"They're far away by now," Kazz said. "But did they go up or down The River?"
"If there was a signal system in this area, we could find out quickly enough," Burton said. "Unless, of course, they beached their boat and went into the hills to hide."
Alice said, "What do we do now, Dick? If we stay here to look for them, we'll not be able to get on the Rex."
Burton stifled the impulse to tell her not to point out the obvious to him. She was still simmering; no sense in making her boil again.
"Monat and Frigate can hole up today and sneak out tonight and steal another boat. It would be futile to try to catch them. No, we'll try to get aboard the paddle wheeler. But those two will come along some day, and when they do..."
"We'll tear them apart?" Kazz said.
Burton shrugged and spread his palms upward.
"I don't know. They've got the advantage. They can either drop dead on us or lie to us. Until we get to the tower ..."
Alice spoke then, her eyes dark with accustomed reverie:
"If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed; neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
"For, what with my world-wide wandering. What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring-
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
"There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my, lips I set And blew, 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.' "
Burton grinned savagely. "Browning would have thought ... must think . .. that this world is even stranger than the setting of his outre poem. I appreciate your sentiment, even if he said it first, Alice. Very well, we will go to the Dark Tower."
"I don't know what Alice was talking about," Kazz said. "Anyway, just how're we going to get on that boat?"
"If King John has room for us, I'll offer him our treasure trove, our free-grails. That should appeal even to the ungreediest heart.''
"And if he doesn't have room?"
He was silent for a moment. That tickle in the back of his brain, that feeling that he had overlooked some linkage between agents, had returned while Alice was speaking. And now he saw, or thought he saw, the means for scratching the itch, the kind of chain binding the agents together.
How did they recognize each other? Monat was no problem; he did not need identification. But what kind of secret signal would the human agents use to identify each other?
If they possessed a Neanderthal's ability, they could see the negative signal, lack of a sign, in their colleagues' foreheads. Suppose, though, they did not have this ability? Spruce had been surprised when he found out about Kazz's optical talent. Though he had not said so, his manner had indicated that he had never heard of such a thing. Evidently, machines were used to detect and translate the symbols into whatever meaning they had. That would probably be done in the PR bubble or whatever HQ was.
If, then, they could not see the symbols with the naked eye, they would have another means of identification.
Suppose, just suppose, that there was a cutoff date. A period of time at which no more people from Earth were resurrected, not, at least, on this planet. According to Monat, Frigate, Ruach, and Spruce, that cutoff date had been 2008 A.D.
What if that was not the true date? What if it were earlier than 2008 A.D.?
He had no idea what the true date would be, though he had never met anyone, except the agents, who claimed to have lived past 1983 A.D. From now on, he would question every late-twentieth-centurian he met. And if 1983 was the latest at which anybody had died, then he would be fairly certain that that was the cutoff point.
So ... perhaps the Ethicals had contrived a fiction which would enable them to identify each other instantly. That was that they had lived during 2008 A.D. And, of course, there would be a fixed story about events from 1983, or whatever date it was, to 2008.
Which meant that perhaps it was untrue that the Arcturans had killed most of humanity in that year. The terrible slaugher might never have happened. In fact, anything he had heard about the years 1983-2008 might be a lie. Yet, there was Monat. He was not a Terrestrial. There was no reason to believe that he had not come from a planet of the Bear Watcher.
For the present, there was no way to explain his presence on The Riverworld.
Meanwhile, Burton had two means for catching ah Ethical. Kazz was one; the 2008 story was another.
However-humanity lived not only in an as-if world, it was a but-if world, too-however, just possibly the agents had been recruited from a time past 1983. So, their stories could be true.
There were so many possibilities. For instance, how did he know that Monat, Frigate, and Ruach had told him the truth about what had happened to them when they were away from him? There was that incident when Frigate had claimed he had met the publisher who had cheated him on Earth. Frigate said he had gotten a long-delayed revenge by punching him on the nose.
There were bruises on Frigate, supposedly gotten during the fight with Sharkko and his gang. Those could have come from conflict with others, though. Frigate's nature was such that he dreaded violence, physical or verbal. He might fantasize revenge, but he would never carry it out.
Suppose, just suppose, that the agents adopted disguises based on real life Terrestrials. What if there was an actual Peter Jairus Frigate somewhere on this planet? The pseudo-Frigate could be pretending to be the man who had had such an intense interest in Burton's life. That would be one means of getting close to Burton, of making sure that Burton would let him attach himself to Burton. After all, it would be hard for any man to be indifferent to his biographer, to a person who seemed to worship him.
Yet, why would it be necessary for an agent to adopt such a disguise? Why not make up one from whole cloth?
Perhaps it was not necessary, it was just easier, more convenient. As for an agent encountering the person he was pretending to be, that was highly unlikely.
There were so many potentialities, so many questions to be answered.
Alice said, "Dick! What's the matter?"
He came out of his reverie with a start. Everybody except his crew and the man whose boat had been stolen had fled. The man looked as if he would like to ask for reparations but was hesitating because he had no one to back him up.
A wind was whipping the waves of The River and ruffling the thatches of the huts. The Snark thumped against the bumpers of its dock. The light had gone from brownish-yellow to pale grey, making the faces around him even more ghastly. Across the water lightning flashed its fiery tooth, and thunder bellowed like a bear in a cave. Kazz and Besst were obviously longing for him to give the word to look for shelter. The others were only somewhat less nervous.
"I was thinking," he said. "You asked what we'd do if King John doesn't have room for us? Well, monarchs have means for making room if they wish to do so. And if he refuses, I'll find some way to get aboard. I'm not going to be stopped by anything or anybody!"
Lightning struck nearby, cracking as if the back of the world had broken. Kazz and Besst led the headlong flight for the nearest building.
Burton, standing in the heavy rain that had immediately followed the bolt, laughed at them.