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I remember best her feet (this is not unusual, considering my low position here upon my mattress) in little black pumps reflecting the squares of the window and reminding me of Number Ones nose ... something classical about them both, I guess. I would have liked to press my tongue across the shine of the shoes ... well, yes and the nose too. (I still wonder what their flavors might have been, the nose, certainly vanilla or apple, the shoes a red-winy taste soured by the sidewalks.) (I do often wonder ifthey can appreciate flavors as I do, ifthey even know the real pleasures of eating. Certainly they have too many diversions and, though as babies they tested things as I test them, I am sure that, by now, they have forgotten the joys and understandings of tongue and lip.) Mother, pressing her dactyls into ladyfingers in a useless proliferation, had just said the view from my window was the best in the house and I had just said that I had been thinking about my future and would like to have her help, at least for some of the details, until I could get started on my own. "Future," Mother said, just at that moment glancing down, and then she saw it. She forgot the studied beauty of the classical smile, the corners of the mouth faintly Ionic but not yet Corinthian and she forgot to watch out for those knees under that tight skirt of hers. Her eyes saw a wound ... some horrible wound of the genitals, lustrous, blistered, purple. (And yet I suppose exposed genitals, pure and simple, healthily blooming and blushing, would do to describe her stunned and outraged look.) And my starfish was firm-bodied, beautifully turgid and a rosy, tan-pink colour. E. C. TubbToo Bad,SciF #40, Apr. free ladybug sofa After a moment Penrose said,I should be back home by late today. Nah, Im going to take him home. The murmuring started again as people sorted themselves out. There was a clinking from the bar.Jesus, Pete, a skinny pop-eyed little guy was saying, crouching in adoration, “when you dropped that fishbowl I thought Id pee myself, honest to God-“ Perhaps one of my friends will manage to live until there is peace and quiet. I have never known such a time. But it may come, and somebody might say,Those, children, were the days when we learned to throw a bomb as you learn to throw a ball. The boy Martin was there at that time, and he played the man among us men . . . You lay in the sand, and before you were able to move or to think, you were able to feel a triumph—a triumph because you were alive and knew that much without thinking at all. For the past almost five years, other work has kept him too busy to leave much time for s-f. Now it would seem the spring floods are back, or so one hopes, on the basis of this story and the new Doubleday novel, Eight Keys to Eden.* * * * Sit, he said, leaning shakily against the door, not quite ready to believe. He would be glad to leave. The dome was like a prison. Outside, the wind was bitter cold and the sea crashed endlessly on the islands rocky shore. The domesticated Floppers were always underfoot, brainlessly stupid. His quarters had none of the comforts a civilized man was accustomed to, and the food he got was abominably plain. We went up. We mounted to the ridge, and stared down the awful precipice of the South Face. We worked toward the second step, where James and Leverhome were last seen. Small, keen lancets of wind thrust through our clothes down to the flowing blood. The summit was hidden behind its plume of cloud. On the blink again, said Carlisle. The cops sipped the drinks and waited. Jon leant against the shelves, his narrow, black-clad body almost invisible in the shadow, only his thin face showing. We didnt look at one another. We were both scared— not only for Frenchy, but for ourselves. The cops had a habit of subpoenaing witnesses and forgetting to release them after the trial — particularly if they were healthy men who werent already working in industry or the police force. Though I didn't have to fear this possibility as much as most, I was still worried. This was one of the strangest things he had ever done in his life—sitting here above the Moon, listening to the telephone ring in his own home a quarter of a million miles away. It must be near midnight down there in Africa and it would be some time before there would be any answer. Myra would stir sleepily—then, because she was a spacemans wife, always alert for disaster, she would be instantly awake. But they had both hated to have a phone in the bedroom, and it would be at least fifteen seconds before she could switch on the lights, close the nursery door to avoid disturbing the baby, get down the stairs and— When the automobile carrying the Peoples Minister of Finance, the Honorable Chou Lung, went through the Gate of the Dog to enter the inner court of the Palace, none of the four men inside it had any notion that they were carrying an unwanted guest. How could they? The car was a small one; its low, streamlined body carried only four people, and there was no luggage compartment, since the powerful little vehicle was designed only for maneuvering in a crowded city or for fast, short trips to nearby towns. There was simply no room for another passenger, and both the man in the car and the guards who passed it through were so well aware of that fact that they didn’t even bother to think about it. It never occurred to them that a slight, elderly-looking gentleman might be hanging beneath the car, floating a few inches off the ground, holding on with his fingertips, and allowing the car to pull him along as it moved on into the Palace of the Great Chinese People’s Government. Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesnt. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time. "Leave him so somebody can come along and steal his belt?" Ratlit grinned. "Im not that nasty.".
