Lantry awoke. It had all been a dream, but God, how realistic. How
strangely the two men had carried on. But not unnaturally, oh, no. That
was exactly how you expected men of the future to talk. Men of the
future. Lantry grinned wryly. That was an anachronism for you. This
_was_ the future. This was happening _now_. It wasn't 300 years from
now, it was now, not then, or any other time. This wasn't the Twentieth
Century. Oh, how calmly those two men in the dream had said, "He got up
and walked away." "--interesting to think about." "_Isn't_ it, though?"
With never a quaver in their voices. With not so much as a glance over
their shoulders or a tremble of spade in hand. But, of course, with
their perfectly honest, logical minds, there was but one explanation;
certainly nobody had _stolen_ the corpse. "_Nobody_ steals." The corpse
had simply got up and walked off. The corpse was the only one who could
have _possibly_ moved the corpse. By the few casual slow words of the
gravediggers Lantry knew what they were thinking. Here was a man that
had lain in suspended animation, not really dead, for hundreds of
years. The jarring about, the activity, had brought him back.
Everyone had heard of those little green toads that are sealed for
centuries inside mud rocks or in ice patties, alive, alive oh! And how
when scientists chipped them out and warmed them like marbles in their
hands the little toads leapt about and frisked and blinked. Then it
was only logical that the gravediggers think of William Lantry in like
fashion.
But what if the various parts were fitted together in the next day or
so? If the vanished body and the shattered, exploded incinerator were
connected? What if this fellow named Burke, who had returned pale from
Mars, went to the library again and said to the young woman he wanted
some books and she said, "Oh, your friend Lantry was in the other day."
And he'd say, "Lantry who? Don't know anyone by that name." And she'd
say, "Oh, he _lied_." And people in this time didn't lie. So it would
all form and coalesce, item by item, bit by bit. A pale man who was
pale and shouldn't be pale had lied and people don't lie, and a walking
man on a lonely country road had walked and people don't walk anymore,
and a body was missing from a cemetery, and the Incinerator had blown
up and and and--
They would come after him. They would find him. He would be easy to
find. He walked. He lied. He was pale. They would find him and take him
and stick him through the open fire lock of the nearest Burner and that
would be your Mr. William Lantry, like a fourth of July set-piece!
[Illustration: _They would come after him. They would find him._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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