They came to the plain and continued trotting, for they could see that there was much excitement around one of the structures. Burton swore at those in his way and pushed them aside. He got black looks but no one tried to push back. Abruptly, he was in the space cleared around the use. And he saw what had attracted them. He also smelled it.
Frigate, behind him, said, "Oh, my God and tried to retch on his empty stomach.
Burton had seen too much in his lifetime to be easily affected by grisly sights. Moreover, he could take himself to one remove from reality when things became too grim or too painful. Sometimes, he made the move, the sidestepping of things-as-they were, with an effort of will. Usually, if occurred automatically. In this case the displacement was done automatically.
The corpse lay on its side and half under the edge of the mushroom top. Its skin was completely burned off, and the naked muscles were charred. The nose and ears, fingers, toes, and the genitals had been burned away or were only shapeless stubs.
Near it, on her knees, was a woman mumbling a prayer in Italian. She had huge black eyes, which would have been beautiful, if they had not been reddened and puffy with tears. She had a magnificent figure, which would have caught all his attention under different circumstances.
"What happened?" he said.
The woman stopped praying and looked at him. She got to her feet and whispered, "Father Giuseppe was leaning against the rock; be said he was hungry. He said he didn’t see much sense in being brought back to life only to starve to death. I said that we wouldn’t die, how could we? We’d been raised from the dead, and we’d be provided for. He said maybe we were in hell. We’d go hungry and naked forever. I told him, not to blaspheme, of all people he should be the last to blaspheme. But he said that this was not what he’d been telling everybody for forty years would happen and then … and then…"
Burton waited a few seconds, and then said, "And then?"
"Father Giuseppe said that at least there wasn’t any hellfire but that that would be better than starving for eternity. And then the flames reached out and wrapped him inside them and there was a noise like a bomb exploding, and he was dead, burned to death It was horrible, horrible."
Burton moved north of the corpse to get the wind behind him, but even here the stench was sickening. It was not the odor as much as the idea of death that upset him. The first day of the Resurrection was only half over and a man was dead. Did this mean that the resurrected were just as vulnerable to death as to Earthlife? 1f so, what sense was there to it? Frigate had quit trying to heave on an empty stomach. Pie and shaking, he got to his feet and approached Burton. He kept his back turned to the dead man.
"Hadn’t we better get rid of that?" he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
"I suppose so," Burton said coolly. "It’s too bad his skin is ruined, though." He grinned at the American. Frigate looked even more shocked.
"Here," Burton said. "Grab hold of his feet, I’ll take the other end We’ll toss him into the river."
"The river?" Frigate said.
"Yaws. Unless you want to carry him into the hills and chop out a hole for him there."
"I can’t," Frigate said, and walked away. Burton looked disgustedly after him and then signaled to the subhuman. Kazz grunted and shuffled forward to the body with that peculiar walking-on-the-side-of-his-feet gait. He stooped over and, before Burton could get hold of the blackened stumps of the feet, Kazz had lifted the body above his head, walked a few steps to the edge of the river, and tossed the corpse into the water. It sank immediately and was moved by the current along the shore. Kazz decided that this was not good enough. He waded out after it up to his waist and stooped down, submerging himself gar a minute. Evidently he was shoving the body out into the deeper part.
Alice Hargreaves had watched with horror. Now she said "But that’s the water we’ll be drinking!"
"The river looks big enough to purify itself," Burton said. "At any rate, we have more things to worry about than proper sanitation procedures." Burt turned when Monat touched his shoulder and said, "look at that."
The water was boiling about where the body should be. Abruptly a silvery-white-finned back broke the surface.
"It looks as if your worry about the water being contaminated is in vain," Burton said to Alice Hargreaves. "The river has scavengers. I wonder… I wonder if it’s safe to swim."
At least, the subhuman had gotten out without being attacked. He was standing before Burton, brushing the water off his hairless body, and grinning with those huge teeth. He was frighteningly ugly. But he had the knowledge of a primitive man, knowledge which had already been handy in a world of primitive conditions. And he would be a damned good man to have at your back in a fight. Short though he was, he was immensely powerful. Those heavy bones afforded a broad base for heavy muscles. It was evident that he had, for some reason, become attached to Burton. Burton liked to think the savage, with a savage’s instincts, "knew" that Burton was the man to follow if he would survive. Moreover, a subhuman or prehuman, being closer to the animals, would also be more psychic. So he would detect Burton’s own well-developed psychic powers and would feel an affinity to Burton, even though he was Homo Sapiens.
Then Burton reminded himself that his reputation for psychism had been built up by himself and that he was half charlatan. He had talked about his powers so much, and had listened to his wife so much, that he had come to believe in them himself. But there were moments when he remembered that his "powers" were at least half-fake.
Nevertheless, he was a capable hypnotist, and he did believe that his eyes radiated a peculiar extra-sensory power, when he wished them to do so. It may have been this that attracted the half-man.
"The rock discharged a tremendous energy," Lev Roach said. "It must have been electrical. But why? I can’t believe that the discharge was purposeless."
Burton looked across the mushroom-shape of the rock. The gray cylinder in the center depression seemed to be undamaged by the discharge. He touched the stone. It was no warmer than might have been expected from its exposure to the sun.
Lev Roach said, "Don’t touch it! There might be another…" and he stopped when he saw his warning was too late.
"Another discharge?" Burton said. "I don’t think so. Not for some time yet anyway. That cylinder was left here so we could learn something from it.
He put his hands on the top of the mushroom structure and jumped forward. He came up and onto the top with an ease that gladdened him. It had been so many years since he had felt so young and so powerful. Or so hungry.
A few in the crowd cried out to him to get down off the rock before the blue flames came again. Others looked as if they hoped that another discharge would occur. The majority were content to let him take the risks.
Nothing happened, although he had not been too sure he would not be incinerated. The stone felt only pleasantly warm on his bare feet.
He walked over the depressions to the cylinder and put his fingers under the rim of the cover. It rose easily. His heart beating with excitement, he looked inside it. He had expect the miracle, and there it was. The racks within held six containers, each of which was full.
He signaled to his group to come up. Kazz vaulted up easily. Frigate, who had recovered from his sickness, got onto the top with an athlete’s ease. If the fellow did not have such a queasy stomach, he might be an asset, Burton thought. Frigate turned and pulled up Alice, who came over the edge at the ends of his heads.