Groaning, the translated man rubbed his head and sat up. Bowie, checking the contents of his lunch bucket, kept one eye on the stranger. A few months earlier, a new arrival went berserk seconds after his arrival. He slaughtered three citizens of New Athens before finally being dispatched. Ever since, Bowie made sure he had his knife handy after a resurrection.
Meanwhile, his friend Socrates, always the Good Samaritan, knelt by the stranger. The philosopher’s small, ugly face creased with concern. “Would you like something to eat?” Bowie heard the Greek inquire in Esperanto, the lingua franca of the River. “Resurrection gives one an appetite. Or so I have been told.”
The newcomer, a tall, lanky man with pleasant features and blue-gray eyes, groggily shook his head. “No, thanks,” he replied in the same language. “The last thing I remember is a bunch of cannibals hacking at me with knives. Best I could tell, they wanted me to stay for dinner.” The man laughed out loud. “Actually, I guess they wanted me for dinner. Kinda put me off eating for a while.”
“Cannibals!” gasped a nearby woman, her features turning a delicate shade of green. “But the food from the grailstones…”
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
2S5
“Each to his own nature,” said Socrates with a shrug. “Some people are harder to please than others.”
Opening his grail, the philosopher pulled out a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Taking a deep bite, he waved the food at the other man. “Are you firm in your resolve? Or perhaps a cup of coffee would suit you better?”
“Maybe in a few minutes,” replied the stranger, his gaze sweeping the crowd. It came to rest on Bowie, unmistakable with his fair skin and wavy red hair. “I thought I heard your name,” the man muttered in amazement.
Bowie frowned. That voice sounded familiar.
“Don’t you recognize me, Jim?” the man cried out, his voice thick with emotion. “You old son of a bitch.”
Bowie gasped in amazement. Everyone on Riverworld had been reborn at age twenty-five and without any facial hair. The man whose voice he heard had been fifty the last time they had been together. He stared at the new arrival, trying to fit his image to the one he remembered. It was the stranger’s eyes, blue-gray like his own—”killer’s eyes,” the Mexicans had called them—that decided him. His mouth curved in a huge grin. “I’ll be a ring-tailed alligator!” he exclaimed. “Davy Crockett.”
Tears in both their eyes, they embraced. “Long time since the Alamo,” said Bowie.
“Not long enough,” replied Crockett grimly. “But we can talk about that later. How you been?”
Before Bowie could answer, Crockett turned to Socrates. “I’ll take that coffee now, friend. And maybe a bite or two from that sandwich. Running into old buddies always makes me hungry.”
“Back on Earth,” said Bowie a few minutes later,
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Robert Weinberg
watching his old friend wolf down anything offered him by the generous villagers, “everything made you hungry. Can’t say you’ve changed very much.”
“Been eating a lot better since Resurrection Day,” said Crockett between bites. “Life’s a mite easier when you don’t gotta hunt for your grub.”
He waved a hand about, taking in the whole area. “Who lives in these parts?” he asked, eyeing several of the better-looking women. Around their waists, they wore their towels like loincloths, leaving their breasts bare. Crockett grinned. “Foreigners, I take it. Not that I mind their style of clothing.”
Bowie chuckled. “To them, we’re the outsiders. Most of the folks are ancient Greeks like my buddy, Socrates. Some from Athens, the others from Sparta. The rest are a scattering of Texans from our era, some fifteenth-century Frenchies, and a few dozen others drawn from all periods and places. That Bill Mason over there comes from the twentieth century. He told me that we became famous after we died. Got our names in all the history books and stuff like that.”
“They wrote a song about me,” said Crockett smugly. “Learned some of the lyrics from a pretty young lady back down the River a-pace. You want to hear the words?”
Without waiting for an answer, he started singing. Bowie grimaced. Resurrection had not improved Crockett’s voice. He still sounded like a bullfrog in pain.