To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

They walked out of sight of Kazz and behind one of the great gnarled trees. Alice said, “I don’t want him around He’s an animal, an abomination! Why, I wouldn’t feel safe for a second with him around!”

“You asked me for protection,” Burton said. “I’ll give it to you as long as you are a member of this party. But you’ll also have to accept my decisions. One of which is that the apeman remains with us. We need his strength and his skills, which seem to be very appropriate for this type of country. We’ve become primitives; therefore, we can learn from a primitive. He stays.”

Alice looked at the others with silent appeal. Monat twitched his eyebrows. Frigate shrugged his shoulders and said, “Mrs. Hargreaves, if you can possibly do it, forget your mores, your conventions. We’re not in a proper, upper-class Victorian heaven. Or, indeed, in any sort of heaven ever dreamed of. You can’t think and behave as you did on Earth. For one thing, you come from a society where women covered themselves from neck to foot in heavy garments, and the sight of a woman’s knee was a stirring sexual event. Yet, you seem to suffer no embarrassment because you’re nude. You are as poised and dignified as if you wore a nun’s habit”

Alice said, “I don’t like it. But why should I be embarrassed? Where all are nude, none are nude. It’s the thing to do, in fact, the only thing that can be done. If some angel were to give me a complete outfit, I wouldn’t wear it. I’d be out of style. And my figure is good. If it weren’t I might be suffering more.”

The two men laughed, and Frigate said, “You’re fabulous, Alice. Absolutely. I may call you Alice? Mrs. Hargreaves seems so formal when you’re nude.” She did not reply but walked away and disappeared behind a large tree.

Burton said, “Something will have to be done about sanitation in the near future. Which means that somebody will have to decide the health policies and have the power to make regulations and enforce them. How does one form legislative, judicial, and executive bodies from the present state of anarchy?”

“To get to more immediate problems,” Frigate said, “what do we do about the dead man?” He was only a little less pale than a moment ago when Kazz had made his incisions with his chert knife.

Burton said, “I’m sure that human skin, properly tanned, or human gut, properly treated, will be far superior to grass for making ropes or bindings. I intend to cut off some strips. Do you want to help me?” Only the wind rustling the leaves and the tops of the grass broke the silence. The sun beat down and brought out sweat, which dried rapidly in the wind. No bird cried, no insect buzzed. And then the shrill voice of the little girl shattered the quiet Alice’s voice answered her, and the little girl ran to her behind the tree.

“I’ll try,” the American said. “But I don’t know. I’ve gone through more than enough for one day.”

“You “do as you please then, Burton said. “But anybody who helps me gets first call on the use of the skin. You may wish you could have some in order to bind an axehead to a haft.”

Frigate gulped audibly and then said, “I’ll come.’

Kazz was still squatting in the grass by the body, holding the bloody liver with one hand and the bloody stone knife with the other. Seeing Burton, he grinned with stained lips and cut off a pieces of liver. Burton shook his head. The others, Galeazzi, Brontich, Maria Tucci, Filipo Rocco, Rosa Nalini, Caterina Carpone, Fiorenza Fiorri, Babich, and Gloats, had retreated from the grisly scene. They were on the other side of a thick pine and talking subduedly in Italian.

Burton squatted down by the body and applied the paint of Eke knife beginning just above the right knee and continuing to the collarbone. Frigate stood by him and stared. He became even more pale, and his trembling increased. But he stood firm until two long strips had been lifted from the body.