Alice was sleeping on the bamboo-and-grass bed on the right side of the building. Only her head was visible, for she was curled up under a blanket of towels fastened to each other by the magnetic clasps. Burton threw the blanket back, got down on his knees by the low bed, and raised her to a sitting position. Her head lolled forward, and her arms hung limply. But she had a healthy color and breathed normally.
Burton called her name three times. She slept on. He slapped both her cheeks sharply; red splotches sprang up on them. Her eyelids fluttered, then she went back to sleep.
By then Frigate and Ruach appeared. “We’ve looked into some of the other huts,” Frigate said. “They’re all asleep. I tried to wake a couple of them, but they’re out for the count. What’s wrong?”
Burton said, “Who do you think has the power or the need to do this? Spruce! Spruce and his kind, Whoever They are!”
“Why?” Frigate sounded frightened.
“They were looking for me! They must have come in under the fog, somehow put this whole area to sleep!”
“A sleep-gas would do it easily enough,” Ruach said. “Although people who have powers such as Theirs could have devices we’ve never dreamed of.”
“They were looking for me!” Burton shouted.
“Which means, if true, that They may be back tonight,” Frigate said. “But why would They be searching for you?”
Ruach replied for Burton. “Because he, as far as we know, was the only man to awaken in the preresurrection phase. Why he did is a mystery. But it’s evident something went wrong. It may also be a mystery to Them. I’d be inclined to think They’ve been discussing this and finally decided to come here. Maybe to kidnap Burton for observation—or some more sinister purpose.”
“Possibly. They wanted to erase from my memory all that I’d seen in that chamber of floating bodies,” Burton said. “Such a thing should not be beyond Their science.”
“But you’ve told that story to many,” Frigate said. “They couldn’t possibly track down all those people and remove the memory of your story from their minds.”
“Would that be necessary? How many believe my tale? Sometimes I doubt it myself.”
Ruach said, “Speculation is fruitless. What do we do now?”
Alice shrieked, “Richard!” and they turned to see her sitting up and staring at them.
For a few minutes, they could not get her to understand what had happened. Finally she said, “So that’s why the fog covered the land, too! I thought it was strange, but of course I had no way of knowing what was really happening.”
Burton said, “Get your grails. Put anything you want to take along in your sack. We’re leaving as of now. I want to get away before the others awake.”
Alice’s already large eyes became even wider. “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere from here. I don’t like to run away but I can’t stand up and fight people like that. Not if They know where I am. I’ll tell you, however, what I plan to do. I intend to find the end of The River. It must have an inlet and an outlet, and there must be a way for a man to get through to the source. If there’s any way at all, I’ll find it—you can bet your soul on that!
“Meanwhile, They’ll be looking for me elsewhere—I hope. The fact that They didn’t find me here makes me think that They have no means for instantly locating a person. They may have branded us like cattle”—he indicated the invisible symbols on his forehead—“but even cattle have mavericks. And we’re cattle with brains.”
He turned to the others. “You’re more than welcome to come along with me. In fact, I’d be honored.”
“I’ll get Monat,” Kazz said. “He wouldn’t want to be left behind.”
Burton grimaced and said, “Good old Monat! I hate to do this to him, but there’s no helping it. He can’t come along. He’s too distinguishable. Their agents would have no trouble at all in locating anybody who looked like him. I’m sorry, but he can’t.”
Tears stood in Kazz’s eyes, then ran down his bulging cheekbones. In a choked voice, he said, “Burton-naq, I can’t go either. I look too different, too.”
Burton felt tears wet his own eyes. He said, “We’ll take that chance. After all, there must be plenty of your type around. We’ve seen at least thirty or more during our travels.”
“No females so far, Burton-naq,” Kazz said mournfully. Then he smiled. “Maybe we find one when we go along The River.”
As quickly, he lost his grin. “No, damn it, I don’t go! I can’t hurt Monat too much. Him and me, others think we ugly and scary-looking. So we become good friends. He’s not my naq, but he’s next to it. I stay.”
He stepped up to Burton, hugged him in a grip that forced Burton’s breath out in a great whoosh, released him, shook hands with the others, making them wince, then turned and shuffled off.
Ruach, holding his paralyzed hand, said, “You’re off on a fool’s errand, Burton. Do you realize that you could sail on this River for a thousand years and still be a million miles or more from the end? I’m staying. My people need me. Besides, Spruce made it clear that we should be striving for a spiritual perfection, not fighting Those Who gave us a chance to do so.”
Burton’s teeth flashed whitely in his dark face. He swung his grail as if it were a weapon.
“I didn’t ask to be put here any more than I asked to be born on Earth. I don’t intend to kowtow to another’s dictates! I mean to find The River’s end. And if I don’t, I will at least have had fun and learned much on the way!”
By then, people were beginning to stumble out of their huts as they yawned and rubbed heavy eyes. Ruach paid no attention to them; he watched the craft as it set sail close-hauled to the wind, cutting across and up The River. Burton was handling the rudder; he turned once and waved the grail so that the sun bounced off it in many shining spears.
