The Fabulous Riverboat by Phillip Jose Farmer

“It still hurts. But I can walk without driving hot spikes in it every time I take a step.”

“I don’t like to see a man suffer,” Sam said. “So I suggest that you could avoid more suffering, if not downright pain, by leaving Parolando.” “Are you threatening me?”

“Not with any action from me. But there are plenty who may get so riled up they’ll run you out on a rail. Or take you down to The River and drown you. You’re upsetting everybody with your preachings. This state was founded with one main goal, the building of the Riverboat. Now, a man may say anything he wants to and not run foul of the law here. But there are those who sometimes ignore the law, and I wouldn’t want to have to punish them because you tempted them. I suggest that you do your Christian duty and remove yourself from the premises. That way, you won’t be tempting good men and women to commit violence.” “I’m not a Christian,” Goring said.

“I admire a man who can admit that. I don’t think I ever met a preacher who came out and said so, in so many words.”

“Sinjoro Clemens,” Goring said, “I read your books when I was a young man in Germany, first in German and then in English. But levity or mild irony aren’t going to get us any place. I am not a Christian, though I try to practice the better Christian virtues. I am a missionary for the Church of the Second Chance. All Terrestrial religions have been discredited, even if some won’t admit it. The Church is the first religion to rise on the new world, the only one which has any chance to survive. It—”

“Spare me the lecture,” Sam said. “I’ve heard enough from your predecessors and from you. What I’m saying, in utter friendliness and a desire to save you from harm and also, to be honest, to get you but of my craw, is that you should take off. Right now. Or you’ll be killed.”

“Then I’ll rise at dawn tomorrow somewhere else and preach The Truth there, wherever I find myself. You see, here, as on Earth, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church. The man who kills one of us only ensures that The Truth, the chance for eternal salvation, will be heard by more people. Murder has spread our faith up and down The River far faster than any conventional means of travel.”

“Congratulations,” Sam said exasperatedly, dropping into English, as he often did when angry. “But tell me, doesn’t the repeated killing of your missionaries bother you? Aren’t you afraid of running out of body?” “What do you mean?” “Tenets, anyone?”

Sam got no reaction except a puzzled look. Sam resumed in Esperanto. “One of your major tenets, if I remember correctly, is that Man wasn’t resurrected so he could enjoy life here forever. He is given only a limited time, though it may look like a long time to most, especially if they don’t happen to be enjoying life here. You postulate something analogous to a soul, something you call a psychomorph, right? Or sometimes a ka. You have to, otherwise you can’t claim a continuity of identity in a man. Without it a man who dies is dead, even if his body is reproduced exactly and made alive again. That second body is only a reproduction. The lazarus has the mind and the memories of the men who died, so he thinks he’s the man who died. But he isn’t. He’s just a living duplicate. Death terminated the first man. He’s through.

“But you solve this problem by postulating a soul—or a psychomorph or a ka—call it what you will. This is an entity which is born with the body, accompanies it, registers and records everything the body does and, indeed, must be an incorporeal incorporation of the body, if you’ll excuse that contradiction. So that, when the flesh dies, the ka still exists. It exists in some fourth dimension or in some polarization which protoplasmic eyes can’t see or mechanical devices can’t detect. Is that correct?”

“You’re close enough,” Goring said. “Crudely put but satisfactory.”