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appeared. He strode from the grass, and was followed by the naked head of a woman. Emerging from
the grass, she revealed a wet but beautiful body. Her eyes were large and a dark green, and her
lips were a little too thick for beauty. But her other features were exquisite.
Frigate was smiling broadly. He turned and pulled her into the warmth of the fire with his hand.
`You look like the cat who ate the canary,' Burton said. `What happened to your hand?' Peter
Frigate looked at the knuckles of his right hand. They were swelled, and there were scratches on
the back of the hand.
`I got into a fight,' he said. He pointed a finger at the woman, who was squatting near Alice and
warming herself. `It was a madhouse down by the river last night. That gum must contain a drug of
some sort. You wouldn't believe what people were doing. Or would you? After all, you're Richard
Francis Burton. Anyway, all women, including the ugly ones, were occupied, one way or another. I
'got scared at what was going on and than I got mad. I hit two men with my grail, knocked them out
They were attacking a ten-year-old girl. I may have killed them; I hope I did. I tried to get the
girl to come with me, but she ran away into the night.'
`I decided to come back here. I was beginning to react pretty badly from what I'd done to those
two men even if they deserved it. The drug was responsible; it must have released a lifetime of
rage and frustration. So I started back here and then I came across two more men, only these were
attacking a woman - this one. I think she wasn't resisting the idea of intercourse so much as she
was their idea of simultaneous attack, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she was screaming, or
trying to, and struggling, and they had just started to hit her. So I hit them with my fist and
kicked them and then banged away on them with my grail: Then I took the woman, her name's Loghu,
by the way, that's all I know about her since I can't understand a word of her language, and she
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went with me.' He grinned again. `But we never got there.' He quit grinning, and shuddered.
Then we woke up with the rain and lightning and thunder coming down like the wrath of God. I
thought that maybe, don't laugh, that it was judgment Day, that God had given us free rein for a
day so He could let us judge ourselves. And now we were going to be cast into the pit.' He laughed
tightly and said, `I've been an agnostic since I was fourteen years old, and I died one at the age
of ninety, although I was thinking about calling in a priest then. But the little child that's
scared of the Old Father God and Hellfire and Damnation, he's still down there, even in the old
man. Or in the young man raised from the dead.'
`What happened?' Burton said. `Did the world end in a crack of thunder and a stroke of lightning?
You're still here, I see, and you've not renounced the delights of sin in the person of this
woman.'
`We found a grailstone near the mountains. About a mile west of here. We got lost, wandered-
around, cold, wet, jumping every time the lightning struck nearby. Then we found the grailstone.
It was jammed with people, but they were exceptionally friendly, end there were so many bodies it
was very warm, even if some rain did leak down through the grass. We finally went to sleep, long
after the rain quit. When I woke up, I searched through the grass until I found Loghu. She got
lost during the night, somehow. She seemed pleased to see me, though, add I like her. There's an
affinity between us. Maybe I'll find out why when she learns to speak English. I tried that and
French and German and tags of Russian, Lithuanian, Gaelic, all the Scandinavian tongues, including
Finnish, classical Nahuatl, Arabic, Hebrew, Onondaga Iroquois, Objibway, Italian, Spanish, Latin,
modem and Homeric Greek, and a dozen others. Result: a blank look.'
`You must be quite a linguist,' Burton said.
'I'm not fluent in any of those,' Frigate said. `I can read most of them but can speak only
everyday phrases. Unlike you, I am not master of thirty-nine languages - including pornography.'
'The fellow seemed to know much about himself, Burton thought. He would find out just how much at
a later time.
`I'll be frank with you, Peter,' Burton said. `Your account of your aggressiveness amazed me. I
had not thought you capable of attacking and beating that many men. Your queasiness...'
`It was the gum, of course. It opened the door of the cage.' Frigate squatted down by Loghu and
rubbed his shoulder against hers. She looked at him out of slightly slanted eyes. The woman would
be beautiful once her hair grew out.
Frigate continued, `I'm so timorous and queasy because I am afraid of the anger, the desire to do
violence, that lies not too deeply within me. I fear violence because I am violent. I fear what
will happen if I am not afraid. Hell, I've known that for forty years. Much good the knowledge has
done me!' He looked at Alice and said, `Good morning!' Alice replied cheerily enough, and she even
smiled at Loghu when she was introduced. She would look at Burton, and she would answer his direct
questions. But she would not chat with him or give him anything but a stern face.
Monat, Kazz, and the little girl, all yawning, came to the preside. Burton prowled around the
edges of the camp and found that the Triestans were gone. Some had left their grails behind. He
cursed them for their carelessness and thought about leaving the grails in the grass to teach them
a lesson. But he eventually placed the cylinders in depressions on the grailstone.
If their owners did not return, they would go hungry unless someone shared their food with them. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]