“No? That is strange. I would have sworn that not one of the six billion of Earth’s inhabitants had not heard of or seen me on TV.”
“TV?”
The creature’s brows twitched again. “You don’t know what TV…” His voice trailed, then he smiled again. “Of course, how stupid of me! You must have died before I came to Earth!
“When was that?” The alien’s eyebrows rose (equivalent to a human frown as Burton would find), and he said slowly, “Let’s see. I believe it was, in your chronology, A.D. 2002. When did you die?”
“It must have been in A.D. 1890,” Burton said. The creature had brought back his sense that all this was not real. He ran his tongue around his mouth; the back teeth he had lost when the Somali spear ran through his cheeks were now replaced. But he was still circumcised, and the men on the riverbank – most of whom had been crying out in the Austrian-German, Italian, or the Slovenian of Trieste – were also circumcised. Yet, in his time, most of the males in that area would have been uncircumcised.
“At least,” Burton added, “I remember nothing after October 20, 1890.”
“Aab!” the creature said. “So, I left my native planet approximately 200 years before you died. My planet? It was a satellite of that star you Terrestrials call Tau Ceti. We placed ourselves in suspended animation, and, when our ship approached your sun, we were automatically thawed out, and … but you do not know what I am talking about?”
“Not quite. Things are happening too fast. I would like to get details later. What is your name?”
“Monat Grrautut. Yours?”
“Richard Francis Burton at your service.” He bowed slightly and smiled. Despite the strangeness of the creature and some repulsive physical aspects, Burton found himself warming to him.
“The late Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,” he added. “Most recently Her Majesty’s Consul in the Austro-Hungarian port of Trieste.”
“Elizabeth?”
“I lived in the nineteenth century, not the sixteenth.”
“A Queen Elizabeth reigned over Great Britain in the twentieth century,” Monat said.
He turned to look toward the riverbank.
“Why are they so afraid? All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.”
Burton grinned and said, “Those who denied the hereafter are sure they’re in Hell because they denied it. Those who knew they would go to Heaven are shocked, I would imagine, to find themselves naked. You see, most of the illustrations of our afterlives showed those in Hell as naked and those in Heaven as being clothed. So, if you’re resurrected bare-ass naked, you must be in Hell.”
“You seem amused,” Monat said.
“I wasn’t so amused a few minutes ago,” Burton said. “And I’m shaken. Very shaken. But seeing you here makes me think that things are not what people thought they would be. They seldom are. And God, if He’s going to make an appearance, does not seem to be in a hurry about it. I think there’s an explanation for this, but it won’t match any of the conjectures I knew on Earth.”
“I doubt we’re on Earth,” Monat said. He pointed upward with long slim fingers which bore thick cartilage pads instead of nails.
He said, “If you look steadily there, with your eyes shielded, you can see another celestial body near the sun. It is not the moon.” Burton cupped his hands over his eyes, the metal cylinder on his shoulder, and stared at the point indicated. He saw a faintly glowing body which seemed to be an eighth of the size of a full moon. When he put his hands down, he said, “A star?”
Monat said, “I believe so. I thought I saw several other very faint bodies elsewhere in the sky, but I’m not sure. We will know when night comes.”
“Where do you think we are?”
“I would not know.” Monat gestured at the sun.
“It is rising and so it will descend, and then night should come. I think that it would be best to prepare for the night. And for other events. It is warm and getting warmer, but the night may be cold and it might rain. We should build a shelter of some sort. And we should also think about finding food. Though I imagine that this device” – he indicated the cylinder – “will feed us.”
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