Confuse creature pause
I wasnt tired, but I didnt feel very well. How could I, on my rations? The mystery of what made the goonie tick tormented me for twenty years. It was a crucial period—crucial, thats the word for it. The Syndicate was at a turning point: we were going social. We were stepping into the longshoremen’s union fight and it was rough; nobody had ever given us much trouble before. It often looked as if we weren’t going to make it, as if the unions on the New York waterfront were strong enough to look after themselves and didn’t feel like being protected by us. The press was dragging us in the mud, the federal authorities were sniffing around and the dockers themselves were sore as hell; dues had just been set at 20 percent of their pay, and everyone was trying to get control of the cashbox and milk the unions for himself. She turned on him with a tremendous smile, her eyes glittering with sudden affection. I should be honored. … Carsons Hill tonight… cured! I looked around the office. So bare and clean. No big, empty boxes with small, dark places in them. The children, upon hearing this word, burst out crying: they were living organisms. They huddled inside their coats. Some tried to run away. The lyrical project of the teacher, which consisted of loosening childish comets and multicolored balloons inscribed withPITY in the direction of the cancer, came tumbling down. No one shared her sensibility, and there was a general disbanding of children.* * * * Behind his friend stood the hillside that none of them had ever climbed, though their dwelling caves tunneled into the lower slopes. He noted that three women from the settlement stood there, clutching each other in the way women always did and laughing. On the heavy air, their sounds were just audible. In the evening, they would come down to the river and bathe and splash each other, laughing because they had forgotten (or because they remembered?) that the dark was coming on. Dyak felt a mild pleasure at their laughter. It meant that their stomachs were full and their heads empty. They were content. The smile danced.Must I explain? A mountain is much more than rock and ice. No man can conquer the hardest mountain in the world. His conquest can be only of himself. The man—another of those eager young scientist-candidates—didnt seem to understand the question. The Floppers? he wondered uncertainly, then nodded. He could not do it. "All right. Your mother then." Big Steve said,Ambush em—fight it out! She spoke aloud to her mentor, half the world away, but he was not listening. His mind closed to her thoughts, he muttered an obscure exposition that darkened what it sought to clarify. A glider, Ed had said noncommittally, staring at the fuzzy enlarged snapshot of a great expanse of snow and rocky ledges, full of harsh light and shadows, a sort of roughly bowl-shaped plateau apparently, and in the middle of it a group of indistinct figures, tiny, lost against the immensity of great ice pinnacles. Ed looked closer. Were the figures people? If so—what had happened to their clothes? And at night the elevator of time dropped me to its bottom floors... Mr. Woods once said something like that—and added, Now and hereafter. He occasionally said fanciful things like that, though he had a wonderfully acute mind..
