Riverworld, Day 43, Morning


Sly had moved along in the rear, but at the very front. Trying to blend
in with the end of the 'chest', he had spent a lot of time playing with
the short spear Shaka had given him.  Two or three times, he had thrown.
the spear off to the side then scurried after it to retrieve it. 

Just out of sight of the grailstone the group now approached, he had
begun to chew two pieces of dreamgum, unbeknownst to the others. He
watched with a glazed look as they came upon the ramrod straight backs
of the sitting group.

Louis turned to Shaka and asked, "It's mid-morning, before the grail
firing...could they be waiting for food? I don't think any of us spoke
Mishima's native tongue.  We should tread lightly here."

(If the group or Louis approaches, Louis will lower his sword and at first
meeting not appear openly hostile.  If attacked, he will defend himself.
If not, he will attempt to communicate with them in either English or
French, with the purpose of finding out who they are, and what their
purpose is.)

Shaka regarded the seated orientals with caution, then gave orders
for the horns to move out into a flanking position and for the chest
to remain where it was.  Signaling Mandragola and Louis to come with
him, he began approaching the small group. Sly, staggering a little,
tagged along.

"These others remind me of Mishima," Shaka said. "Perhaps he is with
them, or they know where he is."

Mandragola studied them with a keen eye.  "These are definitely people
from the east. It is hard to tell whether they are warriors or
pacifists, though. The way they sit is disturbing, and most
unusual. Perhaps the army should circle around them, for safety."

Shaka nodded, motioning for the horns to do so. With Mandragola,
Louis, and Sly at his heels, he stepped up to the inhabitants, raising
his scythe and saying in a loud voice, "Hail, we come to you seeking
the lion god of this world.  Let us use your grailstone, and we will
speak of the gods of this place and our quest."

The people continued to sit, unmoving.

As Sly watched them, his heart began to race. They seemed to be giving
off an inner light, a glow which at once warmed him and seemed alien.
They had a peace he had never known and he felt an uncontrollable
longing to join them and learn of their ways.

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"What is it about chess, is it some sort of clue?" Shaw asked. "There
do appear to be at least two sides at work here. We have Shaka's lion
god, the woman whom Eric and my self dreamed of, assuming that it was
the same woman. We should also not forget that Stalin mentioned a
'they' before he died." He sank into thought.

"We are, once again, stymied by the Power responsible for the
Circumstances in which those who have lost those Memories find
themselves." Benjamin said. "But is this Erasure meant simply to
conceal some dark Secret, or is it meant to move them to achieve some
Purpose, itself hidden?  I think to find how such a hiding can be
expected to serve some Purpose, but other than the Inquiries we are
making now, I can see no Purpose that the Power could rely on them
achieving thereby.  Thus, the concealment of some Secret, and we are
no nearer to knowing it than we ever have been.  If this is the same
Power as directed Shaka's Vision, mayhap we cannot trust it, or that
vision."

"And yet, as sure as I speak of the Inscrutability of a Truth does
that Truth mock me by revealing parts of itself!  Josephine, when you
said that you remembered from before, do you mean that the Beasts, and
the blurry Glow, are from before, the memory of Men running and dead
all around?"

"Now, Erik's dream...in a line, like Chessmen?  Hmm... if the Rooks
are missing, that makes Charles the King, true enough, and myself a
Bishop... chuckle which is as close to a Sage as Chessman get, I'll
grant that...  Josephine as a Bishop, and Jeanne and Shaw as Knights,
but are Erik and Freud then Pawns, or the two missing Rooks?  Who is
Charles' Queen, someone we have not yet met, or someone who has
vanished before Erik met us?  Perhaps Cleopatra, she fits the bill."
He smiled.  "But why are those of us without the Erasures among the
Chessmen?  And who are the Voices?"

