Farmer, Philip Jose – Riverworld 06 – ( Shorts) Tales of Riverworld

“What are we doing?” he said to Huey Long. “Is this what we have become? Is this the end for us?”

He had a sudden blazing insight: Long and Selous had talked them back to the gates of the city for precisely this reason, so that pillage and rape could be undertaken, and Caligula had been unbound to lead them because only Caligula could manage what was necessary without hesitation.

“Aren’t you going to stop this?” continued Beethoven. Long bit his lip, shook his head, smirked a negative. Selous shrugged; he seemed fascinated with what was going on, engaged but disengaged.

“From here I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman,” said Selous.

“Does it make any difference?” said Long.

“Then /’// stop it!” Beethoven, without quite realizing what he was doing, flung himself at the rounded, heaving flanks of the emperor, feeling a revulsion such as he had never known. That other emperor, Napoleon, had betrayed him, but that had been impersonal, it had not been like this. This was revolting. It was obscene, disgusting, it was the revocation of all that he had lived his fifty-seven years to negate. Freedom, yes, but freedom for all, not just the insane and the wicked.

“Stop!” he shrieked, lunging toward them. Then he

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Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg

felt Huey Long’s hands upon him, enormous, pulling him back.

“No!” said Huey Long. “Don’t stop him! This is what we came here to see.”

“Every man a god,” said Huey Long. Selous stared at the American in shock and approval. “That is why we were taken to this place,” continued Long; “so that we could do as we wished.”

Beethoven struggled in his embrace, tried feebly to escape, but Long was much too powerful for him.

Selous looked upon the two of them in that embrace, looked further to see Caligula humping and scuttling away in the position of an insect, and thought: the man is right. The American is right, every man is a god, and we have come to this accursed place to make gods of ourselves, be they in the most despicable of fashion. That is the answer that lay in the heart of the city; that is what we have always understood. All of his life he had aspired, just as others must, to this position, and now that he had found it there was nothing to do but submit.

“Submit!” Selous screamed to Beethoven. “Let it be! Do as you will!” He scanned the land, the encampment in the distance, the near forms that in the intensity of Caligula’s necessity had scattered to open ground. I’d do it myself if I could, thought Selous, and I will, I will. “Now I understand why we came back to the banks of the River,” he said to Huey Long. “This was waiting for us all the time, wasn’t it?”

Long smiled, shook his head, opened his hands to Selous. His expression was curious, abstracted. Beethoven, scrambling in Long’s enormous hug, gave up sud-

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denly, sunk to his knees, then leaned over the ground and rubbed his forehead in the mud.

“You won’t stop him,” muttered Beethoven. “None of us will stop him. Nothing will ever be stopped again. That’s the answer, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted me to know, why you brought me back to humiliate me.”

“I don’t know anything about that, son,” said Huey Long. He smiled easily and stared at Selous. “But we think we know the answer now, don’t we?”

“Yes,” said Selous. There was a dim and insistent haze in front of him; he could have whisked it away with a few motions of his hand, but he chose not to. “Yes, I understand. Every man a god.” He looked at the entrapped, sullen Beethoven. “Even you,” he said. “And me, and the rest of them. That is for us to discover.”

Caligula’s voice bleated through the haze, through the shocking stillness of the Riverworld. Selous heard the chanting of the emperor and then the dull scream of his release. I’ll be damned, he thought, and then, Yes, I guess I am. I guess we all are. Which is exactly the same thing as being free.