To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

“You haven’t left the hut?” Burton said. “Then who charged your grail for you? How’d you get so much dreamgum?” Goring smiled slyly. “I had a big collection from the last place I stayed; somewhere about a thousand miles up The River.”

“Doubtless taken forcibly from some poor slaves,” Burton said. “But if you were doing so well there, why did you leave?” Goring began to weep. Tears ran down his face, and over his collarbones and down his chest, and his shoulders shook.

“I . . . I had to get out. I wasn’t any good to the others. I was losing my hold over them – spending too much time drinking, stroking marihuana, and chewing dreamgum. They said I was too soft myself. They would have killed me or made me a slave. So I sneaked out one night … took the boat. I got away all right and kept going until I put into here. I traded part of my supply to Sevier for two weeks” sanctuary.” Burton stared curiously at Goring.

“You knew what would happen if you took too much gum,” he said. “Nightmares, hallucinations, delusions. Total mental and physical deterioration. You must have seen it happen to others.”

“I was a morphine addict on Earth!” Goring cried. “I struggled with it, and I won out for a long time. Then, when things began to go badly for the Third Reich – and even worse for myself – when Hitler began picking on me, I started taking drugs again!” He paused, then continued, “But here, when I woke up to a new life, in a young body, when it looked as if I had an eternity of life and youth ahead of me, when there was no stern God in Heaven or Devil in Hell to stop me, I thought I could do exactly as I pleased and get away with it. I would become even greater than the Fuehrer! That little country in which you first found me was to be only the beginning! I could see my empire stretching for thousands of miles up and down The River, on both sides of the valley. I would have been the ruler of ten times the subjects that Hitler ever dreamed of!” He began weeping again, then paused to take another drink of water, then put a piece of the dreamgum in his mouth. He chewed, his face becoming more relaxed and blissful with each second.

Goring said, “I kept having nightmares of you plunging the spear into my belly. When I woke up, my belly would hurt as if a flint had gone into my guts. So I’d take gum to remove the hurt and the humiliation. At first, the gum helped. I was great. I was master of the world, Hitler, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, all rolled into one. I was chief again of Von Richthofen’s Red Death Squadron; those were happy days, the happiest of my life in many ways. But the euphoria soon gave way to hideousness. I plunged into hell; I saw myself accusing myself and behind the accuser a million others. Not myself but the victims of that great and glorious hero, that obscene madman Hitler, whom I worshipped so. And in whose name I committed so many-crimes.”

“You admit you were a criminal?” Burton said. “That’s a story different than the one you used to give me. Then you said you were justified in all you did, and you were betrayed by the…” He stopped, realizing that he had been sidetracked from his original purpose. “That you should be haunted with the specter of a conscience is rather incredible. But perhaps that explains what has puzzled the puritans – why liquor, tobacco, marihuana, and dreamgum were offered in the grails along with food. At least, dreamgum seems to be a gift booby-trapped with danger to those who abuse it.” He stepped closer to Goring: The German’s eyes were half-closed, and his jaw hung open.

“You know my identity. I am traveling under a pseudonym, with good reason. You remember Spruce, one of your slaves? After you were killed, he was revealed, quite by accident, as one of those who somehow resurrected all the dead of humanity. Those we call the Ethicals, for lack of a better term. Goring, are you listening?” Goring nodded.