To Your Scattered Bodies Go

5

A woman approached them. She was of medium height, had a superb shape, and a face that would have been beautiful if it had been framed by hair. Her eyes were large and dark. She made no attempt to cover herself with her hands. Burton was not the least bit aroused looking at her or any of the women. He was too deeply numbed.

The woman spoke in a well-modulated voice and an Oxford accent. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I couldn’t help overhearing you. You’re the only English voices I’ve heard since I woke up… here, wherever here is. I am an Englishwoman, and I am looking for protection. I throw myself on your mercy."

"Fortunately for you, Madame," Burton said, "you come to the right men. At least, speaking for myself, I can assure you that you will get all the protection I can afford. Though, if I were like some of the English gentlemen I’ve known, you might not have fared so well. By the way, this gentleman is not English. He’s Yankee." It seemed strange to be speaking so formally this day of all days, with all the wailing and shouting up and down the valley and everybody birth-naked and as hairless as eels.

The woman held out her hand to Burton. "I’m Mrs. Hargreaves," she said.

Burton took the hand, and, bowing kissed it lightly. He felt foolish, but, at the same time, the gesture strengthened his held on sanity. If the fortes of polite society could be preserved perhaps the "rightness" of things might also be restored.

"The late Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton," he said, grinning slightly at the late. "Perhaps you’ve heard of me?" She snatched her hand away and then extended it again.

"Yes, I’ve heard of you, Sir Richard’

Somebody said, "It can’t be!"

Burton looked at Frigate, who had spoken in such a low tone. "And why not?" he said.

"Richard Burton!" Frigate said. "Yes. I wondered, but without any hair?…"

"Yeas?" Burton drawled.

"Yaas" Frigate said. "Just as the books said’

"What are you talking about?" Frigate breathed in deeply and then said, Never mind now, Mr. Burton. I’ll explain later. Just take it that I’m very shaken up. Not in my right mind. You understand that, of course." He looked intently at Mrs. Hargreaves, shook his head, and said, "Is your name Alice?"

"Why, yes" she said, smiling and becoming beautiful, hair or no hair. "How did you know? Have I met you? No, I don’t think so."

"Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves?"

"Yes!"

"I have to go sit down," the American said. He walked under the tree and sat down with his back to the trunk. His eyes looked a little glazed.

"Aftershock," Burton said.

He could expect such erratic behavior and speech from the others for some time. He could expect a certain amount of non-rational behavior from himself, too. The important thing was to get shelter and food and some plan for common defense.

Burton spoke in Italian and Slovenian to the others and they made the introductions. They did not protest when he suggested that they should follow him down to the river’s edge.

"I’m sure we’re all thirsty," he said. "And we should investigate that stone mushroom." They walked back to the plain behind them. The people were sitting on the grass or trilling about. They passed one couple arguing loudly and red-facedly. Apparently, they had been husband and wife and were continuing a life-long dispute. Suddenly, the man turned and walked away. The wife looked unbelievingly at him and then ran after him. He thrust her away so violently that she fell on the grass. He quickly lost himself in the crowd, but the woman wandered around, calling his name and threatening to make a scandal if he did not come out hiding.

Burton thought briefly of his own wife, Isabel. He had not seen her in this crowd, though that did not mean that she was not in it. But she would have been looking for him. She would not stop until she found him.

He pushed through the crowd to the river’s edge and then got down on his knees and scooped up water with his hands. It was cool and clear and refreshing. His stomach felt as if it were absolutely empty. After he had satisfied his thirst, he became hungry.

"The waters of the River of Life," Burton said. "The Styx? Lethe? No, not Lethe. I remember everything about my Earthly existence."

"I wish I could forget mine," Frigate said.

Alice Hargreaves was kneeling by the edge and dipping water with one hand while she leaned on the other arm. Her figure was certainly lovely, Burton thought. He wondered if she would be blonde when her hair grew out, if it grew out. Perhaps Whoever had put them here intended they should all be bald, forever, for some reason of Theirs.

They climbed upon the top of the nearest mushroom structure. The granite was a dense-grained gray flecked heavily with red. On its flat surface were seven hundred indentations, forming fifty concentric circles. The depression in the center held a metal cylinder. A little dark-skinned man with a big nose and receding chin was examining the cylinder. As they approached, he looked up and smiled.

"This one won’t open," he said in German. "Perhaps it will later. I’m sure it’s there as an example of what to do with our own containers." He introduced himself as Lev Ruach and switched to a heavily accented English when Burton, Frigate, and Hargreaves gave their names.

"I was an atheist," he said, seeming to speak to himself more than to them. "Now, I don’t know! This place is as big a shock to an atheist, you know, as to those devout believers who had pictured an afterlife quite different from this. Well, so I was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time." He chuckled, and said to Monat, "I recognized you at once. It’s a good thing for you that you were resurrected in a group mainly consisting of people who died in the nineteenth century. Otherwise, you’d be lynched."

"Why is that?" Burton asked.

"He killed Earth," Frigate said. "At least, I think he did."

"The scanner," Monat said dolefully, "was adjusted to kill only human beings. And it would not have exterminated all of mankind. It would have ceased operating after a predetermined number — unfortunately, a large number — had lost their lives. Believe me, my friends; I did not want to do that. You do not know what an agony it cost me to make the decision to press the button. But I had to protect my people. You forced my hand."

"It started when Monat was on a live show," Frigate said. "Mount made an unfortunate remark. He said that his scientists had the knowledge and ability to keep people from getting old. Theoretically, using Tau Cetan techniques, a man could live forever. But the knowledge was not used on his planet; it was forbidden. The interviewer asked him if these techniques could be applied to Terrestrials. Monat replied that there was no reason why not. But rejuvenation was denied to his own kind for a very good reason, and this also applied to Terrestrials. By then the government censor realized what was happening and cut off the audio. But it was too late."

