Strangely, Frigate was reluctant to go. He seemed to feel that he had disgraced himself by his weakness. He stood a there for a moment, shifting his weight from one leg to another and sighing several times. Then, as Burton continued to scrape away at the underside of the skin-strips, he walked away. He carried the two grails in one hand and his stone axe head in the other.
Burton stopped working after the American was out of sight. He had been interested in finding out how to cut off strips, and he might dissect the body's trunk to remove the entrails. But he could do nothing at this time about preserving the skin or guts. It was possible that the bark of the oak-like trees might contain tannin, which could be used with other materials to convert human skin into leather. By the time that was done, however, these strips would have rotted. Still, he had not wasted his time. The efficiency of the stone knives was proven, and he had reinforced his weak memory of human anatomy. When they were juveniles in Pisa, Richard Burton and his brother Edward had associated with the Italian medical students of the university. Both of the Burton youths had learned much from the students and neither had abandoned their interest in anatomy. Edward became a surgeon, and Richard had attended a number of lectures and public and private dissections in London. But he had forgotten much of what he had learned.
Abruptly, the sun went past the shoulder of the mountain. A pale shadow fell over him, and, within a few minutes, the entire valley was in the dusk. But the sky was a bright blue for a long time. The breeze continued to flow at the same rate. The moisture-laden air became a little cooler. Burton and the Neanderthal left the body and followed the sounds of the others' voices: These were by the grailstone of which Brontich had spoken. Burton wondered if there were others near the base of the mountain, strung out at approximate distances of a mile. This one lacked the grail in the center depression, however. Perhaps this meant that it was not ready to operate. He did not think so. It could be assumed that Whoever had made the grailstones had placed the grails in the center holes of those on the river's edge because the resurrectees would be using these first. By the time they found the inland stones, they would know how to use them.
The grails were set on the depressions of the outmost circle. Their owners stood or sat around, talking but with their minds on the grails. All were wondering when – or perhaps if – the blue flames would come. Much of their conversation was about how hungry they were. The rest was mainly surmise about how they had come here, Who had put them here, where they were, and what was being planned for them. A few spoke of their lives on Earth.
Burton sat down beneath the wide-flung and densely leaved branches of the gnarled black-trunked irontree. He felt tired, as all, except Razz, obviously did. His empty belly and his stretched-out nerves kept him from dozing off, although the quiet voices and the rustle of leaves conduced to sleep. The hollow in which the group waited was formed by a level space at the junction of four hills and was surrounded by trees. Though it was darker than on top of the hills, it also seemed to be a little warmer. After a while, as the dusk and the chill increased, Burton organized a firewood-collecting party. Using the knives and bandages, they cut down many mature bamboo pleats and gathered piles of grass. With the white-hot wire of the lighter, Burton started a fire of leaves and grass. These were green, and so the fire was smoky and unsatisfactory until the bamboo was put on.
Suddenly, an explosion made them jump. Some of the women screamed. They had forgotten about watching the grailstone. Burton turned just in time to see the blue flames soar up about twenty feet. The heat from the discharge could be felt by Brontich, who was about twenty feet from it.
Then the noise was gone, and they stared at the grails. Burton was the first upon the stone again; most of them did not care to venture on the stone too soon after the flames. He lifted the lid of his grail, looked within, and whooped with delight. The others climbed up and opened their own grails. Within a minute, they were seated near the fire eating rapidly, exclaiming with ecstasy, pointing out to each other what they'd found, laughing, and joking. Things were not so bad after all. Whoever was responsible for this was taking care of them.
There was food in plenty, even after fasting all day, or, as Frigate put it, `probably fasting for half of eternity.' He meant by this as he explained to Monat, that there was no telling how much time had elapsed between AD 2008 and today. This world wasn't built in a day, and preparing humanity for resurrection takes more than seven days. That is, if all of this been brought about by scientific means, not by supernatural. Burton's grail had yielded a four-inch cube of steak; a small ball of dark bread; butter; potatoes and gravy; lettuce with salad dressing of an unfamiliar but delicious taste. In addition, there was a five-ounce cup containing an excellent bourbon and another small cup with four ice cubes in it.
