To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Burton swung around and spoke to the other women. "What about you ladies? Are you going to wear these ugly and scratchy haycocks because one of your sex suddenly decides that she has private parts again? Can something that has bean so public become private?" Loghu, Tanya, and Alice did not understand him because he spoke in Italian. He repeated in English for the benefit of the last two.

Alice flushed and said, "What I wear is my business. If anybody else cares to go naked when I’m decently covered, well…!" Loghu had not understood a word, but she understood what was going on. She laughed and turned away. The other women seemed to be trying to guess what each one intended to do. The ugliness and the uncomfortable-ness of the clothing were not the issues.

"While you females are trying to make up your minds," Burton said, "it would be nice if you would take a bamboo pail and go with us to the river. We can bathe, fill the pails with water, find out the situation in the plains, and then return here. We may be able to build several houses — or temporary shelters before nightfall." They started down the hills, pushing through the grass and carrying their grails, chert weapons, bamboo spears and buckets. They had not gone far before they encountered a number of people. Apparently, many plains dwellers had decided to move out. Not only that, some had also found chert and had made tools and weapons. These had learned the technique of working with stone from somebody, possibly from other primitives in the area. So far, Burton had seen only two specimens of non-Homo sapiens, and these were with him. But wherever the techniques had been learned, they had been put to good use. They passed two half-completed bamboo huts. These were round, one-roomed, and would have conical roofs thatched with the huge triangular leaves from the irontrees and with the long hill grass. One man, using a chert adze and axe, was building a short-legged bamboo bed.

Except for a number erecting rather crude huts or lean-tos without stone tools at the edge of the plains, and for a number swimming in the river, the plain was deserted. The bodies from last night’s madness had been removed. So far, no one had put on a grass skirt, and many stared at Alice or even laughed and made raucous comments. Alice turned red, but she made no move to get rid of her clothes. The sun was getting hot, however, and she was scratching under her breast garment and under her skirt. It was a measure of the intensity of the irritation that the, raised by strict Victorian upper-class standards, would scratch in public.

However, when they got to the river, they saw a dozen heaps, of stuff that turned out to be grass dresses. These had been left on the edge of the river by the men and women now laughing, splashing, and swimming in the river.

It was certainly a contrast to the beaches he knew. These were the same people who had accepted the bathing machines, the suits that covered them from ankle to neck, and all the other modest devices, as absolutely moral and vital to the continuation of the proper society — theirs. Yet, only one day after finding themselves here, they were swimming in the nude. And enjoying it.

Part of the acceptance of their unclothed state came from the shock of the resurrection. In addition, there was not much they could do about it that first day. And there had been a leavening of the civilized with savage peoples, or tropical civilized peoples, who were not particularly shocked by nudity.

He called out to a woman who was standing to her waist in the water. She had a coarsely pretty face and sparkling blue eyes.

"That is the woman who attacked Sir Robert Smithson," Lev Ruach said. "I believe her name is Wilfreda Allport."

Burton looked at her curiously and with appreciation of her splendid bust. He called out, "How’s the water?"

"Very nice!" she said, smiling.

He un-strapped his grail, put down the container, which held his chert knife and handaxe, and waded in with his cake of green soap. The water felt as if it was about ten degrees below his body temperature. He soaped himself while he struck up a conversation with Wilfreda. If she still harbored any resentment about Smithson, she did not show it. Her accent was heavily North Country, Perhaps Cumberland.

Burton said to her, "I heard about your little to-do with the late great hypocrite, the baronet. You should be happy now, though. You’re healthy and young and beautiful again, and you don’t have to toil for your bread. Also, you can do for love what you had to do for money." There was no use beating around the bush with a factory girl Not that she had any.

Wilfreda gave him a stare as cool as any he had received from Alice Hargreaves. She said, "Now, haven’t you the ruddy nerve? English, aren’t you? I can’t place your accent, London, I’d say, with a touch of something foreign."