Waves scarce army
I once read a story, she said. I dont remember who by. Perhaps you’ve read it too. About a man who saved another man from drowning. And the guy was grateful, gave him presents, tried to do him favors, said he was his only friend in all the world, dogged his footsteps, moved into his home—and finally the guy who’d saved him couldn’t stand it any longer and took him and pushed him back in the river. That’s Mack Wilson. That’s why Mack Wilson has been expunged by everybody he’s conned into making Contact with him in the past two mortal years. I stood it for going on three months, and that’s about the record, as I understand it.” Burgade! Amity had said that he was superficially charming, and so he was. He had held Sabinas hand a trifle longer than necessary, appraising her in a bold but not offensive fashion, smiling pleasantly all the while. It was plain that he found her appealing to the eye, an opinion she didn’t reciprocate. He was handsome enough, she supposed, but not in the least the type of man who attracted her. Tallish, lean, with penetrating gray eyes, a considerable amount of black hair that glistened sleekly with pomade, a neatly trimmed mustache, and a small, natty imperial. His gray wool suit was expensive and immaculate, his silk cravat fastened with a not quite ostentatious ruby stickpin matched by a ring on his left pinkie. Sabina noticed that, unlike his wife, he wore no wedding ring. At this point, confronted with the whole complicated affair of Nikolai Vassilevitchs wife, I am overcome by hesitation. Have I any right to disclose something which is unknown to the whole world, which my unforgettable friend himself kept hidden from the world (and he had his reasons), and which I am sure will give rise to all sorts of malicious and stupid misunderstandings? Something, moreover, which will very probably offend the sensibilities of all sorts of base, hypocritical people, and possibly of some honest people too, if there are any left? And finally, have I any right to disclose something before which my own spirit recoils, and even tends toward a more or less open disapproval? A joke? Why should I? Quimble would turn red in the face and say,Bah! or sometimes, “Pfagh!” and stalk out. Now it was all changing. Libo City was mushrooming. The Company had made it into a shipping terminal to serve the network of planets still out beyond as the Company extended its areas of exploitation. More barracks and more executive cottages were going up as fast as goonie labor could build them. Hundreds of tenderfoot Earthers were being shipped in to handle the clerical work of the terminal. Hundreds of Earthers, all at once, to bring with them their tensions, their callousness, swaggering, boasting, cruelties and sadisms which were natural products of life on Earth— and all out of place here where wed been able to assimilate a couple or so at a time, when there hadn’t been enough to clique up among themselves; they’d had to learn a life of calmness and reason if they wanted to stay. I was surprised to find that I had a handsome, rather noble head. No reactions, no expressions on any of the faces of those that had appeared before me had ever led me to believe that this might be. In fact, I was sure of the opposite and I had only hoped I might be passable. Also I found that I did resemble, to a surprising degree, Miss Number Two, and was, in my own masculine way, quite as attractive as she was, my hair the same matt-black, my eyes, mysterious, my cheeks with a mute, aristocratic pallor, my nose, stark. I had a thick, muscular neck not exactly in keeping with my fine-featured face and, as she held the mirror farther from me, I saw a barrel-chested manatee-thing, certainly ichthyoid, with little wing shapes lumping under my clothes at hips and shoulders as though I could actually, as Ive dreamed, swim into the air, and I saw the eyes of Number Two leaning to get the same view as I had of myself. I could see her thought reflecting my own! What a curious shape, and is it beautiful or ugly? Has it a meaning of its own? Is it a symbol of sloth or courage or of sex? Or is it a symbol at all? Jake got red in the face and said,No! No! No! I aint gonna give you any of my grub! I’m gonna get my gasoline and burn you up,that’s what I’m gonna do! He jerked his hand from under the TV set and stood up. Once, yes. (J. G. Ballard, on The New Science Fiction) Gausgofer turned her watery eyes on the doctor and said in a low, even, unbelievably poisonous voice,Could they have done it, comrade doctor? Just a moment, I said, slapping the ruler hard against my palm. No comment. " ... the paternity is not Mr. Ratlits. If you are interested, for your eugenic records, in further information, please send us other possible urine samples from the men in your group, and we will be glad to confirm paternity ... " Where she worked never mattered much. Regardless of what place she was in she would always be slightly out of place. To her, books were kinder than life. She found her acquaintances, forged her friendships among the people created by man instead of by God. "Wait." With ceremony, she pushed aside a picture and touched a tiny switch and then, like sweet balm for my panic, Tommys voice flowed into the room..
