Riverworld01- To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) Hugo Award

by Philip José Farmer

  'Food!' a man shouted. He was a large man not a member of what Burton thought of as `his group.' He had followed them, and others were scrambling up on the rock. Burton reached down past the containers into the cylinder and gripped the small silvery rectangular object on the bottom. Frigate had said this might be a lighter. Button did not know what a `lighter' was, but he suspected that it provided flame for the cigarettes. He kept the object in the palm of his hand and with the other he closed the lid. His mouth was watering, and his belly was rumbling. The others were just as eager as he their expressions showed that they could not understand why he was not removing the food.

  'The large man said, in a loud blustery Triestan Italian, `I'm hungry, and I'll kill anybody who tries to stop me! Open that!' The others said nothing, but it was evident that they expected Burton to take the lead in the defense.

  Instead, he said, `Open it yourself,' and turned away. The others hesitated. They had seen sad smelled the food. Kazz was drooling. But Burton said, `Look at that mob. There'll be a fight here in a minute. I say, let them fight over their morsels. Not that I'm avoiding a battle, you understand,' he added, looking fiercely at them. `But I'm certain that we'll all have our own cylinders full of food by supper, time. These cylinders, call them grails, if you please, just need to be left on the rock to be filled. That is obvious, that's why this grail was placed here.' He walked to the edge of the stone near the water and got off, by then the top was jammed with people and more were trying to get on. The large man had seized a steak and bitten into it, but someone had tried to snatch it away from him. He yelled with fury and, suddenly, rammed through those between him and the river. He went over the edge and into the water, emerging a moment later. In the meantime, men and women were screaming and striking each other over the rest of the food and goods in the cylinder.

  The man who had jumped into the river floated off on his back while he ate the rest of the steak. Burton watched him closely, half expecting him to be seized by fish. But he drifted on down the stream undisturbed.

  The rocks to the north and south, on both sides of the river, were crowded with struggling humans.

  Burton walked until he was free of the crowd and sat down. His group squatted by him or stood up and watched the writhing and noisy mass. The grailstone looked like a toadstool engulfed in pale maggots. Very noisy maggots. Some of them were now also red, because blood had been spilled.

  The most depressing aspect of the scene was the reaction of the children. The younger ones had stayed back from the rock, but they knew that there was food in the grail. They were crying from hunger and from terror caused by the screaming and fighting of the adults on the stone. The little girl with Burton was dry-eyed, but she was shaking. She stood by Burton and put her arms around his neck. He patted her on the back and murmured encouraging words, which she could not understand, but the tone of which helped to quiet her.

  The sun was on its descent. Within about two hours it would be hidden by the towering western mountain, though a genuine dusk presumably would not happen for many hours. There was no way to determine how long the day was here. The temperature had gone up, but sitting in the sun was not by any means unbearable, and the steady breeze helped cool them off.

  Kazz made signs indicating that he would like a fire and also pointed at the tip of a bamboo spear. No doubt he wanted to fire-harden the tip.

  Burton had inspected the metal object taken from the grail. It was of a hard silvery metal, rectangular, flat, about two inches long and three-tenths across. It had a small hole in one end and a slide on the other. Burton put his thumbnail against the projection at the end of the slide and pushed. The slide moved downward about two-sixteenths of an inch, and a wire about one-tenth of an inch in diameter and a half-inch long slid out of the hole in the end. Even in the bright sunlight, it glowed whitely. He touched the tip of the wire to a blade of grass; the blade shriveled up at once. Applied to the tip of the bamboo spear, it burned a tiny hole. Burton pushed the slide back into its original position, and the wire withdrew, like the hot head of a brazen turtle, into the silvery shell.

  Both Frigate and Roach wondered aloud at the power contained in the tiny pack. To make the wire red hot required much voltage. How many charges would the battery or the radioactive pile that must be in it give? How could the lighter's power pack be renewed? There were many questions that could not be immediately answered or, perhaps, never. The greatest was how they could have been brought back to life in rejuvenated bodies. Whoever had done it possessed a science that was godlike. But speculation about it, though it would give them something to talk about, would solve nothing.

  After a while, the crowd dispersed. The cylinder was left on its side on top of the grailstone. Several bodies were sprawled there, and a number of men and women who got off the rock were hurt. Burton went through the crowd. One woman's face had been clawed, especially around her right eye: She was sobbing with no one to pay attention to her. Another man was sitting on the ground and holding his groin, which had been raked with sharp fingernails.

  Of the four lying on top of the stone, three were unconscious. These recovered with water dashed into their faces from the river. The fourth, a short slender man, was dead. Someone had twisted his head until his neck had broken.

