Read Gods of Riverworld for Free Online

to bed one by one. Burton and Nur saw the work through from beginning to end. Some were getting up when the two decided they should sleep. First, though, Burton wanted to make sure that no one could enter the suite.
    “The unknown could override the codeword locking the door.”
    “How do you suggest that we block the door?” Frigate said, and he yawned. “Do we shove a bed against it? Pile more furniture on top of that?”
    “The door swings inward, so that’s not a bad idea. What I’m going to do, however, is to order the Computer to make a burglar alarm.”
    Burton did just that. Five minutes later, he pulled out from an energy-matter converter cabinet a dozen pieces of equipment. He taped two boxes to the wall on each side of the door and secured several other boxes to these. Then he adjusted a dial on one of the large boxes.
    “There,” he said, stepping back to admire the set. “No one can enter without setting off a hell of a loud siren. I think. We’d best test it. Pete, will you go outside, close the door, then come back in?”
    “Sure, but I hope I don’t disappear while I’m standing in the hall.”
    Burton turned a knob on the box. Frigate spoke the codeword, the door swung open, and he walked out. He turned, spoke the word, and the door shut. Burton reset the dial on the box. A few seconds later, the door began opening. A bright orange light flashed from the box, and an ear-pummeling whooping filled the room. Aphra Behn and de Marbot came running through the doorway. Turpin, who had been eating breakfast and not paying Burton much attention, leaped up from the table, his mouth spewing food. “Go-o-o-d damn!”
    Burton turned the alarm off.
    “The unknown could learn what the combination for the alarm is from the Computer. So I asked for one that I could set myself. There’s no way the Computer can know which I chose, not as long as I blocked the line of sight from its screen with my body when I set the alarm.”
    “Admirable,” Frigate said. “But our bedrooms are soundproofed. How are we going to hear the alarm from there?”
    The walls, floor, and ceilings were several inches thick and packed with circuits and power lines, most of them unused. Burton could have ordered the Computer to set up a circuit that would set off alarms in all rooms when the door alarm went off. But the unknown could override these circuits.
    Burton was thinking about what to do when Frigate spoke.
    “We could have the Computer make mass detectors. These could be set inside the bedroom doors so that, even if we didn’t hear the apartment door alarm, we’d hear anybody trying to get into our bedrooms. These should be activated and deactivated by some sort of hand signals. The unknown can eavesdrop on us through the Computer. He’s probably doing it now. But, as far as I know, he can’t see us unless he turns on a screen. And we can see that.”
    “You say, as far as we know,” Burton said. “Isn’t it possible that he could turn on a screen but make it invisible to us?”
    “I suppose so. I don’t really know enough about Ethical science to be sure of what can or can’t be done.”
    “Then the unknown may be also watching us.”
    “Yes. What we should do is erect some sort of tent in this room and write communications to one another inside it. Or the Computer could make us a soundproof cubicle. Even the floor would be soundproof. The trouble with that is that its walls might contain detectors put in by the order of the unknown. We’d have no way of checking that. Come to think of it, a tent made of cloth could contain detectors, too.”
    Burton became angry. “Is there nothing we can do?”
    “We can do the best we can and hope that it’ll be enough.”
    “We’ll keep the door alarm,” Burton said. “I’ll write the combination on paper. You’ll memorize it, and I’ll make sure that the papers are destroyed.”
    “Destroy the papers with a beamer,” Frigate said. “If you just burned them and