GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

Burton took the note and held it close to his chest, his left hand partly covering it. He read: How long must I wait before you tell me your plans?

Burton wrote with a pen taken from the container on the side of his chair.

Some time this evening.

De Marbot read it and smiled. “I will have something to look forward to,” he murmured.

He tore the note into tiny pieces, placed them on the floor, and ignited them with his beamer ray. He ground the ashes with the toe of his sandal and blew them away.

They waited, and presently a recess in the wall opened and a wheeled, jointed, cylindrical machine rolled out. It headed for the ashes, a scoop-like extension sliding out from its front. It sprayed the dirty area with a liquid that quickly dried into many tiny balls and then sucked the spheres onto the scoop and into an opening. A minute later, it had retreated into the cavity from which it had come, and the recess closed.

De Marbot spat on the floor just to see the robot in action again. As it rolled back to its lair after its cleanup job, the Frenchman kicked it. Unperturbed, the machine disappeared into the cavity.

“Really, I prefer the protein-and-bone robots, the androids,” de Marbot said. “These mechanical things, they give me the shivers.”

“It’s the flesh-and-blood ones that disturb me,” Burton said.

“Ah, yes, if one kicks them, not out of a desire to hurt, you comprehend, but a desire to evoke an emotion, one knows that, since they’re of flesh and blood, they do hurt. But they do not resent the insult or the injury, and that makes them nonhuman. Still, one does not have to pay them wages, and one knows that they will not go on strike.”

“It’s their eyes I don’t like,” Burton said.

De Marbot laughed.

“They look no deader than the eyes of my Hussars at the end of a long campaign. You are reading into them a lack of life that does not exist. The lack, I mean. You know that they are brainless, rather, to be exact, use only a tiny portion of their brains. But one can say that of certain humans we have met.”

“One could say a lot,” Burton said. “Shall we join the others?”

De Marbot glanced at his wristwatch. “An hour until supper. Perhaps I may be able to make Aphra jolly again. There is nothing that upsets one’s digestion like a sullen companion at the table.”

“Tell her that she’ll be in on the next phase of the project,” Burton said. “She’ll brighten up then. But don’t tell her what we did unless you use this.”

He indicated the notebook.

De Marbot grimaced and said, “That one, the watcher, must be wondering what we’re up to. How can we hide anything from him? One can’t fart without his knowing about it.”

Burton grinned and said, “Perhaps we’ll make him fill his pants. In a manner of speaking.”

The eight had agreed that each would take turns hosting the others. Tonight was Alice’s, and she greeted them wearing a long, very lowcut, Lincoln-green evening gown of the style of 1890. Burton doubted that she was also wearing the numerous undergarments of that period. She was too accustomed to the comfortable cool clothes of the Rivervalley, a towel serving as a short skirt and a thin, light cloth serving as a bra. She did have elegant green high-heeled shoes on, and silk stockings, though the latter probably did not reach to her knees. Her jewelry, provided by an e-m converter, was an emerald set in a gold ring, small gold earrings, each with a single large emerald, and a string of pearls.

“You look lovely,” he said as he bowed and kissed her hand. “Eighteen-ninety, heh? The year of my death. Are you trying to tell me in a subtle manner that you are celebrating that occasion?”

“If I am, I am doing so unconsciously,” she said. “Let’s not have any wisecracks, right?”

“Wisecrack. Nineteen thirty-four word,” Frigate said to Alice. “The year of your first death.”

“The only one, thank God,” she said. “Must we speak of the Grim Reaper?”