Only a few minutes after both had chewed the gum, the man strangled his wife, heaved her body into the river, picked up another woman in his arms, and run off into the darkness of the woods with her.
Another man had leaped upon a grailstone and delivered a speech that lasted all night, even through the rain. To the few who could hear, and the even fewer who listened, he had demonstrated the principles of a perfect society and how these could be carried out in practice. By dawn, he was so hoarse he could only croak a few words. On Earth, he had seldom bothered to vote.
A man and a woman, outraged at the public display of carnality, had forcefully tried to separate couples. The results bruises, bloody noses, split lips, and two concussions, all theirs, Some men and women had spent the night on their knees praying and confessing their sins.
Some children had been badly beaten, raped, or murdered, or all three. But not everybody had succumbed to the madness. A number of adults had protected the children, or tried to.
Ruach described the despair and disgust of a Croat Moslem and an Austrian Jew because their grails contained pork. A Hindu screamed obscenities because his grail offered him meat.
A fourth man, crying out that they were in the hands of devils, had hurled his cigarettes into the river.
Several had said to him, 'Why didn’t you give us the cigarettes if you didn’t want them?'
'Tobacco is the invention of the devil; it was the weed created by Satan in the Garden of Eden!'
A man said, 'At least you could have shared the cigarettes with us. It wouldn’t hurt you.'
'I would like to throw all the evil stuff into the river!' he had shouted.
'You’re an insufferable bigot and crazy to boot,' another had replied, and struck him in the mouth. Before the tobacco-hater could get up off the ground, he was hit and kicked by four others.
Later, the tobacco-hater had staggered up and, weeping with rage, cried, 'What have I done to deserve this, O Lord, my God! I have always been a good man. I gave thousands of Pounds to charities, I worshipped in Thy temple three times a week, I waged a lifelong war against sin and corruption, I . .
'I know you!' a woman had shouted. She was a tall blue-eyed 62 girl with a handsome face and well-curved figure. 'I know you! Sir Robert Smithson!'
He had stopped talking and had blinked at her. 'I don’t know you!'
'You wouldn’t! But you should! I’m one of the thousands of girls who had to work sixteen hours a day, six and a half days a week, so you could live in your big house on the hill and dress in fine clothes and so your horses and dogs could eat far better than I could! I was one of your factory girls! My father slaved for you, my mother slaved for you, my brothers and sisters, those who weren’t too sick or who didn’t die because of too little or too bad food, dirty beds, drafty windows, and rat bites, slaved for you. My father lost a hand in one of your machines, and you kicked him out without a penny. My mother died of the white plague. I was coughing out my life, too, my fine baronet, while you stuffed yourself with rich foods and sat in easy chairs and dozed off in your big expensive church pew and gave thousands to feed the poor unfortunates in Asia and to send missionaries to convert the poor heathens in Africa. I coughed out my lungs, and I had to go a-whoring to make enough money to feed my kid sisters and brothers. And I caught syphilis, you bloody pious bastard, because you wanted to wring out every drop of sweat and blood I had and those poor devils like me had! I died in prison because you told the police they should deal harshly with prostitution. You… you…!'
Smithson had gone red at first, then pale. Then he had drawn himself up straight, scowling at the woman, and said, 'You whores always have somebody to blame for your unbridled lusts, your evil ways. God knows that I followed His ways.' He had turned and had walked off, but the woman ran after him and swung her grail at him. It came around swiftly; somebody shouted; he spun and ducked. The grail almost grazed the top of his head.
Smithson ran past the woman before she could recover and quickly lost himself in the crowd. Unfortunately, Ruach said, very few understood what was going on because they couldn’t speak English.
'Sir Robert Smithson,' Burton said 'If I remember correctly, he owned cotton mills and steelworks in Manchester. He was noted for his philanthropies and his good works among the heathens. Died in 1870 or thereabouts at the age of eighty.'
'And probably convinced that he would be rewarded in Heaven,' Lev Ruach said. 'Of course, it would never have occurred to him that he was a murderer many times over.'
'If he hadn’t exploited the poor, someone else would have done so.'
'That is an excuse used by many throughout men’s history,' Lev said 'Besides, there were industrialists in your country who saw to it that wages and conditions in their factories were improved. Robert Owen was one, I believe.'
10
'I don’t see much sense in arguing about what went on in the past,' Frigate said. 'I think we should do something about our present situation.'
Burton stood up. 'You’re right, Yank! We need roofs over our heads, tools, God knows what else! But first, I think we should take a look at the cities of the plains and see what the citizens are doing there.' At that moment, Alice came through the trees on the hill above them. Frigate saw her first. He burst out laughing. 'The latest in ladies' wear!' She had cut lengths of the grass with her scissors and plaited them into a two-piece garment. One was a sort of poncho which covered her breasts and the other a skirt which fell to her calves.