Ruach thought that Burton was really happy that he had been forced to make this decision. Now he could evade the deadly responsibilities that would come with governing this little state and could do what he wanted. He could set out on the greatest of all his adventures.
“I suppose it’s for the best,” Ruach muttered to himself. “A man may find salvation on the road, if he wants to, just as well as he may at home. It’s up to him. Meanwhile, I, like Voltaire’s character—what was his name? Earthly things are beginning to slip away from me—will cultivate my own little garden.”
He paused to look somewhat longingly after Burton.
“Who knows? He may some day run into Voltaire.”
He sighed, then smiled.
“On the other hand, Voltaire may someday drop in on me!”
19
Ihate you, Hermann Göring!”
The voice sprang out and then flashed away as if it were a gear tooth meshed with the cog of another man’s dream and rotated into and then out of his dream.
Riding the crest of the hypnopompic state, Richard Francis Burton knew he was dreaming. But he was helpless to do anything about it.
The first dream returned.
Events were fuzzy and encapsulated. A lightning streak of himself in the unmessurable chamber of floating bodies; another flash of the nameless Custodians finding him and putting him back to sleep; then a jerky synopsis of the dream be had had just before the true Resurrection on the banks of The River.
God—a beautiful old man in the clothes of a mid-Victorian gentleman of means and breeding—was poking him in the ribs with an iron cane and telling him that he owed for the flesh.
“What? What flesh?” Burton said, dimly aware that he was muttering in his sleep. He could not hear his words in the dream.
“Pay up!” God said. His face melted, then was recast into Burton’s own features.
God had not answered in the first dream five years before. He spoke now, “Make your Resurrection worth my while, you fool! I have gone to great expense and even greater pains to give you, and all those other miserable and worthless wretches, a second chance.”
“
Second chance at what?” Burton said. He felt frightened at what God might answer. He was much relieved when God the All-Father—only now did Burton see that one eye of Jahweh-Odin was gone and out of the empty socket glared the flames of hell—did not reply. He was gone—no, not gone but metamorphosed into a high gray tower, cylindrical and soaring out of gray mists with the roar of the sea coming up through the mists.
“The Grail!” He saw again the man who had told him of the Big Grail. This man had heard it from another man, who had heard of it from a woman, who had heard it from…and so forth. The Big Grail was one of the legends told by the billions who lived along The River—this River that coiled like a serpent around this planet from pole to pole, issued from the unreachable and plunged into the inaccessible.
A man, or a subhuman, had managed to climb through the mountains to the North Pole. And he had seen the Big Grail, the Dark Tower, the Misty Castle just before he had stumbled. Or he was pushed. He had fallen headlong and bellowing into the cold seas beneath the mists and died. And then the man, or subhuman, had awakened again along The River. Death was not forever here, although it had lost nothing of its sting.
He had told of his vision. And the story had traveled along the valley of The River faster than a boat could sail.
Thus, Richard Francis Burton, the eternal pilgrim and wanderer, had longed to storm the ramparts of the Big Grail. He would unveil the secret of resurrection and of this planet, since he was convinced that the beings Who had reshaped this world had also built that tower.
“Die, Hermann Göring! Die, and leave me in peace!” a man shouted in German.
Burton opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the pale sheen of the multitudinous stars through the open window across the room of the hut.
His vision bent to the shape of the black things inside, and he saw Peter Frigate and Loghu sleeping on their mats by the opposite wall. He turned his head to see the white, blanket-sized towel under which Alice slept. The whiteness of her face was turned toward him, and the black cloud of her hair spilled out on the ground by her mat.
That same evening, the single-masted boat on which he and the other three had been sailing down The River had put into a friendly shore. The little state of Sevieria was inhabited largely by sixteenth-century Englishmen, although its chief was an American who had lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. John Sevier, founder of the “lost state” of Franklin, which had later become Tennessee, had welcomed Burton and his party.
Sevier and his people did not believe in slavery and would not detain any guest longer than he desired. After permitting them to charge their grails and so feed themselves, Sevier had invited them to a party. It was the celebration of Resurrection Day; afterward, he had them conducted to the guest hostelry.
Burton was always a light sleeper, and now he was an uneasy one. The others began breathing deeply or snoring long before he had succumbed to weariness. After an interminable dream, he had wakened on hearing the voice that had interlocked with his dreams.
Hermann Göring, Burton thought. He had killed Göring, but Göring must be alive again somewhere along The River. Was the man now groaning and shouting in the neighboring hut one who had also suffered because of Göring, either on Earth or in the Rivervalley?
Burton threw off the black towel and rose swiftly but noiselessly. He secured a kilt with magnetic tabs, fastened a belt of human skin around his waist, and made sure the human-leather scabbard held the flint poignard. Carrying an assegai, a short length of hardwood tipped with a flint point, he left the hut.
The moonless sky cast a light as bright as the full moon of Earth. It was aflame with huge many-colored stars and pale sheets of cosmic gas.
The hostelries were set back a mile and a half from The River and placed on one of the second row of hills that edged the Riverplain. There were seven of the one-room, leaf-thatch-roofed, bamboo buildings. At a distance, under the enormous branches of the irontrees or under the giant pines or oaks, were other huts. A half-mile away, on top of a high hill, was a large circular stockade, colloquially termed the “Roundhouse.” The officials of Sevieria slept there.
