Phillip Farmer: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

A man trailing the group especially attracted Burton’s scrutiny. Monat was obviously non-human, but this fellow was subhuman or pre-human. He stood about five feet tall. He was squat and powerfully muscled. His head was thrust forward on a bowed and very thick neck. The forehead was low and slanting. The skull was long and narrow. Enormous supraorbital ridges shadowed dark brown eyes. The nose was a smear of flesh with arching nostrils, and the bulging bones of his jaws pushed his thin lips out. He may have been covered with as much hair as an ape at one time, but now, like everybody else, he was stripped of hair.

The huge hands looked as if they could squeeze water from a stone.

He kept looking behind him as if he feared that someone was sneaking up on him. The human beings moved away from him when he approached them.

But then another man walked up to him and said something to the subhuman in English. It was evident that the man did not expect to be understood but that he was trying to be friendly. His voice, however, was almost hoarse. The newcomer was a muscular youth about six feet tall. He had a face that looked handsome when he faced Burton but was comically craggy in profile. His eyes were green.

The subhuman jumped a little when he was addressed. He peered at the grinning youth from under the bars of bone. Then he smiled, revealing large thick teeth, and spoke in a language Burg did not recognize. He pointed to himself and said something that sounded like Kaxzintuitruuabemss. Later, Burton would find out that it was his name and it meant Man-Who-Slew-The-Long-White-Tooth.

The others consisted of five men and four women. Two of the men had known each other in Earthlife, and one of them had been married to one of the women. All were Italians or Slovenes who had died in Trieste, apparently about 1890, though he knew none of them.

"You there," Burton said, pointing to the man who had spoken in English. "Step forward. What is your name?" The man approached him hesitantly. He said, "You’re English, right?" The man spoke with an American Midwest flatness.

Burton held out his hand and said, "Yaas. Burton here." The fellow raised hairless eyebrows and said, "Burton?" He leaned forward and peered at Burton’s face. "It’s hard to say … it couldn’t be…’.

He straightened up. "Name’s Peter Frigate. F-R-I-G-A-T-E." He looked around him and then said in a voice even more strained, "It’s hard to talk coherently. Everybody’s in such a state of shock, you know. I feel as if I’m coming apart. But … here we are. … alive again … young again … no hellfire … not yet, anyway. Born in 1918, died 2008 … because of what this extra-Terrestrial did … don’t hold it against him … only defending himself, you know." Frigate’s voice died away to a whisper. He grinned nervously at Monat.

Burton said, "You know this … Monat Grrautut?"

"Not exactly," Frigate said. "I saw enough of him on TV, of course, and heard enough and read enough about him." He held out his hand as if he expected it to be rejected, smiled and they shook hands.

Frigate said, "I think it’d be a good idea if we banded together. We may need protection."

"Why?" Burton said, though he knew well enough.

"You know how rotten most humans are," Frigate said. "Once people get used to being resurrected, they’ll be fighting for women and food and anything that takes their fancy. And I think we ought to be buddies with this Neanderthal or whatever he is. Anyway, he’ll be a good man in a fight." Kazz, as he was named later on, seemed pathetically eager to be accepted at the same time, he was suspicious of anyone who got too close.

A woman walked by then, muttering over and over in German, "My God! What have I done to offend Thee?" A man, both fists clenched and raised to shoulder height, was shouting in Yiddish, "My beard! My beard.

Another man was, pointing at his genitals and saying in Slovenian, "They’ve made a Jew of me! A Jew! Do you think that…? No, it couldn’t be!" Burton grinned savagely and said, "It doesn’t occur to him that maybe they have made a Mohammedan out of him or an Australian aborigine or an ancient Egyptian, all of whom practiced circumcision."

"What did he say?" asked Frigate. Burton translated; Frigate laughed.

A woman hurried by; she was making a pathetic attempt to cover her breasts and her pubic regions with her hands. She was muttering, "What will they think, what will they think?" And she disappeared behind the trees.

A man and a woman passed them; they were talking loudly in Italian as if they were separated by a broad highway.

"We can’t be in Heaven … I know, oh my God, I know! … There was Giuseppe Zomzini and you know what a wicked man he was… he ought to burn in hellfire! I know, I know… he stole from the treasury, he frequented whorehouses, he drank himself to death… yet… he’s here!… I know, I know . .’

Another woman was running and screaming in German, "Daddy! Daddy! Where are you? It’s your own darling Hilda!"

A man scowled at them and said repeatedly, in Hungarian, "I’m as good as anyone and better than some. To hell with them" A woman said, "I wasted my whole life, my whole life. I did everything for them, and now… "

A man, swinging the metal cylinder before him as if it were a censer, called out, "Follow me to the mountains) Follow me! I know the truth, good people! Follow me! We’ll be safe in the bosom of the Lord! Don’t believe this illusion around you; follow me! I’ll open your eyes!" Others spoke gibberish or were silent; their lips tight as if they feared to utter what was within them.

"It’ll take some time before they straighten out," Burton said. He felt that it would take a long time before the world became mundane for him, too.

"They may never know the truth," Frigate said.

"What do you mean?"

"They didn’t know the Truth — capital T — on Earth, so why should they here? What makes you think we’re going to get a„ revelation?"

Burton shrugged and said, "I don’t. But I do think we ought to determine just what our environment is and how we can survive in it. The fortune of a man who sits, sits also." He pointed toward the riverbank. "See those stone mushrooms? They seem to be spaced out at intervals of a mile. I wonder what their purpose is?"

Monat said, "If you had taken a close look at that one, you would have seen that its surface contains about 700 round indentations. These are just the right size for the base of a cylinder to fit in. In fact, there is a cylinder in the center of the top surface. I think that if we examine that cylinder we may be able to determine their purpose. I suspect that it was placed there so we’d do just that."

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.