The effect was strange, though one that she should have expected. When she was naked, the hairless head still did not detract too much from her femaleness and her beauty. But with the green, bulky, and shapeless garments, her face suddenly became masculine and ugly.
The other women crowded around her and examined the weaving of the grass lengths and the grass belt that secured the skirt.
'It’s very itchy, very uncomfortable,' Alice said. 'But it’s decent. That’s all I can say for it'
'Apparently you did not mean what you said about your unconcern with nudity in a land where all are nude,' Burton said.
Alice stared coolly and said, 'I expect that everybody will be wearing these. Every decent man and woman, that is.'
'I supposed that Mrs. Grundy would rear her ugly head here,' Burton replied.
'It was a shock to be among so many naked people,' Frigate said. 'Even though nudity on the beach and in the private home became commonplace in the late '80’s. But it didn’t take long for everyone to get used to it. Everyone except the hopelessly neurotic, I suppose.'
Burton swung around and spoke to the other women. 'What about you ladies? Are you going to wear these ugly and scratchy haycocks because one of your sex suddenly decides that she has private parts again? Can something that has bean so public become private?' Loghu, Tanya, and Alice did not understand him because he spoke in Italian. He repeated in English for the benefit of the last two.
Alice flushed and said, 'What I wear is my business. If anybody else cares to go naked when I’m decently covered, well…!' Loghu had not understood a word, but she understood what was going on. She laughed and turned away. The other women seemed to be trying to guess what each one intended to do. The ugliness and the uncomfortable-ness of the clothing were not the issues.
'While you females are trying to make up your minds,' Burton said, 'it would be nice if you would take a bamboo pail and go with us to the river. We can bathe, fill the pails with water, find out the situation in the plains, and then return here. We may be able to build several houses — or temporary shelters before nightfall.' They started down the hills, pushing through the grass and carrying their grails, chert weapons, bamboo spears and buckets. They had not gone far before they encountered a number of people. Apparently, many plains dwellers had decided to move out. Not only that, some had also found chert and had made tools and weapons. These had learned the technique of working with stone from somebody, possibly from other primitives in the area. So far, Burton had seen only two specimens of non-Homo sapiens, and these were with him. But wherever the techniques had been learned, they had been put to good use. They passed two half-completed bamboo huts. These were round, one-roomed, and would have conical roofs thatched with the huge triangular leaves from the irontrees and with the long hill grass. One man, using a chert adze and axe, was building a short-legged bamboo bed.
Except for a number erecting rather crude huts or lean-tos without stone tools at the edge of the plains, and for a number swimming in the river, the plain was deserted. The bodies from last night’s madness had been removed. So far, no one had put on a grass skirt, and many stared at Alice or even laughed and made raucous comments. Alice turned red, but she made no move to get rid of her clothes. The sun was getting hot, however, and she was scratching under her breast garment and under her skirt. It was a measure of the intensity of the irritation that the, raised by strict Victorian upper-class standards, would scratch in public.
However, when they got to the river, they saw a dozen heaps, of stuff that turned out to be grass dresses. These had been left on the edge of the river by the men and women now laughing, splashing, and swimming in the river.
It was certainly a contrast to the beaches he knew. These were the same people who had accepted the bathing machines, the suits that covered them from ankle to neck, and all the other modest devices, as absolutely moral and vital to the continuation of the proper society — theirs. Yet, only one day after finding themselves here, they were swimming in the nude. And enjoying it.
Part of the acceptance of their unclothed state came from the shock of the resurrection. In addition, there was not much they could do about it that first day. And there had been a leavening of the civilized with savage peoples, or tropical civilized peoples, who were not particularly shocked by nudity.
He called out to a woman who was standing to her waist in the water. She had a coarsely pretty face and sparkling blue eyes.
'That is the woman who attacked Sir Robert Smithson,' Lev Ruach said. 'I believe her name is Wilfreda Allport.'
Burton looked at her curiously and with appreciation of her splendid bust. He called out, 'How’s the water?'
'Very nice!' she said, smiling.
He un-strapped his grail, put down the container, which held his chert knife and handaxe, and waded in with his cake of green soap. The water felt as if it was about ten degrees below his body temperature. He soaped himself while he struck up a conversation with Wilfreda. If she still harbored any resentment about Smithson, she did not show it. Her accent was heavily North Country, Perhaps Cumberland.
Burton said to her, 'I heard about your little to-do with the late great hypocrite, the baronet. You should be happy now, though. You’re healthy and young and beautiful again, and you don’t have to toil for your bread. Also, you can do for love what you had to do for money.' There was no use beating around the bush with a factory girl Not that she had any.
Wilfreda gave him a stare as cool as any he had received from Alice Hargreaves. She said, 'Now, haven’t you the ruddy nerve? English, aren’t you? I can’t place your accent, London, I’d say, with a touch of something foreign.'
'You’re close,' he said, laughing. 'I’m Richard Burton, by the way. How would you like to join our group? We’ve banded together for protection; we’re going to
