To Your Scattered Bodies Go

There was much that Burton did not know. But he had had a glimpse into the workings of this Riverplanet that no other human being possessed.

With the little knowledge he did have, he pla

Meanwhile, he continued to play the role of Abdul ibn Harun, translated and transplanted Egyptian physician of the nineteenth century, now a citizen of Bargawhwdzys. As such, he decided to join the Church of the Second Chance. He a

"Then you must swear not to take arms against any man nor to defend yourself physically, my dear friend," Collop said.

Burton, outraged, said that he would allow no man to strike at him and go unharmed.

"Tis not u

At this time, Collop got his second convert, Göring. The German had had nothing but sneers and jibes for Collop. Then he began chewing dreamgum again, and the nightmares started.

For two nights he kept Collop and Burton awake with his groanings his tossings, his screams. On the evening of the third day, he asked Collop if he would accept him into the Church. However he had to make a confession. Collop must understand what sort of person he had been, both on Earth and on this planet.

Collop heard out the mixture of self-abasement and self-aggrandizement. Then he said, "Friend, I care not what you may have been. Only what you are and what you will be. I listened only because confession is good for the soul I can see that you are deeply troubled, that you have suffered sorrow and grief for what you have done, yet take some pleasure in what you once were, a mighty figure among men. Much of what you told me I do not comprehend, because I know not much about your era. Nor does it matter. Only today and tomorrow need to be our concern, each day will take care of itself."

It seemed to Burton not that Collop did not care what Göring had been but that he did not believe his story of Earthly glory and infamy. There were so many phonies that genuine heroes, or villains, had been depreciated.

Thus, Burton had met three Jesus Christs, two Abrahams, four King Richard the LionHearts, six Attilas, a dozen Judases (only one of whom could speak Aramaic), a George Washington, two Lord Byrons, three Jesse James’s, any number of Napoleons, a General Custer (who spoke with a heavy Yorkshire accent), a Fi

Whatever a man had been on Earth, he had to reestablish himself here. This was not easy, because conditions were radically altered. The greats and the importants of Terra were constantly being humiliated in their claims and denied a chance to prove their identities.

To Collop, the humiliation was a blessing. First, humiliation, then humility, he would have said. And then comes humanity as a matter of course.

Göring had been trapped in the Great Design — as Burton termed it — because it was his nature to overindulge, especially with drugs. Knowing that the dreamgum was uprooting the dark things in his personal abyss, was spewing them up into the light, -that he was being tom apart, fragmented, he still continued to chew as much as he could get. For a while, temporarily made healthful again with a new resurrection, he had been able to deny the call of the drug. But a few weeks after his arrival is this area, he had succumbed, and now the night was ripped apart with his shrieks of "Herma

"If this continues," Burton said to Collop, "he will go mad or he will kill himself again, or force someone to kill him, so that he can get away from himself. But the suicide will be useless, and it’s all to do over again. Tell me truly now, is this hell?"

"Purgatory, rather," Collop said. "Purgatory is hell with hope.’

24

Two months passed. Burton marked the days off on a pine stick notched with a flint knife. This was the fourteenth day of the seven month of 5 A.R., the fifth year After the Resurrection. Burton tried to keep a calendar, for he was, among many other things; a chronicler. But it was difficult. Time did not mean much, on The River. The planet had a polar axis that was always at ninety degrees to the ecliptic. There was no change of seasons, and the stars seemed to jostle each other and made identification of individual luminaries or of constellations impossible. So many and so bright were they that even the noonday sun at its zenith could not entirely dim the greatest of them. Like ghosts reluctant to retreat before daylight, they hovered in the burning air.

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!