GODS OF RIVERWORLD

As if reading his mind, Loga had said, "Tell me, Dick, do you really believe, believe in the i

Burton had stared at Loga for a moment. Then, slowly, he had said, "No. Not in the sense you mean. I just ca

"Yes, there is! Our instruments ca

"Which only means that the instruments can't detect it," Burton had said. "You have no knowledge of what really happens to the wathan at that point."

Loga had smiled and said, "In the end, we have to fall back on faith, don't we?"

"From what I've seen of its manifestations on Earth, I have no faith in faith," Burton had said. "How do you know but what the wathan, as you call it, has simply worn out? It's an artificial thing, but its life may end naturally, just as all synthetic things ... and natural, too ... end. The wathan is not a material entity, as we know material things, but that's the point. We don't really know if it's material or not. It may be a form of matter unknown to us. Or a thing of pure energy. If so, a form of energy unknown to us. But how do you know that it may not change into another form, which your instruments ca

"It does! It does!" Loga had said. "Into the Undetectible! How else could you explain that the wathan only passes beyond the instrument range when the owner has reached a certain stage of ethical advancement? Those who don't reach this stage may die again and again, but always, always, the wathans return to their resurrected bodies!"

"There may be an explanation you haven't thought of."

"Hundreds of thousands of minds greater than yours have tried to find another explanation, and they have failed."

"But one may yet come along who won't fail."

"You're depending upon faith now," Loga had said.

"No. Upon history, logic and probability."

Loga had been upset, not because he was begi

As it had turned out, Loga was not going to Go On. His body-record had been destroyed, and he would no longer have the opportunity to attain that final goal. Yet ... it was Loga's own fault that he did not have that chance now. If he had not set the project on a different course, he would still be alive, and his body-record would insure that he could keep striving for that mysterious event known as Going On.

Was the unknown who had committed Loga to oblivion an Ethical who had somehow survived Loga's mass slaughter of his fellows? If he was, why didn't he show himself? Was he afraid of the eight lazari? Was he biding his time until he could kill them and raise them in The Valley where they could no longer interfere with the original design?

Anyone who knew how to input override commands in the computer should not be afraid of the eight. But then perhaps the unknown knew something that the eight did not know yet but might find out. If that were so, the unknown would try to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

However, it was possible that one—or more—of the eight might have made Loga vanish.

Burton was thinking of this when Nur's head appeared on a wall-screen. "I'd like to speak to you."

Burton gave the codeword that allowed Nur to see him.

5

"What is it?"

Nur was wearing a green turban, indicating that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The choice of color was probably accidental, though, since the little Moor was not one to set store by such things. His long, straight black hair fell from under the cloth onto ski

"The inhibit input against resurrecting Monat and all the Ethicals and their agents still holds. I expected that. But something even more momentous has occurred!"

He paused.

Burton said, "Well?"

"You know that Loga told us three weeks ago that he'd told the Computer to start resurrecting the eighteen billion in the records. We all assumed that it had been done. But it's not so! Apparently, Loga changed his mind for some reason. Perhaps he intended to wait until we were out of the tower. Anyway, not a single person has been resurrected since then."

The shock silenced Burton for a moment.

When he recovered, he said, "How many bodies are on hold now?"

"As of now, eighteen billion, one million, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine. No. Now ... two hundred and seven."

"I suppose you... ?" Burton said.

Nur, anticipating him, which he did with a

"Just think," Burton said, "only three weeks ago we thought that our long hard, struggle was over. That all the big issues were dissolved and our only problems from then on would be personal."

Nur did not reply.

"Very well. What we must do first is to subject each of us to a truth test. We can't proceed on the assumption that there is an unknown until we've eliminated all of our group."

"They won't like it," Nur said.

"But it's logical that we do it."

"Humans don't like logic when it's inconvenient or dangerous for them," Nur said. "However, they'll submit to the test. They have to to avoid suspicion."

If not telling a lie was the same as telling the truth, the results of the test were positive. If telling a lie could result in an indication that the truth was being told, the results were negative.

Whether the indications were true or not, the eight seemed to be i

Each sat in turn inside a closed transparent cubicle and answered questions from Burton or Nur. The field generated inside the cubicle showed the wathan floating just above the head of the questionee and attached to it by a thread of bright scarlet light. The wathan was a sphere that swelled and shrank, whirled or seemed to whirl, and flashed a spectrum of glowing colors. This was the invisible thing that accompanied every person from the moment of conception and did not leave him or her until that person was dead. It contained all that was a person, duplicating the contents of the mind and nervous system and also giving him or her self-consciousness.

Burton had taken the first test, and Nur had asked him several questions to which he had to give an answer he believed to be true.

"Were you born in Torquay, England, on March 19, 1821?"

"Yes," Burton said, and the Computer photographed his wathan at that second.

"When and where did you die the first time?"

"On Sunday, October 19, 1890, in my house in Trieste, that part of Italy then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire."

The Computer took another photograph and compared the two. It then compared these two to others that had been taken many years ago when Burton had been questioned by the Council of Twelve.

Nur looked at the flashing display on a screen and said, "The truth. As you know it."

That was one of the deficiencies of the test. If a person believed that he was telling the truth, the wathan indicated that he was.

"That is the truth," Frigate said. "I read those dates many times when I was on Earth."

"Have you ever lied?" Nur said.

Burton, gri

A narrow black zigzag shot over the surface of the wathan.

"The subject lies," Nur told the Computer.

On the screen appeared: previously verified.

"Have you ever lied?" Nur said again.