Events were fuzzy and encapsulated. A lightning streak of himself in the unmeasurable chamber of floating bodies; another flash of the nameless Custodians finding him and putting him back to sleep; then a jerky synopsis of the dream he had had just before the true Resurrection on the banks of The River.
God – a beautiful old man in the clothes of a mid-Victorian gentleman of means and breeding – was poking him in the ribs with an iron cane and telling him that he owed for the flesh.
“What? What flesh?” Burton said, dimly aware that he was muttering in his sleep. He could not hear his words in the dream.
“Pay up!” God said. His face melted, then was recast into Burton’s own features.
God had not answered in the first dream five years before. He spoke now, “Make your Resurrection worth my while, you fool! I have gone to great expense and even greater pains to give you, and all those other miserable and worthless wretches, a second chance.”
“Second chance at what?” Burton said. He felt frightened at what God might answer. He was much relieved when God the All-Father – only now did Burton see that one eye of Jahweh-Odin was gone and out of the empty socket glared the flames of hell – did not reply. He was gone – no, not gone but metamorphosed into a high gray tower, cylindrical and soaring out of gray mists with the roar of the sea coming up through the mists.
“The Grail!” He saw again the man who had told him of the Big Grail. This man had heard it from another man, who had heard of it from a woman, who had heard it from … and so forth. The Big Grail was one of the legends told by the billions who lived along The River – this River that coiled like a serpent around this planet from pole to pole, issued from the unreachable and plunged into the inaccessible.
A man, or a subhuman, had managed to climb through the mountains to the North Pole. And he had seen the Big Grail, the Dark Tower, and the Misty Castle just before he had stumbled. Or he was pushed. He had fallen headlong and bellowing into the cold seas beneath the mists and died. And then the man, or subhuman, had awakened again along The River. Death was not forever here, although it had lost nothing of its sting.
He had told of his vision. And the story had traveled along the valley of The River faster than a boat could sail.
Thus, Richard Francis Burton, the eternal pilgrim and wanderer, had longed to storm the ramparts of the Big Grail. He would unveil the secret of resurrection and of this planet, since he was convinced that the beings who had reshaped this world had also built that tower.
“Die, Hermann Goring! Die, and leave me in peace!” a man shouted in German.
Burton opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the pale sheen of the multitudinous stars through the open window across the room of the hut.
His vision bent to the shape of the black things inside, and he saw Peter Frigate and Loghu sleeping on their mats by the opposite wall. He turned his head to see the white, blanket-sized towel under which Alice slept. The whiteness of her face was turned toward him, and the black cloud of her hair spilled out on the ground by her mat.
That same evening, the single-roasted boat on which he and the other three had been sailing down The River had put into a friendly shore. The little state of Sevieria was inhabited largely by sixteenth-century Englishmen, although its chief was an American who had lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. John Sevier, founder of the “lost state” of Franklin, which had later become Tennessee, had welcomed Burton and his party.
Sevier and his people did not believe in slavery and would not detain any guest longer than he desired. After permitting them to charge their grails and so feed themselves, Sevier had invited them to a party. It was the celebration of Resurrection Day; afterward, he had them conducted to the guest hostelry.