GODS OF RIVERWORLD

Williams had promised to marry her, but his enemies were closing in, and he had left her to save his own life. Corporal Goggin had apparently gone psychotic because of his unexplained desertion and because of her overreaction to infection with a disease that he had become quite accustomed to. He heard, while he was in Portland, that a woman resembling Rachel was asking about him and that she was packing a gun.

"Everybody except Goodwill Industries was after my ass, and I wasn't too sure about them."

"And what have you learned from these, ah, Candidean experiences?"

"You sound like Nur."

"You've talked to him?"

"Sure," Williams said. "I know everybody here. Very well."

"Yes, but what was the lesson?" Burton said.

"That I'd been the plaything of life but I wasn't going to be any more. I made sure of that on The River, I fought for power and I got it. If I was in a situation where I was the underdog, I became the overdog as soon as possible. I was tired of being kicked around, the one who got shafted. So ..."

"Nobody's victimizing you here, am I correct?" Burton said. He rose from his chair.

"And nobody's going to."

Williams smiled, his expression a curious blend of amusement and malice.

"Just sit down for a minute. Then you can go. Hasn't something been perplexing you for these past two weeks? Something you just can't account for?"

Burton frowned and said slowly, "I can't recall anything."

His forehead cleared. "Unless ... yes, I have been wondering ... but you couldn't have had anything to do with it ... I have been wondering who resurrected Netley, Gull, Crook, Stride and Kelly."

"You mean those involved in the Jack-the-Ripper case?"

Burton was startled but tried not to show it. "How do you know who they are?"

"Oh, / was watching you watch their memory files."

Burton reared from the chair, his face red and contorted.

"Damn you, you've been spying on me! Why do you think you have the right ...?"

Williams, still smiling, though his eyes were narrowed, rose from his chair.

"Hold it right there! If you think it's OK to spy on others, why shouldn't others spy on you? Don't throw stones in a glass house, my friend."

Burton was speechless for a moment. Then he said, "There's a vast difference. I observed the dead. You're spying on the living, your neighbors!"

"You didn't observe the living from the grailstones along the River?"

"You soiled my privacy!"

"You can't soil the soiled," Williams said. He was still smiling, but his body stance showed that he was ready to repel attack.

"Very well," Burton said. "You still haven't told me why you took it on yourself to raise those pathological murderers."

"They were, but they aren't. The reason I did ... I'm a collector and a student of religious types. I got interested on Earth, I had much experience with them, you know. The Marxists ... they're religious, though they'd deny it, the Black Muslims, the Salvation Army, the Buddhists, the Southern Methodists, you know how many of them I became involved with. I am religious, too, though not in a conventional sense. I am the one who raised the New Christians and the Nichirenites and the Second Chancers who live in Turpinville, and I raised Gull the Dowist. I left it to him to resurrect his fellows, which he did. I have plans for bringing others in."

Burton did not know whether or not to believe him- He snorted and strode out of the room. Williams called, "Don't go away mad, Sir Richard!" and he laughed uproariously.

27

On his way to the elevator, Burton looked back down the hall. Williams was going down the steps, apparently to join the crowd of revelers in the vestibule. The man looked up and waved at him through the railing uprights. He was gri

However, climbing the steps was a good idea. He needed the exercise. He turned the corner, passing by the elevator, and strode down the long hallway toward the stairway. The music and voices that he had faintly heard in the other hall faded away. The only sound was that of his footsteps. But, as he passed the door of the room next to the stairwell, he thought he heard a scream. He stopped. It had not been loud. So faint was it, he might have imagined it. No! There it was again, and it seemed to come through the door.

The rooms were insulated but were not, like the tower walls, absolutely soundproof. He placed his ear against the intricately carved oak door. He could not hear the screams now, but a man was yelling in the room. The words were not clear; the tone was. It was threatening and angry.

He tried the doorknob. It turned, but the door would not budge. He hesitated. For all he knew, the two inside, if there were only two, might not want to be disturbed. If they turned on him because he was interfering in a matter strictly between lovers, he would be embarrassed. On the other hand, he was not easily embarrassed, and he would feel that he had been remiss if he could have prevented a crime.

He knocked hard on the wood three times, then kicked it twice. A woman started to scream, but she was cut off.

"Open up in there!" Burton shouted, and he struck the door again.

A man shouted. It sounded like, "Go away, motherfucker!" but Burton was not sure.

He took his beamer from his jacket and cut a circle around the lock. When he had pushed the knob and the lock through, he stepped to one side. It was well that he had. Three shots boomed, and three bullets pierced the thick wood. The man— he supposed it was a man was firing—had a heavy handgun, perhaps a .45 automatic. Burton yelled, "Come out unarmed! Your hands on your head! I have a beamer!"

The man snarled a series of curses and said that he would kill whoever tried to come in.

"It's no use! You're trapped!" Burton said. "Come on out, hands to your head!"

"You can—"

The man's voice was cut off by a thud and a clatter. Then Star Spoon's voice, high and trembling, said, "I knocked him out, Dick!"

Burton pushed the door in and sprang in, beamer ready. A large naked black man was lying face down on the thick Oriental rug, blood on the back of his head. A gold statuette, smeared with blood, lay by his side.

He swore. She was naked, and her face and arms were blue with bruises. One eye was begi

"What happened?" Burton said.

She had trouble getting the words out. He took her to a table and poured out a glass of wine. She drank, though most of it ran down her chin and neck. Still crying, she choked out a story, most of which he had guessed. She had been on her way to the stairwell when the man had stepped out of the door ahead of her. Smiling, he had asked her name. She had told him and then had tried to get by him, but he had grabbed her arm. He wanted to party, he said. He had never had a Chinese woman before, and she sure was a doll. And so on.

Star Spoon had struggled as he pulled her into the room. The man's whiskey breath sickened her when he kissed her. When she had tried to scream, he clapped his hand over her mouth, slammed the door shut, hurled her so hard she fell on the floor, locked the door and ripped her clothes from her.