GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

“Ah!” Burton said, as if he suddenly understood much that had been hidden before.

“Ah?”

“Yes. I located the file of the historical Jesus Christ several days ago,” Burton said.

“Me, too!” Frigate said.

“Then you know that he was resurrected on the River, died several times, the last time twenty years ago. And he, too, has Gone On now. But, apparently, Buddha was more ethically advanced than Jesus.”

“Buddha had a much longer life on Earth than Jesus,” Frigate said.

“I am attacking no one, only pointing out a fact.”

“I located St. Francis of Assisi,” Frigate said. “He was raised on the River, but when he died ten years ago, he Went On.”

“How many popes and cardinals, how many high churchmen of any faith have Gone On?” Aphra Behn said.

“None,” Frigate said. “None so far as I’ve determined, I mean. I haven’t located all. Rather, the Computer hasn’t. I put it on a scan. It’s located all but twelve of the popes …”

“Including the first one, St. Peter?” Burton said.

“He wasn’t the first pope, he was the first bishop of Rome. Technically speaking, that is.”

“Ah, then he really was in Rome?”

“Yes, he was executed by the Romans there. But … he’s still on The River. He’s died three times and still has not Gone On.”

“So,” Burton said, “we could resurrect him and get the truth about Jesus and Christianity. That is, the truth as he knows it, which may not be the objective truth.”

“Jesus’ records are still on tap,” Frigate said. “His wathan is gone, but his life is still there to be run off.”

“St. Paul?”

“Ah, St. Paul!” Frigate cried, smiling. “First, he was a fanatical Orthodox Judaist, then a fanatical Christian, probably did more to pervert the course of the founder’s teachings than anyone, and now he is a fanatical member of the Church of the Second Chance. Rather, I should say, he was. The Church wants zealots but not fanatics, and so it recently kicked him out. He is now interested in the teachings of the Dowists,”

“The Dowists?”

“Tell you about them some other time. Paul is alive on The River. I located him and I watched him for a while. Ugly little fellow”, but a powerful speaker. He’s no longer celibate; he decided that he is burning and wants a woman to quench the flame.”

Frigate showed them three men he had located because of their undeniable evil and vast prominence in his time. Burton had heard of them while in The Valley but had known little about them until now. Adolf Hitler was born the year before Burton had died, Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, was born eleven years before Burton’s death, and Mao Tse-tung was born three years after 1890.

“They’re locked up in the files now,” Frigate said. “I’ve not had much time to look at their post-Earth lives, but I’ve seen enough to be sure that they did not change for the better. Their natures are still essentially like Ivan the Terrible’s. Whom, by the way, I’ve also located.”

Nur said, “You believe that there is no hope for them, that they will never change for the better?”

“Yes. It looks that way, anyway. They were and are evil, sadistic and cold-blooded killers, mass butchers, without love. Psychopathic.”

“But Loga said that there were no true psychopaths on the Riverworld. He said that true psychopaths were so because of chemical imbalances in their bodies. These imbalances, these deficiencies, were eliminated when the bodies were resurrected.”

Frigate shrugged and said, “Yes, I know. So … what is their excuse now? They have none; they have chosen their attitudes through their own free will. They and they alone are responsible.”

“That may be,” Nur said, “but it is not up to you to destroy them, to cut their allotted time short. Who knows? They might, at the very last moment, undergo a radical change of character. See the light, as it were. Remember Goring.”

“Goring started suffering remorse and guilt years ago. These … creatures … Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ivan the Terrible … are still ready … eager, in fact … to kill anyone who stands in their way. Which way, by the way, is a steady advancement toward power, supreme power, the power to dominate and control others and crush all who oppose them. Or who they think oppose them. They’re all genuinely paranoiac, you know. Though they strive to shape reality, and often do, they’re not connected with reality. I mean that they don’t truly perceive things as they are. They’re driven by their lust to shape reality into what they think it is or should be.”