“Everybody except Goodwill Industries was after my ass, and I wasn’t too sure about them.”
“And what have you learned from these, ah, Candidean experiences?”
“You sound like Nur.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Sure,” Williams said. “I know everybody here. Very well.”
“Yes, but what was the lesson?” Burton said.
“That I’d been the plaything of life but I wasn’t going to be any more. I made sure of that on The River, I fought for power and I got it. If I was in a situation where I was the underdog, I became the overdog as soon as possible. I was tired of being kicked around, the one who got shafted. So …”
“Nobody’s victimizing you here, am I correct?” Burton said. He rose from his chair.
“And nobody’s going to.”
Williams smiled, his expression a curious blend of amusement and malice.
“Just sit down for a minute. Then you can go. Hasn’t something been perplexing you for these past two weeks? Something you just can’t account for?”
Burton frowned and said slowly, “I can’t recall anything.”
His forehead cleared. “Unless … yes, I have been wondering … but you couldn’t have had anything to do with it … I have been wondering who resurrected Netley, Gull, Crook, Stride and Kelly.”
“You mean those involved in the Jack-the-Ripper case?”
Burton was startled but tried not to show it. “How do you know who they are?”
“Oh, / was watching you watch their memory files.”
Burton reared from the chair, his face red and contorted.
“Damn you, you’ve been spying on me! Why do you think you have the right …?”
Williams, still smiling, though his eyes were narrowed, rose from his chair.
“Hold it right there! If you think it’s OK to spy on others, why shouldn’t others spy on you? Don’t throw stones in a glass house, my friend.”
Burton was speechless for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a vast difference. I observed the dead. You’re spying on the living, your neighbors!”
“You didn’t observe the living from the grailstones along the River?”
“You soiled my privacy!”
“You can’t soil the soiled,” Williams said. He was still smiling, but his body stance showed that he was ready to repel attack.
“Very well,” Burton said. “You still haven’t told me why you took it on yourself to raise those pathological murderers.”
“They were, but they aren’t. The reason I did … I’m a collector and a student of religious types. I got interested on Earth, I had much experience with them, you know. The Marxists … they’re religious, though they’d deny it, the Black Muslims, the Salvation Army, the Buddhists, the Southern Methodists, you know how many of them I became involved with. I am religious, too, though not in a conventional sense. I am the one who raised the New Christians and the Nichirenites and the Second Chancers who live in Turpinville, and I raised Gull the Dowist. I left it to him to resurrect his fellows, which he did. I have plans for bringing others in.”
Burton did not know whether or not to believe him- He snorted and strode out of the room. Williams called, “Don’t go away mad, Sir Richard!” and he laughed uproariously.
27
On his way to the elevator, Burton looked back down the hall. Williams was going down the steps, apparently to join the crowd of revelers in the vestibule. The man looked up and waved at him through the railing uprights. He was grinning as if he had been enjoying himself hugely. Had Williams been telling him the truth or had he been fantasizing? The Riverworld was a place where men and women should no longer have reason to lie. They had been delivered from the societies and institutions that had forced them, or made them think they were forced, to form protective self and public images. But most of them seemed unaware of that or found it hard to discard old and unnecessary habits.
However, climbing the steps was a good idea. He needed the exercise. He turned the corner, passing by the elevator, and strode down the long hallway toward the stairway. The music and voices that he had faintly heard in the other hall faded away. The only sound was that of his footsteps. But, as he passed the door of the room next to the stairwell, he thought he heard a scream. He stopped. It had not been loud. So faint was it, he might have imagined it. No! There it was again, and it seemed to come through the door.
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