Nured-Din el-Musafir: Born in Moorish Spain in 1164, died in Baghdad 1258. A Muslim, though not orthodox, and a Sufi, a member of that mystical yet realistic discipline to which Omar Khayyam belonged.
Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcelln, Baron de Marbot: Born 1782 in France, died there in 1854. Like Nur, small in stature but very strong and swift. He served very bravely under Napoleon and was wounded many times. His Memoirs of His Life and Campaigns so fascinated A. Conan Doyle that he modeled his stories of Brigadier Gerard, the dashing French soldier, on de Marbot’s exploits.
Tom Million Turpin: Black American born in 1871 in Savannah, Georgia; died in 1922 in St. Louis. Turpin was a piano player and composer of considerable talent; his Harlem Rag, published in 1897, was the first published ragtime piece by a black composer. He was also the boss of the Tenderloin red-light district in St. Louis.
Li Po: Born in 710 of Turkish-Chinese lineage in an outlying district of ancient China; died in 762 in China. Considered by many to be China’s greatest poet, he was also a famous swordsman, drunkard, lover, and wanderer. In The Magic Labyrinth, his pseudonym was Tai-Peng.
Star Spoon: A female contemporary of Li Po, who suffered much both in China and on the Riverworld.
The Earthbred and their fates are Yours
In all their stations, Their multitudinous languages and many colors
Are Yours, and we whom from the many You made different, O Master of the Choice.
—ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HYMN
And hell is more than half of paradise.
—edwin arlington robinson, “luke havekgal”
When Moses struck the rock, he forgot to stand out of the way of the water and so barely escaped drowning.
—THE BOOK OF JASHAR
1
Loga had cracked like an egg.
At 10:02, his image had appeared on the wall-screens of the apartments of his eight fellow tenants. Their view was somewhat above him, and they could see him only from his naked navel to a point a few inches above his head. The sides of the desk almost met the edges of their field of vision, and some of the wall and floor behind him showed.
Loga looked like a red-haired, green-eyed Buddha who had lived for years in an ice cream factory and had been unable to resist its product. Though he had lost twenty pounds in the last three weeks, he was still very fat.
He was, however, a very happy Buddha. Smiling, his pumpkin face seeming to glow, he spoke in Esperanto. “I’ve made quite a discovery! It’ll solve the problem of …”
He glanced to his right.
“Sorry. Thought I heard something.”
“You and Frigate,” Burton said. “You’re getting paranoid. We’ve searched every one of the thirty-five thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three rooms in the tower, and …”
The screens flickered. Loga’s body and face shimmered, elongated, then dwarfed. The interruption lasted for perhaps five seconds.’ Burton was surprised. This was the first time that any screen had displayed interference or malfunction.
The image steadied and became clear.
“Yaas?” Burton drawled. “What’s so exciting?”
The electronic vision blinked into enigma.
Burton started, and he clamped his hands on the arms of his chair. They were a hold on reality. What he was seeing certainly seemed to be unreal.
Zigzag cracks had run from the corners of Loga’s lips and curved up over his cheeks and into his hair. They were deep and seemed to go through his skin and the flesh to the mouth cavity and the bone.
Burton shot up from his chair.
“Loga! What is it?”
Cracks had now spread down across the Ethical’s face, chest, bulging belly, arms and hands.
Blood spurted onto his crazing skin and the desk.
Still smiling, he fell apart like a shattered egg, and he toppled sideways to the right from the armless chair. Burton heard a sound as of glass breaking. Now all he could see of Loga was the upper part of an arm, the fragments stained as if they were pieces of a broken bottle of wine.
The flesh and the blood melted. Only bright pools were left.
Burton had become rigid, but, when he heard Loga cry out, he jumped.
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