Gods of Riverworld Read Online Free PDF Page B

violence.
    Having been cleared, for the moment, anyway, Burton left the cubicle and interrogated Nur. When the Moor appeared to be innocent, Alice seated herself. Burton forbore asking her if Loga’s death had given her any joy. He doubted that it had. But when she had time to consider what she might do with the powers here, she might understand why some of the others had felt, to their shame, elated.
    One by one, the others showed their innocence.
    “But Loga could have passed the test while lying like a diplomat,” Nur said. “It is possible that one of us has had access to his wathan distorter.”
    “I don’t think so,” Turpin said. “Ain’t none of us got the smarts to operate one of those. We ain’t smart enough to override Loga’s commands either. I think we’re wasting time, besides insulting all of us.”
    “If I interpret you correctly,” Nur said, “you’re saying that we’re not intelligent enough. That’s not true. We are. But we don’t have the knowledge we need.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I meant. We just don’t know enough.”
    “Three weeks is long enough for a diligent person to get the knowledge from the Computer,” Burton said.
    “No. The Computer ain’t going to tell anyone how to override Loga,” Turpin said. “I just don’t believe that that could be done.”
    “We could do a memory-strip of the past three weeks,” Frigate said. “It’ll take time, but it might be worth it.”
    “No!” Alice said vehemently. “No! I’d feel violated! It would be worse than rape! I won’t do it!”
    “I understand your feelings,” Nur said. “But…”
    The Computer could unreel their memories back to conception and display them on a screen. The process had its limits, since it could not reproduce nonvisual and nonauditory thoughts except as electronic displays, the interpretation of which was still uncertain. It was capable of transmitting tactile, olfactory and pressure memories. But, memory was selective and apparently erased many events that the individual considered unimportant. However, it did show clearly what the subject had seen, heard and spoken. On demand, emotion-pain fields could be projected.
    “I won’t want you seeing me when I went to the toilet,” Alice said.
    “None of us want that, for you or for ourselves,” Burton said, and he laughed. It sounded like a stone skipping across water. “All of us fart and belch and most have probably masturbated and picked our noses, and Marcelin and Aphra, I’m sure, would not care to have us see them in bed. But it’s not necessary to show everything. The Computer can be ordered to be selective, to display only the events we’re interested in. Everything else will be irrelevant and so will not be shown.”
    “It’s a waste of time,” Frigate said. “Anyone clever enough to do what the unknown did wouldn’t overlook the possibility of a memory-strip.”
    “I agree with you,” Burton said, “though I seldom do. But it is one of those routine things that have to be done. What if the guilty person—if there is one—had anticipated that we would think a memory-search was useless?”
    “He wouldn’t take such a chance,” Li Po said.
    “Nevertheless, I insist that we do it,” Burton said. “If we don’t, we’ll all be wondering about one another.”
    “We’ll still be wondering when it’s all done,” Frigate said sourly. “But if it must be.”
    The search could have been run simultaneously with each one in a separate cubicle, but who then would supervise each subject to make sure that he or she did not order the Computer to cancel the relevant events? Burton went first, and, after three hours, the time it took the Computer to strip three weeks of memory, he emerged. The screen had been blank during the entire strip.
    It was, as expected, empty while the others underwent the search.
    Twenty-five hours passed before the last one, Li Po, stepped out of the cubicle. Long before then, others had drifted off