GODS OF RIVERWORLD

"You say, as far as we know," Burton said. "Isn't it possible that he could turn on a screen but make it invisible to us?"

"I suppose so. I don't really know enough about Ethical science to be sure of what can or can't be done."

"Then the unknown may be also watching us."

"Yes. What we should do is erect some sort of tent in this room and write communications to one another inside it. Or the Computer could make us a soundproof cubicle. Even the floor would be soundproof. The trouble with that is that its walls might contain detectors put in by the order of the unknown. We'd have no way of checking that. Come to think of it, a tent made of cloth could contain detectors, too."

Burton became angry. "Is there nothing we can do?"

"We can do the best we can and hope that it'll be enough."

"We'll keep the door alarm," Burton said. "I'll write the combination on paper. You'll memorize it, and I'll make sure that the papers are destroyed."

"Destroy the papers with a beamer," Frigate said. "If you just burned them and crumbled the ashes before dropping them in a disposal hole, the Computer might be able to reconstruct the combination."

Burton said that they would have to make hoods to put over them when they reset the combination. They could make sure that the hoods did not contain detectors by using their bed-sheets.

"We can't trust the mass detectors," he added. "The Computer will make them for us, but the unknown might hide turn-off devices in them."

"True," Frigate said. "He may have installed a turn-off in your burglar alarm, too."

"Then anything the Computer makes for us could betray us?"

"Sure. Including the food. The unknown could order poison put in it."

"By God! There must be something we can do to fight this devil!"

Nur, who had been standing near them and smiling slightly, spoke.

"If the unknown had pla

He hesitated so long that Burton said, "Yes? What is it?"

"Would any Ethical erase Loga's body-recording? I think not. So ... the unknown can't be an Ethical. Unless ..."

"Unless what?"

"Patience, my friend. We are not on schedule. Unless ... it is Loga who's behind all this."

Burton exploded. "We've been through that line of reasoning! Why would he do this?"

Nur shrugged ski

"I don't know. I doubt that it is Loga. Would Loga erase his own body-recording? Of course not."

"But he could have a secret resurrection chamber some place in the tower," Frigate said.

"Just what I was going to say," Nur said. "We still don't have an explanation for sudh irrational conduct. But I keep thinking of the footfalls Frigate heard, or thought he heard, in the corridor outside the room where we were celebrating our victory over the malfunctioning Computer. Loga was disturbed when Pete told him about it. He ran out into the corridor and down to the intersecting hall, and he looked up and down the lift shaft. Then he asked the Computer some questions, but these were in his language, and he talked so fast we did not understand them."

"I asked him what he was so upset about," Burton said. "He replied that he wasn't any more and that Pete's experiences had made Pete so paranoiac that he was hearing sounds that did not exist. Pete's suspicions were infectious. So Loga said."

"That's like throwing a stone through your own window!" Frigate said. "There was nobody more paranoiac than Loga!"

"If he was, then we've been on the wrong side," Nur said calmly. "Those who follow a crazy man are as crazy as he. However, talking about that is useless. What do we do now?"

Frigate's sarcastic suggestion that they pile furniture by the door was, realistically, the best offered. It was an inconvenient arrangement if they were to use the door much, but, at the moment, they pla

Moreover, there now seemed little chance that the unknown could poison their food and water. Frigate and Nur got simplified schematics of the e-m converters and studied them. The unknown could cut off the power to the converters and so starve them. But the food was produced by e-m conversion via preprogrammed circuits that the unknown could not change. He had no way of introducing poison into them. But their drinking and bath water came through pipes, and the unknown could put toxic substances into them.

Frigate and Nur made arrangements whereby the water would be produced from the converters in the rooms. The Computer did not balk at producing the necessary plumbing for them to co

"This seems useless and stupid," Li Po said. "There are so many other ways the unknown could get at us."

"Nevertheless, we must do what we can to avoid his tricks," I Nur said. "That is, if he has any up his sleeve. And if he does indeed exist."

"I'm going to bed," Burton said.

"I'll eat first," Nur said.

The little Moor looked as fresh as if he had just had eight hours of very good sleep. By then, everybody but de Marbot and Behn was in the big room. Burton left it to Nur to explain the door blockade, and he walked down the hall a few steps and entered his apartment within an apartment. It consisted of three rooms: a living room twenty-four feet square, luxuriously furnished yet usable as a workroom, a bedroom and a bath. Burton unbuckled the belt holding the holster, which encased the beamer, and he shed his single garment, a scarlet kilt decorated by bright yellow male lion-shapes. The floor was covered with a thick carpet like that in the big community entrance room. The inwoven figures were different, each consisting of three interlocking circles. The walls were pale cream, but a word from Burton to the Computer could change the color to whatever he wished. He could also order any shape or symbol, anything, imposed on the basic color. Here and there were paintings that looked like oil originals but had been reproduced by the Computer. No art specialist could have distinguished the original from the copy, since the two were exactly alike down to the molecular level.

Burton crawled into bed and was asleep at once. He awoke feeling drugged and with a vague memory of a nightmare. A hyena twice as tall as he had threatened him with fangs that were curving steel swords. He remembered parrying the scimitar-like teeth with a fencing foil and the hyena laughing at him. The cachi