To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

“I don’t think you could compare a crooked publisher to Hitler,” Ruach said. “No, I wouldn’t want to turn him over a fire. I might want to starve him to death, or feed him just enough to keep him alive. But I wouldn’t do that. What good would it do? Would it make him, change his mind about anything, would he then believe that Jews were human beings? No, I would do nothing to him if he were in my power except kill him so he couldn’t hurt others. But I’m not so sure that killing him would mean he’d stay dead. Not here.”

“You’re a real Christian,” Frigate said, grinning.

“I thought you were my friend!” Ruach said.

12

This was the second time that Burton had heard the name Hitler. He intended to find out all about him, but at the moment everybody would have to put off talking to finish the roofs on the huts. They all pitched in, cutting off more grass with the little scissors they had found in their grails, or climbing the irontrees and tearing off the huge triangular green and scarlet-laced leaves. The roofs left much to be desired. Burton meant to search around for a professional thatcher and learn the proper techniques. The beds would have to be, for the time being, piles of grass on top of which were piles of the softer irontree leaves. The blankets would be another pile of the same leaves.

“Thank God, or Whoever, that there is no insect life,” Burton said.

He lifted the gray metal cup, which still held two ounces of the best scotch he had ever tasted.

“Here’s to Whoever. If he had raised us just to live on an exact duplicate of Earth, we’d be sharing our beds with ten thousand kinds of biting, scratching, stinging, scraping, tickling, bloodsucking vermin.” They drank, and then they sat around the fire for a while and smoked and talked. The shadow darkened, the sky lost its blue, and the gigantic stars and great sheets, which had been dimly seen ghosts just before dusk, blossomed out. The sky was indeed a blaze of glory.

“Like a Sime illustration,” Frigate said.

Burton did not know what a Sime was. Half of the conversation with the non-nineteenth centurians consisted of them explaining their references and he explaining his.

Burton rose and went over to the other side of the fire and squatted by Alice. She had just returned from putting the little girl, Gwenafra, to bed in a hut.

Burton held out a stick of gum to Alice and said, “I just had half a piece. Would you care for the other half?” She looked at him without expression and said, “No, thanks.”

“There are eight huts,” he said. “There isn’t any doubt about who is sharing which but with whom, except for Wilfreda, you, and me “I don’t thick there’s any doubt about that,” she said.

“Then you’re sleeping with Gwenafra?” She kept her face turned away from him. He squatted for a few seconds and then got up and went back to the other side and sat down by Wilfreda.

“You can move on, Sir Richard,” she said. Her lip was curled. “Lord grab me, I don’t like being second choice. You could of asked “er where nobody could of seen you. I got some pride, too.” He was silent for a minute. His first impulse had been to lash out at her with a sharp-pointed insult. But she was right. He had been too contemptuous of her. Even if she had been a whore, she had a right to be treated as a human being. Especially since she maintained that it was hunger that had driven her to prostitution, though he had been skeptical about that. Too many prostitutes had to rationalize their profession; too many had justifying fantasies about their entrance into the business. Yet, her rage at Smithson and her behavior toward him indicated that she was sincere.

He stood up and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Are you in love with her?” Wilfreda said, looking up at him.

“I’ve only told one woman that I ever loved her,” he said.