Riverworld Turn #1: A Mysterious Awakening
Day 30

The new resurrectees awoke slowly, sluggishly. As they returned
to consciousness, they sat up, and looked around.

They found themselves in a quiet glade of bamboo, nestled against the
hills of the valley. Surrounded on all sides by bamboo, only the
unmistakable sound of running water oriented them toward the River, to
the west. 

First to awaken was a tall black man who looked around, confused,
before assuming a watchful crouch at the edge of the glade. Taking up
a towel, he fashioned it into a short cape which he secured around his neck.

A tall, willowy woman with red-brown hair and grey eyes slowly sat
up. As her eyes focused, she quietly fastened towels are herself and stood
up to appraise her surroundings, moving with grace, and turning her
head to observe her fellow lazari.

A muscular man with a thickening crop of reddish-brown on top of his skull
and a thatch of matted, curly reddish hair on his chest, legs, and arms, was
next to regain consciousness. He stood up quickly, grabbed a towel, and,
turning his back to the others, formed it into a kilt around his waist.
 
The olive-skinned woman blinked her eyes slowly several times, and her
lips curved into a smile. She closed her eyes again and stretched out in
the sun of the Rivervalley for few moments, extending her arms and legs,
grasping the grass above her head. Then she shifted into a sitting position,
keeping only her buttocks and the soles of her feet in contact with the 
ground. She locked her arms in a circle about her knees, her right hand
holding her left wrist, and watched the people and the terrain with
hooded eyes while her bare toes curled and burrowed in the dirt beneath her.

Humming preceded the motion of the lanky man, who sat up and quickly
covered himself in towels. After covering his groin, he wrapped a towel
along each arm and across his palms, leaving his fingers free. He continued
to hum while he dressed.
 
With a languid stretch, the woman with the skin the color of cafe au lait
awakened. She rose with a noticeable grace and fluidity of motion, and lightly
ran her hands along her body. She too looked over the others, with a
gaze both calculating and frank, causing the lanky man to blush.

The short young woman, perhaps 19 or 20, woke with a start, and
hastily fastened a towel around herself, seeking to cover as much of
her nakedness as possible.  Her wideset, dark eyes took in the actions
of her elders, and studied the place with something akin to horror
beginning in them.
 
A nondescript man at the edge of the glade also rose, and covered himself
quietly with a towel. Saying nothing, his eyes moved from one member of the
group to another.

The last one to awaken, a slender, pale-skinned woman, seemed to wake
at the sound of the man humming. She opened her hazel eyes, large and
doe-like, to reveal a distant, haunted look. Turning on her left side,
she looked at the humming man and smiled. She remained lying down for
some minutes, until, running her hand across the carpet of
chestnut-brown stubble atop her head, her lips down-turned into a
disconcerted pout. Then she stood and formed a skirt from a white
towel, and a shawl from a thinner, gauzier one. The energy and
vitality of her movement belied the impression of fragility given off
by her thin, pale frame.

As the group arose and attired themselves, a babble of languages
poured chaotically from the glade. After much confusion, the willowy
woman raised her hands in a gesture that the others recognized as a
call for silence, and spoke, repeating her message slowly and
confidently in many tongues.

Florence: "Greetings. My name is Miss Nightingale. Does anyone here
           speak English? Parlez-vous francais? Parlate italiano?
	   Spreche sie Deutsch?"

George: "Yes, oui, si, ja, Miss Nightingale. I can see that we at least
         can converse. I'm George."

Acting as interpreter, Florence translated their introductions to one
another.
 
The red-haired man responded to the German greeting using a language
that sounded like a much older form of German. "Yes Nightingale.
I be Charles. Christian."

The lanky man looked up at the sound of English. "Glenn here. Is that
Miss Florence Nightingale?"

Florence: "Yes, sir."

Glenn: "Well, I'll be."

The coffee-colored woman, and the woman with the haunted eyes also
responded to the English greeting, and introduced themselves in both
English and French.

Josephine: "Josephine. I'll have to remember to thank whomever brought us
	    here for giving me back my old body."
Josephine stretched languidly, eyeing the men in the group. Charles returned
her glance with an appraising look and a small smile.
 
Maria: "Maria. Enchanted, I'm sure." She curtseyed, lowering her
haunted eyes.

Jeanne: "Jeanne" The young woman became suddenly silent.

