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After telling them to spread out and to proceed slowly, Burton led them up the hill. The buts were deserted, and several of the little buts had been kicked or trampled. He felt a chill, as if a cold-wind bad blown on him. The silence, the damaged huts, the complete absence of the two, was foreboding.
A minute later, they heard a halloo and turned to look down the hill. The skin-heads of Monat and Frigate appeared in the gasses and then they were coming up the hill. Monat looked grave, but the American was gri
"We just got back from chasing off four men and three women who wanted to take over our buts," he said. "I told them they could build their own, and that you’d be back right away and beat hell out of them if they didn’t take off. They understood the all right, they spoke English. They had been resurrected at the grailstone a mile north of ours along the river. Most of the people there were Triestans of your time, but about ten, all together, were Chicagoans who’d died about 1985. The distribution of the dead sure is fu
"Anyway, I told them what Mark Twain said the devil said.
You Chicagoans think you’re the best people here whereas the truth is you’re just the most numerous. That didn’t go over very well, they seemed to think that I should be buddy-buddies with them because I was an American. One of the women offered herself to me if I’d change sides and take their part in appropriating the huts. She was the one who was living with two of the men. I said no. They said they’d take the huts anyway, and over my dead body if they had to.
"But they talked more brave than they were. Monat scared them just by looking at them. And we did have the stone weapons and spears. Still, their leader was whipping them up into rushing us, when I took a good hard look at one of them.
"His head was bald so he didn’t have that thick straight black hair, and he was about thirty-five when I first knew him, and he wore thick shell-rimmed glasses then, and I hadn’t seen him for fifty-four years. But I stepped up closer, and I looked into his face, which was gri
"His eyes opened then, and he gri
"I was almost glad to see him and for the same reason he said he was glad to see me. But then I told myself, "This is the crooked publisher that cheated you out of $4,000 when you were just getting started as a writer and ruined your career for years. This is the slimy schlock dealer who cheated you and at least four other writers out of a lot of money and then declared bankruptcy and skipped. And then he inherited a lot of money from an uncle and lived very well indeed, thus proving that crime did pay. This is the man you have not forgotten, not only because of what he did to you and others but because of so many other crooked publishers you ran into later on."
Burton gri
"Yeah, I know," Frigate said. "I’ve never forgotten that you said that. Anyway, I put down my natural joy at seeing a familiar face again, and I said, "Sharkko…""
"With a name like that, he got you to trust him?" Alice said.
"He told me it was a Czech name that meant trustworthy. Like everything else he told me, it was a lie. Anyway, I had just about convinced myself that Monat and I should let them take over. We’d retire and then we’d run them out when you came back from the grailstone. That was the smart thing to do. But when I recognized Sharkko, I got so mad! I said, gri
"And I hit him right in the nose! He went over flat on his back, with his nose spouting blood. Monat and I rushed the others, and I kicked one, and then another hit me on the cheek with his grail. I was knocked silly, but Monat knocked one out with the butt of his spear and cracked the ribs of another; he’s ski
Sharkko got up then and I hit with my other fist but only a glancing blow along his jaw. It hurt my fist more than it hurt his jaw. He spun around and took off, and I went after him. The others took off, too, with Monat beating them on the tail with his spear. I chased Sharkko up the next hill and caught him on the downslope and punched him but good! He crawled away, begging for mercy, which I gave him with a kick in the rear that rolled him howling all the way down the hill."
Frigate was still shaking with reaction, but he was pleased.
"I was afraid I was going to torn chicken there for a while," he said. "After all, all that had been so long ago and in another world, and maybe we’re here to forgive our enemies — and some of our friends — and be forgiven. But on the other hand, I thought, maybe we’re here so we can give, a little back of what we had to take on Earth. What about it, Lev? Wouldn’t you like a chance to turn Hitler over a fire? Very slowly over a fire?"
"I don’t think you could compare a crooked publisher to Hitler," Ruach said. "No, I wouldn’t want to turn him over a fire. I might want to starve him to death, or feed him just enough to keep him alive. But I wouldn’t do that. What good would it do? Would it make him, change his mind about anything, would he then believe that Jews were human beings? No, I would do nothing to him if he were in my power except kill him so he couldn’t hurt others. But I’m not so sure that killing him would mean he’d stay dead. Not here."
"You’re a real Christian," Frigate said, gri
"I thought you were my friend!" Ruach said.
12
This was the second time that Burton had heard the name Hitler. He intended to find out all about him, but at the moment everybody would have to put off talking to finish the roofs on the huts. They all pitched in, cutting off more grass with the little scissors they had found in their grails, or climbing the irontrees and tearing off the huge triangular green and scarlet-laced leaves. The roofs left much to be desired. Burton meant to search around for a professional thatcher and learn the proper techniques. The beds would have to be, for the time being, piles of grass on top of which were piles of the softer irontree leaves. The blankets would be another pile of the same leaves.
"Thank God, or Whoever, that there is no insect life," Burton said.
He lifted the gray metal cup, which still held two ounces of the best scotch he had ever tasted.
"Here’s to Whoever. If he had raised us just to live on an exact duplicate of Earth, we’d be sharing our beds with ten thousand kinds of biting, scratching, stinging, scraping, tickling, bloodsucking vermin." They drank, and then they sat around the fire for a while and smoked and talked. The shadow darkened, the sky lost its blue, and the gigantic stars and great sheets, which had been dimly seen ghosts just before dusk, blossomed out. The sky was indeed a blaze of glory.
"Like a Sime illustration," Frigate said.
Burton did not know what a Sime was. Half of the conversation with the non-nineteenth centurians consisted of them explaining their references and he explaining his.
Burton rose and went over to the other side of the fire and squatted by Alice. She had just returned from putting the little girl, Gwenafra, to bed in a hut.