Flame ocean mend
"I went home, but I couldnt sleep. I tried to think it through. And I guess I did think it through. Thisbeing can put me through. With him on my side I can do anything. Theres no position in this corporation I couldn't have. Andthat would just be a starter. I don't know where the end would be. So I want to make the deal. I know exactly what I want. And whathe wants. He wants, well, he wantsme. Not my body, really, or anything like that. It's more like something mental. He wants to take it from me a little at a time, like a parasitical drain. But it wouldn't affect me physically or mentally. In fact, I'd get sharper all the time. And whatever it is, it would go so slowly, day-by-day, that I wouldn't notice it. This goes on for years. I'll even have a normal life expectancy. When he's got all of it, I'll die. And that's the deal. The next thing is to get it down on paper. Something he and I can both sign. A binding contract. It doesn't matter whether you believe he exists. Call him the Devil if you like. And call the thing I'm giving him, my soul. A lot of people who believe in God don't believe the Devil exists. And some of them don't believe in souls, either. Although, as I said, it isn't really that simple." He asked,And what do you want? Thats a Wols, Mike said. "Im here, darling," Jay said. Yes, child. She hardly heard herself. This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box! Joe Carp said I shoud show the girls how I mop out the toilet in the factory and he got me a mop. I showed them and everyone laffed when I told that Mr Donnegan said I was the best janiter he ever had because I like my job and do it good and never come late or miss a day except for my operashun. Complex defamation. I whistled when I wasnt in the Temple. I wrote reams of poetry I would have been ashamed of before. Evenings I would walk with Braxa, across the dunes or up into the mountains. Sometimes she would dance for me; and I would read something long, and in dactylic hexameter. The stringed-thing throbbed like a toothache, and a tick-tocking, like ghosts of all the clocks they had never invented, sprang from the block. Three, Muller said, holding up fingers. Three of em so smart they scare you. And all from the same country. Theres a lot more up there, too—running loose.” Never mind that. Now listen. Each swoop he makes, give him one shot. Just one. Then go forward on your suit jet fast as you can. That confuses him more than lateral movement. "Oh, Im sorry," Poloscki said. "I started drinking your coffee." Softly, gently, sighing and halting, uncertain. A pause, a sob, then a repetition of the first statement, only louder, Were my eyes completely bugged from my reading, or was Braxa actually trembling, all over, head to foot. Not yet. The rear door to Letitia Carvers house, yes. But it was bolted when I tried it and she claimed not to have had any visitors. At the next junction, he transferred to a faster track, still walking rapidly, weaving neatly between the younger mutes, with their frondular arms and snapping fingers. "But if it isnt on my list, how can you be so sure Ill like it?" The rumbling woke the woman. In the kitchen she spoke to the house-boy. The Air Force recently ordered a five-foot-six-inch dummy that may take a ride into space in a Project Mercury capsule one day..
