Shaky perpetual robin
(I pass this on, as I got it, after reading the story—JM) Didnt he ever marry? The little man looked at him for a moment with sad hound-dog eyes, then ducked his head, embarrassed. He stood up uncertainly, swallowed and said,Well- He climbed up on the chair behind the big man, opened the back of the dinner jacket and put his legs in one at a time. A few people were watching him, unsmiling. “Thought Id take it easy a while,” he said weakly, “but I guess-” He reached in and gripped something with both hands, then swung himself inside. His brown, uncertain face disappeared. Fred Brown, once best known—outside of s-f—for his award-winning mysteries, has of recent years become an irrepressible miniaturizer, publishing trios of fantasy-humor vignettes in one magazine after another. (A snapcrackling sampling of the Brown quickies is in his recent collection, Nightmares and Geezenstacks, Bantam, 1961.) Here he foreshortens a situation only slightly different from Mr. Sambrots. Why? Do you remember the old theory about putting ten monkeys to work at ten typewriters, just hitting the keys at random? The argument was that if you kept them at it a million years they would write the complete works of Shakespeare. Along with trillions of pages of gibberish, of course. It was a question of mathematical probability— sooner or later, in a million years, one of the monkeys would justhappen to hit the keys in the sequence that would produceHamlet, and another would doLear, and so on. How marvelous! I sighed. But Miss Fremen, I wouldnt dare try it. I’ve got a weak face.” I didn’t say it, but I thought that the corset had a lot to do with it, too. And if I tried to wear a corset I’d have to hold it on with scotch tape. After inspecting the bunker, Osborne joined them.The child in the photograph—is she your daughter? Oh, no, Reese assured him, earnestly shaking his head. Thats its natural color.” He did not add that it came from a domesticated Flopper which had died; Hitchcock would have claimed he was promoting cannibalism. Crossing to the rail, he dropped the haunch into one of the pens. She didnt move. She stared at me out of her dark blue eyes. The shadows underneath looked as though someone had put inky thumbs under them. 7 Oh, he said, various ways. For example, a rancher puts up a fence, and a chased kangaroo will beat himself to death trying to jump over it or go through it. Doesnt seem to get the idea of going around it. Things like that.” Gone before I could catch up. Did you have a clear look at whoever it was? The fourth switch had its glowing name now: stars. Its for Miss Fremen in the fourth grade, I told Joyce, loud enough for all to hear. Tell her it’s for the book lists.” We held very still for a moment. Then with his gun butt he rapped out ten. I could both see and also hear it through the rock. "No trouble. Heres the cheque.".