Everyone seemed to understand the woman except for the black man
and the olive-skinned woman. Florence repeated her introduction in
Latin and Greek with no further results. The woman looked Florence in
the eye, shrugged slightly, and turned toward the River, but the man
put his hand to his chest and named himself "Shaka" with evident
pride.  The others stepped forward one at a time and spoke their
names, Charles again repeating "Christian" after his, in a voice of
surprisingly high pitch for a man of his size.  Josephine's
introduction included another luxurious stretch and a sly look at
Shaka's body.

George opened his arms to indicate the glade around them and spoke.
 
George: "I wonder if you have noticed anything unusual about our
         resurrection?"

The others turned to him inquiringly.

George: "Do you see anything missing from our little glade?"

Josephine: "Grailstone! There's no grailstone here. But resurrections always
            take place beside the grailstones."

George: "This one, it appears, did not, though from the sounds by the River,
         there seems to be the usual grailstone near the River."

Shaka noticed George speaking, and the others becoming excited as he
pointed around the glade.  He seemed to be indicating something missing
to them, and Shaka assumed he was pointing out the unusual lack of a
grailstone, which Shaka had noticed from the moment he awoke. It did
not bode well for the perceptions of these light-skinned ones, he thought.
Shaka could hear the sounds of people in the direction of the River, and knew
that a grailstone could be found there. 

Watching the movements of George and the others, the olive-skinned
woman also divined the unusual absence of the grailstone.

Throughout the morning, Jeanne had been growing gradually more and
more agitated. Finally, she threw herself to the ground, prostrating
himself, and began crying out loudly in French.

Jeanne: "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far
         from helping me, from the words of my groaning?"

Josephine rushed to the young woman, and held her comfortingly,
murmuring in French.

Josephine: "It's all right, dear, it'll be all right."

Jeanne: "Oh my God, I cry by day but thou dost not answer."

Josephine: "Hush now, it'll be all right."

Jeanne spent an hour wailing under, hoarse and exhausted, she
sank into Josephine's arms.

As the morning wore on and noon approached, finding a grailstone
became an important priority. Charles volunteered to lead the group to
the River, and, with the help of Florence's interpretation and some
signs to Shaka and the woman with the olive-colored skin, who Maria
suggested might be a Gypsy, they made their way out of the glade and
down to the bank of the River. Arriving at the River, the
olive-skinned woman knelt, dipped her fingers into the water, and
dabbed water on her breasts and foreheard.  Glenn turned away at the
sight; Shaka leered.

They surprised a peaceful group of Chinese men and women, who were
willing to allow them use of their grailstone, a mushroom-shaped stone
structure about five feet high and 50 feet in diameter. The party
inserted their grails into one of the 700 hollow indentations that
riddled the top of the mushroom, and waited for noon, when the
grailstones on each side of the seemingly endless mile-wide River
would erupt in blue flame and deliver their lunch.

While they waited, some drank from the River; Charles bathed in it,
swimming contentedly. As he emerged, Florence ask him if he would
join her for a short walk, and motioned to Shaka as well. While the
others guarded the grail, the three walked upRiver, returning
just as the grailstones erupted. Glenn exchanged some words in English
with Florence as the group retrieved their grails.

Glenn: "How was your walk, Miss Nightingale?"

Florence: "Quiet and pleasant"

Glenn: "What's up that way?"

Florence: "The next civilization upRiver looks rather forbidding, I'm
           afraid. There's a high bamboo fence making a sort of
	   walled city."

The Chinese folk took their grails and returned to their huts,
evidently preferring to avoid association with the strangers.  Opening
their grails, the group found that the food was Asian as well, but the
noodles, rice, pork, and soup in their little cups were familiar
enough to the lazari that no explanations of the cuisine were needed.
Each of the men and women also received a small cup of yellow wine,
ten cigarettes, a cigar, a marijuana stick, a small comb, a lipstick,
a roll of toilet paper, a bar of soap, a small rubbery cube, and a
metal device.

The cube was dreamgum, the strange substance that, when chewed, could
produce vile nightmares or ecstatic visions, violent rage or
insatiable lust or deep tranquility.  Though no member of the group
could recall the events of their past life on the Riverworld, each had
vague recollections of the spree of violence and rapine that followed
the First Night when humanity was introduced to dreamgum.

The metal device was a fire-lighter. Sliding it open revealed a
white-hot filament.

The group fell to eating hungrily. Charles, the first to remove his
grail from the grailstone, ate noisily, spitting the bones from the
pork into the River, and concluding his meal with a loud belch, at
which Josephine chuckled. She sat eating the pork and rice, disdaining
the noodles and the soup. Glenn ate his sparingly, muttering to
himself. Florence held her cup of wine out to the olive-skinned woman,
who accepted it as if it were hers already and drank it slowly.

