He must have become unconscious then, or half-conscious since he had no memory of being dragged along on the grass. When his wits cleared, he found himself lying on a bamboo bed inside a hut.
It was dark with the only illumination the starlight filtering is through the tree branches outside the square of window. He turned his head and saw the shadowy and pale-white bulk of a man squatting by him. The man was holding a thin metal object before his eyes, the gleaming end of which was pointed at Burton.
25
As soon as Burton turned his head, the man put the device down. He spoke in English.
'It’s taken me a long time to find you, Richard Burton.' Burton groped around on the floor for a weapon with his left hand, which was hidden from the man’s view. His fingers touched nothing but dirt. He said, 'Now you’ve found me, you damn Ethical, what do you intend doing with me?'
The man shifted slightly and he chuckled. 'Nothing.' He paused, then said, 'I am not one of Them.' He laughed again when Burton gasped. 'That’s not quite true. I am with Them, but I am not of Them.' He picked up the device, which he had been aiming at Burton.
'This tells me that you have a fractured skull and a concussion of the brain: You must be very tough, because you should be dead, judging from the extent of the injury. But you may pull out of it, if you take it easy. Unfortunately, you don’t have time to convalesce. The Others know you’re in this area, give or take thirty miles. In a day or so, They’ll have you pinpointed.'
Burton tried to sit up and found that his bones had become soft as taffy in sunlight, and a bayonet was prying open the back of his skull. Groaning, he lay back down.
'Who are you and what’s your business?'
'I can’t tell you my name. If — much more likely when — They catch you, They’ll thread out your memory and run it off backward to the time you woke up in the pre-resurrection bubble. They won’t find out what made you wake before your time. But They will know about this conversation. They’ll even be able to see me. But only as you see me, a pale shadow with no features. They’ll hear my voice too, but They won’t recognize it. I’m using a transmuter.
'They will, however, be horrified. What they have slowly and reluctantly been suspecting will all of a sudden be revealed as the truth. They have a traitor in Their midst'
'I wish I knew what you were talking about,' Burton said.
The man said, 'I’ll tell you this much. You have been told a monstrous lie about the purpose of the Resurrection. What Spruce told you, and what that Ethical creation, the Church of the Second Chance, teaches — are lies! All lies! The truth is that you human beings have been given life again only to participate in a scientific experiment. The Ethicals — a misnomer if there ever was one have reshaped this planet into one Rivervalley, built the grailstones, and brought all of you back from the dead for one purpose. To record your history and customs. And, as a secondary matter, to observe your reactions to Resurrection and to the mixing of different peoples of different eras. That is all it is: a scientific project. And when you have served your purpose, back into the dust you go!'
'This story about giving all of you another chance at eternal life and salvation because it is Their ethical duty — lies! Actually, my people do not believe that you are worth saving. They do not think you have 'souls'!' Burton was silent for a while. The fellow was certainly sincere. Or, if not sincere, he was very emotionally involved, since he was breathing so heavily.
Finally, Burton spoke. 'I can’t see anybody going to all this expense and labor just to run a scientific experiment, or to make historical recordings.'
'Time hangs heavy on the hands of immortals. You would be surprised what we do to make eternity interesting. Furthermore, given all time, we can take our time, and we do not let even the most staggering projects dismay us. After the last Terrestrial died, the job of setting up the Resurrection took several thousands of years, even though the final phase took only one day.'
Burton said, 'And you? What are you doing? And why are you doing whatever you’re doing?'
'I am the only true Ethical in the whole monstrous race! I do not like toying around with you as if you were puppets; or mere objects to be observed, animals in a laboratory! After all, primitive and vicious though you be, you are sentients! You are, in a sense, as… as…'
The shadowy speaker waved a shadowy hand as if trying to grasp a word out of the darkness. He continued, 'I’ll have to use your term for yourselves. You’re as human as we. Just as the subhumans who first used language were as human as you. And you are our forefathers. For all I know, I may be your direct descendant. My whole people could be descended from you.'
'I doubt it,' Burton said 'I had no children — that I know anyway.' He had many questions, and he began to ask them.
But the man was dying no attention. He was holding the device to his forehead. Suddenly he withdrew it and interrupted Burton in the middle of a sentence. 'I’ve been… you don’t have a word for it. … let’s say … listening. They’ve detected my… wathan . … I think you’d call it an aura. They don’t know whose wathan just that it’s an Ethical’s. But They’ll be zeroing in within the next five minutes. I have to go.' The pale figure stood up. 'You have to go, too.'
