Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page B

androids were not self-conscious and were not at all intelligent. Their actions had to be programmed. The army would have to be separated into small groups acting on their own. This required command levels of noncoms and officers, androids who could act on their own initiative when situations not in their programming arose. The leaders simply would not know what to do. For that matter, they would not even know that they had to do anything.
    “Moreover,” Burton said, “there’s still that nagging worry. Can the unknown install in the robots and androids some sort of channel whereby he can override our commands?”
    “He’s probably thinking about that right now,” Alice said. “If he’s watching us, he can anticipate anything we do.”
    She shuddered.
    “My answer to your objection,” Frigate said to Burton, “is that we could make some modifications in the neural systems of the androids. We could make them partly mechanical. By that, I mean that we could install mechanical devices in them. Say, something like a locker or safe combination that would set our commands mechanically but that would then transmit them electrically.
    “We would set the combinations after we’d received the basic device from the Computer. That way, neither the Computer nor the Snark could control what we did. And … oh, hell! The Snark could still put a neuron complex in the android that would tell it to override the combination command by radio or whatever.”
    “The hard facts,” Nur said, “are that we are in the power of this Snark. He does not have to attack us. All he has to do is shut off our power, and we’ll starve to death. If he intended to do that, he could have done so. He has not done so, therefore, we can assume that he isn’t going to. He has set certain limits to our use of the Computer but allowed us considerable powers. There are certain things he doesn’t want us to have. Otherwise, he just doesn’t care. He’s ignoring us.”
    “The question, one of the questions, is why?”
    “We can’t answer that. He’ll have to, if he ever does,” Frigate said.
    “Right,” Nur said. “Now, while you were all sleeping, I had the Computer locate the secret entrance that Loga arranged long ago. The entrance we used to get into the tower after we’d crossed the mountains and taken that boat to the base of the tower. I tried to get the Computer to open that. It seemed to me that perhaps the unknown might be wanting us to leave the tower and return to The Valley. He did not wish us to use the aircraft for obvious reasons.
    “But the secret door would not open when I asked the Computer to do it for me.
    “Therefore, the unknown does not wish us to leave the tower.
    “There may come a time when he’ll wish us to go, and, if so, he’ll open an exit for us. Until then, we’re prisoners. But this prison is vast and has, in a sense, more treasures to offer than the Earth we lived on or the Rivervalley. The treasures are physical and mental, moral and spiritual. I suggest that we find out what these are and use them. We might as well. We can’t stay caged in this suite.
    “Meanwhile, of course, we’ll be trying to think of ways to override the unknown’s overrides. What one person sets up, another may knock down. The unknown is not a god.”
    “What you’re suggesting is that we move back into our apartments and live as if there were no unknown?” Burton said.
    “I say that we should leave this particular area, which is a small prison, and go out into the larger prison. After all, Earth was a prison. So was the Rivervalley. But if you’re in a large enough space to give you the illusion of freedom, then you don’t think of yourself as a prisoner. The half-free man is one who thinks he is free. The really free man is one who fully knows what he can do in prison and does it.”
    “A Sufi’s wisdom,” Burton said, smiling but with a sneer in his voice. “We do look rather ridiculous, don’t we? We run into