There was more, all the better because unexpected. A small briar pipe, a sack of pipe tobacco. Three cigars. A plastic package with ten cigarettes.
`Unfiltered!' Frigate said.
There was also one small brown cigarette which Burton and Frigate smelled and said, at the same time, `Marihuana!'
Alice, holding up a small metallic scissors and a black comb, said, `Evidently we're going to get our hair back. Otherwise, there'd be no need for these. I'm so glad! But do . . . They really expect me to use this?' She held out a tube of bright red lipstick.
`Or me?' Frigate said, also looking at a similar tube.
`They're eminently practical,' Monat said, turning over a packet of what was obviously toilet paper. Then he pulled out sphere of green soap.
Burton's steak was very tender, although he would have preferred it rare. On the other hand, Frigate complained because it was not cooked enough.
`Evidently, these grails do not contain menus tailored for the individual owner,' Frigate said. `Which may be why we men also get lipstick and the women got pipes. It's a mass production.
`Two miracles in one day,' Burton said. `That is, if they are such. I prefer a rational explanation and intend to get it. I don't think anyone can, as yet, tell me how we were resurrected. But perhaps you twentieth-centurians have a reasonable theory for the seemingly magical appearance of these articles in a previously empty container?'
'If you compare the exterior and interior of the grail,' Monat said, 'you will observe an approximate five-centimeter difference in depth. The false bottom must conceal a molar circuitry, which is able to convert energy to matter. The energy obviously comes during the discharge from the rocks. In addition to the converter, the grail must hold molar templates? . . . molds? . . . which form the matter into various combinations of and compounds.'
`I'm safe in my speculations, for we had a similar converter on my active planet. But nothing as miniature as this, I assure you.'
`Same on Earth,' Frigate said. `They were making iron out of pure energy before A.D. 2002, but it was a very cumbersome and expensive process with an almost microscopic yield.'
`Good,' Burton said. `All this has cost us nothing. So far. . .
He fell silent for a while, thinking of the dream he had when awakening.
`Pay up,' God had said. `You owe for the flesh.'
'What had that meant? On Earth, at Trieste, in 1890, he had been dying, in his wife's arms and asking for . . . what? Chloroform? Something. He could not remember. Then, oblivion. And he had awakened in that nightmare place and had seen things that were not on Earth nor, as far as he knew, on this planet. But that experience had been no dream.
Chapter 8
* * *
They finished eating and replaced the containers in the racks within the grails. Since there was no water nearby, they would have to wait until morning to wash the containers. Frigate and Kazz, however, had made several buckets out of sections of the giant bamboo. The American volunteered to walk back to the river, if some of them would go with him, and fill the sections with water. Burton wondered why the fellow volunteered. Then, looking at Alice, he knew why. Frigate must be hoping to find some congenial female compa
nionship. Evidently he took it for granted that Alice Hargreaves preferred Burton. And the other women, Tucci, Malini, Capone, and Fiorri, had made their choices of, respectively, Galleazzi, Brontich, Rocco, and Giunta. Babich had wandered off, possibly for the same reason that Frigate had for wishing to leave.
Monat and Kazz went with Frigate. The sky was suddenly crowded with gigantic sparks and great luminous gas clouds. The glitter of jam-packed stars, some so large they seemed to be broken-off pieces of Earth's moon, and the shine of the clouds, awed them and made them feel pitifully microscopic and ill-made.
Burton lay on his back on a pile of tree leaves and puffed on a cigar. It was excellent, and in the London of his day would have cost at least a shilling. He did not feel so minute and unworthy now. The stars were inanimate matter, and he was alive. No star could ever know the delicious taste of an expensive cigar. Nor could it know the ecstasy of holding a warm well-curved woman next to it.
