the threshold. The Pharaoh pressed the button which shut off the invisible power that moved the boat. He stepped onto the side of the boat, which was just below the threshold. After jumping inside the hall, he took the ropes attached to the inside of the hull and secured them around hooks set into the hall. Apprehensively, silently, the others followed him.
All, that is, except for Paheri. The terror was now almost unendurable. His teeth clicked uncontrollably. His knees shook. His heart beat in his frozen flesh like a frightened bird’s wings. His mind moved sluggishly, like winter mud flowing down a hillside warmed by the sun.
He was too weak to get up from the seat and step into the corridor. He was sure that if he could go on, he’d face his judge and be found wanting.
I’ll say one thing for Paheri. Two. He did have a conscience, and he wasn’t afraid to admit to Tom Rider that he’d been a coward. That takes courage.
Akhenaten, as if he had nothing to fear from The One God, walked steadily toward the end of the corridor. The others were bunched behind him at a dozen paces. One looked back and was surprised that Paheri was still in the boat. He gestured for him to come on. Paheri shook his head and hung on to the gunwale.
Then, without a single cry from anyone, those in the corridor slumped to their knees, fell forward on their hands, tried to rise, failed, and sagged onto their faces. They lay as still and limp as putty models.
The door swung slowly shut. It closed silently, leaving no evidence that there was a door, not even a thin seamline, and Paheri was alone in the dark fog and the cold sea.
Paheri wasted no time in getting the boat turned around. It moved at its former speed, but now there was no signal on the scope, no bright image, to direct it. He could not find the cave, and so he went up and down the base of the cliff until he gave up trying to locate the cave. Finally, he directed it alongside the cliff until he came to the archway through which the sea rams into the mountains. He got through the long and giant cave there, but when he came to the great cataract, he could find no place to beach the boat. It was carried over the falls. Paheri remembered the bellowing of the waters, being turned over and over, and then… unconsciousness.
When he awoke from his translation, he was lying naked in the dark fog under the overhang of a grailstone. His grail—a new one, of course—and a pile of cloths lay by him. Presently he heard voices. The dim figures of people coming to place their grails on the stone approached. He was safe and sound—except for the terrible memory of the hall of the gods.
Tom Rider was translated to Paheri’s area after he’d been killed by some fanatical medieval Christians. He became a soldier, met Paheri, who was in the same squad, and heard his story. Rider worked up to a captaincy and then he was killed again. He awoke the next day in an area where Farrington lived.
Several months later they went upRiver together in a dugout. Then they settled down for a while to build the Razzle Dazzle.
What’s my reaction to all this? Well, Paheri’s story makes me want to go see for myself if it’s true or not. If he wasn’t making it up, and Tom says Paheri was as stolid and as unimaginative as a wooden cigar-store Indian, then this world, unlike Earth, may have answers to the Big Questions, a mirror to the Ultimate Reality.
Towerward ho!
(Frigate’s letter continued)
There’s more to the story than what Rider told me. I chanced to overhear Frisco and Tex several days ago. They were in the main cabin, and the hatch was open. I had sat down, my back against the cabin, and had lit up a cigar. (Yes, for the nonce, I’ve fallen into the clutches of Ole Devil Nicotine.) I really wasn’t paying much attention to their voices, since I was occupied with thoughts resulting from a conversation with Nur el-Musafir.
Then I heard the captain, who has a loud voice, say, “Yes, but how do we know he isn’t using us for some reason of his own? Some reason beneficial to him but not so good for us? And how do we know we can get into the tower? That Egyptian couldn’t. Is there another entrance? If there is, why didn’t he tell us? He did say he’d tell us more about the tower later on. But that was sixteen years ago! Sixteen! We ain’t seen him since!
“I mean, you ain’t seen him. Of course, I never did see him. Anyway, maybe something happened to him. Maybe he got caught. Or maybe he doesn’t need us anymore!”
Rider said something I couldn’t catch. Farrington said, “Sure, but you know what I think? I think he didn’t have the slightest idea those Egyptians got to the tower. Or that one got away. At least, not when he talked to you.”
Rider said something. Farrington replied, “The tunnel and the rope and the boats and probably the path must have been prepared for us. But others got there first.”
The wind strengthened then, and I couldn’t hear anything for a minute or two. I moved closer to the companionway well. Farrington said, “You really think some of them, one, anyway, might be on this ship? Well, it’s possible, Tex, but so what if it is?
“Why weren’t we told who the others were so we could recognize each other and get together? When are we going to be told? Where do we all meet? At River’s end? What if we get there and nobody shows up? Do we wait a hundred years or so there? What if…”
Rider broke in once more. He must have talked a long time. I was straining my ears, so lit up with curiosity that I almost shone with a sort of St. Elmo’s fire. Mustafa, at the wheel, was looking at me with a strange expression. He must have known, or guessed, that I was eavesdropping. This made me uneasy. I wanted desperately to hear the rest. But if the Turk told those two I’d been listening to them, I might get tossed off the ship. On the other hand, he couldn’t know that they were discussing anything I shouldn’t be hearing. So I puffed on my cigar, and when it was out, I pretended to fall asleep.
