GODS OF RIVERWORLD

"You've had no success so far?" Frigate said.

Alice sipped from her cut-quartz goblet of wine and said, "No. I've given their names and birth and death dates to the Computer, all except the death date of my son Caryl. I don't know that, but I'm sure I can find a book or a newspaper in the records that will, and I'm looking for photographs that the Computer can match up with its files. That all takes time, you know. If any or all are dead and in the records, then they'll be found. But if they're living, the chances that they'll be located are less. The Computer can make a grailstone-scan. However, unless my people happen to be in range during the necessarily quick scan, they won't be found. Perhaps not then."

If you can't find any, Frigate thought, you'll be relieved of the decision whether or not to resurrect them.

"How about Lewis Carroll, Mr. Dodgson?" he said.

"No."

She did not offer to elaborate, and she would have been offended if he had asked her to do so.

Frigate left the "shindig" and went to his apartment. Instead of going to bed, he ran some more scenes from Standish's past. These so troubled him that he could not get to sleep after he had shut them off. Standish was a low-life, a creep, a brutal, dirty, nasty and unintelligent man on Earth and the Riverworld. It was not until two days later, though, that Frigate became so horrified that he quit watching Standish for a while.

Standish was out of a job, his usual circumstance, and living with his sister and her daughter in their apartment in a small Midwestern city. The sister was a twenty-year-old who would have been attractive if she had been clean and shown any signs of intelligence. Her daughter was a blonde, blue-eyed three-year-old who might have been beautiful if she had not been so fat from eating junk food and drinking enormous quantities of Coke. On this particular display, Frigate was watching through Standish's eyes the living room of the shabby apartment. Standish's sister, Maizie, was drinking beer on a broken-down sofa. The infant was playing with a ragged doll but was half-hidden by a chair in a corner. Now and then, Frigate could see the can of beer Standish held. Judging from the conversation, the two adults had been drinking beer since breakfast. : "Where's Linda?" Standish said, looking blearily around.

"There." Maizie waved a hand at the chair. , "Yeah. Come here Linda!" Standish said loudly. ; Reluctantly, the little girl, holding her doll, walked out from behind the chair. Standish zipped open his pants and pulled out his erect penis.

"Ever sheen one of those, Linda?" Standish said.

Linda backed away. Standish yelled at her to stay where she was. Maizie got up swaying from her chair. "What in fuck are you doing?"

"I'm going to fuck Linda."

Frigate felt sick, but he watched, his gorge rising, as Maizie argued with her brother but finally said, "Well, what the Hell, she's gotta get fucked some day. Might as well be now."

"Yeah, you know it. You was pronged when you was seven years old, wasn't you?"

Maizie didn't reply. Standish said, "Come here, Linda." When she shook her head, he yelled, "Come here, damn it! You want a spanking like Uncle Bill gave you last night? Come here!"

Frigate could not endure it any longer. He turned the scene off. Shaking, he told the Computer to run forward three days. And he saw, through Standish's eyes, the jail cell. Standish was with two others and bragging about how he had screwed his sister's kid.

"The little cunt wanted it, so I gave her what she asked for. Anything wrong with that?"

"The poor little girl," Frigate muttered. "God!" The Computer was locked into Standish's recording. All Frigate had to do was to order the Computer to destroy it. Standish would be forever dead except for his wathan, and that would float aimlessly and blindly through the universe.

Biting his lip, quivering, heat seething through him, Frigate got up from the console and walked savagely back and forth, muttering "Damn, damn, damn! Damn him to Hell and back! No, not back!"

Finally, he charged up to the console and shouted, "When I give you this codeword, destroy Standish!"

There was more to do than that, though. He had to identify the man's recording by the Computer's code, affirm three times that he wished it destroyed, and establish the codeword. "But for the present, Standish is to be on hold," Frigate said. For no rational reason that he could find, he felt ashamed of himself a few hours later. Who was he to be the judge? Yet ... anyone who would rape a child ... deserved oblivion.

The next day, hesitatingly, he told Nur what he had done. The Moor raised his eyebrows and said, "I can understand your anger. I did not see what you saw, but I, too, am sick and angry. The man seems totally unredeemable and has proved himself to be no better here than he was on Earth. But he still has time to become something better. I know that you don't think that he ever will, and you are probably right. The Ethicals, however, gave everybody a certain amount of time to save himself or herself, and Loga managed to extend that time. You must not interfere, no matter what you feel."

"He shouldn't be loosed on people again," Frigate said.

"He shouldn't, perhaps, be loosed on himself, either," Nur said. "But he will. What drives you just now is revenge. That's understandable. But it's not permitted, and there is a reason for that."

"What's the reason?"

"You know what it is," Nur said. "Some of the most unredeemable people, unredeemable by all appearances, anyway, have saved themselves, become genuine human beings. Look at Goring. And I'm sure you'll find others in your searches."

"Standish died when he was thirty-three," Frigate said. "Drunk, drove his car through a stoplight and smashed into another car broadside. I don't know if he killed or hurt the others, but I could find out. I suppose that doesn't matter. What does is that Standish never learned a thing, never repented, never blamed himself, never thought of changing himself. Never will."

"I know you," Nur said. "If you do this, you will suffer from guilt."

"The Ethicals didn't suffer from guilt. They knew that the time would come when people like Standish would have sentenced themselves to oblivion."

"Your righteous indignation and wrath are clouding your mind. You have just uttered the reason why you shouldn't interfere."

"Yes, but ... the Ethicals only gave us a certain amount of time. Who's to say that, given a little more time than they've allowed, some might not have attained the goal? Maybe one more year, a month, a day, might have made the difference?"

"That was Loga's reasoning, and he interfered with his fellow Ethicals' plan, and events have gone astray. Perhaps we were wrong to have sided with Loga."

"Now you're arguing against yourself."

Nur smiled and said, "I do a lot of that."

"I don't know," Frigate said. "For the time being, Standish is locked up, as it were. He's not hurting anybody. But when ... if ... the day comes that the eighteen billion are to be raised in The Valley again, I might dissolve him."

"If anyone should do that, it's the little girl. Ask her if she wants to do it."

"I can't. She died of a liver disease when she was about five."

"Then she was raised on the Gardenworld. She may be one of the Agents locked in the recordings and so unattainable."

Why am I doing this? Frigate asked himself. Other than the obvious. Do I get a feeling of power by holding that Yahoo's fate in my hands? Do I like that sense of power? No, I never have liked power. I'm too aware of the responsibility that goes with power. Or should go with it. I've always tried to shun responsibility. Within reasonable limits, of course.