GODS OF RIVERWORLD

By the time Burton arrived, she had been raped three times.

He made sure that the man was tied up, got a tranquilizer from the converter, and gave it and a glass of water to her. He put her into the shower and then held the douche bag while, still trembling and weeping, she washed herself out.

After he had toweled her dry, he ordered some clothes from the converter, helped her get dressed, and put her down on a sofa. He used the computer console to call Turpin. Turpin, hearing the report, scowled and said, "I'll fix that son of a bitch!"

He looked at the man on the floor and said, "That's Crockett Dunaway. A real troublemaker. I've had my eye on him for some time. You wait until I get down there."

A few minutes later, Tom Turpin, followed by the other members of the party, entered. Alice, Sophie and Aphra took Star Spoon in charge at once and carried her into the room next door. Turpin got a hypodermic full of adrenaline and injected it into Dunaway's buttock. After a minute, Dunaway groaned and got to his hands and knees. When he saw the others, his eyes widened. He croaked, "What you doing here?"

Turpin did not answer. Dunaway got to his feet and staggered to a chair, sat down, bent over and held his head in his hands. "Man, I got a headache killing me!"

"That's not all that's going to kill you," Turpin said harshly.

Dunaway raised his head. His bloodshot, slightly crossed eyes looked at Turpin. "What you talking about? That bitch come on me, and when I obliged her, she started screaming for help. You can't blame me for what that slant-eyed whore done. She must've heard her man coming, and so she pretended like she wasn't having none of me."

"She couldn't have heard me," Burton said. "I wasn't making any sound in the hall. If I hadn't heard her scream, I would've gone right on by the door. You're guilty as hell, man."

"I swear 'fore God I ain' t," Dunaway said. "That bitch asked me to give her a good time."

"There's no use arguing about it," Turpin said. "We'll just run off your memory and get at the truth."

Dunaway grunted and shot out of the chair. He was headed for the door, but his legs gave way, and he crumpled on the floor.

"Uh, huh!" Turpin said. "I thought so. Dunaway, no one gets away with rape here. You've had it, man!"

Dunaway raised his head. Saliva ran from his open mouth. "No, I swear to God ... !"

Turpin told his two bodyguards to set Dunaway in a chair before the computer console. "We'll know in a few minutes what's what!"

Dunaway tried to struggle, but the two blows had sapped his strength. He was set down in the chair, and a bodyguard asked the Computer to extract Dunaway's memories of the past hour and display them. Dunaway sat trembling and gibbering while his guilt was shown.

"I'm not only going to kill you," Turpin said, "I'm destroying your body-record. You ain't never going to get a chance to do this to a woman again. You've had it, Dunaway!"

The man's screams were snapped off by the ray from Turpin's beamer. Dunaway fell over in the chair, a narrow hole, cauterized at the edges, on each side of his head.

"Throw him in the converter and incinerate him," Turpin said to the bodyguards.

Nur said, "Are you really going to dissolve his recording?"

"Why not? He won't ever be any different."

"You are not God."

Turpin scowled, and then he laughed. "You're insidious, Nur. You've been bending my ear so long with all that religious philosophical hoop-de-la you got me confused. OK. So I don't destroy him? And then, when he goes back to The Valley, he's going to rape and beat other women. You want that on your conscience?"

"The Ethicals in their wisdom set it up so that anyone, no matter how vicious, will live until this project is ended. No exceptions. 1 trust them. They must know what they're doing."

"Yeah?" Turpin said. "If they're so smart, how come they didn't catch on to Loga? Why didn't they make provisions for someone like him? He's wrecked their schedule and their program."

"I am not certain that they didn't make provisions for someone like him," Nur said calmly.

"Mind explaining that?" Turpin said.

"I have no explanation now."

Tom Turpin took his time lighting up a big cigar. Then he said, "OK. I'll go along with you. Up to a point. Just now, nobody's being sent back to The Valley, so Dunaway ain't going to do anybody any harm. But when ... if ... the Computer starts sending them back, it ain't going to send Dunaway back until I say so. Which may be never. I don't know just now what I'm going to do when that time comes."

"There are millions of Dunaways waiting to be released like pent-up hyenas," Burton said. "What good is it going to do to judge just one?"

"It's your woman that was raped!" Turpin said.

"But she is not my property, and I won't speak for her," Burton said. "Why ... since she is the victim, why don't you let her be the judge?"

Alice, having just come from the bedroom, had overheard him. She said, "Well, Dick! So she isn't your property and she can speak for herself! Imagine Richard Burton saying that! You have changed!"

"I suppose I have."

"Too bad you didn't do it before, not immediately after, we parted," Alice said. "That doesn't make me feel very good, you know. You live with the Chinese woman for a very little while, and she works all sorts of changes in you."

"She had nothing to do with it."

"Who did then, God? Oh, you're impossible."

Nur said, "How is she?"

"As well as can be expected after ... that. Aphra, Sophie and I will take care of her for a few days. If that's all right with you, Dick?"

"Of course," he said, somewhat stiffly. "It is most generous ... compassionate ... of you."

Star Spoon had fallen asleep under the influence of a drug recommended by the Computer. Burton and Frigate Carried her out on a stretcher through a side entrance and placed her in the back of a huge steam-driven Dobler automobile. Turpin drove it over the winding road to the entrance. Here Burton transferred her to his chair, and, with her on his lap, flew the chair the short distance to his world's entrance and the long distance to the Arabian Nights castle in the center. The others followed him. After Star Spoon had been undressed and put in bed by the women, Alice and Sophie came out from her room.

"She should be all right by the time she wakes up," Sophie said. "Physically, that is. Mentally and emotionally ... ?"

The women would take care of Star Spoon in shifts. As soon as she awoke, Burton would be called. He protested that that was not necessary. He would sit by her bed until she awoke and then do his best to comfort her.

"Let us do something, too," Sophie said.

Burton said that he would go along with them; he understood why they insisted. They empathized deeply with Star Spoon because they, too, had been raped more than once. They also needed to take care of her; that compulsion, if you could call it a compulsion, was part of their natures.

"Born nurses," Burton said to Frigate.

"How lucky can you get?"

The American was not being facetious. He envied people who wanted to use themselves for the benefit of others.

Star Spoon got up in time for breakfast. Though she drank only a little tea and ate part of a piece of toast, she was well enough to take some part in the conversation. She seemed glad to have the three women with her, and they even got her to laugh several times. However, she did not want Burton to hold her, and she responded to his attempts to talk with her with uncompleted sentences or nods or shakes of her head.

After two days, the three women left. Star Spoon immediately quit staring into space for long periods and busied herself with various projects with the Computer.

"She's withdrawing," Burton told Nur and Frigate. "I won't say it's just into herself. She seems to be burying herself with work with the Computer. She'll stop whatever she's doing—she won't talk about that much—and listen while I talk. But I've spent hours, days, trying to get her back to her old self, and I've failed."