Flesh by Philip José Farmer

in the water and had to make our way back to the ship unarmed? We were far worse off then, and we didn’t look nearly so woebegone. What’s happened? Aren’t you the men you used to be?”
    “I’m afraid not,” Steinborg said. “It’s not that we’ve lost our courage. It’s just that we expected too much. When we were landing on a newly discovered planet, we expected the unexpected and the disastrous. We even looked forward to it. But here, well, we anticipated too much—plus the fact that we are helpless. We’re unarmed, and if we run into a bad situation, we can’t just shoot our way out and make our way back to the ship.”
    “So you’re going to stand around and hope everything’s turned out all right?” Churchill said. “For God’s sake! You men were the cream of the crop of Earth, chosen out of tens of thousands of candidates because of your I.Q., your education, your ingenuity, your physical hardihood. And now you’re marooned among a people who haven’t the knowledge you have in your little finger! You men should be gods—and you’re mice!”
    “Knock it off,” Lin said. “We’re still suffering from shock. We don’t know what to do, and that’s what is scaring us.”
    “Well, I’m not going to stand around until some kind soul comes along and takes me in hand,” Churchill said. “I am going to act—now!”
    “And just what are you going to do?” Yastzhembski asked.
    “I’m going to walk around Washington until I see something that calls for action. If you men want to come with me, you can. But if you want to go your own ways, that’s all right, too. I’ll be your leader, but I won’t be your shepherd.”
    “You don’t understand,” Yastzhembski said. “Six of us don’t even belong on this continent. I would like to return to Holy Siberia. Gbwe-hun wants to go back to Dahomey. Chandra, to India. Al-Masyuni, to Mecca. Lin, to Shanghai. But that seems impossible. Steinborg could conceivably get back to Brazil, yet, if he did, he’d find nothing but desert and jungle and howling savages. So...”
    “So you have to stay here and do as Tobacco suggested—fit in. Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Anybody coming along?”
    Churchill didn’t wait for more argument. He began walking down the street and did not look back once. When he had turned a corner, however, he stopped to watch a bunch of naked little girls and boys playing ball in the street.
    After perhaps five minutes, he sighed. Apparently no one was following him.
    He was wrong. Just as he turned to go on, he heard someone calling to him. “Hold on a minute, Churchill.”
    It was Sarvant.
    “Where are the others?” Churchill said.
    “The Asiatics have decided to try to get back to their homelands. When I left they were still arguing about whether they should steal a boat and cross the Atlantic, or steal deer and ride up to the Bering Strait, where they’ll cross on boat to Siberia.”
    “I’ll give them credit for the greatest guts in the world—or the most stupid brains. Do they really think they can make it? Or that they’ll find any better conditions there than here?”
    “They don’t know what they’ll find, but they’re desperate.”
    “I’d like to go back and wish them good luck,” Churchill said. “But I’d just end up trying to argue them out of the idea. They are brave men. I knew it when I called them mice, but I was just trying to arouse them. Maybe I succeeded too well.”
    “I gave them my blessing, even if most of them are agnostics,” Sarvant said. “But I fear their bones will bleach on this continent.”
    “What about you? Are you going to try for Arizona?”
    “From what I saw of Arizona while we were still circling Earth, I’d say there’s not only no organized government there, there are almost no people. I would try for Utah, but it doesn’t look much better. Even the Salt Lake is dried up. There’s nothing to go back to. It doesn’t matter. There is a lifetime of