There was also some wonder about why the grails of both men and women occasionally yielded lipstick and other cosmetics.
Frigate said that he thought that their benefactors probably did not like to shave and that both their sexes painted their faces. That was, to him, the only reasonable explanation.
Then Alice brought up Burton’s experience in the preresurrection bubble. This got everybody’s attention, but he told them that he had no memory of that. He’d suffered a blow on his head which had wiped out all recollection of it.
As always, when he told this lie, he caught Monat smiling slightly at him. He suspected that the Arcturan guessed that he was prevaricating. However, the fellow had never said so. He respected Burton’s reasons for concealment even if he did not know what they were.
Frigate and Alice recounted Burton’s tale as they remembered it. They made several mistakes, which he, of course, could not correct.
“If that is so,” a man said, “then the resurrection isn’t a supernatural thing. It was done through scientific means. Amazing!”
“Yes, it is,” Alice said. “But why are we no longer resurrected? Why has death, permanent death, returned?”
A gloomy pensiveness fell upon them for a minute.
Kazz broke it by saying, “There is one thing which Burton-naq has not.forgotten. That’s the business with Spruce. The agent of the Ethicals.”
That brought forth more questions.
“What are Ethicals?”
Burton took a long drink of scotch and launched into the story. At one time, he said, he and his party had been captured by grail-slavers. There was no need to explain this word. Everybody had had some experience with grail-slavers.
Burton told them how his boat had been attacked and how they had been put into a stockade. Thereafter, they had left it only to work under a heavy guard. All of their tobacco, marijuana, dream-gum, and liquor were taken by their captors. Moreover, these kept half of the food for themselves, leaving their prisoners on a bare-minimum diet.
After a few months, Burton and a man named Targoff had led a successful revolt against the slavers.
24
“A few days after we’d won our freedom, Frigate, Monat, and Kazz came to me. They greeted me, and then Kazz spoke excitedly.
“A long time ago, before I could speak English good, I see something. I try to tell you then, but you don’t understand me. I see a man who don’t have this on his forehead.’
“My friend here, my naq, as he calls it in his speech, indicated the center of his forehead and that of all of us.
“Kazz then said, ‘I know you can’t see it. Pete and Monat can’t either. Nobody else can. But I see it on everybody’s forehead. Except on that man I try to catch long time ago. Then, one day, I see a woman who don’t have it, but I don’t say nothing to you. Now, I see a third who don’t have it.’
“I still did not understand. Monat, however, explained.
” ‘He means that he is able to perceive certain symbols of characters on the forehead of each and every one of us. He can see these only in bright sunlight and at a certain angle. But everyone he’s ever seen has had those symbols-except for the three he’s mentioned.’
“Frigate added that Kazz somehow could see a little further into the color spectrum than non-Neanderthals could. Into the ultraviolet , as a matter of fact, since the symbols were bluish. At least that is the way Kazz described them. All of us, except certain individuals, seem to bear this mark. As if we’re branded cattle. Since that time, Kazz, and his woman Besst, have observed these on people’s foreheads, when the lighting conditions were right, of course.”
This news, as always, resulted in astonishment, indignation, and even shock. Burton waited until the furor died down before speaking.
“Some of you late-twentieth-centurians may know that the so-called Neanderthal man was reclassified. The anthropoligists decided that he was not a separate species but a variant of Homo sapiens. Nevertheless, just as he differed somewhat in physical build and teeth from us, he also has the ability to see into the ultraviolet.”