Incandescent mug dislike
The wind was an icy breath on the open water. Overhead, darkening clouds moved furtively; the smell of rain had grown heavy in the late-afternoon air. The coming storm would break long before whichever Stockton packet Noah Rideout had booked passage on arrived at Kennetts Crossing. There were possible benefits in a stormy night, Quincannon thought, but none where his first meeting with the wealthy rancher was concerned. Hummm? I murmured, my voice still drowsy. Wonder about what? Make for the ship. "Something about my medicine," Alegra explained. "Its dreadfully complicated." The walls were papered with anatomical charts, music by Stockhausen. "Something in my medicine kept it from coming out until now, until a golden could come to me, drawing it up and out of the depths of me, till it burst out, beautiful and wonderful and ... golden! Right now hes gone off to Carlson Labs with a urine sample for a final hormone check. They'll tell him in an hour, and he'll bring back my golden belt. But he's sure already. And when he comes back with it, I'm going to go with him to the galaxies, as his apprentice. We're going to find a cure for his sickness and something that will make it so I won't need my medicine any more. He says if you have all the universe to roam around in, you can find anything you look for. But you need itall— not just a cramped little cluster of a few billion stars off in a corner by itself. Oh, I'm free, Ratlit, like you always wanted to be! While you were gone, he ... well, did something to me that wasgolden, and it triggered my hormonal imbalance!" The image came in through all five senses. Breaking the melodious ecstasy came the clatter of keys as Ratlit hurled them at the wall. We have the writers; we have the markets; we have the readers. But nothing is happening to bring them together. Much of the best work is being done entirely away from the social-professional nexus ofscience fiction. (Witness Donald Barthelme and Harvey Jacobs in this volume . . . Stanley Elkins “Perlmutter at the East Pole” in theSaturday Evening Post . . . William Maxwell and Robert Henderson inThe New Yorker . . . and how many others that I won’t even hear about till next year or the year after?) You know, Geraghty said softly, that looks like trouble. I havent had a row in this bar for more than a year, but I remember what one looks like when it’s brewing.” Mangon, hold on to your dive breaks. Im really on reheat this morning. He twirled the ultrasonic trumpet he was playing, a tangle of stops and valves from which half a dozen leads trailed off across the cushions to a cathode tube and tone generator at the other end of the sofa. Shotwell and I watch the console. Shotwell and I live under the ground and watch the console. If certain events take place upon the console, we are to insert our keys in the appropriate locks and turn our keys. Shotwell has a key and I have a key. If we turn our keys simultaneously the bird flies, certain switches are activated and the bird flies. But the bird never flies. In one hundred thirty-three days the bird has not flown. Meanwhile Shotwell and I watch each other. We each wear a .45 and if Shotwell behaves strangely I am supposed to shoot him. If I behave strangely Shotwell is supposed to shoot me. We watch the console and think about shooting each other and think about the bird. Shotwells behavior with the jacks is strange. Is it strange? I do not know. Perhaps he is merely a selfish bastard, perhaps his character is flawed, perhaps his childhood was twisted. I do not know. Similar to the others — a warning that I would burn in hell for flouting the Lords command about submitting to the dominant male. I know our movement disturbs a number of men, and some women as well, but... Singing. (This is important. Many Earth people sing who cannot sing. This early instruction of the Camiroi prevents that occurrence.) Directly in front of him he could see a velvet-lined platform, equipped with a white metal rail to the center of which a large floral ribbon had been tied. Beyond was the orchestra, disposed in a semicircle, each of the twenty members sitting at a small boxlike desk on which rested his instrument, tone generator and cathode tube. They were all present, and the light reflected from the ray screens threw a vivid phosphorescent glow onto the silver wall behind them. They can be bought for $1,500 up, depending on instrumentation. Neither of these articles, nor any others in this days issue, held more than a modicum of Quincannon’s attention; baseball and horse racing were the only two sports that interested him, and he considered men who succumbed to gold fever to be foolish. He pretended to be engrossed, however, while keeping watch on both the banker and the entrance to the bar parlor. Yeth, says Mike firmly by way of making a querulous and ineffectual old man feel better about his decision. What a comfort to me the little one is!.
