Phillip Farmer: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Presently, he saw a figure detach itself from the naked throng and walk toward him. He saw that it was not human.

It was then that Burton was sure that this Resurrection Day was not the one which any religion had stated would occur. Burton had not believed in the God portrayed by the Christians, Moslems, Hindus, or any faith. In fact, he was not sure that he believed in any Creator whatsoever. He had believed in Richard Francis Burton and a few friends. He was sure that when he died, the world would cease to exist.

Waking up after death, in this valley by this river, he had been powerless to defend himself against the doubts that existed is every man exposed to as early religious conditioning and to as adult society which preached its convictions at every chance.

Now, seeing the alien approach, he was sure that there was some other explanation for this event than a supernatural one. There was a physical, a scientific, reason for his being here; he did not have to resort to Judeo-Christian-Moslem myths for cause.

The creature, it, he — it undoubtedly was a male — was a biped about six feet eight inches tall. The pink-skinned body was very thin; there were three fingers and a thumb on each hand and four very long and thin toes on each foot. There were two dark red spots below the male nipples on the chest. The face was semi-human Thick black eyebrows swept down to the cheekbones and flared out to cover them with a brownish down. The sides of his nostrils were fringed with a thin membrane about a sixteenth of an inch long. The thick pad of cartilage on the end of his nose was deeply cleft. The lips were thin, leathery, and black. The ears were lobe-less and the convolutions within were non-human. His scrotum looked as if it contained many small testes.

He had seen this creature floating in the ranks a few rows away is that nightmare place.

The creature stopped a few feet away, smiled, and revealed quite human teeth. He said, "I hope you speak English. However, I can speak with same fluency in Russian, Mandarin Chinese, or Hindustani." Burton felt a slight shock, as if a dog or an ape had spoken to him.

"You speak Midwestern American English," he replied. "Quite well, too. Although too precisely."

"I thank you; the creature said. "I followed you because you seemed the only person with enough sense to get away from that chaos. Perhaps you have some explanation for this … what do you call it?… resurrection?"

"No more than you," Burton said. "In fact, I don’t have any explanation for your existence, before or after resurrection." The thick eyebrows of the alien twitched, a gesture which Burton was to find indicated surprise or puzzlement.

"No? That is strange. I would have sworn that not one of the six billion of Earth’s inhabitants had not heard of or seen me on TV."

"TV?"

The creature’s brows twitched again. "You don’t know what TV…" His voice trailed, then he smiled again. "Of course, how stupid of me! You must have died before I came to Earth!

"When was that?" The alien’s eyebrows rose (equivalent to a human frown as Burton would find), and he said slowly, "Let’s see. I believe it was, in your chronology, A.D. 2002. When did you die?"

"It must have been in A.D. 1890," Burton said. The creature had brought back his sense that all this was not real. He ran his tongue around his mouth; the back teeth he had lost when the Somali spear ran through his cheeks were now replaced. But he was still circumcised, and the men on the riverbank — most of whom had been crying out in the Austrian-German, Italian, or the Slovenian of Trieste — were also circumcised. Yet, in his time, most of the males in that area would have been uncircumcised.

"At least," Burton added, "I remember nothing after October 20, 1890."

"Aab!" the creature said. "So, I left my native planet approximately 200 years before you died. My planet? It was a satellite of that star you Terrestrials call Tau Ceti. We placed ourselves in suspended animation, and, when our ship approached your sun, we were automatically thawed out, and … but you do not know what I am talking about?"

"Not quite. Things are happening too fast. I would like to get details later. What is your name?"

"Monat Grrautut. Yours?"

"Richard Francis Burton at your service." He bowed slightly and smiled. Despite the strangeness of the creature and some repulsive physical aspects, Burton found himself warming to him.

"The late Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton," he added. "Most recently Her Majesty’s Consul in the Austro-Hungarian port of Trieste."

"Elizabeth?"

"I lived in the nineteenth century, not the sixteenth."

"A Queen Elizabeth reigned over Great Britain in the twentieth century," Monat said.

He turned to look toward the riverbank.

"Why are they so afraid? All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter."

Burton grinned and said, "Those who denied the hereafter are sure they’re in Hell because they denied it. Those who knew they would go to Heaven are shocked, I would imagine, to find themselves naked. You see, most of the illustrations of our afterlives showed those in Hell as naked and those in Heaven as being clothed. So, if you’re resurrected bare-ass naked, you must be in Hell."

"You seem amused," Monat said.

"I wasn’t so amused a few minutes ago," Burton said. "And I’m shaken. Very shaken. But seeing you here makes me think that things are not what people thought they would be. They seldom are. And God, if He’s going to make an appearance, does not seem to be in a hurry about it. I think there’s an explanation for this, but it won’t match any of the conjectures I knew on Earth."

"I doubt we’re on Earth," Monat said. He pointed upward with long slim fingers which bore thick cartilage pads instead of nails.

He said, "If you look steadily there, with your eyes shielded, you can see another celestial body near the sun. It is not the moon." Burton cupped his hands over his eyes, the metal cylinder on his shoulder, and stared at the point indicated. He saw a faintly glowing body which seemed to be an eighth of the size of a full moon. When he put his hands down, he said, "A star?"

Monat said, "I believe so. I thought I saw several other very faint bodies elsewhere in the sky, but I’m not sure. We will know when night comes."

"Where do you think we are?"

"I would not know." Monat gestured at the sun.

"It is rising and so it will descend, and then night should come. I think that it would be best to prepare for the night. And for other events. It is warm and getting warmer, but the night may be cold and it might rain. We should build a shelter of some sort. And we should also think about finding food. Though I imagine that this device" — he indicated the cylinder — "will feed us."

Burton said, "What makes you think that?"

"I looked inside mine. It contains dishes and cups, all empty now, but obviously made to be filled." Burton felt less unreal. The being — the Tau Cetan — talked so pragmatically, so sensibly, that he provided an anchor to which Burton could tie his senses before they drifted away again. And, despite the repulsive alien-ness of the creature; he exuded a friendliness and an openness that warmed Burton. Moreover, any creature that came from a civilization which could span many trillions of miles of interstellar space must have very valuable knowledge and resources.

Others were beginning to separate themselves from the crowd. A group of about ten men and women walked slowly toward him. Some were talking, but others were silent and wide-eyed. They did not seem to have a definite goal in mind; they just floated along like a cloud driven by a wind. When they got near Burton and Monat, they stopped walking.