To Your Scattered Bodies Go/The Fabulous Riverboat Read Online Free

sun, we were automatically thawed out, and…but you do not know what I am talking about?”
    “Not quite. Things are happening too fast. I would like to get details later. What is your name?”
    “Monat Grrautut. Yours?”
    “Richard Francis Burton at your service.”
    He bowed slightly and smiled. Despite the strangeness of the creatureand some repulsive physical aspects, Burton found himself warming to him.
    “The late Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,” he added. “Most recently Her Majesty’s Consul in the Austro-Hungarian port of Trieste.”
    “Elizabeth?”
    “I lived in the nineteenth century, not the sixteenth.”
    “A Queen Elizabeth reigned over Great Britain in the twentieth century,” Monat said.
    He turned to look toward the riverbank.
    “Why are they so afraid? All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.”
    Burton grinned and said, “Those who denied the hereafter are sure they’re in Hell because they denied it. Those who knew they would go to Heaven are shocked, I would imagine, to find themselves naked. You see, most of the illustrations of our afterlives showed those in Hell as naked and those in Heaven as being clothed. So, if you’re resurrected bare-ass naked, you must be in Hell.”
    “You seem amused,” Monat said.
    “I wasn’t so amused a few minutes ago,” Burton said. “And I’m shaken. Very shaken. But seeing you here makes me think that things are not what people thought they would be. They seldom are. And God, if He’s going to make an appearance, does not seem to be in a hurry about it. I think there’s an explanation for this, but it won’t match any of the conjectures I knew on Earth.”
    “I doubt we’re on Earth,” Monat said. He pointed upward with long slim fingers which bore thick cartilage pads instead of nails.
    He said, “If you look steadily there, with your eyes shielded, you can see another celestial body near the sun. It is not the moon.”
    Burton cupped his hands over his eyes, the metal cylinder on his shoulder, and stared at the point indicated. He saw a faintly glowing body which seemed to be an eighth of the size of a full moon. When he put his hands down, he said, “A star?”
    Monat said, “I believe so. I thought I saw several other very faint bodies elsewhere in the sky, but I’m not sure. We will know when night comes.”
    “Where do you think we are?”
    “I would not know.”
    Monat gestured at the sun.
    “It is rising and so it will descend, and then night should come. I think that it would be best to prepare for the night. And for other events. It is warm and getting warmer, but the night may be cold and it might rain. We should build a shelter of some sort. And we should also think about finding food. Though I imagine that this device”—he indicated the cylinder—“will feed us.”
    Burton said, “What makes you think that?”
    “I looked inside mine. It contains dishes and cups, all empty now, but obviously made to be filled.”
    Burton felt less unreal. The being—the Tau Cetan!—talked so pragmatically, so sensibly, that he provided an anchor to which Burton could tie his senses before they drifted away again. And, despite the repulsive alienness of the creature, he exuded a friendliness and an openness that warmed Burton. Moreover, any creature that came from a civilization which could span many trillions of miles of interstellar space must have very valuable knowledge and resources.
    Others were beginning to separate themselves from the crowd. A group of about ten men and women walked slowly toward him. Some were talking, but others were silent and wide-eyed. They did not seem to have a definite goal in mind; they just floated along like a cloud driven by a wind. When they got near Burton and Monat, they stopped walking.
    A man trailing the group especially attracted Burton’s scrutiny. Monat was obviously