GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

The scan moved into Level 60 and raced up and down the corridors and into the rooms along them. It came to a corridor the inner wall of which formed a side of the wathan well. Here, he knew, was where an observer could see the surface of the mass of wathans.

He cried out, “Stop!”

He stared at the curving transparent wall of the shaft.

The beautiful, bright, many-colored, swelling, shrinking and whirling entities called wathans were gone. The well was empty and dark.

34

Peter Frigate was the first to enter the room. He stopped, and he looked at Burton, at the beamer on the table, and at the half-opened door to the corridor. “What’s going on?”

Li Po came in just as Burton opened his mouth to answer Frigate. Burton said, “Have some coffee first, Pete.”

“How are you, Dick?” the Chinese said.

“I’ve been up most of the night. Working.”

Li Po also glanced at the weapon and the door. He raised his eyebrows but did not comment. Frigate, after pouring out coffee from a pot on the table, said, “You look awful. The dark circles around your eyes … you look like a debauched raccoon. What’ve you been doing?”

“I feel more than awful,” Burton said slowly. “I feel … how would you feel if you knew that the end of the world was near? Or perhaps I should say that the world has ended—for all practical purposes.”

Frigate drank the whole cup of very hot coffee without flinching. He said, “The end of the world happens every second.”

Burton did not know what he meant and did not think it worthwhile to find out. In any event, Frigate’s words were just a means for putting off the bad news.

Li Po took a sip of coffee and said, “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps I should wait until everybody’s here. I don’t like to repeat.”

“Sure you don’t,” Frigate said. “Let’s hear it.”

Burton told them that the wathan enclosure was empty.

Li Po and Frigate paled but said nothing.

“I checked the body-records then,” Burton said. “I had to force myself to do it because I didn’t want to know what had been done to them, although, of course, I already knew. But it needed doing, and so I did it.”

“And they … they …” Frigate said, choking.

“They had all been erased. All thirty-five billion six hundred and forty-six million plus. No exceptions. All. And no wathans have come in since I made the discovery.”

Li Po sat down. “I’ve had too many shocks lately.”

After a long while, Frigate said, “So … when we die, we die for the last time.”

“Quite.”

After another long silence—only a supercatastrophe could have kept Li Po’s mouth shut so long, Burton thought—Frigate poured brandy into a half-full cup of coffee and downed all of the steaming liquid. Li Po looked as if he would like to do the same, half-rose, shook his head, and sank back into the chair. This was the first time Burton had ever seen him reject a drink.

The brandy had restored some of the American’s color. He drank more, straight this time, and said, “The Snark has overridden that automatic function … I mean, no bodies will be recorded from now on?”

“Right.”

“But if we can survive until the Gardenworlders get here, we can be recorded again. Otherwise, we, too, will lose our chance for immortality forever.”

“Of course,” Burton said. “But when they get here, our time will be up anyway. If we’re not ready to Go On, our records will be erased. And if we’re not, we’ll be erased.”

He got up and poured himself more coffee, looked at the brandy bottle, and decided against it. “I immediately asked the Computer about that. I was shocked, of course, and I cursed myself, railed against the fates, if you must know, because as soon as we got here from Alice’s, I commanded the Computer to refuse to erase any body-records. I was forestalling that. But I was too late. I did not know that then because the Computer, the idiot, did not tell me that my command was too late. It should have, but the Snark had told it not to display that data unless it was asked for it.”