To Your Scattered Bodies Go

19

"I hate you, Hermann Göring!" The voice sprang out and then flashed away as if it were a gear tooth meshed with the cog of another man’s dream and rotated into and then out of his dream.

Riding the crest of the hypnotic state, Richard Francis Burton knew he was dreaming. But he was helpless to do anything about it.

The first dream returned.

Events were fuzzy and encapsulated. A lightning streak of himself in the unmeasurable chamber of floating bodies; another flash of the nameless Custodians finding him and putting him back to sleep; then a jerky synopsis of the dream he had had just before the true Resurrection on the banks of The River.

God — a beautiful old man in the clothes of a mid-Victorian gentleman of means and breeding — was poking him in the ribs with an iron cane and telling him that he owed for the flesh.

"What? What flesh?" Burton said, dimly aware that he was muttering in his sleep. He could not hear his words in the dream.

"Pay up!" God said. His face melted, then was recast into Burton’s own features.

God had not answered in the first dream five years before. He spoke now, "Make your Resurrection worth my while, you fool! I have gone to great expense and even greater pains to give you, and all those other miserable and worthless wretches, a second chance."

"Second chance at what?" Burton said. He felt frightened at what God might answer. He was much relieved when God the All-Father — only now did Burton see that one eye of Jahweh-Odin was gone and out of the empty socket glared the flames of hell — did not reply. He was gone — no, not gone but metamorphosed into a high gray tower, cylindrical and soaring out of gray mists with the roar of the sea coming up through the mists.

"The Grail!" He saw again the man who had told him of the Big Grail. This man had heard it from another man, who had heard of it from a woman, who had heard it from … and so forth. The Big Grail was one of the legends told by the billions who lived along The River — this River that coiled like a serpent around this planet from pole to pole, issued from the unreachable and plunged into the inaccessible.

A man, or a subhuman, had managed to climb through the mountains to the North Pole. And he had seen the Big Grail, the Dark Tower, and the Misty Castle just before he had stumbled. Or he was pushed. He had fallen headlong and bellowing into the cold seas beneath the mists and died. And then the man, or subhuman, had awakened again along The River. Death was not forever here, although it had lost nothing of its sting.

He had told of his vision. And the story had traveled along the valley of The River faster than a boat could sail.

Thus, Richard Francis Burton, the eternal pilgrim and wanderer, had longed to storm the ramparts of the Big Grail. He would unveil the secret of resurrection and of this planet, since he was convinced that the beings who had reshaped this world had also built that tower.

"Die, Hermann Göring! Die, and leave me in peace!" a man shouted in German.

Burton opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the pale sheen of the multitudinous stars through the open window across the room of the hut.

His vision bent to the shape of the black things inside, and he saw Peter Frigate and Loghu sleeping on their mats by the opposite wall. He turned his head to see the white, blanket-sized towel under which Alice slept. The whiteness of her face was turned toward him, and the black cloud of her hair spilled out on the ground by her mat.

That same evening, the single-roasted boat on which he and the other three had been sailing down The River had put into a friendly shore. The little state of Sevieria was inhabited largely by sixteenth-century Englishmen, although its chief was an American who had lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. John Sevier, founder of the "lost state" of Franklin, which had later become Tennessee, had welcomed Burton and his party.

Sevier and his people did not believe in slavery and would not detain any guest longer than he desired. After permitting them to charge their grails and so feed themselves, Sevier had invited them to a party. It was the celebration of Resurrection Day; afterward, he had them conducted to the guest hostelry.

Burton was always a light sleeper, and now he was an uneasy one. The others began breathing deeply or snoring long before he had succumbed to weariness. After an interminable dream, he had wakened on hearing the voice that had interlocked with his dreams.

Hermann Göring, Burton thought. He had killed Göring, but Göring must be alive again somewhere along The River. Was the man now groaning and shouting in the neighboring hut one who had also suffered because of Göring, either on earth or in the Rivervalley? Burton threw off the black towel and rose swiftly but noiselessly. He secured a kilt with magnetic tabs, fastened a belt of human skin around his waist, and made sure the human-leather scabbard held the flint poignard. Carrying an assegai, a short length of hardwood tipped with a flint point, he left the hut.

The moonless sky cast a light as bright as the full moon of Earth. It was aflame with huge many-colored stars and pale sheets of cosmic gas.

The hostelries were set back a mile and a half from The River and placed on one of the second row of hills that edged the Riverplain. There were seven of the one-room, leaf-thatch-roofed, bamboo buildings. At a distance, under the enormous branches of the irontrees or under the giant pines or oaks, were other huts. A half-mile away, on top of a high hill, was a large circular stockade, colloquially termed the "Roundhouse." The officials of Sevieria slept there.

High towers of bamboo were placed every half-mile along The River shore. Torches flamed all night long on platforms from which sentinels kept a lookout for invaders.

After scrutinizing the shadows under the trees, Burton walked a few steps to the but from which the groans and shouts had come.

He pushed the grass curtain aside. The starlight fell through the open window on the face of the sleeper. Burton hissed in surprise. The light revealed the blondish hair and the broad features of a youth he recognized.

Burton moved slowly on bare feet. The sleeper groaned and threw one arm over his face and half-turned. Burton stopped, then resumed his stealthy progress. He placed the assegai on the ground, drew his dagger, and gently thrust the point against the hollow of the youth’s throat. The arm flopped over; the eyes opened and stared into Burton’s. Burton clamped his hand over the man’s open mouth.

"Hermann Göring! Don’t move or try to yell! I’ll kill you!" Göring’s light-blue eyes looked dark in the shadows, but the paleness of his terror shone out. He quivered and started to sit up, then sank back as the flint dug into his skin.

"How long have you been here?" Burton said.

"Who. …?" Göring said in English, then his eyes opened even wider. "Richard Burton? Am I dreaming? Is that you?" Burton could smell the dreamgum on Göring’s breath and the sweat-soaked mat on which he lay. The German was much thinner than the last time he had seen him.

Göring said, "I don’t know how long I’ve been here. What time is it?"

"About an hour until dawn, I’d say. It’s the day after Resurrection Celebration."

"Then I’ve been here three days. Could I have a drink of water? My throat’s dry as a sarcophagus."

"No wonder. You’re a living sarcophagus — if you’re addicted to dreamgum." Burton stood up, gesturing with the assegai at a fired-clay pot on a little bamboo table nearby. "You can drink if you want to. But don’t try anything."

Göring rose slowly and staggered to the table. "I’m too weak to give you a fight even if I wanted to." He drank noisily from the pot and then picked up an apple from the table. He took a bite, and then said, "What’re you doing here? I thought I was rid of you."

"You answer my question first," Burton said, "and be quick about it. You pose a problem that I don’t like, you know."