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 pieces 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 ten up to them. He said, 'We just found another of big m-shaped stones. About forty yards from here. It was hidden behind some trees down in a hollow.' Burma’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.'
Strangely, Frigate was reluctant to go. He seemed to feel that he had disgraced himself by his weakness. He stood a there for a moment, shifting his weight from one leg to another and sighing several times. Then, as Burton continued to scrape away at the underside of the skin-strips, he walked away. He carried the two grails in one hand and his stone axehead in the other.
Burton stopped working after the American was out of sight. He had been interested in finding out how to cut off strips, and he might dissect the body’s trunk to remove the entrails. But he could do nothing at this time about preserving the skin or guts. It was possible that the bark of the oak-like trees might contain tannin, which could be used with other materials to convert human skin into leather. By the time that was done, however, these strips would have rotted. Still, he had not wasted his time. The efficiency of the stone knives was proven, and he had reinforced his weak memory of human anatomy. When they were juveniles in Pisa, Richard Burton and his brother Edward had associated with the Italian medical students of the university. Both of the Burton youths had learned much from the students and neither had abandoned their interest in anatomy. Edward became a surgeon, and Richard had attended a number of lectures and public and private dissections in London. But he had forgotten much of what he had learned.
Abruptly, the sun went past the shoulder of the mountain. A pale shadow fell over him, and, within a few minutes, the entire valley was in the dusk. But the sky was a bright blue for a long time. The breeze continued to flow at the same rate. The moisture-laden air became a little cooler. Burton and the Neanderthal left the body and followed the sounds of the others' voices: These were by the grailstone of which Brontich had spoken. Burton wondered if there were others near the base of the mountain, strung out at approximate distances of a mile. This one lacked the grail in the center depression, however. Perhaps this meant that it was not ready to operate. He did not think so. It could be assumed that Whoever had made the grailstones had placed the grails in the center holes of those on the river’s edge because the resurrectees would be using these first. By the time they found the inland stones, they would know how to use them.
The grails were set on the depressions of the outmost circle. Their owners stood or sat around, talking but with their minds on the grails. All were wondering when — or perhaps if — the blue flames would come. Much of their conversation was about how hungry they were. The rest was mainly surmise about how they had come here, Who had put them here, where they were, and what was being planned for them. A few spoke of their lives on Earth.
Burton sat down beneath the wide-flung and densely leaved branches of the gnarled black-trunked irontree. He felt tired, as all, except Razz, obviously did. His empty belly and his stretched-out nerves kept him from dozing off, although the quiet voices and the rustle of leaves conduced to sleep. The hollow in which the group waited was formed by a level space at the junction of four hills and was surrounded by trees. Though it was darker than on top of the hills, it also seemed to be a little warmer. After a while, as the dusk and the chill increased, Burton organized a firewood-collecting party. Using the knives and bandages, they cut down many mature bamboo pleats and gathered piles of grass. With the white-hot wire o? the lighter, Burt started a fire of leaves and grass. These were green, and so the fire was smoky and unsatisfactory until the bamboo was put on.
Suddenly, an explosion made them jump. Some of the women screamed. They had forgotten about watching the grailstone. Burton turned just in time to see the blue flames soar up about twenty feet. The heat from the discharge could be felt by Brontich, who was about twenty feet from it.
Then the noise was gone, and they stared at the grails. Burton was the first upon the stone again; most of them did not care to venture on the stone too soon after the flames. He lifted the lid of his grail, looked within, and whooped with delight. The others climbed up and opened their own grails. Within a minute, they were seated near the fire eating rapidly, exclaiming with ecstasy, pointing out to each other what they’d found, laughing, and joking. Things were not so bad after all. Whoever was responsible for this was taking care of them.
There was food in plenty, even after fasting all day, or, as Frigate put it, 'probably fasting for half of-eternity.' He meant by this as he explained to Monat, that there was no telling hove much time had elapsed between AD 2008 and today. This world wasn’t built in a day, and preparing humanity for resurrection take more than seven days. That is, if all of this been brought about by scientific means, not by supernatural. Burton’s grail had yielded a four-inch cube of steak; a small ball of dark bread; butter; potatoes and gravy; lettuce with salad dressing of an unfamiliar but delicious taste. In addition, there was a five-ounce cup containing an excellent bourbon and another small cup with four ice cubes in it.
