Phillip Farmer - To Your Scattered Bodies Go

"If she really is an ancient Gaul," Frigate said, "she may be used to seeing charred bodies. If I remember correctly, the Gauls burned sacrifices alive in big wicker baskets at religious ceremonies. I don’t remember what god or goddess the ceremonies were is honor of. I wish I had a library to refer to. Do you think we’ll ever have one here? I think I would go nuts if I didn’t have books to read."

"That remains to be seen," Burton said. "If we’re not provided with a library, we’ll make our own. If it’s possible to do so." He thought that Frigate’s question was a silly one, but then not everybody, was quite in their right minds at this time.

At the foothills, two men, Rocco and Brontich, succeeded Kazz and Monat. Burton led them past the trees through the waist-high grass. The saw-edged grass scraped their legs. Burton cut off a stalk with his knife and tested the stalk for toughness and flexibility. Frigate kept close to his elbow and seemed unable to stop chattering. Probably, Burton thought, he talked to keep from thinking about the two deaths.

"If every one who has ever lived has been resurrected here, think of the research to be done! Think of the historical mysteries and questions you could clear up! You could talk to John Wilkes Booth and find out if Secretary of War Stanton really was behind the Lincoln assassination. You might ferret out the identity of Jack the Ripper. Find out if Joan of Arc actually did belong to a witch cult. Talk to Napoleon’s Marshal Ney; see if he did escape the firing squad and become a schoolteacher is America. Get the true story on Pearl Harbor. See the face of the Man in the Iron Mask, if there ever was such a person. Interview Lucrezia Borgia and those who knew her and determine if she was the poisoning bitch most people think she was. Learn the identity of the assassin of the two little princes in the Tower. Maybe Richard III did kill them.’

"And you, Richard Francis Burton, there are many questions about your own life that your biographers would like to have answered. Did you really have a Persian love you were going to marry and for whom you were going to renounce your true identity and become a native? Did she die before you could marry her, and did her death really embitter you, and did you carry a torch for her the rest of your life?" Burton glared at him. He had just met the man and here he was, asking the most personal and prying questions. Nothing excused this.

Frigate backed away, saying, "And … and … well, it’ll all have to wait, I can see that. But did you know that your wife had extreme unction administered to you shortly after you died and that you were buried in a Catholic cemetery — you, the infidel?"

Lev Ruach, whose eyes had been widening while Frigate was rattling on, said. "You’re Burton, the explorer, and linguist? The discoverer of Lake Tanganyika? The one who made a" pilgrimage to Mecca while disguised as a Moslem? The translator of The Thousand and One Nights?"

"I have no desire to lie nor need to. I am he."

Lev Ruach spat at Burt, but the wind carried it away. "You son of a bitch!" he cried. "You foul Nazi bastard! I read about! You were, in many ways, an admirable person, I suppose! But you were an anti-Semite!"

Burton was startled. He said, "My enemies spread that baseless and vicious rumor. But anybody acquainted with the facts and with me would know better. And. now, I think you’d…"

"I suppose you didn’t write The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam?" Ruach said, sneering.

"I did," Burton replied. His face was red, and when he looked down, he saw that his body was also flushed. "And now, as I started to say before you so boorishly interrupted me, I think you had better go. Ordinarily, I would be at your throat by now. A man who talks to me like that has to defend his words with deeds. But this is a strange situation, and perhaps you are overwrought. I do not know. But if you do not apologize now, or walk off, I am going to make another corpse."

Ruach clenched his fists and glared at Burton; then he spun around and stalked off.

"What is a Nazi?" Burton said to Frigate.

The American explained as best he could. Burton said, "I have much to learn about what happened after I died. That man is mistaken about me. I’m no Nazi. England, you say, became a second-class power? Only fifty years after my death? I find that difficult to believe."

"Why would I lie to you?" Frigate said. "Don’t feel bad about it. Before the end of the twentieth century, she had risen again, and in a most curious way, though it was too late…" Listening to the Yankee, Burton felt pride for his country. Although England had treated him more than shabbily during his lifetime, and although he had always wanted to get out of the island whenever he had been on it, he would defend it to the death. And he had been devoted to the Queen.

Abruptly, he said, "If you guessed my identity, why didn’t you say something about it?"

"I wanted to be sure. Besides, we’ve not had much time for social intercourse," Frigate said. "Or any other kind, either," he added, looking sidewise at Alice Hargreaves" magnificent figure.

"I know about her, too," he said, "if she’s the woman I think she is."

"That’s more than I do," Burton replied. He stopped. They had gone up the slope of the first hill and were on its top. They lowered the body to the ground beneath a giant red pine.

Immediately, Kazz, chert knife in his hand, squatted down by charred corpse. He raised his head upward and uttered a few phrases in what must have been a religious chant. Then, more the others could object, he had cut into the body and removed the liver.

Most of the group cried out in horror. Burton grunted. Monat stared.

Kazz’s big teeth bit into the bloody organ and tore off a large "Chunk. His massively muscled and thickly boned jaws began chewing, and he half-closed his eyes in ecstasy. Burton stepped "up to him and held out his hand, intending to remonstrate. Kazz grinned broadly and cut off a piece and offered it. He was very surprised at Burton’s refusal.

"A cannibal!" Alice Hargreaves said. "Oh, my God, a bloody, stinking cannibal! And this is the promised after-life!"

"He’s no worse than our own ancestors," Burton said. He had recovered from the shock, and was even enjoying — a little — the reaction of the others. "In a land where there seems to be precious little food, his action is eminently practical. Well, our problem of burying a corpse without proper digging tools is solved. Furthermore, if we’re wrong about the grails being a source of food, we may be emulating Kazz before long!"

"Never!" Alice said. "I’d die first!"

"That is exactly what you would do," Burton replied, coolly. "I suggest we retire and leave him to his meal. It doesn’t do anything for my own appetite, and I find his table manners as abominable as those of a Yankee frontiersman’s. Or a country prelate’s," he added for Alice’s benefit.

They walked out of sight of Kazz and behind one of the great gnarled trees. Alice said, "I don’t want him around He’s an animal, an abomination! Why, I wouldn’t feel safe for a second with him around!"

"You asked me for protection," Burton said. "I’ll give it to you as long as you are a member of this party. But you’ll also have to accept my decisions. One of which is that the apeman remains with us. We need his strength and his skills, which seem to be very appropriate for this type of country. We’ve become primitives; therefore, we can learn from a primitive. He stays."

Alice looked at the others with silent appeal. Monat twitched his eyebrows. Frigate shrugged his shoulders and said, "Mrs. Hargreaves, if you can possibly do it, forget your mores, your conventions. We’re not in a proper, upper-class Victorian heaven. Or, indeed, in any sort of heaven ever dreamed of. You can’t think and behave as you did on Earth. For one thing, you come from a society where women covered themselves from neck to foot in heavy garments, and the sight of a woman’s knee was a stirring sexual event. Yet, you seem to suffer no embarrassment because you’re nude. You are as poised and dignified as if you wore a nun’s habit"