GODS OF RIVERWORLD

"Yes."

The black lightning streak disappeared.

"Did you make Loga vanish?"

"No."

"Were you implicated with anyone tion?"

"Not that I know of."

"That's the truth, as far as you know it," Nur said after glancing at the screen. "Do you have any knowledge about anyone who might have made Loga vanish?"

"No."

"Are you glad that Loga did vanish?"

Burton said, "What the hell?"

He could see the image of his wathan on a screen. It was glowing with orange overlaying the other shifting colors.

"You shouldn't have asked that!" Aphra Behn said.

"Yes, you devil, you had no right!" Burton said. "Nur, you're a scoundrel, like all Sufis!"

"You were glad," Nur said calmly. "I suspected so. I also suspect that most of us were. I was not, but I will allow the same question to be put to me. It may be that I, too, was glad, though deep in my animal mind."

"The subconscious," Frigate murmured.

"Whatever it is called, it is the same. The animal mind."

"Why should anyone be glad?" Alice said.

"Don't you really know?" Burton shouted.

Alice recoiled at the violence.

Having been cleared, for the moment, anyway, Burton left the cubicle and interrogated Nur. When the Moor appeared to be i

One by one, the others showed their i

"But Loga could have passed the test while lying like a diplomat," Nur said. "It is possible that one of us has had access to his wathan distorter."

"I don't think so," Turpin said. "Ain't none of us got the smarts to operate one of those. We ain't smart enough to override Loga's commands either. I think we're wasting time, besides insulting all of us."

"If I interpret you correctly," Nur said, "you're saying that we're not intelligent enough. That's not true. We are. But we don't have the knowledge we need."

"Yeah, that's what I meant. We just don't know enough."

"Three weeks is long enough for a diligent person to get the knowledge from the Computer," Burton said.

"No. The Computer ain't going to tell anyone how to override Loga," Turpin said. "I just don't believe that that could be done."

"We could do a memory-strip of the past three weeks," Frigate said. "It'll take time, but it might be worth it."

"No!" Alice said vehemently. "No! I'd feel violated! It would be worse than rape! I won't do it!"

"I understand your feelings," Nur said. "But ..."

The Computer could unreel their memories back to conception and display them on a screen. The process had its limits, since it could not reproduce nonvisual and nonauditory thoughts except as electronic displays, the interpretation of which was still uncertain. It was capable of transmitting tactile, olfactory and pressure memories. But, memory was selective and apparently erased many events that the individual considered unimportant. However, it did show clearly what the subject had seen, heard and spoken. On demand, emotion-pain fields could be projected.

"I won't want you seeing me when 1 went to the toilet," Alice said.

"None of us want that, for you or for ourselves," Burton said, and he laughed. It sounded like a stone skipping across water. "All of us fart and belch and most have probably masturbated and picked our noses, and Marcelin and Aphra, I'm sure, would not care to have us see them in bed. But it's not necessary to show everything. The Computer can be ordered to be selective, to display only the events we're interested in. Everything else will be irrelevant and so will not be shown."

"It's a waste of time," Frigate said. "Anyone clever enough to do what the unknown did wouldn't overlook the possibility of a memory-strip."

"I agree with you," Burton said, "though I seldom do. But it is one of those routine things that have to be done. What if the guilty person—if there is one—had anticipated that we would think a memory-search was useless?"

"He wouldn't take such a chance," Li Po said.

"Nevertheless, I insist that we do it," Burton said. "If we don't, we'll all be wondering about one another."

"We'll still be wondering when it's all done," Frigate said sourly. "But if it must be."

The search could have been run simultaneously with each one in a separate cubicle, but who then would supervise each subject to make sure that he or she did not order the Computer to cancel the relevant events? Burton went first, and, after-three hours, the time it took the Computer to strip three weeks of -memory, he emerged. The screen had been blank during the entire strip.

It was, as expected, empty while the others underwent the search.

Twenty-five hours passed before the last one, Li Po, stepped out of the cubicle. Long before then, others had drifted off to bed one by one. Burton and Nur saw the work through from begi

"The unknown could override the codeword locking the door."

"How do you suggest that we block the door?" Frigate said, and he yawned. "Do we shove a bed against it? Pile more furniture on top of that?"

"The door swings inward, so that's not a bad idea. What I'm going to do, however, is to order the Computer to make a burglar alarm."

Burton did just that. Five minutes later, he pulled out from an energy-matter converter cabinet a dozen pieces of equipment. He taped two boxes to the wall on each side of the door and secured several other boxes to these. Then he adjusted a dial on one of the large boxes.

"There," he said, stepping back to admire the set. "No one can enter without setting off a hell of a loud siren. I think. We'd best test it. Pete, will you go outside, close the door, then come back in?"

"Sure, but I hope I don't disappear while I'm standing in the hall."

Burton turned a knob on the box. Frigate spoke the codeword, the door swung open, and he walked out. He turned, spoke the word, and the door shut. Burton reset the dial on the box. A few seconds later, the door began opening. A bright orange light flashed from the box, and an ear-pummeling whooping filled the room. Aphra Behn and de Marbot came ru

Burton turned the alarm off.

"The unknown could learn what the combination for the alarm is from the Computer. So I asked for one that I could set myself. There's no way the Computer can know which I chose, not as long as I blocked the line of sight from its screen with my body when I set the alarm."

"Admirable," Frigate said. "But our bedrooms are soundproofed. How are we going to hear the alarm from there?"

The walls, floor and ceilings were several inches thick and packed with circuits and power lines, most of them unused. Burton could have ordered the Computer to set up a circuit that would set off alarms in all rooms when the door alarm went off. But the unknown could override these circuits.

Burton was thinking about what to do when Frigate spoke.

"We could have the Computer make mass detectors. These could be set inside the bedroom doors so that, even if we didn't hear the apartment door alarm, we'd hear anybody trying to get into our bedrooms. These should be activated and deactivated by some sort of hand signals. The unknown can eavesdrop on us ] through the Computer. He's probably doing it now. But, as far I as I know, he can't see us unless he turns on a screen. And we can see that."