Phillip Farmer: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

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!