To Your Scattered Bodies Go/The Fabulous Riverboat Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mrs. Hargreaves,” she said.
    Burton took the hand, and, bowing, kissed it lightly. He felt foolish, but, at the same time, the gesture strengthened his hold on sanity. If the forms of polite society could be preserved perhaps the “rightness” of things might also be restored.
    “The late Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,” he said, grinning slightly at the late. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
    She snatched her hand away and then extended it again.
    “Yes, I’ve heard of you, Sir Richard.”
    Somebody said, “It can’t be!”
    Burton looked at Frigate, who had spoken in such a low tone.
    “And why not?” he said.
    “Richard Burton!” Frigate said. “Yes. I wondered, but without any hair?….”
    “Yaas?” Burton drawled.
    “Yaas!” Frigate said. “Just as the books said!”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Frigate breathed in deeply and then said, “Never mind now, Mr. Burton. I’ll explain later. Just take it that I’m very shaken up. Not in my right mind. You understand that, of course.”
    He looked intently at Mrs. Hargreaves, shook his head, and said, “Is your name Alice?”
    “Why, yes!” she said, smiling and becoming beautiful, hair or no hair. “How did you know? Have I met you? No, I don’t think so.”
    “Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves?”
    “Yes!”
    “I have to go sit down,” the American said. He walked under the tree and sat down with his back to the trunk. His eyes looked a little glazed.
    “Aftershock,” Burton said.
    He could expect such erratic behavior and speech from the others for some time. He could expect a certain amount of nonrational behavior from himself, too. The important thing was to get shelter and food and some plan for common defense.
    Burton spoke in Italian and Slovenian to the others and then made the introductions. They did not protest when he suggested that they should follow him down to the river’s edge.
    “I’m sure we’re all thirsty,” he said. “And we should investigate that stone mushroom.”
    They walked back to the plain behind them. The people were sitting on the grass or milling about. They passed one couple arguing loudly and red-facedly. Apparently, they had been husband and wife and were continuing a lifelong dispute. Suddenly, the man turned and walked away. The wife looked unbelievingly at him and then ran after him. He thrust her away so violently that she fell on the grass. He quickly lost himself in the crowd, but the woman wandered around, calling his name and threatening to make a scandal if he did not come out of hiding.
    Burton thought briefly of his own wife, Isabel. He had not seen herin this crowd, though that did not mean that she was not in it. But she would have been looking for him. She would not stop until she found him.
    He pushed through the crowd to the river’s edge and then got down on his knees and scooped up water with his hands. It was cool and clear and refreshing. His stomach felt as if it were absolutely empty. After he had satisfied his thirst, he became hungry.
    “The waters of the River of Life,” Burton said. “The Styx? Lethe? No, not Lethe. I remember everything about my Earthly existence.”
    “I wish I could forget mine,” Frigate said.
    Alice Hargreaves was kneeling by the edge and dipping water with one hand while she leaned on the other arm. Her figure was certainly lovely, Burton thought. He wondered if she would be blonde when her hair grew out, if it grew out. Perhaps Whoever had put them here intended they should all be bald, forever, for some reason of Theirs.
    They climbed upon the top of the nearest mushroom structure. The granite was a dense-grained gray flecked heavily with red. On its flat surface were seven hundred indentations, forming fifty concentric circles. The depression in the center held a metal cylinder. A little dark-skinned man with a big nose and receding chin was examining the cylinder. As they approached, he looked up and smiled.
    “This one won’t