He cried out in English, “Pete! For God’s sake, Pete! It’s me, Bill Owain! Pete Frigate, by the Lord! It is you, isn’t it, Pete?”
Frigate looked startled. He said, “Yes? But you, you’re … what did you say your name was?”
“Bill Owain! For Christ’s sake, you haven’t forgotten me, Bill Owain, your old buddy! You look a little different, Pete. For a moment, I wasn’t sure! You don’t quite look like I remember you! Bill Owain! I didn’t recognize you at first, it’s been so long!”
They embraced then and both talked swiftly, laughing now and then. When they let loose of each other, Frigate introduced Owain.
“He’s my old schoolmate. We’ve known each other since fourth grade in grammar school. We went to Peoria Central High together and buddied around for some years afterward. When I finally settled down in Peoria after working around the country, we used to see each other now and then. Not very often, since we had our own lives to live and belonged to different circles.”
“Even so,” Owain said, “I don’t see how you could have failed to recognize me right off. But then I wasn’t quite sure about you either. I remembered you differently. Your nose is a little longer and your eyes are greener and your mouth isn’t quite as broad and your chin seems bigger. And your voice-you remember how everybody kidded you because it was a dead ringer for Gary Cooper’s? It doesn’t sound like it used to, like I thought it did. So much for memory, eh?”
“Yeah, so much for memory. You know, Bill, mine was never very good. Besides, we remember each other as middle-aged and old men, and now we look like we did when we were twenty-five. Also, we’re not wearing the clothes we did then, and it’s a shock, a real shock, to run across somebody I knew then. I was stunned!”
“I was, too! I wasn’t quite sure! Listen, do you know you’re the first person I’ve met that I knew on Earth?”
Frigate said, “You’re the second for me. And that was thirty-two years ago, and the guy I met wasn’t one I cared to associate with!”
That, Burton thought, would be a man called Sharkko. A publisher of hardcover science fiction books in Chicago, he had cheated Frigate in a rather complicated deal. The business had taken several years, at the end of which Frigate’s writing career had been almost wrecked. But one of the first persons Frigate had encountered after being resurrected was Sharkko. Burton had not witnessed the meeting, but Frigate had recounted how he had avenged himself by punching the fellow in the nose.
Burton himself had met only one person he had known on Earth, though his acquaintances had been numerous and worldwide. That was also a meeting he could have passed up. The man had been one of the porters on his expedition to find the source of the Nile. On the way to Lake Tanganyika (Burton and his companion Speke were the first Europeans to see it), the porter had purchased a slave, a girl about thirteen years old. She had become too sick to continue with them, so the porter had cut off her head rather than allow someone else to own her.
Burton had not been present to prevent the murder, nor would it have been discreet to punish the man. He had the legal right to do with his slave as he wished. However, Burton would punish him for other things, such as laziness, thievery, and breakage of goods, and he laid the whip on him whenever the opportunity arose.
Now Owain and Frigate sat down to drink lichen-alcohol and to talk of old times. Burton noticed that Owain seemed to remember incidents and friends much better than Frigate did. This was surprising, since Frigate had very good recall.
“Remember how we used to see the shows at the Princess, Columbia, and Apollo theaters?” Owain said. “Do you remember the Saturday we decided to find out how many movies we could see in one day? We went to a doublefeature at the Princess, then a double-feature at the Columbia, a triple-feature at the Apollo, and a midnight show at the Madison.”