On the other side of the fire, half or wholly lost in the grasses and the shadows, were the Triestans. The liquor had uninhibited them, though part of their sense of freedom may have come from joy at being alive and young again. They giggled and laughed and rolled back and forth in the grass and made loud noises while kissing. And then, couple by couple, they retreated into the darkness. Or at least, made no more loud noises.
The little girl had fallen asleep by Alice. The firelight flickered over Alice's handsome aristocratic face and bald head and on the magnificent body and long legs. Burton suddenly knew that all of him bad been resurrected. He definitely was not the old man who, during the last sixteen years of his life, had paid so heavily for the many fevers and sicknesses that had squeezed him dry in the tropics. Now he was young again, healthy, and possessed by the old clamoring demon.
Yet he had given his promise to protect her. He could make no move, say no word which she could interpret as seductive.
Well, she was not the only woman in the world. As a matter of fact, he had the whole world of women, if not at his disposal, at least available to be asked. That is, he did if everybody who had died on Earth was on this planet. She would be only one among many billions (possibly thirty-six billion, if Frigate's estimate was correct). But there was, of course, no such evidence that this was the case.
The hell of it was that Alice might as well be the only one in the world, at this moment, anyway. He could not get up and walk off into the darkness looking for another woman, because that would leave her and the child unprotected. She certainly would not feel safe with Monat and Kazz, nor could he blame her. They were so terrifyingly ugly. Nor could he entrust her to Frigate – if Frigate returned tonight, which Burton doubted because the fellow was an unknown quantity.
Burton suddenly laughed loudly at his situation. He had decided that he might as well stick it out for tonight. This thought set him laughing again, and he did not stop until Alice asked him if he was all right.
`More right than you will ever know,' he said, turning his back to her. He reached into his grail and extracted the last item. This was a small flat stick of chicle-like substance. Frigate, before leaving, had remarked that their unknown benefactors must be American. Otherwise, they would not have thought of providing chewing gum.
After stubbing out his cigar on the ground, Burton popped the stick into his mouth. He said, `This has a strange but rather delicious taste. Have you tried yours?'
`I am tempted, but I imagine I'd look like a cow chewing her cud.'
`Forget about being a lady,' Burton said. `Do you think that beings with the power to resurrect you would have vulgar tastes?'
Alice smiled slightly, said, `I really wouldn't know,' and placed the stick in her mouth. For a moment, they chewed idly, looking across the fire at each other. She was unable to look him full in the eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
Burton said, `Frigate mentioned that he knew you. Of you, rather. Just who are you, if you will pardon my unseemly curiosity?'
'There are no secrets among the dead,' she replied lightly. `Or among the ex-dead, either.' She had bees born Alice Pleasance Liddell on April 25, 1852. (Burton was thirty then.) She was the direct descendant of King Edward III and his son, John of Gaunt. Her father was dean of Christ Church College of Oxford and co-author of a famous Greek-English lexicon. (Liddell and Scott! Burton thought.) She had had a happy childhood, an excellent education, and had met many famous people of her times: Gladstone, Mattheca Arnold, the Prince of Wales, who was placed under her father's care while he was at Oxford. Her husband had been Reginald Gervis Hargreaves, and she had loved him very much. He had been a `country gentleman,' liked to hunt, fish, play cricket, raise trees, and read French literature. She had three sons, all captains, two of whom died in the Great War of 1914-1918. (This was the second time that day that Burton had heard of the Great War.) She talked on and on as if drink had loosened her tongue. Or as if she wanted to place a barrier of conversation between her and Burton.
She talked of Dinah, the tabby kitten she had loved when she was a child, the great trees of her husband's arboretum, how her father, when working on his lexicon, would always sneeze at twelve o'clock in the afternoon, no one knew why . . . at the age of eighty, she was given an honorary Doctor of Letters by the American university, Columbia, because of the vital part she had played in the genesis of Mr. Dodgson's famous book. (She neglected to mention the title and Burton, though a voracious reader, did not recall any works by a Mr. Dodgson.)
'That was a golden afternoon indeed,' she said, `despite the official meteorological report. On July 4, 1862, I was ten . . . my sisters and I were wearing black shoes, white openwork socks, white cotton dresses, and hats with large brims.' Her eyes were wide, and she shook now and then as if she were struggling inside herself, and she began to talk even faster.
