Flesh by Philip José Farmer Page A

work here.”
    “Work? You don’t mean preaching?”
    Churchill looked incredulously at Sarvant as if seeing his true character for the first time.
    Nephi Sarvant was a short, dark, and bony man of about forty. His chin jutted out so far it gave the impression of curving upwards at its end. His mouth was so thin-lipped it was only a thread. His nose, like his chin, was overdeveloped. It hooked downwards as if trying to meet the chin. His crewmates said that in profile he looked like a human nutcracker.
    His large brown eyes were very expressive and just now seemed to glow with inner light. They had glowed often during the star-trip when he had extolled the merits of his church as the only true one left on Earth. He belonged to a sect known as the Last Standers, the strictly orthodox core of a church that had undergone the suburbanization most churches had experienced. Once thought a peculiar people, the members of this sect now could be distinguished from other Christians only by the fact that they still attended their church. But the spiritual fires had died out.
    Not so the group to which the Sarvant belonged. The Last Standers had refused to adopt the so-called vices of their neighbors. They had collected in a body at the city of Fourth of July, Arizona, and from there had sent out missionaries to an indifferent or amused world.
    Sarvant had been chosen to be a crew member of the Terra because he was the foremost authority in his field of geology. He had been accepted only after he had promised not to proselytize. He had never explicitly made an attempt to convert. But he had offered to others the Book of his church, asking only that they read. And he had argued with the others about the authenticity of the Book.
    “Of course I mean to preach!” he said. “This country is as wide open to the Gospel as it was when Columbus landed. I’ll tell you, Rud, that when I saw the desolation of the Southwest I was filled with despair. It seemed that my church had vanished from the face of the Earth. And if that were true, then my church was false, for it was supposed to be eternal. But I prayed, and at once the truth came to me. That is—I still exist! And through me the church can grow again—grow as it never did, for these pagan minds, once convinced of the Truth, will become as the First Disciples. The Book will spread like a flame. You see, we Last Standers could make little headway among Christians because they thought they already had the true church. But the true church meant little more to them than a social club. It wasn’t a way of truth and life, the only way. It...”
    “I get your point,” Churchill said. “The only thing I have to say is, don’t implicate me. Things are going to be tough enough. Well, let’s go.”
    “Go where?”
    “Someplace where we can trade these monkey suits in for native clothes.”
    They were on a street called Conch. It ran north and south, so Churchill felt that if they followed it south it would bring them eventually to the port area. Here, unless things changed very much, there would be more than one shop where they could trade their clothes and perhaps make a little profit in the bargain. In this neighborhood, Conch Street was a mixture of well-to-do residences and large government buildings. The residences were set far back on well-tended yards and were of brick or cement. Single-storied, they presented a broad front, and most of them had two wings at right angles to the front buildings. They were painted in many colors and various designs. Every one had a large totem pole in front of it. These were, for the most part, of carved stone, since wood was reserved for shipbuilding, wagons, weapons, and stove fuel.
    The government buildings were set close to the street and were of brick or marble. They had curving walls and were surrounded by roofless porches with tall pillars. On top of each dome roof was a statue.
    Churchill and Sarvant walked on the asphalt pavement— there