Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer

Author:Philip José Farmer [Farmer, Philip José]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Retail, Personal
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 0101-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

22

His investigation of the Ripper affair was completed; the mystery, solved. Now he could take residence in his private world, but, for some unfathomable reason, he was still reluctant to do so. Nevertheless, he could not put off moving long. It irked him to be unconsciously opposing himself; he would not put up with it.

Before going, though, he considered what he had been living through, vicariously, these past two weeks. He was shaken and appalled, especially by the world as seen through the eyes of the whores. He had witnessed many savage and grisly deeds and much injustice and oppression, but none matched the grisliness and inhumanity of the deed that was the East End of London in the 1880s. In this relatively small area were jam-packed eight hundred thousand people, hungry most of the time, eating swill and glad to have it, drunk if they could afford it and often when they could not, dwelling in small, dirty rooms with sweating, peeling walls alive with vermin, cruel to each other, ignorant, superstitious, and, worst condition of all, hopeless.

Burton knew that the lives of the East Enders had been wretched, but not until he had lived in it, even if in a secondhand manner, was he made sick and guilty by the mere existence of that hellhole. Guilty because he now understood that he and all others who had ignored it were responsible.

From one viewpoint, perverted but nevertheless valid, the Ripper had done a deed of mercy when he had put those hungry, gaunt, diseased, and hopeless whores out of their deep misery.

Also, unwittingly, he had forced the England outside of the East End to look at the inferno they had turned their eyes away from. The result had been a great cry for change, and many buildings had been torn down to make way for better housing. But in time the poverty and pain had resumed its former level—it had never subsided much—and the East End was forgotten by those who did not have to live there.

Frigate, when told by Burton of the results of his investigation, was intrigued. He said, “What you should do is track down those absentee landlords who made money from the horribly poor and deliver them to oblivion.”

“That’s Marxism,” Burton said.

“I despised the practice of communism, but it had some great ideals,” Frigate said. “I also despised the practice of capitalism, many aspects of it anyway.”

“But it had its ideals,” Burton said.

He had looked at Frigate and then laughed. “Has any social-political-economic system ever gotten anywhere near its ideals? Haven’t they all been corrupted?”

“Of course. So … the corrupters should be punished.”

Nur el-Musafir had pointed out what they knew but had ignored.

“It does not matter what they … we … did on Earth. What matters is what we’re doing now. If the corrupter and the corrupted have changed for the better, then they should be rewarded as much as those who have always been virtuous. Now, let me define virtue and the virtuous…” He smiled.

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