Flesh Read Online Free Page B

street. Several men were lifting a large barrel onto the back of the wagon.
    “Honeydippers was the ancient name for them,” said Calthorp. “Every day they come by and collect their stuff for the fields. This is a world where every little grunt is for the glory of the nation and the enrichment of the soil.”
    “You’d think we’d be used to it by now,” Stagg said. “But the odor seems to get stronger every day.”
    “Well, it’s not a new odor around Washington. Though in the old days there was less of the human and more of the bull.”
    Stagg grinned and said, “Who ever thought America, land of the two-bathroom house, would go back to the little house with the crescent on the door? Except the little houses don’t have doors. It’s not because they don’t know anything about plumbing. We have running water in our apartments.”
    “Everything that comes out of the earth must go back to the earth. They don’t sin against Nature by piping millions of tons of phosphates and other chemicals, which the soil needs, into the ocean. They’re not like we were, blind stupid fools killing our earth in the name of sanitation.”
    “This lecture wasn’t why you called me to the window,” Stagg said.
    “Yes, it was. I wanted to explain the roots of this culture. Or try to. I’m handicapped because I’ve spent most of my time learning the language.”
    “It’s English. But farther from our brand than ours was from Anglo-Saxon.”
    “It’s degenerated, in the linguistical sense, far faster than was predicted. Probably because of the isolation of small groups after the Desolation. And also because the mass of the people are illiterate. Literacy is almost the exclusive property of the religious ministers and the diradah .”
    “Diradah?”
    “The aristocrats. I think the word originally was deer-riders. Only the privileged are allowed to ride deer. Diradah. Analogous to the Spanish caballero or French cavalier. Both originally meant horseman. I’ve several things to show you, but let’s look at that mural again.”
    They walked to the far end of the long room and stopped before an enormous and brightly colored mural.
    “This painting,” Calthorp said, “depicts the great basic myth of Deecee. As you can see”—he pointed at the figure of the Great White Mother towering over the tiny plains and mountains and even tinier people—“she is very angry. She is helping her son, the Sun, to blast the creatures of Earth. She is rolling back the blue shield she once flung around Earth to protect it from the fierce arrows of her son.
    “Man, in his blindness, greed, and arrogance, has fouled the Goddess-given earth. His ant-heap cities have emptied their filth into the rivers and seas and turned them into vast sewers. He has poisoned the air with deadly fumes. These fumes, I suppose, were not only the products of industry but of radioactivity. But the Deecee, of course, know nothing of atomic bombs.
    “Then Columbia, unable any longer to endure man’s poisoning of Earth and his turning away from her worship, ripped away her protective shield around Earth—and allowed the Sun to hurl the full force of his darts upon all living creatures.”
    “I see all those people and animals falling down all over Earth,” Stagg said. “On the streets, in the fields, on the seas, in the air. The grasses shrivel, and the trees wither. Only the humans and animals lucky enough to have been sheltered from the Sun’s arrows survived.”
    “Not so lucky,” Calthorp said. “They didn’t die from sunburn, but they had to eat. The animals came forth at night and ate the carrion and each other. Man, after devouring all the canned goods, ate the animals. And then man ate man.
    “Fortunately, the deadly rays lasted only a short time, perhaps less than a week. Then the Goddess relented and replaced her protective shield.”
    “But what was the Desolation?”
    “I can only surmise. Do you remember that just before we left Earth