  Burton looked up at the sun again and said, `I don't know exactly when suppertime will occur. I suggest we return not too long after the sun goes down behind the mountain. We will set our grails, or glory buckets, or lunch pails, or whatever you wish to call them, in these depressions. And then we'll wait. In the meantime. . .

  He could have tossed this body into the river, too, but he had thought of a use, perhaps uses, for it. He told the others what he wanted, and they got the corpse down off the stone and started to carry it across the plain. Frigate and Galeazzi, a farmer importer of Trieste, took the first turn. Frigate had evidently not cared for the job, but when Burton asked him if he would, he nodded. He picked up the man's feet and led with Galeazzi holding the dead man under the armpits. Alice walked behind Burton with the child's hand in hers. Some in the crowd looked curiously or called out commits or questions, but Burton ignored them. After half a mile, Kazz and Monat took over the corpse. The child did not seem to be disturbed by the dead man. She had been curious about the first corpse, instead of being horrified by its burned appearance.

  `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 in 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 bit
ch 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!'

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  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 ape-man 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'

  Alice said, `I don't like it. But why should I be embarrassed? Where all are nude, none are nude. It's the thing to do, in fact, the only thing that can be done. If some angel were to give me a complete outfit, I wouldn't wear it. I'd be out of style. And my figure is good. If it weren't I might be suffering more.'

  The two men laughed, and Frigate said, `You're fabulous, Alice. Absolutely. I may call you Alice? Mrs. Hargreaves seems so formal when you're nude.' She did not reply but walked away and disappeared behind a large tree.

  Burton said, `Something will have to be done about sanitation in the near future. Which means that somebody will have to decide the health policies and have the power to make regulations and enforce them. How does one form legislative, judicial, and executive bodies from the present state of anarchy?'

  `To get to more immediate problems,' Frigate said, `what do we do about the dead man?' He was only a little less pale than a moment ago when Kazz had made his incisions with his chert knife.

  Burton said, `I'm sure that human skin, properly tanned, or human gut, properly treated, will be far superior to grass for making ropes or bindings. I intend to cut off some strips. Do you want to help me?' Only the wind rustling the leaves and the tops of the grass broke the silence. The sun beat down and brought out sweat, which dried rapidly in the wind. No bird cried, no insect buzzed. And then the shrill voice of the little girl shattered the quiet Alice's voice answered her, and the little girl ran to her behind the tree.

  `I'll try,' the American said. `But I don't know. I've gone through more than enough for one day.'

  'You 'do as you please then, Burton said. `But anybody who helps me gets first call on the use of the skin. You may wish you could have some in order to bind an axe head to a haft.'

  Frigate gulped audibly and then said, `I'll come.'

 
; Kazz was still squatting in the grass by the body, holding the bloody liver with one hand and the bloody stone knife with the other. Seeing Burton, he grinned with stained lips and cut off a piece of liver. Burton shook his head. The others, Galeazzi, Brontich, Maria Tucci, Filipo Rocco, Rosa Nalini, Caterina Carpone, Fiorenza Fiorri, Babich, and Gloats, had retreated from the grisly scene. They were on the other side of a thick pine and talking subduedly in Italian.

  Burton squatted down by the body and applied the paint of Eke knife beginning just above the right knee and continuing to the collarbone. Frigate stood by him and stared. He became even more pale, and his trembling increased. But he stood firm until two long strips had been lifted from the body.

  `Care to try your hand at it?' Burton said. He rolled the body over on its side so that other, even longer, strips could be taken. Frigate took the bloody-tipped knife and set to work, his teeth gritted.

  'Not so deep,' Burton said and, a moment later, `Now you're not cutting deeply enough. Here, give me the knife: Watch!

  'I had a neighbor who used to hang up his rabbits behind his garage and cut their throats right after breaking their necks,' Frigate said. `I watched once. That was enough.'

  `You can't afford to be fastidious or weak-stomached,' Burton said. `You're living in the most primitive of conditions. You have to be a primitive to survive, like it or not'

  Brontich, the tall skinny Slovene who had once been an innkeeper hastened up to them. He said, `We just found another of those big m-shaped stones. About forty yards from here. It was hidden behind some trees down in a hollow.' Burton's first delight in hectoring Frigate had passed. He was beginning to feel story for the fellow. He said, `Look, Peter, why don't you go investigate the stone? If there is one here, we can save ourselves a trip back to the river.'

  He handed Frigate his grail. `Put this in a hole on the stone, remember exactly which hole you put it in. Have the others do that, too. Make sure that they know where they put their grails. Wouldn't want to have any quarrels about that, you know.'