To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

He could have tossed this body into the river, too, but he had thought of a use, perhaps uses, for it. He told the others what he wanted, and they got the corpse down off the stone and started to carry it across the plain. Frigate and Galeazzi, a farmer importer of Trieste, took the first turn. Frigate had evidently not cared for the job, but when Burton asked him if he would, he nodded. He picked up the man’s feet and led with Galeazzi holding the dead man under the armpits. Alice walked behind Burton with the child’s hand in hers. Some in the crowd looked curiously or called out commits or questions, but Burton ignored them. After half a mile, Kazz and Monat took over the corpse. The child did not seem to disturbed by the dead man. She had been curious about the first corpse, instead of being horrified by its burned appearance.

“If she really is an ancient Gaul,” Frigate said, “she may be used to seeing charred bodies. If I remember correctly, the Gauls burned sacrifices alive in big wicker baskets at religious ceremonies. I don’t remember what god or goddess the ceremonies were is honor of. I wish I had a library to refer to. Do you think we’ll ever have one here? I think I would go nuts if I didn’t have books to read.”

“That remains to be seen,” Burton said. “If we’re not provided with a library, we’ll make our own. If it’s possible to do so.” He thought that Frigate’s question was a silly one, but then not everybody, was quite in their right minds at this time.

At the foothills, two men, Rocco and Brontich, succeeded Kazz and Monat. Burton led them past the trees through the waist-high grass. The saw-edged grass scraped their legs. Burton cut off a stalk with his knife and tested the stalk for toughness and flexibility. Frigate kept close to his elbow and seemed unable to stop chattering. Probably, Burton thought, he talked to keep from thinking about the two deaths.

“If every one who has ever lived has been resurrected here, think of the research to be done! Think of the historical mysteries and questions you could clear up! You could talk to John Wilkes Booth and find out if Secretary of War Stanton really was behind the Lincoln assassination. You might ferret out the identity of Jack the Ripper. Find out if Joan of Arc actually did belong to a witch cult. Talk to Napoleon’s Marshal Ney; see if he did escape the firing squad and become a schoolteacher is America. Get the true story on Pearl Harbor. See the face of the Man in the Iron Mask, if there ever was such a person. Interview Lucrezia Borgia and those who knew her and determine if she was the poisoning bitch most people think she was. Learn the identity of the assassin of the two little princes in the Tower. Maybe Richard III did kill them.’

“And you, Richard Francis Burton, there are many questions about your own life that your biographers would like to have answered. Did you really have a Persian love you were going to marry and for whom you were going to renounce your true identity and become a native? Did she die before you could marry her, and did her death really embitter you, and did you carry a torch for her the rest of your life?” Burton glared at him. He had just met the man and here he was, asking the most personal and prying questions. Nothing excused this.

Frigate backed away, saying, “And … and … well, it’ll all have to wait, I can see that. But did you know that your wife had extreme unction administered to you shortly after you died and that you were buried in a Catholic cemetery – you, the infidel?”

Lev Ruach, whose eyes had been widening while Frigate was rattling on, said. “You’re Burton, the explorer, and linguist? The discoverer of Lake Tanganyika? The one who made a” pilgrimage to Mecca while disguised as a Moslem? The translator of The Thousand and One Nights?”

“I have no desire to lie nor need to. I am he.”