To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

Nevertheless, man needs time as a fish needs water. If he does not have it, he will invent it; so to Burton, it was July 14, 5 A.R.

But Collop, like many, reckoned time as having continued from the year of his Terrestrial death. To him, it was A.D. 1667. He did not believe that his sweet Jesus had become sour. Rather, this River was the River Jordan; this valley, the vale beyond the shadow of death. He admitted that the afterlife was not that which he had expected. Yet it was evidence of the all-encompassing love of God for His creation. He had given all men, altogether undeserving of such a gift, another chance. If this world was not the New Jerusalem, it was a place prepared for its building. Here the bricks, which were the love of God, and the mortar, love for man, must be fashioned in this kiln and this mill: the planet of The River of The Valley.

Burton pooh-poohed the concept, but he could not help loving the little man. Collop was genuine; he was not stoking the furnace of his sweetness with leaves from a book or pages from a theology. He did not operate under forced draft. He burned with a flame that fed on his own being, and this being was love. Love even for the unlovable, the rarest and most difficult species of love.

He told Burton something of his Terrestrial life. He had been a doctor, a farmer, a liberal with unshakable faith in his religion, yet full of questions about his faith and the society of his time. He had written a plea for religious tolerance which had aroused both praise and damnation is his time. And he had been a poet, well-known for a short time, then forgotten.

Lord, let the faithless see

Miracles ceased, revive in me.

The leper cleansed, blind healed,

dead raised by Thee

“My lines may have died, but their truth has not,” he said to Burton. He waved his hand to indicate the hilts, The River, the mountains, the people. “As you may see if you open your eyes and do not persist in this stubborn myth of yours that this is the handiwork of men like us.”

He continued, “Or grant your premise. It still remains that these Ethicals are but doing the work of Their Creator!

“I like better those other lines of yours,” Burton said.

Dull soul aspire;

Thou art not the Earth.

Mourn higher!

Heaven gave the spark;

to it return the fire.’

Collop was pleased, not knowing that Burton was thinking of the lines in a different sense than that intended by the poet.

“Return the fire.” That meant somehow getting into the Dark Tower, discovering the secrets of the Ethicals, and turning Their devices against Them. He did not feel gratitude because They had given him an earned life. He was outraged that They should do this without his leave. If They wanted his thanks, why did They not tell him why They had given him another chance? What reason did They have for keeping Their motives in the dark? He would find out why. The spark They had restored in him would turn into a raging fire to barn Them.

He cursed the fate that had propelled him to a place so near the source of The River, hence so close to the Tower, and in a few minutes had carried him away again, back to some place is the middle of The River, millions of miles away from his goal.

Yet, if he had been there once, he could get there again. Not by taking a boat, since the journey would consume at least forty years and probably more. He could also count on being captured and enslaved a thousand times over. And if he were killed along the way, he might find himself raised again far from his goal and have to start all over again.

On the other hand, given the seemingly random selection of resurrection, he might find himself once more near The River’s mouth. It was this that determined him to board The Suicide Express once more. However, even though he knew that his death would be only temporary, he found it difficult to take the necessary step. His mind told him that death was the only ticket, but his body rebelled. The cells” fierce insistence on survival overcame his will.