He also had some suspicions that Firebrass had been one or the other. And perhaps the woman who’d died in the explosion of the helicopter, Anna Obrenova, had been an Ethical or agent.
Sam had concluded from his examination of all available evidence that something had long ago stranded a number of agents and perhaps some Ethicals in The Valley. X was probably one of them. Which meant that agents and Ethicals would have to use the same means as the Valley-dwellers to get to the tower. Which meant that there were probably some disguised agents or Ethicals or both on his boat. Which meant that there were probably also some on the Rex.
Just why the Ethicals and agents hadn’t been able to use their aircraft to return to the tower, he didn’t know.
By now he’d reasoned that anyone who claimed to have lived after A.D. 1983 was one of the beings responsible for the Riverworld. It was his idea that the post-1983 story was false and was a code which enabled them to recognize each other.
He also reasoned that some of them might have figured that X’s recruits suspected this story-code. Therefore, they would be dropping that story.
Clemens said to the woman, “The airship was supposed to be a scout, to find out the lay of the land. Its captain was under orders, however, to get into the tower if it was possible. Then he was to return to the boat and pick up myself and some others. But no one but a Sufi philosopher named Piscator could get in, and he didn’t come back out. On the way back, its captain, a woman named Jill Gulbirra, who took over when Firebrass was killed, sent a raiding expedition in a copter against the Rex. King John was captured, but he escaped by jumping from the copter. I don’t know whether or not he survived. The aircraft flew back to the Parseval and continued on its course to the Not For Hire. Then Gulbirra reported sighting a very large balloon and was heading for it when Thorn got loose again. He flew off in a copter. Gulbirra, suspecting he’d planted a bomb, searched for it. None was found, but she couldn’t take a chance that there wasn’t one. She dived the dirigible toward the ground. She wanted to get her crew off just in case there was a bomb.
“Then she reported that there was an explosion. That was the last we heard from the Parseval.”
The woman said, “We’ve heard rumors that it crashed many thousands of miles up-River. There was only one survivor.”
“Only one! My God, who was he? Or she?”
“I don’t know his name. But I heard that he was a Frenchman.”
Sam groaned. There was just one Frenchman on the airship. Cyrano de Bergerac, with whom Sam’s wife had fallen in love. Of all the crew, he was the only one whom Sam would not have sorrowed over.
6
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN SAM SAW THE STRANGE BEING who was even more grotesque than Joe Miller. Joe was at least human, but this person had obviously not been born on Earth.
Sam knew at once that the being had to be one of the small group from a planet of Tau Ceti. His informant, the late Baron John de Grey stock, had known one of them. According to his story, the Tau Cetans, in the early twenty-first century, had put into orbit a smaller vessel around Earth before descending in the great mothership to the surface. They’d been welcomed, but then one of them, Monat, had said on a TV talk show that the Cetans had the means for extending their lives to centuries. The Earthpeople had demanded that this knowledge be given them. When the Cetans had refused, saying that the Terrestrials would abuse the gift of longevity, mobs had lynched most of the Cetans and then stormed the spaceship. Reluctantly, Monat had activated a scanner on the satellite, and this had projected a beam which killed most of the human life on Earth. At least, Monat thought it would do so. He didn’t see the results of his action. He, too, was torn apart by the mob.