There was more, all the better because unexpected. A small briar pipe, A sack of pipe tobacco. Three cigars. A plastic package with ten cigarettes.
'Unfiltered!' Frigate said.
There was also one small brown cigarette which Burton and Frigate smelled and said, at the same time, 'Marihuana!'
Alice, holding up a small metallic scissors and a black comb, said, 'Evidently we’re going to get our hair back. Otherwise, there’d be no need for these. I’m so glad! But do … They really expect me to use this?' She held out a tube of bright red lipstick.
'Or me?' Frigate said, also looking at a similar tube.
'They’re eminently practical,' Monat said, turning over a packet of what was obviously toilet paper. Then he pulled out sphere of green soap.
Burton’s steak was very tender, although he would have preferred it rare. On the other hand, Frigate complained because it was not cooked enough.
'Evidently, these grails do not contain menus tailored for the individual owner,' Frigate said. 'Which may be why we men also get lipstick and the women got pipes. It’s a mass production.
'Two miracles in one day,' Burton said. 'That is, if they are such. I prefer a rational explanation and intend to get it. I don’t think anyone can, as yet, tell me how we were resurrected. But perhaps you twentieth-centurians have a reasonable theory for the seemingly magical appearance of these articles in a previously empty container?'
'If you compare the exterior and interior of the grail,' Monat said, 'you will observe an approximate five-centimeter difference in depth. The false bottom must conceal a molar circuitry, which is able to convert energy to matter. The energy obviously comes during the discharge from the rocks. In addition to the converter, the grail must hold molar templates? … molds? … which form the matter into various combinations of and compounds.’
'I’m safe in my speculations, for we had a similar converter on my active planet. But nothing as miniature as this, I assure you.'
'Same on Earth,' Frigate said. 'They were making iron out of pure energy before A.D. 2002, but it was a very cumbersome and expensive process with an almost microscopic yield.'
'Good,' Burton said. 'All this has cost us nothing. So far…
He fell silent for a while, thinking of the dream he had when awakening.
'Pay up,' God had said. 'You owe for the flesh.'
'What had that meant? On Earth, at Trieste, in 1890, he had been dying, in his wife’s arms and asking for… what? Chloroform? Something. He could not remember. Then, oblivion. And he had awakened in that nightmare place and had seen things that were not on Earth nor, as far as he knew, on this planet. But that experience had been no dream.
8
They finished eating and replaced the containers in the racks within the grails. Since there was no water nearby, they would have to wait until morning to wash the containers. Frigate and Kazz, however, had made several buckets out of sections of the giant bamboo. The American volunteered to walk back to the river, if some of them would go with him, and fill the sections with water. Burton wondered why the fellow volunteered. Then, looking at Alice, he knew why. Frigate must be hoping to find some congenial female companionship. Evidently he took it for granted that Alice Hargreaves preferred Burton. And the other women, Tucci, Malini, Capone, and Fiorri, had made their choices of, respectively, Galleazzi, Brontich, Rocco, and Giunta. Babich had wandered off, possibly for the same reason that Frigate had for wishing to leave.
Monat and Kazz went with Frigate. The sky was suddenly crowded-with gigantic sparks and great luminous gas clouds. The glitter of jam-packed stars, some so large they seemed to be broken-off pieces of Earth’s moon, and the shine of the clouds, awed them and made them feel pitifully microscopic and ill-made.
Burton lay on his back on a pile of tree leaves and puffed on a cigar. It was excellent, and in the London of his day would have cost at least a shilling. He did not feel so minute and unworthy now. The stars were inanimate matter, and he was alive. No star could ever know the delicious taste of an expensive cigar. Nor could it know the ecstasy of holding a warm well-curved woman next to it.
On the other side of the fire, half or wholly lost in the grasses and the shadows, were the Triestans. The liquor had uninhibited them, though part of their sense of freedom may have come from joy at being alive and young again. They giggled and laughed and rolled back and forth in the grass and made loud noises while kissing. And then, couple by couple, they retreated into the darkness. Or at least, made no more loud noises.
The little girl had fallen asleep by Alice. The firelight flickered over Alice’s handsome aristocratic face and bald head and on the magnificent body and long legs.
