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Except for a number erecting rather crude huts or lean-tos without stone tools at the edge of the plains, and for a number swimming in the river, the plain was deserted. The bodies from last night’s madness had been removed. So far, no one had put on a grass skirt, and many stared at Alice or even laughed and made raucous comments. Alice turned red, but she made no move to get rid of her clothes. The sun was getting hot, however, and she was scratching under her breast garment and under her skirt. It was a measure of the intensity of the irritation that the, raised by strict Victorian upper-class standards, would scratch in public.
However, when they got to the river, they saw a dozen heaps, of stuff that turned out to be grass dresses. These had been left on the edge of the river by the men and women now laughing, splashing, and swimming in the river.
It was certainly a contrast to the beaches he knew. These were the same people who had accepted the bathing machines, the suits that covered them from ankle to neck, and all the other modest devices, as absolutely moral and vital to the continuation of the proper society — theirs. Yet, only one day after finding themselves here, they were swimming in the nude. And enjoying it.
Part of the acceptance of their unclothed state came from the shock of the resurrection. In addition, there was not much they could do about it that first day. And there had been a leavening of the civilized with savage peoples, or tropical civilized peoples, who were not particularly shocked by nudity.
He called out to a woman who was standing to her waist in the water. She had a coarsely pretty face and sparkling blue eyes.
"That is the woman who attacked Sir Robert Smithson," Lev Ruach said. "I believe her name is Wilfreda Allport."
Burton looked at her curiously and with appreciation of her splendid bust. He called out, "How’s the water?"
"Very nice!" she said, smiling.
He un-strapped his grail, put down the container, which held his chert knife and handaxe, and waded in with his cake of green soap. The water felt as if it was about ten degrees below his body temperature. He soaped himself while he struck up a conversation with Wilfreda. If she still harbored any resentment about Smithson, she did not show it. Her accent was heavily North Country, Perhaps Cumberland.
Burton said to her, "I heard about your little to-do with the late great hypocrite, the baronet. You should be happy now, though. You’re healthy and young and beautiful again, and you don’t have to toil for your bread. Also, you can do for love what you had to do for money." There was no use beating around the bush with a factory girl Not that she had any.
Wilfreda gave him a stare as cool as any he had received from Alice Hargreaves. She said, "Now, haven’t you the ruddy nerve? English, aren’t you? I can’t place your accent, London, I’d say, with a touch of something foreign."
"You’re close," he said, laughing. "I’m Richard Burton, by the way. How would you like to join our group? We’ve banded together for protection; we’re going to build some houses this afternoon. We’ve got a grailstone all to ourselves up in the hills" Wilfreda looked at the Tau Cetan and the Neanderthal "They’re part of your mob, now? I heard about "em; they say the monster’s a man from the stars, come along in A.D. 2000, they do say."
"He won’t hurt you," Burton said. "Neither will the subhuman. What do you say?"
"I’m only a woman," she said. "What do I have to offer?"
"All a woman has to offer," Burton said, gri
Surprisingly, she burst out laughing. She touched his chest and said, "Now ain’t you the clever one? What’s the matter, you can’t get no girl of your own?"
"I had one and lost her," Burton said. That was not entirely true. He was not sure what Alice intended to do. He could not understand why she continued to stay with his group if she was so horrified" and disgusted. Perhaps it was because she preferred the evil she knew to the evil she did not know. At the moment, he himself felt only disgust at her stupidity, but he did not want her to go. That love he had experienced last night may have been caused by the drug, but he still felt a residue of it. Then why was he asking this woman to join them? Perhaps it was to make Alice jealous. Perhaps it was to have a woman to fall back upon if Alice refused him tonight. Perhaps … he did not know why.
Alice stood upon the bank, her toes almost touching the water. The bank was, at this point, only an inch above the water. The short grass continued from the plain to form a solid mat that grew down on the river bed. Burton could feel the grass under his feet as far as he could wade. He threw his soap onto the bank and swam out for about forty feet and dived down. Here the current suddenly became stronger and the depth much greater. He swam down, his eyes open, until the light failed and his ears hurt. He continued on down and then his fingers touched bottom. There was grass there, too.
When he swam back to where the water was up no his waist he saw that Alice had shed her clothes. She was in closer to the shore, but squatting so that the water was up to her neck. She" was soaping her head and face.
He called to Frigate, "Why don’t you come in?"
"I’m guarding the grails," Frigate said.
"Very good!" Burton swore under his breath. He should have thought of that and appointed somebody as a guard. He wasn’t in actuality a good leader, he tended to let things go to pot, to permit them to disintegrate. Admit it. On Earth he had been the head of many expeditions, none of which had been distinguished by efficiency or strong management. Yet, during the Crimean War, when he was head of Beatson’s Irregulars, training the wild Turkish cavalry, the Bashi-Bazouks, he had done quite well, far better than most. So he should not be reprimanding himself…
Lev Ruach climbed out of the water and ran his hands over his ski
"It’s not just being young again that delights me," Lev said in his heavily accented English. "It’s having this leg back." He tapped his right knee.
"I lost it in a traffic accident on the New Jersey Turnpike when I was fifty years old." He laughed and said; "There was an irony to the situation that some" might call fate. I had been captured by Arabs two years before when I was looking for minerals in the desert, in the state of Israel, you understand…’
"You mean Palestine?" Burton said. "
"The Jews founded an independent state in 1948," Lev said. "You wouldn’t know about that, of course. I’ll tell you all about it some time. Anyway, I was captured and tortured by Arab guerrillas. I won’t go into the details; it makes me sick to recall it. But I escaped that night, though not before bashing in the heads of two with a rock and shooting two more with a rifle. The others fled, and I got away. I was lucky. An army patrol picked me up. However, two years later, when I was in the States, driving down the Turnpike, a truck, a big semi, I’ll describe that later, too, cut in front of me and jackknifed and I crashed into it. I was badly hurt, and my right leg was amputated below the knee. But the point of this story is that the truck driver had been born in Syria. So, you see the Arabs were out to get me, and they did; though they did not kill me. That job was done by our friend from Tau Ceti. Though I can’t say he did anything to humanity except hurry up its doom."
"What do you mean by that?" Burton said.
"There were millions dying from famine, even the States were on a strictly rationed diet, and pollution of our water, land, and air was killing other millions. The scientists said that half of Earth’s oxygen supply would be cut off in ten years because the phytoplankton of the oceans — they furnished half the world’s oxygen, you know — were dying. The oceans were polluted."