`Mr. Dodgson and Mr. Duckworth carried the picnic baskets . . . we set off in our boat from FollyBridge up the Isis, upstream for a change. Mr. Duckworth rowed stroke; the drops fell off his paddle like tears of glass on the smooth mirror of the Isis, and . . .'
Burton heard the last words as if they had been roared at him. Astonished, he gazed at Alice, whose lips seemed to be moving as if she were conversing at a normal speech level. Her eyes were now fixed on him, but they seemed to be boring through him into a space and a time beyond. Her hands were half-raised as if she were surprised at something and could not eve them.
Every sound was magnified. He could hear the breathing of the little girl, the pounding of her heart and Alice's, the gurgle of the workings of Alice's intestines and of the breeze as it slipped across the branches of the trees. From far away, a cry came.
He rose and listened. What was happening? Why the heightening of senses? Why could he hear their hearts but not his? He was also aware of the shape and texture of the grass under his feet. Almost, he could feel the individual molecules of the air as they bumped into his body.
Alice, too, had risen. She said, `What is happening?' and her voice fell against him like a heavy gust of wind.
He did not reply, for he was staring at her. Now, it seemed to him, he could really see her body for the first time. And he could see her, too. The entire Alice.
Alice came toward him with her arms held out, her eyes half-shut her mouth moist. She swayed, and she crooned, `Richard! Richard!' Then she stopped; her eyes widened. He stepped toward her, his arms out. She cried, `No!', and turned and ran into the darkness among the trees.
For a second, he stood still. It did not seem possible that she, whom he loved as he had never loved anybody, could not love him back.
She must be teasing him. That was it. He ran after her, and called her name over and over.
It must have been hours later when the rain fell against them. Either the effect of the drug had worn off or the cold water helped dispel it, for both seemed to emerge from the ecstasy and the dreamlike State at the same time. She looked up at him as lightning lit their features, and she screamed and pushed him violently.
/> He fell on the grass, but reached out a hand and grabbed her ankle as she scrambled away from him on all fours.
`What's the matter with you?' he shouted.
Alice quit struggling. She sat down, hid her face against her knees, and her body shook with sobs. Burton rose and placed his hands under her chin and forced her to look upward. Lightning hit nearby again and showed him her tortured face. `You promised to protect me!' she cried out.
`You didn't act as if you wanted to be protected,' he said. `I didn't promise to protect you against a natural human impulse.'
'Impulse!' she said.
'Impulse! My God, I've never done anything like this in my life! I've always been good! I was a virgin when I married, and I stayed faithful to my husband all my life! And now . . . a total stranger! Just like that! I don't know what got into me!'
`Then I've been a failure,' Burton said, and laughed. But he was beginning to feel regret and sorrow. If only it had been her own will, her own wish, then he would not now be having the slightest bite of conscience. But that gum had contained some powerful drug, and it had made them behave as lovers whose passion knew no limits. She had certainly cooperated as enthusiastically as any experienced woman in a Turkish harem.
You needn't feel the least bit contrite or self-reproachful,' he said gently. `You were possessed. Blame the drug.'
`I did it!' she said. `I . . . I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!' 'I don't remember offering you any money.' He did not mean to be heartless. He wanted to make her so angry that she would forget her self-abasement. And he succeeded. She jumped up and attacked his chest and face with her nails. She called him names that a high-bred and gentle lady of Victoria's day should never have known.
Burton caught her wrists to prevent further damage and held her while she spewed more filth at him. Finally, when she had fallen silent and had begun weeping again, he led her toward the camp site. The fire was wet ashes. He scraped off the top layer and dropped a handful of grass, which had been protected from the rain by the tree, onto the embers. By its light, he saw the little girl sleeping huddled between Kazz and Monat udder a pile of grass beneath the irontree. He returned to Alice, who was sitting under another tree.
Riverworld01- To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) Hugo Award Page 6