Riverworld Short Stories by Philip Jose Farmer

Author:Philip Jose Farmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

CROSSING THE DARK RIVER

1

What? You prescribed lemon juice to cure cholera?”

“What? You had a sure cure for infants who held their breaths until their faces turned blue? And for young females in a hysterical seizure? You stuck your little finger up their anuses? Presto! Changeo! They’re rid forever of infantile behavior and the tantrums of the body?”

“What? You’re searching for the woman who’s supposed to have given birth to a baby somewhere along the River? A baby? In this world where all are sterile and no woman has ever gotten pregnant? You believe that’s true? How about buying the Brooklyn Bridge?

“No? Then how about a splinter from the True Cross? Ho! Ho! Ho! And you believe that this baby reproduced by parthenogenesis is Jesus Christ born again to save us Valleydwellers? And you’ve been traveling up-River to find the infant? Who do you think you are? One of the Three Wise Men? Ho! Ho! Ho!”

And so Doctor Andrew Paxton Davis had not stayed long any place until he had been detained by Ivar the Boneless. He had wandered up the Valley, seldom pausing, just as, on Earth, he had been the peripatetic’s peripatetic. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, he had traveled to many cities in the United States. There he had lectured on and practiced his new art of healing and sometimes established colleges of osteopathy. Denver, Colorado; Quincy, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, Ohio; LaFayette and Indianapolis, Indiana; Dallas and Corsicana, Texas; Baker City, Oregon; Los Angeles, California, and many other places.

Then he had originated Neuropathy, an eclectic discipline of healing. It combined all the best features of osteopathy, chiropracty, magnetism, homeopathy, and other systems of drugless medicine. He had preached that God-inspired gospel throughout the country. And he had written four thick books that were used by osteopaths and ophthalmologists and read by many laymen throughout the United States.

“From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.”

That was Satan’s answer to God when He said, “Whence comest thou?” That could be said also of Andrew P. Davis. But Davis loathed Satan, and his model was Job, who “was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed evil.”

Since Davis had awakened on the Riverworld, he had suffered the torments of Job. Yet he had not faltered in his faith any more than had Job. God must have made this world, but the Great Tempter was here too. To realize that, you just had to look around at the inhabitants.

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