'Where are you taking me?' Burton said.
'I’m not. You must die; They must find only your corpse. I can’t take you with me; it’s impossible. But if you die here, They’ll lose you again. And we’ll meet again. Then…'
'Wait!' Burton said. 'I don’t understand. Why can’t They locate me? They built the Resurrection machinery. Don’t They know where my particular resurrector is?' The man chuckled again. 'No. Their only recordings of men on Earth were visual, not audible. And the location of the resurrectees in the pre-resurrection bubble was random, since They had planned to scatter you humans along The River in a rough chronological sequence but with a certain amount of mixing. They intended to get down to the individual basis later. Of course, They had no notion then that I would be opposing Them. Or that I would select certain of Their subjects to aid me in defeating the Plan. So They do not know where you, or the others, will next pop up.
'Now, you may be wondering why I can’t set your resurrector so that you’ll be translated near your goal, the headwaters. The fact is that I did set yours so that the first time you died, you’d be at the very first grailstone. But you didn’t make it; so I presume the Titanthrops killed you. That was unfortunate, since I no longer dare to go near the bubble until I have an excuse. It is forbidden for any but those authorized to enter the pre-resurrection bubble. They are suspicious; They suspect tampering. So it is up to you, and to chance, to get back to the north polar region.
'As for the others, I never had an opportunity to set their resurrectors. They have to go by the laws of probabilities, too. Which are about twenty million to one.'
'Others?' Burton said. 'Others? But why did you choose us?'
'You have the right aura. So did the others. Believe me I know what I’m doing; I chose well.'
'But you intimated that you woke me up ahead of time… is the pre-resurrection bubble, for a purpose. What did it accomplish?'
'It was the only thing that would convince you that the Resurrection was not a supernatural event. And it started you sniffing on the track of the Ethicals. Am I right? Of course, I am. Here!' He handed Burton a tiny capsule. 'Swallow this. You will be dead instantly and out of Their reach — for a while. And your brain cells will be so ruptured They’ll not be able to read them. Hurry! I must go!'
'What if I don’t take it?' Burton said. 'What if I allow Them to capture me now?'
'You don’t have the aura for it,' the man said.
Burton almost decided not to take the capsule. Why should he allow this arrogant fellow to order him around? Then he considered that he should not bite off his nose to spite his face. As it was, he had the choice of playing along with this unknown man or of falling into the hands of the Others.
'All right,' he said, 'But why don’t you kill me? Why make me do the job?'
The man laughed and said, 'There are certain rules in this game, rules that I don’t have time to explain. But you are intelligent, you’ll figure out most of them for yourself. One is that we are Ethicals. We can give life, but we can’t directly take life. It is not unthinkable for us or beyond our ability. Just very difficult.' Abruptly, the man was gone. Burton did not hesitate. He swallowed the capsule. There was a blinding flash…
26
And light was full in his eyes, from the just-risen sun. He had time for one quick look around, saw his grail, his pile of neatly folded towels — and Hermann Goring.
Then Burton and the German were seized by small dark men with large heads and bandy legs. These carried spears and flint headed axes. They wore towels but only as capes secured around their thick short necks. Strips of leather, undoubtedly human skin, ran across their disproportionately large foreheads and around their heads to bind their long, coarse black hair. They looked semi Mongolian and spoke a tongue unknown to him An empty grail was placed upside down over his head; his hands were tied behind him with a leather thong. Blind and helpless, stonetipped spears digging into his back, he was urged across the plain. Somewhere near, drums thundered, and female voices wailed a chant.
He had walked three hundred paces when he was halted. The drums quit beating, and the women stopped their singsong. He could hear nothing except for the blood beating in his ears. What the hell was going on? Was he part of a religious ceremony which required that the victim be blinded? Why not? There had been many cultures on Earth, which did not want the ritually slain to view those who shed his blood. The dead man’s ghost might want to take revenge on his killers.
But these people must know by now that there were no such things as ghosts. Or did they regard lazari as just that, as ghosts that could be dispatched back to their land of origin by simply killing them again? Goring! He, too, had been translated here. At the same grailstone. The first time could have been coincidence, although the probabilities against it were high. But three times in succession? No, it was…
The first blow drove the side of the grail against his head, made him half-unconscious, sent a vast ringing through him, sparks of light before his eyes, and knocked him to his knees. He never felt the second blow, and so awoke once more in another place…