After the meal, Charles lit up a cigar and began smoking with great
relish. He incurred a baleful stare from Glenn, who moved to put as
much space between himself and the smoke as possible. The others saved
their tobacco and other grail-products, except for Florence, who
offered hers to the group, which had divided them among themselves in
short measure.

Returning to the glade, Shaka seated himself at the edge of the bamboo
clearing. Uprooting the bamboo near him, he began creating
weapons. From the largest of the bamboo stalks, Shaka fashioned a
heavy staff which he carried like a ceremonial scepter. As he began
shaping several into spears by filing their ends down against a flat
rock, a task requiring no little strength, Charles approached
cautiously, and gestured toward Shaka and his spears. Shaka, nodding
wordlessly, motioned for Charles to sit at his feet, and continued his
spear-making at a slower pace. Charles instead took a position at
Shaka's side, and he and Shaka looked into one another's eyes for a
long moment. Finally, Shaka shrugged and returned to his work.
Charles constructed two spears for himself by nightfall. At the other
side of the glade, George also worked at fashioning a bamboo spear and
staff. Josephine observed the men's work but didn't seem overly
interested.

Maria surveyed the terrain around the glade, and returned with wide
strips of bark that resembled that of an English oak. She silently
sat, and began trying to write on the bark with the lipstick from her
grail. Quickly becoming frustrated, she swore angrily.

Maria: "Damn, damn, damn!"

Shaka paused in his speak-making and broke off a smaller piece
of bamboo. With his fire-lighter, he charred the tip of the bamboo,
and presented it to Maria, whose eyes widened with
understanding. Making signs of gratitude, she climbed up a hill to the
east of the glade, and sat contentedly, writing on bark with the
charcoal tip. Now and then, she puffed on one of her marijuana sticks,
and her eyes filled with a look of excitement and anticipation.

As the day turned to evening, they returned to the River to refill
their grails again. George built a fire in the center of the
clearing, and the group gathered around it. Again, Florence served
as interpreter for the group, while Shaka and the olive-skinned woman
ate in silence.

Florence: "Perhaps we should get to know each other better? I'll
           begin. My name is Florence Nightingale, and I was a nurse,
	   in England. I served during wartime and peacetime, trying
	   to improve nursing in my country, which was in a sorry
	   state of neglect. I was born in 1820 and died in 1910."

Glenn: "History records that you were successful, Miss Nightingale.
        My name's Gould, Glenn Gould. I was born in Canada in 1932,
	and died in 1982. I play the piano, so I know who Miss
	Baker is."

Glenn muttered to Florence, "Though I can't say I think much of her stuff."

Josephine smiled at Glenn, pleased at the recognition.
Josephine: "Yes, my name is Josephine Baker. I'm an entertainer, a
            dancer and chanteuse. I was born in St. Louis at the turn
	    of the century, but lived the end of my life in Paris
	    until 1975."

Charles: "I am finding modern language still confused. I am only
          Charles, Christian and protection of Christians, of
          Aachen. I am unknowing in your calendar."

George: "From your German, I'd say you lived between the 6th and 10th
         century. I'm something of a historian. Died in 1945. And I
	 also had the pleasure of seeing Josephine perform, in Paris."

Maria: "I am an Englishwoman, and, as you have probably perceived, a
        writer. I lived from 1797 to 1851. While you all seem very
	pleasant, I would quite like to rejoin my husband."

Jeanne, shrugging her head, said nothing.

Josephine looked at Shaka and spoke alluringly.

Josephine: "I don't know if I'll ever get over the joy of waking up
            with a young body."

Shaka's eyes, however, rested on the olive-skinned woman who sat
slightly apart from the others. He popped his cube of dreamgum into
his mouth and began chewing, watching her. Jeanne fixed her gaze on
the black man, and consumed her dreamgum as well.

As Shaka chewed the gum, a feeling of deep warmth suffused his
body. His vision seemed clearer, sharper. He felt an overwhelming
desire to communicate, to boast, to tell tales of his prowess, and
impress the olive-skinned woman. The disappointment of knowing that
communication was impossible affected him but little.

From the moment Jeanne put the gum in her mouth, her felt herself
transported back to the fire at Rouen, hearing the voice of her
God urging her to be brave even as she screamed and pled in agony,
calling for God to protect her, save her. She was rooted to spot, and
somehow knew that while she felt her face contort in pain and shriek
to heaven, the others could see nothing of her invisible torment.

The group around the fire continued their conversation.

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