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

Of course, our society was a technocracy. Our Technocrat Council of Engineers ruled, with me at its head. When it occurred to us that we should try to bring all the best elements of this new world together in one place, we sent out emissaries. Our scientific ambassadors ranged for a thousand miles up and down the River, persuading whatever engineers and scientists they found to join our cause.

Again, the plan worked. People from all ages flocked to our incipient city. The vast laboratories we set up were something to see! We had mills, running water, and even a number of working clocks and watches within a year. Every success fueled our drive forward. A railway was begun to link the Providers. Hot-air balloons scouted the air. Cartographers began to chart our new world. And, finally, we began to build this riverboat.

250

John Gregory Betancourt

THE MERRY MEN OF RIVERWORLD

251

No, don’t interrupt—let me finish my tale. I am near the end now.

Perhaps we were too giddy with our successes. We allowed anyone to join us who wanted to—anyone. That was the mistake. We woke up one morning to find our little society drowning in an unskilled “proletariat,” to borrow Lenin’s word.

Among those who had joined us was a man called Capone. He came with a group of followers. He was small, quiet, a smooth talker. He offered to set up a bureaucracy to deal with our population as a whole. Indeed, we had already seen the need for administration and police… but none on the Council truly wanted to oversee such mundane matters. We were all scientists, visionaries, men looking toward the future. Each of us had pet projects to oversee. Letting Capone handle such matters seemed the ideal solution, as it would allow us to concentrate on our work.

Capone gave us all bodyguards. At the time it seemed like a good idea, since there were grumblings from the masses, but I understood his plan now. He wanted to isolate us from the population so he could control us. I’d heard of many twentieth-century inventions by this point— men walking on the moon, satellites, computers, television— and I wanted all these scientific miracles and more. Perhaps that’s what blinded me. I wanted to leap centuries in months, to claw my way to the highest point of mankind’s technological achievement in the span of a few years.

Perhaps it truly was punishment for my hubris. Perhaps it was blind stupidity. I awakened one morning to find myself a prisoner. My bodyguards had become prison guards. I—and the other technocrats—were no

longer in control. In the space of a single night, our government fell in a bloodless coup. Al Capone had taken over.

He was a clever man, I admit. When we met with him in the Technocrat Council’s chambers—we on the floor, he on a low throne—he made it clear who was in charge. When Leonardo da Vinci dared speak against him, Capone bludgeoned him to death with a wooden club. The blood, the blood! It was horrible… the most horrible moment of my life.

I longed to see Capone dead, but there was nothing any of us could do but agree to whatever he demanded. Perhaps we should have spoken against him, should have joined Leonardo in death. That would have been the proper thing to do. Even though I knew I would be resurrected somewhere else along the River, I could not stand up against him. I’m ashamed to say I was afraid of death, and of the pain he would administer before it.

Capone kept us on tight leashes after that. We never appeared alone in public, never spoke to anyone except on scientific projects, and then always under the close scrutiny of our guards. Capone wanted my pet project, the riverboat, completed as quickly as possible; I assume that’s why I had what little freedom I did. Most of the other technocrats were locked in their rooms, forced to work on blueprints for machines that others would fully execute in their absence.

The greater body of engineers and working scientists, I found out later, had deduced most of what had happened. Capone was a greedy pig. He renamed our little city New Chicago and began taxing everyone on their tobacco, marijuana, and dreamgum. Anyone who didn’t have a useful skill suddenly found himself drafted into a labor