The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

But they felt that the gods (in Akhenaten’s view. The God) had provided for them. A path had been prepared for them, though it had not been an easy one. The road to immortality had never been easy, and only the virtuous and hardy would traverse it. Perhaps Djehuti had sinned in some way and so had been hurled from the ledge by the gods.

There were diagrams, how-to-do-it sketches using signs, in the boats. They studied these and then carried one of the large boats through the tunnel. It could hold thirty people, but four people could lift it easily or one strong man could drag it. It was shoved under the ledge into the sea, which was moderately rough, and the party got into it. There was a small control board by the wheel. Though he was a Pharaoh and so above work of any kind, Akhenaten neverthe­less took over the controls. Following the diagrammed instructions, he punched a button on the board. A screen lit up, and a bright orange outline of the tower appeared on it. He punched another button, and the boat moved of its own accord outward into the sea.

Everybody was scared, of course, though their leader did not show it. Yet they felt that they were in the right place and were welcome-in a sense. The boat they likened to the barge in which, in their religion, the dead journeyed across the waters of the Other World, Amenti.

(Amenti comes from Ament, a goddess whose name meant “the Westerner.” She wore a feather, as did the Libyans, the people to the west of Egypt. She may have been a Libyan goddess borrowed by the Egyptians. A feather was also the sign or hieroglyph for the word “Western.” In later times, “the West” meant the Land of the Dead, and Ament became the goddess of the country of the dead. She it was who welcomed them at the gate of the Other World. She proffered them bread and water and, if they ate it, they became “friends of the gods.”)

Naturally, the food they’d found in the cave reminded them of this, just as the boat was an analog of the barge used by the dead in the Other World. The Egyptians, like many people, had been upset, not to mention outraged, when they woke from death upon The Riverworld. This was not what the priests had said would happen to them after death. Yet, there were parallels here, physical analogs, to the promised land. Also, that there was a River was comforting. They had always been a riparian folk, living close to the Nile. And now they had been guided by a divine being to the heart of the Other World.

They wondered if they should have named the giant subhuman Anubis instead of Djehuti. Anubis was the jackal-headed god who conducted the dead in the Underworld to the Double Palace of Osiris, the Judger, the Weigher of Souls. Still, Djehuti was the spokesman of the gods and the keeper of their records. Sometimes, he took the shape of a dog-headed ape. Considering their compan­ion’s features and his hairiness, he did look like that avatar of Djehuti.

Note: These two aspects of Thoth (Djehuti) indicate that there may have been a fusion of two different gods in early times.

This world did have some similarities to the Other World. Now that they were in the Abode of Osiris, the similarities were even more striking. The Riverworld could be that country between the world of the living and the dead vaguely described by the Priests. The priests had told confusing, contradictory stories. Only the gods knew the full truth.

Whatever the truth was, it would soon be found. The tower didn’t look like their picture of the Double Hall of Justice, but perhaps the gods had changed things. The Riverworld was a place of constant change, a reflection of the state of mind of the gods themselves.

Akhenaten turned the wheel so that the orange tower was bisected by the vertical line splitting the screen. At times, just to reassure himself that he had control of the speed, he would squeeze the bulb fixed to the right side of the steering wheel. The boat’s speed would increase or decrease according to the force of the squeezing.