To Your Scattered Bodies Go

"Impulse! My God, I’ve never done anything like this in my life! I’ve always been good! I was a virgin when I married, and I stayed faithful to my husband all my life! And now … a total stranger! Just like that! I don’t know what got into me!"

"Then I’ve been a failure," Burton said, and laughed. But he was beginning to feel regret and sorrow. If only it had been her own will, her own wish, then he would not now be having the slightest bite of conscience. But that gum had contained some powerful drug, and it had made them behave as lovers whose passion knew no limits. She had certainly cooperated as enthusiastically as any experienced woman in a Turkish harem.

You needn’t feel the least bit contrite or self-reproachful," he said gently. "You were possessed. Blame the drug."

"I did it!" she said. "I… I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!"

"I don’t remember offering you any money." He did not mean to be heartless. He wanted to make her so angry that she would forget her self-abasement. And he succeeded. She jumped up and attacked his chest and face with her nails. She called him names that a high-bred and gentle lady of Victoria’s day should never have known.

Burton caught her wrists to prevent further damage and held her while she spewed more filth at him. Finally, when she had fallen silent and had begun weeping again, he led her toward the camp site. The fire was wet ashes. He scraped off the top layer and dropped a handful of grass, which had been protected from the rain by the tree, onto the embers. By its light, he saw the little girl sleeping huddled between Kazz and Monat udder a pile of grass beneath the irontree. He returned to Alice, who was sitting under another tree.

"Stay away," she said. "I never want to see you again! You have dishonored me, dirtied me! And after you gave your word to protect me!"

"You can freeze if you wish," he said. "I was merely going to suggest that we huddle together to keep warm. But, if you wish discomfort, so be it. I’ll tell you again that what we did was generated by the drug. No, not generated. Drugs don’t generate desires or actions; they merely allow them to be released. Our normal inhibitions were dissolved, and neither one of us can blame ourself or the other.

"However, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy it, and you’d be a liar if you claimed you didn’t. So, why gash yourself with the knives of conscience?"

"I’m not a beast like you! I’m a good Christian God-fearing virtuous woman!"

"No doubt," Burton said dryly. "However, let me stress again one thing. I doubt if you would have done what you did if you had not wished in your heart to do so. The drug suppressed your inhibitions, but it certainly did not put in your mind the idea of what to do. The idea was already there. Any actions that resulted from taking the drug came from you, from what you wanted to do."

"I know that!" she screamed. "Do you think I’m some stupid simple serving girls I have a brain! I know what I did and why! It’s just that I never dreamed that I could be such … such a person! But I must have been! Must be!"

Burton tried to console her, to show her that everyone had certain unwished-for elements in their nature. He pointed out that the dogma of original sin surely covered this; she wan human; therefore, she had dark desires in her. And so forth. The more he tried to make her feel better, the worse she felt Then, shivering with cold, and tired of the useless arguments, he gave up. He crawled in between Monat and Razz and took the little girl in his arms. The warmth of the three bodies arid the cover of the grass pile and the feel of the naked bodies soothed him. He went to sleep with Alice’s weeping coming to him faintly through the grass cover.

9

When he awoke, he was in the gray light of the false dawn, which the Arabs called the wolfs tail. Monat, Kazz, and the child were still sleeping. He scratched for a while at the itchy spots caused by the, rough-edged grass and then crawled out. The fire was out; water drops hung from the leaves of the trees end the tips of the grass blades. He shivered with the cold. But he did not feel tired nor have any ill effects from the drug, as he had expected. He found a pile of comparatively dry bamboo under some grass beneath a tree. He rebuilt the fire with this and in a short time was comfortable. Then he saw the bamboo containers, and he drank water from one. Alice was sitting up in a mound of grass and staring sullenly at him. Her skin was ridged with goosebumps.

"Come and get warm!" he said.

She crawled out, stood up, walked over to the bamboo bucket, beat down, scooped up water, and splashed it over her face. Then she squatted down by the fire, warming her hands over a small flame. If everybody is naked, how quickly even the most modest lose their modesty, he thought.