"Farmer, Philip Jose - Riverworld 5 - Gods of Riverworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

"You talk of limits," Nur said, "and that is necessary and good. But within what we call limits we have such power as the greatest kings on Earth never dreamed of. That power will be our strength, but it will also be our weakness. Rather, I should say, the power will tempt us to misuse it. I pray to God that we will be strong enough to overcome our weaknessesЧif we have them."

"We are, in a sense, gods," Burton said. "But humans with godlike power. Half-gods."

"Half-assed gods," Frigate said.

Burton smiled and said, "We've been through much on The River. It's scourged us, winnowed out the chaff. I hope. We shall see."

"The greatest enemy is not the unknown," Nur said. He did not need to explain what he meant.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Herakleitos, once said, "Character determines destiny."

Burton was thinking of this as he paced back and forth in his bedroom. What Herakleitos said was only partly true. Everyone had a unique character. However, that character was influenced by environment. And every environment was unique. Every place was not exactly like every other place. In addition, a person's character was part of the environment he traveled in. How a person acted depended not only upon his character but also on the peculiar opportunities and constraints of the environment, which included the person's self. The self carried about in it all the environments that the person had lived in. These were, in a sense, ghosts, some of thicker ectoplasm than the others, and thus powerful haunters of the mobile home, the person.

Another ancient sage, Hebrew, not Greek, had said, "There is nothing new under the sun."

The old Preacher had never heard of evolution and so did not know that new species, unfamiliar to the sun, emerged now and then. Moreover, he overlooked that every newborn baby was unique, therefore new, whether under the sun or under the moon. Like all sages, the Preacher spoke half-truths.

When he said that there was a time to act and a time not to act, he spoke the whole truth. That is, unless you were a Greek philosopher and pointed out that not acting is an act in itself. The difference in philosophy between the Greek and the Hebrew was in their attitudes toward the world. Herakleitos was interested in abstract ethics; the Preacher, in practical ethics. The former stressed the why, the latter, the how.

34 / Philip Jose Farmer

It was possible, Burton thought, to live in this world and only wonder about the how. But a complete human, one trying to realize all his potential, would also probe the why. This situation demanded the why and the how. Lacking the first, he could not function properly with the second.

Here he was with seven other Earthborns, in a tower set in the center of a sea at the north pole of this world. The sea had a diameter of sixty miles and was ringed by an unbroken range of mountains over twenty thousand feet high. In this sea The River gave up almost all of its warmth before it plunged from the other end and began picking up heat again. Thick mists like those from the gates of Hell hid a tower that rose ten miles from the sea surface. Below the waters and deep into the earth, the tower extended five miles or perhaps even deeper.

There was a shaft in the center of the tower that housed some billion of wathans at this moment. Wathans. The Ethical name for the artificial souls created by a species extinct for millions of years. Somewhere near the tower, deep under the earth, were immense chambers in which were kept records of the bodies of each of the thirty-five billion plus who had once lived on Earth from circa 100,000 B.C. through A.D. 1983.

When a person died on the Riverworld, the resurrector, using a mass-energy converter and the record, reproduced that body on a bank of The River. The wathan, the synthetic soul, the invisible entity that held all of what made that person sentient, flew at once to the body, attracted as iron by a magnet. And the man or woman, dead twenty-four hours before, was alive.

Of the thirty-five billion plus, Burton had experienced more of death than any. A man who had died 777 times could claim a record. Though he had been dead more often than anyone else, there were few who had lived as intensely on Earth and the Riverworld as he. His triumphs and sweet times had been few; his defeats and frustrations, many. Though he had once written that the bad and the good things of life tended to balance out, his own ledger had far more red ink than black. The Book of Burton showed a deficit, a heavy imbalance. Despite which, he had refused to take bankruptcy. Why he continued fighting, why he wanted so desperately to keep living, he did not know. Perhaps it was because he hoped to balance the books someday.

Cods of Riucrioorld / 35

And then what?

He did not know about that, but it was the then-what? that

fed his flame.

Here he was, trailing a horde of ghosts and placed by forces, which he had not understood and still did not understand, in this vast building at the top of the world. It had been erected for one purpose, to allow Terrestrials a chance for immortality. Not physical foreverness but a return, perhaps an absorption into, the Creator.

The Creator, if there was one, had not given Earthpeople, or indeed any sentients, souls. That entity which figured so largely in religions had been imaginary, a nonexistent desideratum. But that which sentients could imagine they might bring into actuality, and the might-be had become the is. What Burton and others objected to was the implied should-be. The Ethicals had not asked each resurrectee if he or she wished to be raised from the dead. They had been given no choice. Like it or not, they became lazari. And they had not been told how or why.

Loga had said that there just was not enough time to do that. Even if a thousand agents were assigned to asking a thousand people per hour whether or not they wished to be endowed with synthetic souls, the project would take thirty-five million hours. If fifty thousand agents conducted the interviews, it would take half a million hours. If the interviews could be con-j ducted on a twenty-four-hour basis, and they couldn't, it would take somewhat over fifty-seven years to question every person. What would have been accomplished at the end of that time? Very little. Perhaps ten or twelve million might decide not to keep on living. Even a man like Sam Clemens, who insisted that he wanted the eternal peace and quiet of death, would opt for life if he was given a chance for it. He would at least want to try the life offered, one with conditions different from those on Earth. A hundred considerations would make him change his mind. The same would apply to those others who felt, for various reasons, that life on Earth had been miserable, wretched, painful and altogether not worthwhile.

"The resurrectees have to be dealt with en masse," Loga had said. "There is no other way to handle them. We have, however, made a few exceptions. You were one, because I secretly

I