"Later," Lev Ruach said, "the American government reported that Monat had misunderstood the question, that his knowledge of English had led him to make a misstatement. But it was too late. The people of America, and of the world, demanded that: Monat reveal the secret of eternal youth."

"Which I did not have," said Monat. "Not a single one of out, expedition had the knowledge. In fact, very few people on my planet had it: But it did no good to tell the people this. They thought I was lying. There was a riot, and a mob stormed the guards around our ship and broke into it. I saw my friends torn to pieces while they tried to reason with the mob. Reason! "But I did what I did, not for revenge, but for a very differed motive. I knew that, after we were killed, or even if we weren’t, the U.S. government would restore order. And it would have the ship in its possession. It wouldn’t be long before Terrestrial scientists would know how to duplicate it. Inevitably, the Terrestrials would launch an invasion fleet against our world. So, to make sure that Earth would be set back many centuries; maybe thousands of years, knowing that I must do the dreadful thing to save my own world, I sent the signal to the scanner to orbit. I would not have had to do that if I could have gotten to the destruct button and blown up the ship. But I could not get to the control room. So, I pressed the scanner-activation button. A short time later, the mob blew off the door of the room in which I had taken refuge. I remember nothing after that."

Frigate said, "I was in a hospital in Western Samoa, dying of cancer, wondering if I would be buried nest to Robert Louis Stevenson. Not much chance, I was thinking. Still, I had translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into Samoan… Then, the news came. People all over the world were falling dead. The pattern of fatality was obvious. The Tau Cetan satellite was radiating something that dropped human beings in their tracks. The last I heard was that the U.S., England, Russia, China, France, and Israel were all sending up rockets to intercept it, blow it up. And the scanner was on a path which would take it over Samoa within a few hours. The excitement must have been too much for me in my weakened condition. I became unconscious. That is all I remember!

"The interceptors failed," Ruach said. "The scanner blew them up before they even got close."

Burton thought he had a lot to learn about post-1890, but now was not the time to talk about it. "I suggest we go up into the hills," he said. "We should learn what type of vegetation grows there and if it can be useful. Also, if there is any flint we can work into weapons. This Old Stone Age fellow must be familiar with stone working. He can show us how." They walked across the mile-broad plain and into the hills. On the way, several others joined their group. One was a little girl, about seven years old, with dark blue eyes and a beautiful face. She looked pathetically at Burton, who asked her in twelve languages if any of her parents or relatives were nearby. She replied in a language none of them knew. The linguists among them tried every tongue at their disposal, most of the European speeches and many of the African or Asiatic: Hebrew, Hindustani, Arabic, a Berber dialect, Romany, Turkish, Persian, Latin, Greek, Pushtu.

Frigate, who knew a little Welsh and Gaelic, spoke to her. Her eyes widened, and then she frowned. The words seemed to have a certain familiarity or similarity to her speech, but they were not close enough to be intelligible.

"For all we know," Frigate said, "she could be an ancient Gaul She keeps using the word Gwenafra. Could that be her name?"

"We’ll teach her English," Burton said. "And we’ll call her Gwenafra." He picked up the child in his arms and started to walk with her. She burst into tears, but she made no effort to free herself. The weeping was a release from what must have been almost unbearable tension and a joy at finding a guardian.

Burton bent his neck to place his face against her body. He did not want the others to see the tears in his eyes.

Where the plain met the hills, as if a line had been drawn, the short grass ceased and the thick, coarse Esparto-like grass, waist-high, began. Here, too, the towering pines, red pines and Lodgepole pines, the oaks, the yew, the gnarled giants with scarlet and green leaves, and the bamboo grew thickly. The bamboo consisted of many varieties, from slender stalks only a few feet high to plants over fifty feet high. Many of the trees were overgrown with the vines bearing huge green, red, yellow, and blue flowers.

"Bamboo is the material for spear-shafts," Burton said, "pipes for conducting water, containers, the basic stuff for building houses, furniture, boats, charcoal even for making gunpowder. And the young stalks of some may be good for eating. But we need stone for tools to cut down and shape the wood" They climbed over hills whose height increased as they neared the mountain. After they had walked about two miles as the crow flies, eight miles as the caterpillar crawls, they were stopped by the mountain. This rose in a sheer cliff-face of some blue-black igneous rock on which grew huge patches of a blue-green lichen. There was no way of determining how high it was, but Burton did not think that he was wrong in estimating it as at least 20,000 feet high. As far as they could see up and down the valley, it presented a solid front.

"Have you noticed the complete absence of animal life?" Frigate said.

"Not even an insect." Burton exclaimed. He strode to a pile of broken rock and picked up a fist-sized chunk of greenish stone. "Chert," he said. "If there’s enough, we can make knives, spearheads, adzes, and axes. And with them build houses, boats, and many other things."

"Tools and weapons must be bound to wooden shafts," Frigate said. "What do we use as binding material? "Perhaps human skin," Burton said.

The others looked shocked. Burton gave a strange chirruping laugh, incongruous in so masculine-looking a man. He said, "If we’re forced to kill in self-defense or lucky enough to stumble over a corpse some assassin has been kind enough to prepare for us, we’d be fools not to use what we need. However, if any of you feel self-sacrificing enough to offer your own epidermises for the good of the group, step forward! We’ll remember you in our wills."

"Surely, you’re joking," Alice Hargreaves said. "I can’t say I particularly care for such talk."

Frigate said, "Hang around him, and you’ll hear lots worse," but he did not explain what he meant.