“He shouldn’t be loosed on people again,” Frigate said.
“He shouldn’t, perhaps, be loosed on himself, either,” Nur said. “But he will. What drives you just now is revenge. That’s understandable. But it’s not permitted, and there is a reason for that.”
“What’s the reason?”
“You know what it is,” Nur said. “Some of the most unredeemable people, unredeemable by all appearances, anyway, have saved themselves, become genuine human beings. Look at Goring. And I’m sure you’ll find others in your searches.”
“Standish died when he was thirty-three,” Frigate said. “Drunk, drove his car through a stoplight and smashed into another car broadside. I don’t know if he killed or hurt the others, but I could find out. I suppose that doesn’t matter. What does is that Standish never learned a thing, never repented, never blamed himself, never thought of changing himself. Never will.”
“I know you,” Nur said. “If you do this, you will suffer from guilt.”
“The Ethicals didn’t suffer from guilt. They knew that the time would come when people like Standish would have sentenced themselves to oblivion.”
“Your righteous indignation and wrath are clouding your mind. You have just uttered the reason why you shouldn’t interfere.”
“Yes, but … the Ethicals only gave us a certain amount of time. Who’s to say that, given a little more time than they’ve allowed, some might not have attained the goal? Maybe one more year, a month, a day, might have made the difference?”
“That was Loga’s reasoning, and he interfered with his fellow Ethicals’ plan, and events have gone astray. Perhaps we were wrong to have sided with Loga.”
“Now you’re arguing against yourself.”
Nur smiled and said, “I do a lot of that.”
“I don’t know,” Frigate said. “For the time being, Standish is locked up, as it were. He’s not hurting anybody. But when … if … the day comes that the eighteen billion are to be raised in The Valley again, I might dissolve him.”
“If anyone should do that, it’s the little girl. Ask her if she wants to do it.”
“I can’t. She died of a liver disease when she was about five.”
“Then she was raised on the Gardenworld. She may be one of the Agents locked in the recordings and so unattainable.”
Why am I doing this? Frigate asked himself. Other than the obvious. Do I get a feeling of power by holding that Yahoo’s fate in my hands? Do I like that sense of power? No, I never have liked power. I’m too aware of the responsibility that goes with power. Or should go with it. I’ve always tried to shun responsibility. Within reasonable limits, of course.
19
Others might be uncertain about whom they wanted to resurrect to populate their private worlds, but Thomas Million Turpin was not one of them. He wanted Scott Joplin, Louis Chauvin, James Scott, Sam Patterson, Otis Saunders, Artie Mathews, Eubie Blake, Joe Jordan. Lots of others, those whom he knew and loved in the ragtime days, great musicians all, though the greatest were Joplin and Chauvin. Tom could play the piano like an angel, but those two were three circles of Heaven above him, and he loved them.
The women? Most of those he’d known on Earth were whores, but some of them were easy to get along with and better to look at. When he’d been in The Valley, he’d fallen in love with a woman he’d never fallen out of love with, an ancient-Egyptian broad named Menti. Maybe she was filed away; if so, he could bring her back. It’d been thirteen years since he’d seen her, but she wasn’t going to forget him. She was a Caucasian, but she was darker than he was, and she wasn’t prejudiced against blacks. She was the daughter of a merchant in Memphis. Memphis, Egypt, not Tennessee. She … she’d be the first one he’d have the Computer look for.
He had even composed a ragtime tune for her, “My Egyptian Belle,” which he’d play for her after she got adjusted to this life.
Smack dab in the center of his world, Turpinville, would be his New Rosebud Cafe. It wouldn’t be the original, the square red-brick building at 2220 Market Street in the black red-light district of St. Louis. It’d be ten stories high, round, its walls of gold alloy, thick with diamonds and emeralds. The roof would be topped with a big gold alloy T. T for Turpin.