The situation reminded me of Jim Hawkins’ experience in the apple barrel in Treasure Island, when he overheard Long John Silver plotting with his pirate cronies to take over the Hispaniola after the treasure was found. Only, in this case, Farrington and Rider weren’t planning anything evil against anybody at all. They seemed to be more plotted against.
Farrington said, “What I’d like to know is why he needs us? Here’s a man with more power than a dozen gods, and if he’s going against his buddies, what help can he get from mere mortals like us? And if he wants us in the tower, why doesn’t he just ferry us to it?”
There was another interruption, followed by the clink of grail cups against each other. Then Rider spoke loudly. “… must have damn good reasons. Anyway, we’ll find out in time. And what else do we have to do?”
Farrington bellowed laughter, then said, “That’s right! What else? Might as well use our time for some end, good or bad. But I still feel like we’re being exploited, and I’m fed up with that. I was exploited by the rich and the middle class when I was young, and then when I became famous and rich, I was exploited by editors and publishers and then by my relatives and friends. I ain’t going to let anybody exploit me here on this world, use me like I was a dumb beast fit for nothing but shoveling coal or canning fish!”
“You did some self-exploiting, too,” Rider said. “Didn’t we all? I made plenty of money and so did you. And what happened? We spent more’n we made on big houses and fast cars
and bad investments and booze and whores and putting on a big front. We could’ve played it smart and tight and saved our money and taken it easy and lived to ripe old ages in ease and plenty. But…”
Farrington exploded into laughter again. “But we didn’t, did we? That wasn’t our nature, Tex, and it ain’t now. Live it up, burn the candle at both ends, spin off fire and beauty like a St. Catherine’s wheel instead of trudging along like a steer turning a mill wheel! So the deballed beast gets turned out to pasture instead of going to the glue factory? So what? What does he have to think about while he’s munching grass? A long, gray life and a short, gray future?”
More clinking. Then Farrington started to tell Rider about a train trip he’d taken from San Francisco to Chicago. He had introduced himself to a beautiful woman who was accompanied by her child and a maid. It wasn’t more than an hour after meeting her that he and the woman went to his compartment, where they coupled like crazed minks for three days and nights.
I decided that then was a good time to leave. I got up and strolled to the foremast where Abigail Rice and Nur were talking. Mustafa apparently never suspected me of eavesdropping.
Since then, I’ve been wondering. Who was the he referred to? It’s obvious that he must be one of Those who have made this world for us and then raised us from the dead. Could it really be? The idea seemed so tremendous, so difficult to grasp. Yet—Somebody has to have done this, Somebodies, I should say. And they are truly gods, in many senses, anyway.
If Rider is telling the truth, there is a tower in the north polar sea. And by implication it’s a base for Whomever made this world, our secret masters. Yes, I know this sounds paranoid. Or like a science fiction tale, most of which were paranoid, anyway. But, except for the very few who got rich, science fiction writers were convinced that their secret (or not so secret) masters were the publishers. Even the rich ones questioned their royalty statements. Maybe the tower is inhabited by the cabal of super-publishers. (Just kidding, Bob. I think.)
Maybe Rider is lying. Or his informant, Paheri, was lying. I don’t believe so. It’s obvious that Rider and Farrington have been approached by one of these Whomevers. They weren’t just making up this story to fool an eavesdropper.
Or were they?
How paranoid can you get?
No, they were discussing something that had really happened. If they were careless, left the hatch open, didn’t talk subduedly, it was only natural. After all those years, who wouldn’t get careless? As far as that goes, why shouldn’t they tell everybody?
Somebody might be looking for them. Who? Why?
My mind yaws, pitches, and rolls. So many speculations, so many possibilities. And I think, wow! What a story! Too bad I hadn’t thought of something like this when I was writing science fiction. But the concept of a planet consisting of a many-millions-kilometer-long river along which all of humanity that ever lived had been resurrected (a good part of it, anyway) would have been too big to put in one book. It would have taken at least twelve books to do it anywhere near justice. No, I’m glad I didn’t think of it.
In light of those developments, what do I do now? Should I mail this letter or tear it up? It won’t fall into your hands, of course, not a chance of that. Into whose, then?
Probably it’ll be picked up by someone who can’t even read English.
Why am I afraid it might fall into the wrong hands? I really don’t know. But there is a dark, secret struggle going on under the seemingly simple life of this Valley. I intend to find out just what it is. I’ll have to proceed cautiously though. A small voice tells me that I might be better off if I don’t know anything about this.
Anyway, to whom am I really writing these missives? To myself, probably, though I hope hopelessly that just possibly impossibly one might drift into the hands of someone I knew and loved or at least was fond of.
And yet, this very moment, as I stare across the water at the many people on the bank, I might be looking directly at the person to whom I’ve written one of these letters. But the ship is in the middle of The River just now, and I’m too far away to recognize anyone recognizable.
