The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

“What debt?” the man on the grass said.

The Burton who was watching suddenly realized that fog was swirling around him, casting veils between the two before him. And a grey wall, expanding and contracting as if it were the chest of a breathing animal, was behind them.

“You owe for the flesh,” God said. He poked the ribs of the man on the grass. Somehow, the standing Burton felt the pain.

“You owe for the flesh and the spirit, which are one and the same thing.”

The man on the grass struggled to get onto his feet. He said, gasping, “Nobody can strike me and get away without a fight.”

Somebody snickered, and the standing Burton became aware of a dim, tall figure in the fog beyond.

God said, “Pay up, sir. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to foreclose.”

“Damned money lender!” the man on the grass said. “I ran into your kind in Damascus.”

“This is the road to Damascus. Or it should be.”

The dark figure snickered again. The fog enclosed all. Burton awoke, sweating, hearing the last of his whimperings.

Alice turned and said sleepily, “Are you having a nightmare, Dick?”

“I’m all right. Go back to sleep.”

“You’ve been having many nightmares lately.”

“No more than on Earth.”

“Would you like to talk?”

“When I dream, I am talking.”

“But to yourself.”

“Who knows me better?” He laughed softly.

“And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly.

He did not reply. After a few seconds, she was breathing with the gentle rhythm of the untroubled. But she would not forget what had been said. He hoped that morning would not bring another quarrel.

He liked arguing; it enabled him to explode. Lately, however, their fights had left him unsatisfied, ready at once for another.

It was so difficult to blaze away at her without being overheard on this small vessel. Alice had changed much during their years togeth­er, but she still retained a ladylike abhorrence of, as she put it, washing their dirty linen in public. Knowing this, he pressed her too hard, shouted, roared, getting pleasure out of seeing her shrink. Afterward, he felt ashamed because he had taken advantage of her, because he had caused her shame.

All of which made him even more angry.

Frigate’s footsteps sounded on the deck. Burton thought of re­lieving Frigate early. He would not be able to get back to sleep; he’d suffered from insomnia most of his adult life on Earth and much here, too. Frigate would be grateful to get to bed. He had trouble staying awake when on watch.

He closed his eyes. Darkness was replaced by grey ness. Now he saw himself in that colossal chamber without walls, floor, or ceil­ing. Naked, he was floating in a horizontal position in the abyss. As if suspended on an invisible, unfelt spit, he was turning slowly. Rotating, he saw that there were naked bodies above, to the sides, and below. Like him, their heads and pubic regions were shaven. Some were incomplete. A man nearby had a right arm which was skinless from the elbow down. Turning, he saw another body that had no skin at all and no muscles in the face.

At a distance was a skeleton with a mess of organs floating inside it.

Everywhere, the bodies were bounded at head and foot by red metallic-looking rods. They rose from the unseen floor and ascend­ed to the unseen ceiling. They stood in rows as far as he could see, and in a vertical line between each pair hovered the wheeling bodies, rank on rank of sleepers, bodies as far down, bodies as far up, as the eye could encompass.

They formed vertical and horizontal lines stretching into grey infinity.

This time, watching, he felt some of the bewilderment and the terror of the first moment of awakening.

He, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Her Majesty’s consul at the city of Trieste in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had died on Sunday, October 19, 1890.

Now he was alive in a place that was like no heaven or hell he had ever heard of.

Of all the millions of bodies he could see, he was the only one alive. Or awake.