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Not that theres ever been anything sisterly-brotherly between us, but I have a hundred clues. The most obvious, that shes always been around, one way or another, in a sneaky way even before she came to me with her books and that Nefertiti tip of her head. I remember a breezy kid not much younger than myself in a tree outside my window, blue jeans, red shirt, sticking out her tongue at me, and I happy that the gesture was one I could return. Now and again I remember a furious voice from some other part of the house screeching for her to "Get down, my God, get down." I remember an eye, brown, lustrous, like a little mouse nose waiting at the crack in the door, sometimes during my bath. I even remember the knob turning and the door opening to make that crack. Later a decision was made, out of a sense of obligation or out of resentment, and she, or someone else, decided and she came to me, I cannot say with happiness. I think I was happier before, and then, with five o'clock drama, everything might have seemed complete to me. No, it wasn't happiness and she knew it. And I swallowed, with some difficulty. But surprisingly, the first intelligent sounds we hear from far Epsilon Indi may not be code or pulsing signal at all, but rather some Epsilon Indi music that was broadcast, as is ours, to the heedless winds of space. We would not know it as music at first, just as when we hear the Oriental tone-scale it falls strangely on the ear. Yet, with persistent listenings, our first brush with alien minds across the darkness may be the filtering in of a symphony composed by a Beethoven raised in the starshine of 61 Cygni. Lazeer opened the table drawer and fumbled around in it and pulled out a tattered copy of a hot-rodder magazine. He opened it to a page where readers had sent in pictures of their cars. It didnt look like anything I had ever seen. Most of it seemed to be bare frame, with a big chromed engine. There was a teardrop-shaped passenger compartment mounted between the big rear wheels, bigger than the front wheels, and there was a tail-fin arrangement that swept up and out and then curved back so that the high rear ends of the fins almost met. He may understand too much. He may have advanced beyond me. Remember, Im a throwback, with faculties no longer needed by my people. Sports rarely breed true; he may be closer to them in some ways than I. like include remain The tip of the ancient razor-sharp, double-edged blade was missing. Oh! I backed up, laughing breathlessly. The wind blew—” A typical case is described by an Arizona gentleman who writes that he was recently notified by a machine of the Internal Revenue Service that he had not paid his taxes. In fact, he had paid his taxes and had a canceled check to prove it. Her name was Ramona and as I wept silently, she filled me in. This was a last resort for the few who could afford to send their children here. They prettied it up with a schedule of therapy, exercise, massage; we would wear dainty pink smocks and talk of art and theater; from time to time we would attend classes in elocution and hygiene. Our parents would say with pride that we were away at Faircrest, an elegant finishing school; we knew better— it was a prison and we were being starved. I guess not. But it is important for you to know that good and evil exist there, too, and that the will remains free. She was thinking the one thing she didnt want to do most of all was to hurt him. No, she told herself inside, sternly. Stop it right now. Be silent for once and eat, and, like Ben says, don’t think; but she was caught up in it somehow and she said, You know, Littleboy never did go to the beach yet, not even once, and it’s onlynine miles down, and she knew it would hurt him. It took the fellow three days to go through the orchard, fooling around with every one of the old trees. By the end of the third day Sherry was giving two full gallons of milk, they were gathering more eggs than usual in the season when laying normally fell off, and Joseys birthmark had practically disappeared, even in full sunlight. Malcolm Maxill grumbled at the fellow’s uselessness but he never said straight out that he had to move on, so everything was all right. That boy warnt no help to me, Mister, but he warn’t no trouble neither. The onliest thing on his mind was that car. I didn’t hold with it, but I didn’t put down no foot. He fixed up that old shed there to work in, and he needed something, he went out and earned up the money to buy it. They was a crowd of them around most times, helpin’ him, boys workin’ and gals watchin’. Them tight-pants girls. Have radios on batteries set around so as they could twisty dance while them boys hammered that metal out. When I worked around and overheared em, I swear I couldn’t make out more’n one word from seven. What he done was take that car to some national show, for prizes and such. But one day he just took off, like they do nowadays. I checked with Alice. She took me down Grove Street to the library. It was a nice day, and the air smelled clean and fresh. Alice and I sat at the long table in the library and read all about Alfa Sentori (Alpha Centauri, says the Starman). I saw a lot of my friends, and then Alice and I walked home through souter woods! ! !.