Great God, the faces I’ve seen in twenty years! Millions, far more than I ever saw on Earth. Some of the faces came into being three hundred thousand years ago or more. Undoubtedly, the faces of many of my ancestors, some of them Neanderthals. A certain number of Homo neanderthalis was absorbed by miscegenation into Homo sapiens, you know. And considering the flux and reflux of large groups through prehistory and history, migrations, invasions, slavery, individual travel, some, maybe many, of the Mongolian, Amerindian, Australoid, and Negro faces I’ve seen belong to my ancestors.
Consider this. Each generation of your ancestors, going back in time, doubles its number. You were born in 1925. You had two parents, born in 1900. (Yes, I know you were born in 1923 and your mother was forty when she bore you. But this is an ideal case, an average.)
Your parents’ parents were born in 1875. That makes four. Double your ancestors every twenty-five years. By 1800, you have thirty-two ancestors. Most of them didn’t even know each other, but they were “destined” to be your great-great-great-grandparents.
In 1700 A.D., you have five hundred twelve ancestors. In 1600 A.D., 8,192 ancestors. In 1500 A.D., 131,072 ancestors. In 1400, 2,097,152. In 1300, 33,554,432. By 1200 A.D., you have 536,870,912 ancestors.
So do I. So does everybody. If the world population was, say, two billion in 1925 (I don’t remember what it was), then multiply that by the number of your ancestors in 1200 A.D. You get over one quadrillion. Impossible? Right.
I just happen to remember that in 1600 the estimated world population was five hundred million. In 1 A.D., it was an estimated 138,000,000. So, the conclusion is obvious. There was a hell of a lot of incest, close and remote, going on in the past. Not to mention the present. Probably from the dawn of humankind. So, you and I are related. And, in fact, it may be possible that we’re all related, many times over. How many Chinese and black Africans born in 1925 were distant cousins of you and me? Plenty, I’d say.
So, the faces I see on both banks as I sail along are my cousins’. Hello, Hang Chow. Yiya, Bulabula. What’s happening, Hiawatha? Hail, Og, Son of Fire! But even if they knew this, they wouldn’t feel any more friendly toward me. Or vice versa. The most intense quarreling and the most vicious bloodletting take place in families. Civil wars are the worst wars. But then, since we’re all cousins, all wars are civil. Mighty uncivil, at the same time. The paradox of human relations. I’ll shoot your ass off, brother.
Mark Twain was right. Did you ever read his Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven? Old Stormfield was shocked when he got past the Pearly Gates because there were so many dark people. Like all of us pale Caucasians, he had envisioned Heaven as being full of white faces with here and there a few yellow, brown, and black ones. But it wasn’t that way. He’d forgotten that the dark-skinned peoples had always outnumbered the whites. In fact, for every white face he saw there were two dark ones. And that’s the way it is here. My hat is off to you, Mr. Twain. You told it like it was gonna be.
So, here we are in the Rivervalley, knowing not why and whence. Just like on Earth.
Of course, there are plenty of people who say they know. There are the two dominant churches, the Chancers and the Nichirenites, and a thousand sects of reformed Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and God knows what all. The former Taoists and Confucianists say they don’t give a damn; this is a better life, on the whole, than the last one. The totemists are in a bit of a bind, since there are no animals here. But that doesn’t mean the totem spirits aren’t here. Many’s the savage I’ve run into who sees his totem in dreams or visions. The majority of them, though, have been converted to one of the “higher” religions.
There’s also Nur el-Musafir. He’s a Sufi. He was just as shocked as anybody to wake up here. He wasn’t outraged, however, and he reordered his thinking tout de suite. He says that whatever being
s have made this world have done so with only our eventual good in mind. Otherwise, why go to all this great expense and trouble? (In this, he sounds like a barker for a circus. But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about.)
We shouldn’t concern ourselves with the Who or the How, he says. Just with the Why. In this respect, he sounds like a Chancer. But I see I’m about to run out of my quota of paper. So, adieu, adios, selah, amen, salaam, shalom, and so long. (The English so long is from selang, the Moslem Malayan’s pronunciation of the Arabic salaam.)
Amicably and didactically yours in the bowels of Whomever,
PETER JAIRUS FRIGATE
P.S. I still don’t know if I’ll mail this in toto, censor it, or use it for toilet paper.
On the average, The River was 2.4135 kilometers or a mile and a half wide. Sometimes it narrowed into channels always lined by high hills; sometimes it widened into a lake. Whatever its breadth, its depth was everywhere about 305 meters or a trifle over 1000 feet.
Nowhere along The River was there water erosion of the banks. The grass on the plains merged into an aquatic grass at the water level, and the latter flourished on the sides and bottom of the channel. The roots of this fused with the roots of the surface grass to form an interconnected mass. The grass was not separate blades; it was one vast vegetable entity.
The water plants were eaten by a multitude of fish life from surface to bottom. Many species cruised about in the upper stratum, where the sunlight penetrated. Others, paler creatures but no less voracious, swarmed in the middle layer. In the darkness of the bottom many weird forms scuttled, crawled, wriggled, jetted, swam.
Some ate the leprous-white rooted things that looked like flowers or were in turn enfolded and digested by them. Others, large and small, slid steadily along, mouths gaping, collecting the microscopic life that also lived in the fluid strata.