To Your Scattered Bodies Go

A moment later, Burton heard the rustle of grass to the east. A naked head, Peter Frigate’s, appeared. He strode from the grass, and was followed by the naked head of a woman. Emerging from the grass, she revealed a wet but beautiful body. Her eyes were large and a dark green, and her lips were a little too thick for beauty. But her other features were exquisite.

Frigate was smiling broadly. He turned and pulled her into the warmth of the fire with his hand.

"You look like the cat who ate the canary," Burton said. "What happened to your hand?" Peter Frigate looked at the knuckles of his right hand. They were swelled, and there were scratches on the back of the hand.

"I got into a fight," he said. He pointed a finger at the woman, who was squatting near Alice and warming herself. "It was a madhouse down by the river last night. That gum must contain a drug of some sort. You wouldn’t believe what people were doing. Or would you? After all, you’re Richard Francis Burton. Anyway, all women, including the ugly ones, were occupied, one way or another. I "got scared at what was going on and than I got mad. I hit two men with my grail, knocked them out They were attacking a ten-year-old girl. I may have killed them; I hope I did. I tried to get the girl to come with me, but she ran away into the night.’

"I decided to come back here. I was beginning to react pretty badly from what I’d done to those two men even if they deserved it. The drug was responsible; it must have released a lifetime of rage and frustration. So I started back here and then I came across two more men, only these were attacking a woman — this one. I think she wasn’t resisting the idea of intercourse so much as she was their idea of simultaneous attack, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she was screaming, or trying to, and struggling, and they had just started to hit her. So I hit them with my fist and kicked them and then banged away on them with my grail: Then I took the woman, her name’s Loghu, by the way, that’s all I know about her since I can’t understand a word of her language, and she went with me." He grinned again. "But we never got there." He quit grinning, and shuddered.

Then we woke up with the rain and lightning and thunder coming down like the wrath of God. I thought that maybe, don’t laugh, that it was judgment Day, that God had given us free rein for a day so He could let us judge ourselves. And now we were going to be cast into the pit." He laughed tightly and said, "I’ve been an agnostic since I was fourteen years old, and I died one at the age of ninety, although I was thinking about calling in a priest then. But the little child that’s scared of the Old Father God and Hellfire and Damnation, he’s still down there, even in the old man. Or in the young man raised from the dead."

"What happened?" Burton said. "Did the world end in a crack of thunder and a stroke of lightning? You’re still here, I see, and you’ve not renounced the delights of sin in the person of this woman."

"We found a grailstone near the mountains. About a mile west of here. We got lost, wandered-around, cold, wet, jumping every time the lightning struck nearby. Then we found the grailstone. It was jammed with people, but they were exceptionally friendly, end there were so many bodies it was very warm, even if some rain did leak down through the grass. We finally went to sleep, long after the rain quit. When I woke up, I searched through the grass until I found Loghu. She got lost during the night, somehow. She seemed pleased to see me, though, add I like her. There’s an affinity between us. Maybe I’ll find out why when she learns to speak English. I tried that and French and German and tags of Russian, Lithuanian, Gaelic, all the Scandinavian tongues, including Finnish, classical Nahuatl, Arabic, Hebrew, Onondaga Iroquois, Objibway, Italian, Spanish, Latin, modem and Homeric Greek, and a dozen others. Result: a blank look."

"You must be quite a linguist," Burton said.

"I’m not fluent in any of those," Frigate said. "I can read most of them but can speak only everyday phrases. Unlike you, I am not master of thirty-nine languages — including pornography."

"The fellow seemed to know much about himself, Burton thought. He would find out just how much at a later time.

"I’ll be frank with you, Peter," Burton said. "Your account of your aggressiveness amazed me. I had not thought you capable of attacking and beating that many men. Your queasiness…"

"It was the gum, of course. It opened the door of the cage." Frigate squatted down by Loghu and rubbed his shoulder against hers. She looked at him out of slightly slanted eyes. The woman would be beautiful once her hair grew out.