GODS OF RIVERWORLD

Burton had come into disfavor with Outram, then a general in the Indian army, when Sir Charles Napier, whom Burton greatly admired, got into a long and bitter feud with Outram. Burton had defended Napier with articles and letters for the Karachee Advertiser, a private publication devoted to Napier's defense. Outram had resented these and marked Burton down for attack if he ever had an opportunity. Years later, when Burton, then a captain in the Indian army, had requested permission to explore Somalia in Africa, Outram had refused his request. Though overridden by his superiors, Outram had then limited Burton's plans for exploration.

Now the androids, whom he called Corsellis and Outram, stood before him. The former was in the uniform of a colonel; the latter, in civilian clothes. Their faces were expressionless; they would smile only at request and then only if they had been programmed to do so.

"You two arseholes will, as required, paint the rooms with the materials you'll find in that converter there," he said, pointing.

The androids did not follow his gesture, so he said, "Look over there. Where my finger is pointing. That cabinet is the converter I mean. The paint's in sprayers. You know how to use those. The ladders are also in there. You know how to put the sections together and how to use them."

Burton had thought of programming them to kiss his ass before they started the job, but he had rejected the childish and essentially meaningless act. If he resurrected the real Outram and Corsellis and got them to kiss his ass, that would be different. But they would refuse, of course. Besides, he could not just bring them to life for a while, even if he would have liked them to do menial labor for him. They were human beings, and he could not have them disintegrated when he was through with them.

Nevertheless, he did get some satisfaction, even chuckled, when he saw the two walk to the converter. If only he could arrange it so that the real men, the models, could at least see his androids. They would be outraged, furiously indignant.

He sighed. That form of revenge was petty, and he knew it. If Nur could see this, he would say, "It is beneath you. You have become no better than they."

"I should turn the other cheek?" Burton muttered, continuing aloud the imaginary conversation. "I am not a Christian. Moreover, I never met a Christian who turned the other cheek when slapped."

He would have to keep the identity of the simulacra to himself and that deprived him of the pleasure he had in this. Alice could get away with giving her androids the faces of Gladstone and Disraeli because she had no animus toward them. It was, to her, merely amusing to be waited on by two prime ministers.

He left his apartment for a while, though he was not sure that he should leave the androids unattended. If they had a problem that a sentient painter could have solved, they would either ignore it and go on or stop and wait for orders. He, however, was angered by the events on the past-display screen, not yet covered over. Its sequence was not in proper chronology; it had jumped to when he was three years old and being whipped savagely by his tutor. "All I did was tell him that he had a breath like a sick dog's," Burton said. "And that he farted overmuch. That's all."

Burton could not read at that age, but the tutor had started to teach him to speak Latin. At the age of ten, Burton would know far more Latin than his tutor and speak it fluently.

"But that was in spite of him, not because of him. I had a natal love for languages that no brutal pedant could scourge from me. Unfortunately, most boys hated the subject as much as they hated their teachers' rods. In their minds, one was the other."

The screen displaying his past appeared on the wall beside the door after it had been shut. Burton sat down in the flying chair parked by the door and turned it so that his back was to the wall. Immediately, the screen appeared on the wall opposite him. Burton put soundproof devices over his ears and a long eyeshade on his head. While he kept his eyes lowered, he could not see the screen. Apparently, the Computer had not had orders to shift the screen to the floor. Thus, Burton could read the book he held close to his chest without seeing or hearing the display.

The book was the Roman emperor Claudius' grammar of the Etruscan language, located and reproduced for Burton by the Computer. It had been lost sometime during the Dark Ages of Earth, but an Ethical agent had photographed a copy of it shortly after Claudius had finished it. While Earth linguists were bemoaning its loss, it had been sitting in the records of the Ethicals for a thousand years.

Despite his absorption in the book, he could not keep from glancing at the screen. Now he, as the child, had been swung around to face the red angry features of McClanahan, the tutor. Though Burton could not hear the man, he could read the writhing lips. And he suddenly remembered other occasions when McClanahan had hurled invective and accusations at him, and the prophecy that he would go to Hell when he died—if not sooner.

Burton could not see his own lips, but he was screaming, "I'll meet you there!" His view shifted. He was facing the other way, and the tutor was thrashing him again. He would not be crying or yelling; he kept his lips stubbornly locked so that the tutor would not have the satisfaction of knowing how much he was hurting him. That only made McClanahan' angrier, and he increased the severity of his strokes. But he was afraid to whip him as much as he would have liked to. Though Burton's father approved of instilling love of learning and obedience with the rod, he would not have stood for a whipping near to death. The tutor knew that the child would not scream until he was almost dead, and perhaps not then.

Burton turned his head away and focused his intentness into a sword, the tip of which raked across the words of the grammar. He finished two pages, then closed his eyes and projected the pages, as if they had been a film, on the screen of his mind. After which, he opened his eyes to check his accuracy. He smiled. His memory had been one hundred percent perfect.

Book-learning a language was a step toward mastering it. But he should resurrect an Etruscan and imbibe the living speech. However—there was always a however—what would he do with the Etruscan after he had finished with her?

It was then that he thought of the possibility of reading the recordings of the dead in the files. Why not have the Computer unreel their memories? Perhaps the dead could speak.

Using a codeword, he asked the Computer to form a screen on the floor. It did so, and Burton put his question to it. The Computer replied that the memories of the recordings could be extracted and displayed. However, some recordings were not available because of overrides.

He looked at his wristwatch. Time for the androids to have finished their job.

By then the display of his past had leaped to Naples, where -the family was staying for a while during its never-ending wandering through southern Europe. Once more, he was being whipped by a tutor, this time by DuPre, an Oxford graduate.

As Frigate had said, their lives were movies, but, before being shown the main feature, they were seeing "previews."

It would be embarrassing when the Computer got to the events of the day before this particular incident. He and an Italian playmate had masturbated before each other.

It was also going to be embarrassing when the i