Philip Jose Farmer - Gods of Riverworld (Riverworld Saga, Book 5)

The author gratefully acknowledges permission from Charles Scribner's Sons to reprint a line from "Luke Havergal" from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897).

To those who won't knuckle under.

Those who have not read the previous volumes of the River-world series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Fabulous Riverboat, The Dark Design, and The Magic Labyrinth, should go to the outline at the back of this book. There the reader can acquaint himself or herself with some events and items only referred to en passant in the book at hand. I have written the outline to avoid lengthy recapitulation. Those familiar with the series so far might also want to read the outline to refresh their memories about certain matters.

I stated in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth, that it would be the final book in the series. I had intended it to be so, but I did leave myself a tiny escape hatch in the final paragraph. My unconscious knew better than my conscious, and it made me (the devil!) install that little door. Some time after the fourth volume appeared, I got to thinking about the vast powers possessed by the people who had entered the tower and how tempting the powers would be.

Also, as 1 knew and some readers pointed out, the truths revealed in the fourth volume might not be the final truths after all.

The opinions and conclusions about economics, ideology, politics, sexuality, and other matters re Homo sapiens vary according to the characters' knowledge or biases. They are not necessarily my own. I am convinced that all races have an equal mental potential and that the same spectrum of stupidity, mediocre intelligence, and genius runs through every race. All races, I'm convinced, have an equal potential for evil or good, love or hate, and saintliness or sin. I'm also convinced from sixty years of wide reading and close observation that human life has always been both savage and comically absurd but that we are not a totally unredeemable species.

Thirty-five billion people from every country and every age of Earth's history were resurrected along the great and winding River of Riverworld. The reader will be relieved to hear that only a few of them will play a part in this story.

Logo: A grandson of King Priam of ancient Troy, born in the twelfth century b.c., slain at the age of four by a Greek soldier during the fall of that city. Resurrected on the Garden-world by nonhuman extra-Terrestrials and raised there. He became a member of the Ethical Council of Twelve, which was charged with creating Riverworld and resurrecting there all human beings who had died between 99,000 b.c. and a.d. 1983. He became a renegade and involved various Terrestrial resurrectees in his plot to overthrow the other Ethicals and their Agents and to subvert the original plan for the destiny of those reborn in Riverworld.

Richard Francis Burton: An Englishman, born in 1821, died in 1890. During his lifetime a cause celebre and bete noire. A famous explorer, linguist, anthropologist, translator, poet, author, and swordsman. He discovered Lake Tanganyika; entered the Muslim sacred city of Mecca in disguise (and from the experience wrote the best book ever written about Mecca); did the most famous translation of A Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), full of footnotes and e'ssays derived from his vast knowledge of the esoterics of African and Oriental life; was noted as one of the greatest swordsmen of his day; and was the first European to enter the forbidden city of Harar, Ethiopiaand leave alive.

Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves: Born in England in 1852, died there in 1934. Daughter of Henry George Liddell, domestic chaplain to the Prince Consort, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, dean of Christ Church,'Oxford, and co-editor of the famous Scott-Liddell A Greek-English Lexicon, which is still today the standard Classical Greek-English dictionary. When ten years old, Alice inspired Lewis Carroll to write his Alice in Wonderland and to base his fictional Alice on her.

Peter Jairus Frigate: An American science fiction writer, born 1918, died 1983.

AphraBehn: An Englishwoman, born 1640, died 1689. She was a spy for Charles II in the Netherlands, and later a famousor infamousnovelist, poetess, and playwright. The first English woman to support herself solely by writing.

Nured-Din el-Musafir: Born in Moorish Spain in 1164, died in Baghdad 1258. A Muslim, though not orthodox, and a Sufi, a member of that mystical yet realistic discipline to which Omar Khayyam belonged.

Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcelln, Baron de Marbot: Born 1782 in France, died there in 1854. Like Nur, small in stature but very strong and swift. He served very bravely under Napoleon and was wounded many times. His Memoirs of His Life and Campaigns so fascinated A. Conan Doyle that he modeled his stories of Brigadier Gerard, the dashing French soldier, on de Marbot's exploits.

Tom Million Turpin: Black American born in 1871 in Savannah, Georgia; died in 1922 in St. Louis. Turpin was a piano player and composer of considerable talent; his Harlem Rag, published in 1897, was the first published ragtime piece by a black composer. He was also the boss of the Tenderloin red-light district in St. Louis.

Li Po: Born in 710 of Turkish-Chinese lineage in an outlying district of ancient China; died in 762 in China. Considered by many to be China's greatest poet, he was also a famous swordsman, drunkard, lover, and wanderer. In The Magic Labyrinth, his pseudonym was Tai-Peng.

Star Spoon: A female contemporary of Li Po, who suffered much both in China and on the Riverworld.

The Earthbred and their fates are Yours
In all their stations, Their multitudinous languages and many colors
Are Yours, and we whom from the many You made different, O Master of the Choice.
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HYMN

And hell is more than half of paradise.
Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Luke Havekgal"

When Moses struck the rock, he forgot to stand out of the way of the water and so barely escaped drowning.
THE BOOK OF JASHAR

Loga had cracked like an egg.

At 10:02, his image had appeared on the wall-screens of the apartments of his eight fellow tenants. Their view was somewhat above him, and they could see him only from his naked navel to a point a few inches above his head. The sides of the desk almost met the edges of their field of vision, and some of the wall and floor behind him showed.

Loga looked like a red-haired, green-eyed Buddha who had lived for years in an ice cream factory and had been unable to resist its product. Though he had lost twenty pounds in the last three weeks, he was still very fat.

He was, however, a very happy Buddha. Smiling, his pumpkin face seeming to glow, he spoke in Esperanto. "I've made quite a discovery! It'll solve the problem of ..."

He glanced to his right.

"Sorry. Thought I heard something."

"You and Frigate," Burton said. "You're getting paranoid. We've searched every one of the thirty-five thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three rooms in the tower, and ..."

The screens flickered. Loga's body and face shimmered, elongated, then dwarfed. The interruption lasted for perhaps five seconds.' Burton was surprised. This was the first time that any screen had displayed interference or malfunction.

The image steadied and became clear.

"Yaas?" Burton drawled. "What's so exciting?"

The electronic vision blinked into enigma.