High towers of bamboo were placed every half-mile along The River shore. Torches flamed all night long on platforms from which sentinels kept a lookout for invaders.
After scrutinizing the shadows under the trees, Burton walked a few steps to the hut from which the groans and shouts had come.
He pushed the grass curtain aside. The starlight fell through the open window on the face of the sleeper. Burton hissed in surprise. The light revealed the blondish hair and the broad features of a youth he recognized.
Burton moved slowly on bare feet. The sleeper groaned and threw one arm over his face and half-turned. Burton stopped, then resumed his stealthy progress. He placed the assegai on the ground, drew his dagger, and gently thrust the point against the hollow of the youth’s throat. The arm flopped over; the eyes opened and stared into Burton’s. Burton clamped his hand over the man’s open mouth.
“Hermann Göring! Don’t move or try to yell! I’ll kill you!”
Göring’s light-blue eyes looked dark in the shadows, but the paleness of his terror shone out. He quivered and started to sit up, then sank back as the flint dug into his skin.
“How long have you been here?” Burton said.
“Who…?” Göring said in English, then his eyes opened even wider. “Richard Burton? Am I dreaming? Is that you?”
Burton could smell the dreamgum on Göring’s breath and the sweat-soaked mat on which he lay. The German was much thinner than the last time he had seen him.
Göring said, “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. What time is it?”
“About an hour until dawn, I’d say. It’s the day after Resurrection Celebration.”
“Then I’ve been here three days. Could I have a drink of water? My throat’s dry as a sarcophagus.”
“No wonder. You’re a living sarcophagus—if you’re addicted to dreamgum.”
Burton stood up, gesturing with the assegai at a fired-clay pot on a little bamboo table nearby. “You can drink if you want to. But don’t try anything.”
Göring rose slowly and staggered to the table. “I’m too weak to give you a fight even if I wanted to.” He drank noisily from the pot and then picked up an apple from the table. He took a bite, and then said, “What’re you doing here? I thought I was rid of you.”
“You answer my question first,” Burton said, “and be quick about it. You pose a problem that I don’t like, you know.”
20
Göring started chewing, stopped, stared, then said, “Why should I? I don’t have any authority here, and I couldn’t do anything to you if I did. I’m just a guest here. Damned decent people, these; they haven’t bothered me at all except to ask if I’m all right now and then. Though I don’t know how long they’ll let me stay without earning my keep.”
“You haven’t left the hut?” Burton said. “Then who charged your grail for you? How’d you get so much dreamgum?”
Göring smiled slyly. “I had a big collection from the last place I stayed; somewhere about a thousand miles up The River.”
“Doubtless taken forcibly from some poor slaves,” Burton said. “But if you were doing so well there, why did you leave?”
Göring began to weep. Tears ran down his face, and over his collarbones and down his chest, and his shoulders shook.
“I…I had to get out. I wasn’t any good to the others. I was losing my hold over them—spending too much time drinking, smoking marijuana, and chewing dreamgum. They said I was too soft myself. They would have killed me or made me a slave. So I sneaked out one night…took the boat. I got away all right and kept going until I put into here. I traded part of my supply to Sevier for two weeks’ sanctuary.”
Burton stared curiously at Göring.
“You knew what would happen if you took too much gum,” he said. “Nightmares, hallucinations, delusions. Total men
tal and physical deterioration. You must have seen it happen to others.”
“I was a morphine addict on Earth!” Göring cried. “I struggled with it, and I won out for a long time. Then, when things began to go badly for the Third Reich—and even worse for myself—when Hitler began picking on me, I started taking drugs again!”
He paused, then continued, “But here, when I woke up to a new life, in a young body, when it looked as if I had an eternity of life and youth ahead of me, when there was no stern God in Heaven or Devil in Hell to stop me, I thought I could do exactly as I pleased and get away with it. I would become even greater than the Führer! That little country in which you first found me was to be only the beginning! I could see my empire stretching for thousands of miles up and down The River, on both sides of the valley. I would have been the ruler of ten times the subjects that Hitler ever dreamed of!”
He began weeping again, then paused to take another drink of water, then put a piece of the dreamgum in his mouth. He chewed, his face becoming more relaxed and blissful with each second.
Göring said, “I kept having nightmares of you plunging the spear into my belly. When I woke up, my belly would hurt as if a flint had gone into my guts. So I’d take gum to remove the hurt and the humiliation. At first, the gum helped. I was great. I was master of the world, Hitler, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, all rolled into one. I was chief again of von Richthofen’s Red Death Squadron; those were happy days, the happiest of my life in many ways. But the euphoria soon gave way to hideousness. I plunged into hell; I saw myself accusing myself and behind the accuser a million others. Not myself but the victims of that great and glorious hero, that obscene madman Hitler, whom I worshipped so. And in whose name I committed so many crimes.”
“You admit you were a criminal?” Burton said. “That’s a story different than the one you used to give me. Then you said you were justified in all you did, and you were betrayed by the….”
To Your Scattered Bodies Go/The Fabulous Riverboat Page 17
