Gods of Riverworld Read Online Free PDF

think,” Burton said, “only three weeks ago we thought that our long hard struggle was over. That all the big issues were dissolved and our only problems from then on would be personal.”
    Nur did not reply.
    “Very well. What we must do first is to subject each of us to a truth test. We can’t proceed on the assumption that there is an unknown until we’ve eliminated all of our group.”
    “They won’t like it,” Nur said.
    “But it’s logical that we do it.”
    “Humans don’t like logic when it’s inconvenient or dangerous for them,” Nur said. “However, they’ll submit to the test. They have to to avoid suspicion.”

4
    If not telling a lie was the same as telling the truth, the results of the test were positive. If telling a lie could result in an indication that the truth was being told, the results were negative.
    Whether the indications were true or not, the eight seemed to be innocent.
    Each sat in turn inside a closed transparent cubicle and answered questions from Burton or Nur. The field generated inside the cubicle showed the wathan floating just above the head of the questionee and attached to it by a thread of bright scarlet light. The wathan was a sphere that swelled and shrank, whirled or seemed to whirl, and flashed a spectrum of glowing colors. This was the invisible thing that accompanied every person from the moment of conception and did not leave him or her until that person was dead. It contained all that was a person, duplicating the contents of the mind and nervous system and also giving him or her self-consciousness.
    Burton had taken the first test, and Nur had asked him several questions to which he had to give an answer he believed to be true.
    “Were you born in Torquay, England, on March 19, 1821?”
    “Yes,” Burton said, and the Computer photographed his wathan at that second.
    “When and where did you die the first time?”
    “On Sunday, October 19, 1890, in my house in Trieste, that part of Italy then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
    The Computer took another photograph and compared the two. It then compared these two to others that had been taken many years ago when Burton had been questioned by the Council of Twelve.
    Nur looked at the flashing display on a screen and said, “The truth. As you know it.”
    That was one of the deficiencies of the test. If a person believed that he was telling the truth, the wathan indicated that he was.
    “That is the truth,” Frigate said. “I read those dates many times when I was on Earth.”
    “Have you ever lied?” Nur said.
    Burton, grinning, said, “No.”
    A narrow black zigzag shot over the surface of the wathan.
    “The subject lies,” Nur told the Computer.
    On the screen appeared: PREVIOUSLY VERIFIED .
    “Have you ever lied?” Nur said again.
    “Yes.”
    The black lightning streak disappeared.
    “Did you make Loga vanish?”
    “No.”
    “Were you implicated with anyone in Loga’s destruction?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “That’s the truth, as far as you know it,” Nur said after glancing at the screen. “Do you have any knowledge about anyone who might have made Loga vanish?”
    “No.”
    “Are you glad that Loga did vanish?”
    Burton said, “What the hell?”
    He could see the image of his wathan on a screen. It was glowing with orange overlaying the other shifting colors.
    “You shouldn’t have asked that!” Aphra Behn said.
    “Yes, you devil, you had no right!” Burton said. “Nur, you’re a scoundrel, like all Sufis!”
    “You were glad,” Nur said calmly. “I suspected so. I also suspect that most of us were. I was not, but I will allow the same question to be put to me. It may be that I, too, was glad, though deep in my animal mind.”
    “The subconscious,” Frigate murmured.
    “Whatever it is called, it is the same. The animal mind.”
    “Why should anyone be glad?” Alice said.
    “Don’t you really know?” Burton shouted.
    Alice recoiled at the