GODS OF RIVERWORLD

Turpin lifted his palms.

"How do I do that?"

"There must be ways. The Computer ..."

"I ain't no mass murderer. I been pretty rough in my time, but I ain't going to slaughter people just to get some peace and quiet. Besides, keeping them in line gives me something to do."

He gri

He went to the wall behind the desk, said a few words, and a glowing round spot appeared. Then he uttered some codewords.

He turned, gri

Within three minutes clouds had cut off the sun, clouds that thickened and blackened. A wind whistled through the bars in the open windows and lifted the togas, kilts and skirts.

"They'll all be inside quicker'n you can say scat to a cat," he said. "They be bitching about getting wet, but that don't matter."

"There are unconscious people out there," Alice said. "What about them?"

"They got to take their chances. Besides, it'll do them good. Some of them need a bath. Nobody gets pneumonia, anyway."

He gave them some instructions about keeping out of trouble if the drunks gave them a hard time. "They shouldn't. I gave them orders they was to treat you nice even if you is white."

"What about us?" Li Po said. "We aren't white."

"You are to them. Anybody who ain't black is white. It's a matter of fine but not subtle semantic distinction."

Burton was partly amused by the latter statement and partly irritated. The man deliberately shifted back and forth from the English of the "well-educated to ghetto lingo as if he wanted to anger his listeners. Or perhaps to play the clown. Or both. Somewhere in him was a self-contempt engendered by the white-ruled system of his time. He might not be conscious of it, but it was there. According to Frigate, the American Negroes of the later twentieth century had overcome this, or tried to, and claimed to be proud to be black. But Turpin was still playing a game for which there was no need.

But, as Nur had said, one should not be proud to be black or white. One should only be proud to be a good human being, and that pride should watch out for stumbles.

Turpin had replied, "Yeah, but you have to go through certain stages to get there, and being proud you're black is one of them."

"A very good point," Nur had said. "However, one shouldn't get stuck in a stage. Climb on to the next one."

They went down to the vestibule, as Turpin called it. Long before they reached it, the loud music and chatter and shrill laughter and the tsunami of alcohol, burning drugs and tobacco smote them. Everybody was inside, including those who'd passed out. These had been carried in by the androids and were lined along a wall.

"Mingle, folks!" Turpin shouted, and he waved his hand at the crowd. He did not feel he had to introduce his guests; he had shown their faces and names on the computer screens. However, his guests hesitated. It was not easy to just walk up to a group and start talking. The Dowists were repelled and scandalized and obviously were regretting having come here. Turpin, seeing this, gestured at a small group that had been standing at the far end of the bar. This made its way through the throng to the guests and began conversation. Their host had picked them out to break the ice, and he had done well. Or so it seemed at the begi

The man appointed to keep Burton company was six feet three inches tall, broad-shouldered, huge-chested and massively limbed. He was wearing a white doeskin headband, a white kid-skin vest, a white doeskin belt with a broad silver buckle on which was an alto relief wolfs head, tight white doeskin trousers, and white doeskin boots reaching to just below his knees. His face was broad and high-cheekboned, and his nose was large, long and aquiline. He looked more like Sitting Bull than a Negro, except for his everted lips and kinky hair. When he smiled, he was craggily handsome.

He introduced himself with a conventional handshake, a

"Tom Turpin didn't appoint me to act as your faithful Indian guide and bodyguard," he said, gri

"Oh?" Burton said, raising his eyebrows. "May I ask why?"

"You may. I read about you; you intrigue me. Besides, Turpin has told me much about how you led him and the others across the mountains and into the tower."

"I'm flattered," Burton said. "However, I do have a slight bone to pick with you. Why did you almost run over me with your motorcycle?"

Williams laughed and said, "If I'd tried, I would've made it."

"And the pejorative?"

"I just felt like it. Choppers bring out the mea

"It makes you feel good to upset Whitey?"

"Sometimes. If you're truly objective, you won't blame me."

"Hasn't sixty-seven years on The River changed your attitude any?"

"That's something you never get rid of. I don't let it bother me though. It's like a dull toothache you get used to," Williams said. "Want a drink?"

"White wine. Any kind."

Burton had decided to stay sober.

"Let's get it in one of the rooms upstairs. It'll be quieter there, and we won't have to shout to hear ourselves."

"Very well," Burton said, wondering what Williams was up to.

They got into the elevator with a laughing, shouting, giggling crowd. On the way up there were cries of protest as the riders groped each other. Someone passed gas before they reached the second floor, and there were shouts of amused outrage. When the doors opened, the culprit, the man blamed, anyway, was thrown headlong onto the floor.

"Everybody's feeling good, real good," Williams murmured. "Won't be so later on, though. You armed?"

Burton patted his jacket pocket.

"Beamer."

The rooms they passed were, except for one, packed and loud. Here a dozen men and women were sitting and watching a movie on a wall-screen. Burton, curious, stopped to look in. It was one that Frigate had insisted he see, the actors Laurel and Hardy selling Christmas trees in Los Angeles in July. The viewers were laughing uproariously.

"They're New Christians," Williams said. "Quiet, harmless folks. They couldn't refuse Turpin's invitation, they're so polite. But they don't hold with most of the goings-on here."

They found an empty room far down the hall around the corner. On the way, Burton admired the reproductions of oil paintings. Rembrandt, Rubens, David's "Death of Marat," many by Russians, Kiprensky, Surikov, Ivanov, Repin, Levitan, and others.

"Why so many Slavs?" Burton said.

"There's a reason."

They got their drinks from a converter. Burton sat down and lit up a cigar.

After a silence, Williams said, "I'm not American, you know."

Burton puffed out smoke and said, "You would have fooled me if Turpin had not told me you were Russian."

"I was born Rodion Ivanovitch Kazna in 1949 in the black ghetto of the city of Kiev."

"Amazing," Burton said. "I didn't know that there were Negroes ... no, I take that back. There were some Russian black slaves. Pushkin was descended from one."