Josephine chuckled. "Me, a bishop? I don't know about being a sage or
religious person...."  In a musing voice she added, "I _have_,
however, heard certain entreaties to the heavens...."  She let her
voice trail off and smiled a somewhat wicked smile before continuing.
"If the Queen is gone, is the match... game... tournament or whatever
basically over?" Josephine asked. "I don't want to believe that
whatever we are doing is futile. There must be someone," she looked up
to the sky, "up there who wants us to know what is happening, else why
the dreams?"

"The King is the Game, not the Queen," Benjamin continued, "and I
still feel that Pieces are missing. I wonder what, if anything, it
Signifies that the black Chessman are to be Grail-made, and the white
ones made by our Sweat and Labor?  And where in this Chessboard is
Shaka, and Mishima, and our other Friends separated now by a half a
width of River and some mismatched Purposes, but not, it has so far
seemed, by the Gulf of open Opposition?

"Mayhap the male and female Voices of Erik's dream are the Players in
this great Game.  But which is the lion of Shaka's Vision?  Which
erased the Memories of Charles and the others?  Which plays White?
And do we, when we play Chess ourselves, thus affect the Fate of
others on Riverworld?  Or did we, in our past Lives?  Or..."

Benjamin trailed off, swamped by possibilities and combinations and
unanswered, unanswerable questions, and waited for someone else to
contribute to this line of reasoning.

"I know little of this game of chess," Jeanne confessed, "other than
it is a stylized war. But if Charles is the white king, could Shaka be
his opposite? Our party is separated into two groups, hardly armies,
but certainly camps. Charles leads one, Shaka the other.  And now he
does have an army of his countrymen to lead."

Shaw looked up at the others with a wry smile.  "I wonder if it would
be possible to talk Shaka into being hypnotized once we see him
again. Even if we couldn't persuade him it would be interesting to
watch, assuming no one got killed," he added, laughing. Another
thought struck him.  "Hmm, Dr. Freud, is it possible for you to
hypnotize yourself and let us question you?"

"Certainly I would be willing to try," Freud replied.

Jeanne studied Freud, clearly warring with something within her mind.
"You are sure these are truths? The answers they gave?"  She looked
around at the group and hastily added, "I do not imply that they
lie. But if Charles memory could be erased completely, could not other
answers have been writ in those empty spaces?"

"A telling point." Freud agreed. "The erasure of memory was beyond my
abilities to break through. Surely that casts doubt on the memories I
could bring forward."

"What do we know for sure?" Shaw asked, but continued without waiting
for an answer.  "We know we died. We know we have been reborn on this
river. We know Charles has had a month worth of memories erased
somehow, and Josephine seems to have some hidden memories of the same
time. We also know that somewhere there is the means to forge
metal. We also know that Shaka was killed and reborn at the same spot
he died."

"Unfortunately," Freud replied, "we know no such things. If we, like a
Cartesian, really set out to doubt everything and thus learn what can
not be doubted, we can find little that stands up to our
scrutiny. Perhaps, as Descartes wondered, we are simply dreaming,
hypnotized, or being deceived. Perhaps we only think we are
ourselves."

Josephine frowned and shook her head, looking puzzled for a moment
before restoring a pleasant smile to her face.  "I don't see that
we're going to come to any conclusions before breakfast, so please,
excuse me until then." 

She bowed her head to the group and raised an eyebrow to Shaw. He
followed here as she walked to the other end of the boat.

Freud chuckled. "It is good to see that libido was resurrected along
with thanatos."

"What shall we do about breakfast?" Charles asked. "Perhaps we should
put in an replenish our supplies. This afternoon Freud can hypnotize
himself...if we still feel it can be trusted," he added, with a glance
at Jeanne.

"Well, now does look like a good time a good time to spend some time
together." Shaw said with a smile as he and Josephine leaned against
the bow rail.  "Was there anything specific you had in mind?"

"Had in mind?" she echoed. "I thought perhaps we could swim and talk a
little more...  Get to know one another better. Would this be
agreeable to you?"

Shaw leaned back against the rail, stretched and said with a smile,
"That would be great. Even knights and bishops should get to relax
once in a while."

Soon, the couple dove into the water, and swam together alongside the
boat.

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