Chubby in pantyhose
J. G. Ballard Im a fair man, Hitchcock proclaimed. They did. Ephraim Cohen didnt say anything after he heard us out and looked at Ted’s notebook. Old Ice Cream sat there, a big teddy-bear-shaped genius with thick black hair and a dumb smile, and grinned at us. It was in Institute code. He bent his legs, crouching against the hull. Then, with all his force, he launched himself toward the stars, letting the safety line run out behind him. All right, all right, said Filmore. What should I do, just in case?” Five days is a long time to nurse a violent grudge. "I thought youd spot a snag." Certainly. You have proof of this? Or were he and his kind earths last reserves: not-yet-men, waiting for the opening of still another chapter in earth’s unending mystery story? (Who Can Replace a Man? Best SF Stories of Brian Aldiss should be just out from Harcourt, Brace, and World.)* * * * "I am a construct. You made me." She had met Amity Wellman, who rode beside her this afternoon, at a woman suffrage group meeting some months ago. Amity was well known in the drive to add California as a Fourth Star to the suffragists banner, the other three states in which women had been granted the right to vote being Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. She was head of the most active local organization, Voting Rights for Women, and would be a delegate to the California State Woman Suffrage Convention to be held in the city in November — the focal point of a statewide campaign for an amendment to the state constitution. By morning, he would be just another one of the citys millions. The case itself was thick with dust, but intact. The contents, though—He swallowed again. He wasnt worried overmuch about his clarinet, snugly cushioned on all sides in its special compartment, and it was doubtful that anything had happened to the spools themselves, but their playing apparatus was another matter. Although it was almost completely transistorizedit inevitably contained a minimal number of moving parts, and despite their being made to withstand moderately rough handling they had recently been subjected to rather more than they could be reasonably expected to survive. And so, said Ian, on his twenty-third birthday—which was the day before the night on which he led his men against orders into the enemy area—you saw that he got this birthday card . . .” He reached into a side pocket of his civilian jacket and took out a white, folded card that showed signs of having been savagely crumpled but was now smoothed out again. Ian opened it and laid it beside the decanter on the table between their chairs, the sketch and legend facing Kenebuck. Kenebucks eyes dropped to look at it. Warren Casey said,Youre evidently not knowledgeable about our organization, Professor. I’ll brief you. We exist for the purpose of preventing further armed conflict upon this planet. To secure that end, we are willing to take any measures. We are ruthless, Professor. My interest is not to convert you, but solely to warn you that, unless your present research is ended, you are a dead man..
