GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

“Allah! That won’t be necessary. I should have thought of this before. The Computer can be ordered not to make anyone fertile from now on. Why didn’t I think of that long ago? Time …”

“Time?” Alice said.

Nur waved his hand to dismiss the phrase.

“Then I see no reason to destroy the babies,” Alice said. “Surely they won’t be any problem.”

Nur sighed with relief, though he still looked troubled. Perhaps that was because he had been so slow in arriving at the very obvious solution.

He shook his head. “There’s a possibility I must check on at once. What if someone has given a command to the Computer that anybody who wants to become fertile can become so? That would be the prior command and the authoritative one. The only one who could override that would be Loga or the woman whom I killed … if I did kill her. Just a moment. I’ll check.”

Alice could have listened in on him, but she would never have done that unless he gave permission. A minute later, the screen before her glowed, and Nur’s face appeared. She knew at once what had happened from his angry expression.

“Someone has done just what I hoped would not be done. He … she … whoever … has made it possible for anyone who wants to become fertile to so so. The Computer would not tell me who gave it the command.”

“My God!” Alice said. Then, “Dick told me about that black man, Bill Williams, resurrecting Gull and the others. Do you suppose … ?”

“I don’t know. We’ll probably never find out. It’s possible that Wandal Goudal or Sarah Kelpin, one of the women having babies, did it. In any event …”

Though not very often at a loss for words, Nur was so now.

“Tom will have to be told,” she said. “Surely, he’ll do what must be done.”

“I’ll call him now,” Nur said.

She sat down to wait, thinking that she would hear from him in ten or fifteen minutes. However, the screen glowed on the control console in less than six minutes. She was surprised to see, not Nur’s, but Tom Turpin’s face. It was red under his dark skin, and his face was contorted.

“I’m contacting all of you!” he shouted.

You, she understood, would be the seven companions. But what was he doing in the central area forming the O at the tips of the pie-slice-shaped private worlds? And why were his favorite woman, Diamond Lil Schindler, his cronies, Chauvin, Joplin and other musicians, and their women there?

“OK! I see all of you there! Man, I’m mad! Mad, do you hear?”

Nur’s voice, quiet and soothing, came.

“Calm down, Tom. Tell us what happened.”

“They threw me out!” he screamed. “Overpowered my guards, grabbed me and my friends, and threw me out! They said I wasn’t King Tom no more! I was through! I couldn’t ever get back in! So long, goodbye, farewell, adieu, adios, motherfucker!”

“Who’s they?” Burton’s voice said. “Was Bill Williams the ringleader?”

“No, not him! He moved out two days ago into one of the empty worlds! It was Jonathan Hawley and Hamilton Biggs did it! They were the ringleaders, I mean!”

Alice had probably been introduced to the two, but she did not remember the names.

“Something like this was to be expected,” Nur said. “There’s little … nothing … you can do about it, Tom. Why don’t you move into one of the empty worlds? And be very careful the next time you select someone to bring in?”

“I can’t even do that!” Tom yelled. He raised his arms and brought them down violently, his hands slapping his thighs. “Can’t even do that! Williams is in one of them! The gypsies have taken over another! I know ’cause I saw them coming out of it! I can’t get into any of the other four! Somebody’s locked them with codewords! I don’t know who did it, but I think Hawley and Biggs did it! They’re holding them for excess population or whatever! Maybe they did it just out of spite!”

“It could be worse. They could have killed you,” Nur said.