"Would that be necessary? How many believe my tale? Sometimes I doubt it myself."

Ruach said, "Speculation is fruitless. What do we do now?" Alice shrieked, "Richard!" and they turned to see her sitting up and staring at them.

For a few minutes, they could not get her to understand what had happened. Finally she said, "So that’s why the fog covered the land, too! I thought it was strange, but of course I had no way of knowing what was really happening." Burton said, "Get your grails. Put anything you want to take along in your sack. We’re leaving as of now. I want to get away before the others awake."

Alice’s already large eyes became even wider. "Where are we going?"

"Anywhere from here. I don’t like to run away but I can’t stand up and fight people like that. Not if They know where I am. I’ll tell you, however, what I plan to do. I intend to find the end of The River. It must have an inlet and an outlet, and there must be a way for a man to get through to the source. If there’s any way at all, I’ll find it — you can bet your soul on that!’

"Meanwhile, They’ll be looking for me elsewhere — I hope. The fact that They didn’t find me here makes me think that They have no means for instantly locating a person. They may have branded us like cattle" — he indicated the invisible symbols on his forehead — "but even cattle have mavericks. And we’re cattle with brains." He turned to the others. "You’re more than welcome to come along with me. In fact, I’d be honored."

"I’ll get Monat," Kazz said. "He wouldn’t want to be left behind."

Burton grimaced and said, "Good old Monat! I hate to do this to him, but there’s no helping it. He can’t come along. He’s too distinguishable. Their agents would have no trouble at all in locating anybody who looked like him. I’m sorry, but he can’t"

Tears stood in Kazz’s eyes, then ran down his bulging cheekbones. In a choked voice, he said, "Burton-naq, I can’t go either. I look too different, too."

Burton felt tears wet his own eyes. He said, "We’ll take that chance. After all, there must be plenty of your type around. We’ve seen at least thirty or more during our travels."

"No females so far, Burton-naq," Kazz said mournfully. Then he smiled. "Maybe we find one when we go along The River." As quickly, he lost his grin. "No, damn it, I don’t go! I can’t hurt Monat too much. Him and me, others think we ugly and spry looking. So we become good friends. He’s not my naq, but he’s next to it I stay." He stepped up to Burton, hugged him in a grip that forced Burton’s breath out in a great whoosh, released him, shook hands with the others, making them wince, then turned and shuffled off.

Ruach, holding his paralyzed hand, said. "You’re off on a fool’s errand, Burton. Do you realize that you could sail on this River for a thousand years and still be a million miles or more from the end? I’m staying. My people need me. Besides, Spruce made it clear that we should be striving for a spiritual perfection, not fighting Those who gave us a chance to do so." Burton’s teeth flashed whitely in his dark face. He swung his grail as if it were a weapon.

"I didn’t ask to be put here any more than I asked to be born on Earth, I don’t intend to kowtow to another’s dictates I mean to find The River’s end. And if I don’t, I will at least have had fun and learned much on the way!" By then, people were beginning to stumble out of their huts as they yawned and rubbed heavy eyes. Ruach paid no attention to them; he watched the craft as it set sail close-hauled to the wind, cutting across and up The River. Burton was handling the rudder; he turned once and waved the grail so that the sun bounced off it in many shining spears.

Ruach thought that Burton was really happy that he had been forced to make this decision. Now he could evade the deadly responsibilities that would come with governing this little state and could do what he wanted. He could set out on the greatest of all his adventures.

"I suppose it’s for the best," Ruach muttered to himself. "A man may find salvation on the road, if he wants to, just as well as he may at home. It’s up to him. Meanwhile, I, like Voltaire’s character — what was his name? Earthly things are beginning to slip away from me — will cultivate my own little garden." He paused to look somewhat longingly after Burton.

"Who knows? He may some day run into Voltaire." He sighed, then smiled.

"On the other hand, Voltaire may some day drop in on me!"

19

"I hate you, Hermann Göring!" The voice sprang out and then flashed away as if it were a gear tooth meshed with the cog of another man’s dream and rotated into and then out of his dream.

Riding the crest of the hypnotic state, Richard Francis Burton knew he was dreaming. But he was helpless to do anything about it.

The first dream returned.

Events were fuzzy and encapsulated. A lightning streak of himself in the unmeasurable chamber of floating bodies; another flash of the nameless Custodians finding him and putting him back to sleep; then a jerky synopsis of the dream he had had just before the true Resurrection on the banks of The River.

God — a beautiful old man in the clothes of a mid-Victorian gentleman of means and breeding — was poking him in the ribs with an iron cane and telling him that he owed for the flesh.

"What? What flesh?" Burton said, dimly aware that he was muttering in his sleep. He could not hear his words in the dream.

"Pay up!" God said. His face melted, then was recast into Burton’s own features.

God had not answered in the first dream five years before. He spoke now, "Make your Resurrection worth my while, you fool! I have gone to great expense and even greater pains to give you, and all those other miserable and worthless wretches, a second chance."

"Second chance at what?" Burton said. He felt frightened at what God might answer. He was much relieved when God the All-Father — only now did Burton see that one eye of Jahweh-Odin was gone and out of the empty socket glared the flames of hell — did not reply. He was gone — no, not gone but metamorphosed into a high gray tower, cylindrical and soaring out of gray mists with the roar of the sea coming up through the mists.

"The Grail!" He saw again the man who had told him of the Big Grail. This man had heard it from another man, who had heard of it from a woman, who had heard it from … and so forth. The Big Grail was one of the legends told by the billions who lived along The River — this River that coiled like a serpent around this planet from pole to pole, issued from the unreachable and plunged into the inaccessible.

A man, or a subhuman, had managed to climb through the mountains to the North Pole. And he had seen the Big Grail, the Dark Tower, and the Misty Castle just before he had stumbled. Or he was pushed. He had fallen headlong and bellowing into the cold seas beneath the mists and died. And then the man, or subhuman, had awakened again along The River. Death was not forever here, although it had lost nothing of its sting.

He had told of his vision. And the story had traveled along the valley of The River faster than a boat could sail.

Thus, Richard Francis Burton, the eternal pilgrim and wanderer, had longed to storm the ramparts of the Big Grail. He would unveil the secret of resurrection and of this planet, since he was convinced that the beings who had reshaped this world had also built that tower.

"Die, Hermann Göring! Die, and leave me in peace!" a man shouted in German.

Burton opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the pale sheen of the multitudinous stars through the open window across the room of the hut.

His vision bent to the shape of the black things inside, and he saw Peter Frigate and Loghu sleeping on their mats by the opposite wall. He turned his head to see the white, blanket-sized towel under which Alice slept. The whiteness of her face was turned toward him, and the black cloud of her hair spilled out on the ground by her mat.