GODS OF RIVERWORLD

"St. Paul?"

"Ah, St. Paul!" Frigate cried, smiling. "First, he was a fanatical Orthodox Judaist, then a fanatical Christian, probably did more to pervert the course of the founder's teachings than anyone, and now he is a fanatical member of the Church of the Second Chance. Rather, I should say, he was. The Church wants zealots but not fanatics, and so it recently kicked him out. He is now interested in the teachings of the Dowists,"

"The Dowists?"

"Tell you about them some other time. Paul is alive on The River. I located him and I watched him for a while. Ugly little fellow", but a powerful speaker. He's no longer celibate; he decided that he is burning and wants a woman to quench the flame."

Frigate showed them three men he had located because of their undeniable evil and vast prominence in his time. Burton had heard of them while in The Valley but had known little about them until now. Adolf Hitler was born the year before Burton had died, Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, was born eleven years before Burton's death, and Mao Tse-tung was born three years after 1890.

"They're locked up in the files now," Frigate said. "I've not had much time to look at their post-Earth lives, but I've seen enough to be sure that they did not change for the better. Their natures are still essentially like Ivan the Terrible's. Whom, by the way, I've also located."

Nur said, "You believe that there is no hope for them, that they will never change for the better?"

"Yes. It looks that way, anyway. They were and are evil, sadistic and cold-blooded killers, mass butchers, without love. Psychopathic."

"But Loga said that there were no true psychopaths on the Riverworld. He said that true psychopaths were so because of chemical imbalances in their bodies. These imbalances, these deficiencies, were eliminated when the bodies were resurrected."

Frigate shrugged and said, "Yes, I know. So ... what is their excuse now? They have none; they have chosen their attitudes through their own free will. They and they alone are responsible."

"That may be," Nur said, "but it is not up to you to destroy them, to cut their allotted time short. Who knows? They might, at the very last moment, undergo a radical change of character. See the light, as it were. Remember Goring."

"Goring started suffering remorse and guilt years ago. These ... creatures ... Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ivan the Terrible ... are still ready ... eager, in fact ... to kill anyone who stands in their way. Which way, by the way, is a steady advancement toward power, supreme power, the power to dominate and control others and crush all who oppose them. Or who they think oppose them. They're all genuinely paranoiac, you know. Though they strive to shape reality, and often do, they're not co

"Most people are driven by the same desire."

"There are great evils and little evils."

"Great evildoers and little evildoers, you mean. There is no such thing as abstract evil. Evil always consists of concrete acts and concrete actors."

Burton, who had been listening, became impatient.

"The true philosophy is not in talk, which most philosophers think is philosophy, but in action. Pete, you're doing a lot of talking about what you'd like to do. Why? Because you're afraid to act, and your fear comes from your feeling not self-justified?"

"I keep thinking, Judge not lest ye be judged."

"Do you think for one moment that you won't be judged even if you refrain from judging others?" Burton said scornfully. "Besides, it's impossible for anybody not to judge others. Even saints can't keep from judging, try though they might not to. It's automatic and takes place in both the conscious and unconscious mind. So, I say, judge right and left, fore and aft, up and down, in and out!"

Nur laughed and said, "But don't pass sentence."

"Why not?" Burton said, gri

"I've located a real judge, I mean a judge in the legal sense," Frigate said. "A man who sat in the circuit court of my hometown, Peoria, during the Prohibition era. I remember reading about him when I was a kid; I also remember what my father and his friends said about him. He was part of the very corrupt municipal system then, he sent many a bootlegger to prison or fined those found with booze in their homes or in speakeasies. Yet he had a cellar full of whiskey and gin he purchased from bootleggers. Some of whom, by the way, he let off because they were his direct suppliers."

"You've been very busy," Nur said.

"I can't resist it," Frigate said.

Burton understood Frigate's fascination, or, at least, thought he could. Evil people did have a certain magnetism that drew everybody, evil or good or gray-shaded, towards them. First, attraction, then repulsion. In fact, paradoxically, it was the repulsion that caused the attraction.

"The curious thing is," Frigate said suddenly, as if he had been thinking about it for a long time but had thrust it back down, "the curious thing is that none of these, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tsar Ivan, the Peoria judge, and the baby-rapist I told you about, none of these thinks of himself as evil."

"Goring did, and that was his first step away from his evil," Nur said. "These men ... Hitler, Stalin, and others ... what do you intend to do about them?"

"I've put them On Hold," Frigate said.

"You haven't made up your mind yet what to do with them?"

"No. But if the Computer starts releasing the eighteen billion people back into The Valley, it won't do it for those men. Look! I've seen what they've done! Seen it through their own eyes, seen it through the eyes of the people they did it to!"

Frigate's eyes were large and wild, and his face was red.

"I don't want them to keep on doing those evil things! Why should they escape justice now! They did it on Earth, but things are different here! There is some reason why they're locked in the files and why we are in a position to judge. And to convict and execute if need be!"

"It's not divine intervention or intention that caused the lockup," Nur said. "It's an accident."

"Is it?" Frigate said.

Nur smiled and shrugged. "Perhaps not. All the more reason for us to act discreetly, reasonably and carefully."

"Why should we?" Burton roared. "Who cares?"

"Ah," the Moor said, holding up his index finger and looking at its tip as if it held the answer. "Who knows? Have you perhaps had the feeling, now and then, that we are still being watched? I do not mean by the Computer but by someone who is using the Computer."

"And just whom could that be?"

"I don't know. But have you had that feeling?"

"No."

"I have," Frigate said. "But that doesn't mean anything. I've always had the feeling ... al my life ... that someone was watching me."

"Who then is watching the watcher? Who then judges the judge?"

"You Sufis ..." Burton said disgustedly.

"The thing is," Frigate said, "these men, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible and so on had immense power in their lifetime on Earth. They were exceedingly important historical figures. And now ..."

"Now you, the insignificant, have them in your power," Nur said.

"I wish I could have had them in my power when they were just begi

"Would you have pushed the Destroy button then?"

"Jesus! I don't know! I should have! But..."

"What if someone could have pushed a button to destroy you?" Nur said.

"My sins were not that great," Frigate said.

"Their size would depend on the attitude of the button pusher," Nur said. "Or in the minds of those injured by your sins."