Confess curtain chickens
Yes, Miss Hutton. I was packing my books. by Judith Merril They were back.Kids, I said, growing reflective, “do you, either of you, have any idea what really happened to Aunt Geryl?” “Shes in heaven!” Little Sister said, and her face glowed with a memory and the beautiful-story-line of cutouts she had been doing. “She’s dead,” Little Brother said forthrightly, “and either in heaven or hell. It’s not my place to say. But probably hell.” He’d never liked Aunt Geryl. She was always after him about his toys on the floor, especially the train tracks that seemed to curve everywhere. She and Little Sister had been favorites with each other. "Miss Chanel, the clouds are like madmen," I apologised "Theres a storm on its way." Naw. Skip it, Muller grumbled. Just waste our time.” "I tell you, Rampy," Clarence Little-Saddle squared on him, "a man that lets his wife get away twice doesnt deserve to keep her. I give you till night fall; then you forfeit. Ive taken a liking to the brood. One of us is going to be down there tonight." There was a silence. Ive known, she said. Don’t you think I’ve known?” The man went away disgusted, but still quite dignified. John BerryThe Listener, “NWW#16.” Driven to it by you and your disgusting accusations. Thomas was a good man, though. So were they all; everyone had been through fire and water and knew what it was to bed down in hell. John used to say that all the best men have been to hell. As the storm proves the boat, trouble proves the man, he would say. As always when they spoke, Dyak was aware of a great gulf that could not be bridged by words. Words were so much feebler than the things they were meant to represent. He answered, feeling the inadequacy of what he said,All people are made to wear out. For in the darkness somewhere ahead was the final obstacle—the hazard he feared most of all. Across the heart of Farside, spanning the equator from north to south in a wall more than a thousand miles long, lay the Soviet Range. He had been a boy when it was discovered, back in 1959, and could still remember his excitement when he had seen the first smudged photographs from Lunik III. He could never have dreamed that one day he would be flying toward those same mountains, waiting for them to decide his fate. My firm? Candron gestured his understanding. The President of the United States was a shrewd, able, just, and ethical human being—but he was not yet a member of the Society, and perhaps would never be. As a consequence it was still impossible to convince him that the S.M.M.R. knew what it was talking about—and that applied to nearly ninety per cent of the Federal and State officials of the nation. The contents of the message must have been responsible for her departure. And she must have left the hotel by way of the back stairs. But why? The obvious answer was that she had spotted him somehow, but he was reluctant to accept that explanation. His mastery of the art of trailing a suspect was second to none; at no point last night or today had he done anything to draw her attention. And she had no reason to suspect she was being followed. Unless Wrixton had decided to make one last effort to convince her not to leave San Francisco and had told her of the conversation at the Reception bar... No, the banker had been too resigned, too mired in gloom, to attempt an exercise in further futility. All of his lovesick blandishments had been expended the previous night..
