The casualties on the Rex from both days were thirty dead and sixty wounded, twenty seriously, though it might be said that any wound was taken seriously by the sufferers. The corpses were cast in weighted fishskin bags and into the middle of The River after a brief ceremony. The bags were only to spare the feelings of the survivors since the bags would be ripped open and the flesh devoured by the fish before they reach the bottom.
Along the left bank the waters were thick with corpses, bumping into each other while the eating fish thrashed the bloodied waters. For a month, the logjam of bodies made The River hideous. Everywhere, apparently, the fighting had taken place, and it would be a long time before the drifting corpses disappeared. Meanwhile, the fish ravened, and the colossal riverdragonfish came up from the depths and took the bloating dead whole in their mouths until their stomachs were crammed. And when they had digested and eliminated these, they rose again to feed and to digest and to eliminate.
“It’s Armageddon, the.Apocalypse,” Burton said to Alice, and he groaned.
Alice wept more than once, and she had nightmares. Burton comforted her so much that she felt that they were close again.
The afternoon of the next day, the Rex ventured across The River to recharge. But instead of going on, it went back to the right bank. It was necessary to make gunpowder and to repair damages. That took a month, during which time Burton completely recovered from his wound.
After the boat resumed its journey, some of its crew were tasked with making a count of the survivors in various areas picked at random. The result: an estimate that nearly half the population must have been killed, if the fighting had occurred on the same scale everywhere. Seventeen and a half billion people had died within twenty-four hours.
It was a long time before gaiety came back to the riverboat, and the people on the bank behaved like ghosts. Even worse than the effect of the slaughter was the dread thought: What if the remaining grailstone line quits?
Now, thought Burton, was the time to question the suspected agents. But if they were cornered, they might kill themselves even if no resurrection awaited them. And there was also the restraint that the post-1983 people might be innocent.
He would wait. He could do nothing else but wait.
Meanwhile, Loghu was subtly questioning her cabinmate, and Alice, though not subtle, was doing her best with Podebrad. And Burton was waiting for Strubewell to make a slip.
Several days after the voyage had started again, John decided that he would do some recruiting. He stopped the Rex during the noontime meal and went ashore to make it known that he had empty berths to fill.
Burton, as Sergeant Gwalchgwynn, had the duty with others of wandering through the crowd looking for possible assassins. When he came across an obvious early paleolithic, a squat massive-boned fellow who looked like a pre-Generalized Mongolian, and started to talk to him, he forgot his job for a while. Ngangchungding didn’t mind giving him a quick lesson in the fundamentals of his native speech, one which Burton had never encountered before. Then Burton, speaking Esperanto, tried to get him to sign up on the Rex. Not only would he be a desirable marine, he would give Burton the opportunity to learn his language. Ngangchungding refused his offer. He was, he said a Nichirenite, a member of that Buddhist discipline which stressed pacifism as strongly as its chief rival, the Church of the Second Chance. Though disappointed, Burton gave him a cigarette to show that there were no hard feelings, and he went back to King John’s table.
John was interviewing a Caucasian whose back was partially blocked from Burton’s view by a tall, skinny-legged, long-armed, broad-shouldered Negro. Burton walked by them to place himself behind John.
He heard the white man say, “I am Peter Jairus Frigate.”
Burton whirled, stared, glaring and then he leaped at Frigate. Frigate went down under him, Burton’s hands around his throat.
“I’ll kill you!” Burton shouted.
Something struck him on the back of the head.