"Why would he lie?" de Marbot said.
"Because..." Here Sam pointed his cigar at the arabesques. "He knew that we might get caught by the other Ethicals. And they might get from us this false information. Then they'd be confused and even more alarmed. What? Two traitors in their midst? Holy smoke! And if they put us to some sort of lie-detector, they'd see that we weren't lying. After all, we believed what Qdysseus told us. What X told us, I should say. It was just his way of confusing the issue still further! There! What do you think of that?"
There was a short silence, then Cyrano said. "But if that is true, we have seen the Ethical! And we know what he looks like!"
"Not necessarily true," Gwenafra said. "He surely must have numerous aids for disguise."
"Undoubtedly," Cyrano said. "But can he change his height and his physique? Hair and eye color perhaps and some other things. But not..."
"I think we may take it that he's short and has a very muscular body," Clemens said. "But so have several billion other men. What we've done is to eliminate the possibility that there's a female Ethical who's also a renegade. At least, I believe so."
"Mought be," Johnston said, "that he was an agent who found out that we'd been contacted by X, and he was trying to confuse us."
"I don't think so," Sam said. "If he was an agent who'd known that much, we'd have had the Ethicals on us faster than a wardman would sell his mother to gain a few votes. No. That Odysseus was Mr. X."
"But," Gwenafra said, "that... that takes us deeper than that. What about Gulbirra's description of Barry Thorn? He resembled Odysseus in some respects. Could he have been X? And what about that so-called German, Stern, who tried to kill Firebrass? What was he? If he was an agent, he would've been Firebrass' colleague. After all, we think Firebrass was an agent, and he was blown up by X so that he couldn't get into the tower ahead of him. Firebrass lied to us when he told us he was one of X's recruits. He..."
"No," Cyrano said. "I mean, yes. He seems to have been an agent of the other Ethicals. But if he knew so much about us, why didn't he inform the Ethicals and bring them down on our necks?"
"Because," Sam said, "for some reason, he couldn't tell the Ethicals. I think that was because about then the big troubles started in the tower. Why or how, I don't know. But it seems to me that about the time Odysseus disappeared, rather, X vanished, that the whole project of the Ethicals went shebang. We didn't notice it at the time, but it was shortly thereafter that the resurrections ceased. It wasn't until the Not For Hire was some distance on its way that we began getting reports that the resurrections had stopped. When we were in Parolando, we noticed it but thought it was just a local phenomenon."
"Hmm," Cyrano said, "I wonder if that Hermann Goring fellow, the missionary killed by Hacking's men, was resurrected? He was a strange one, that."
"He was a troublemaker, that one," Sam said. "Anyway, maybe Firebrass did tell the Ethicals that he'd gotten hold of some of X's recruits. But the Ethicals told him they wouldn't do anything about it for a while. Firebrass was to learn all he could from us before they moved in. He would also tell them if he saw anybody who looked like X so they could jump him then and there. Who knows? But...I wonder if Firebrass planted any bugs on us so he'd know when X came to visit us again. Only, he never did."
Cyrano said, "I believe that he, X, got stranded after he, as Odysseus, left us."
"Then why didn't he rejoin us as Odysseus?"
Cyrano shrugged.
"Because he missed the Not For Hire," Sam snapped. "We went by him during the night. But he'd heard that Firebrass was building a dirigible to go straight to the tower. That would be even better for him than the Not For Hire. But as Odysseus, an ancient Hellene, he wouldn't be qualified for a post on the airship. So he became Barry Thorn, a much-experienced Canadian aeronaut."
"But I," Cyrano said, "was of the seventeenth century, yet I was a pilot on the Parseval. And John de Greystock was of a much earlier time yet he was made captain of the blimp."
"Despite that," Sam said, "X would have a much better chance to get on the Parseval if he had experience. Only... I wonder where he got it? Why would an Ethical know all about a dirigible?"
"If you live a very long time or are immortal, perhaps you learn everything about everything in order to pass the time," Gwenafra said.
SECTION 7
Goring's Past
17
HERMANN GORING WOKE UP SWEATING AND GROANING. "JA, mein Fiihrer! Ja, mein Fiihrer! Ja, mein Ftihrer! Ja, ja, ja!"
The screaming face faded. The black gunsmoke pouring in through the shattered windows and broken walls vanished. The windows and walls disappeared. The bass Russian artillery which had been counterpointing der Fiihrer's alto soprano became muted, then withdrew, roaring sullenly. The droning which had been a counter-counterpoint to the madman's screech dwindled and died. That noise, he was vaguely aware, had been from the motors of the American and British bombers.
The darkness of the nightmare was succeeded by the Riverworld's night.
It was comforting and peaceful, though. Hermann lay on his back on the bamboo bed and touched the warm arm of Kren. She stirred and muttered something. Perhaps she was talking to someone in her dreams. She would not be distressed or bewildered or horrified. Her dreams were always pleasant. She was a Riverchild, dead on Earth at or around the age of six. She remembered nothing of her native planet. Her earliest memory, and that was vague, was waking in this valley, her parents gone, everything she'd known gone.
Hermann warmed himself with the touch and with pleasant memories of their years together. Then he got up, dressed in the body-covering early-morning outfit, and stepped outside. He was on a platform of bamboo. Ahead and behind on the same level as his hut were many others. Above was another level of dwellings, and there was another above that. Below were three levels. All were continuous bridges stretching for as far as he could see to the south and terminating far to the north. The supports were usually tall thin spires of rock or irontrees; each length of bridge was seldom less than one hundred and fifty feet or more than three hundred. Where extra support was needed, pylons of oak or mortared stone had been placed.
The Valley here was thirty miles wide. The River widened to form a lake ten miles broad and forty miles long. The mountains were no higher than six thousand feet, fortunately for the inhabitants, since The Valley here was far up in the northern hemisphere and they needed all the daylight possible. At the west end of the lake, the mountains curved into The River itself. Here the waters boiled through a high narrow passage. In the warmer hours of the afternoon, the easterly wind pushed through the strait at an estimated fifteen miles an hour. It then lost some of its force, but it was carried up by the peculiar topography, causing updrafts of which the inhabitants took advantage.
Everywhere on the land, towers of rock, tall columns bearing many carved figures, rose. Between many of these were multilevels spans. These were of wood: bamboo, pine, oak, yew. At intervals, depending upon the weight the spans could bear, were huts. Gliders and folded balloon envelopes were stored on top of many of the broader spires.