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

There was an uproar then, stilled when Burton hit the table again.




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28 / Philip Jose Farmer
"This bottling-up will be scratchsome, no doubt of that. But we've been ridden gallsore by worse things, and the better we
work together, the sooner we'll be free to pursue our own interests."
Alice was frowning, and he knew what she was thinking. Since their final breakup, she had avoided him as much as
possible. Now .. .
"If we're in jail, we're in the best one in two worlds," Frigate said.
"No jail's any good," Turpin said. "You ever been in the slammer, Pete?"
"Only the one that I made for myself all my life," Frigate said. "But it was portable."
That was not true, Burton thought. Frigate has been a prisoner several times on the Riverworld, including being one of
Hermann Goring's slaves. But he spoke metaphorically. A most metaphorical man, Frigate. Shifty, a verbal trickster,
ambiguous, which he would cheerfully admit, quoting Emily Dickinson to justify himself.
"Success in circuit lies."
Quoting himself, he would say, "The literal man litters reality/'
"Well, Captain, what do we do next?" Frigate said.
The first priority was to go to their individual apartments and bring their few possessions to the large apartment down the
hall. They went in a body, since it would not do to go alone, and then they picked out their bedrooms. Alice took one as far
from Burton's as possible. Peter Frigate chose the apartment next to hers. Burton smiled ferociously on noting this. It was
an acknowledged but mostly unspoken fact that the American was "in love" with Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves. He
had been ever since, in 1964, he had seen the photographs of her at the ages of ten and eighteen in a biography of Lewis
Carroll. He had written a mystery story, The Knave of Hearts, in which thirty-year-old Alice had played the amateur
detective. In 1983, he had organized a public subscription drive to erect a monument to her on her unmarked grave in the
Hargreaves family plot at Lyndhurst. Times were hard, however, and little money had been given. Then Frigate had died,
and he still had not
Gods of Riverworld / 29
learned if his project had been completed. If it had, above Alice's body there was now a carved marble monument of Alice
at the tea table with the March Hare, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat's head above and behind her.
Meeting her had not lessened his love for her, as a cynic might expect, but had heated it. The literary attractions had
become fleshly. Yet he had never said a word to her or Burton about his passion. He loved, or had loved, Burton too much
to make what he would have called a dishonorable move toward her. Alice had never shown the slightest sign of feeling
toward him as he did toward her. That did not necessarily mean anything. Alice was a master at concealing her feelings in
certain situations. There was the public Alice, and there was the private Alice. There might also be an Alice whom even
Alice did not know. Whom she would not at all want to know.
Tw┬╗ hours before lunchtime, they were settled in, though still unsettled by the morning's events. Burton had chosen not to
use the control console, which could be slid from a wall recess. Instead, he had asked the Computer to simulate the screen
and the keyboard on the wall. This could have been reproduced in light on the ceiling or the floor if required. The floor,
however, was covered with a thick rug, which the unlearned would have thought was a very expensive Persian. Its model
had, in fact, been woven on the Gardenworld, a recording of it had been brought to the tower, and the Computer had
reproduced the original by energy-mass conversion.
Burton stood before the wall, the simulation at head level. If he chose to walk back and forth, the simulation would keep
pace with him.
Burton gave Loga's name and ID code and asked the Computer, in English, where Loga's living body was.