Reward decisive waiting
"An used to come visit us when he got his one weekend a month off from his training program as golden," Sandy was going on. "Joeys and Ans parents lived in the reeds near the estuary. But we lived back up the canyon by Chroma Falls. An and Joey were pretty close, even though Joey's my age and An was only eight or nine back then. I guess Joey was the only one who really knew what An was going through, since they were both golden." reward decisive waiting Feeling the inevitable postproject let-down, Colles eyes wandered over the top of his desk. Mail … He’d checked through the mail: nothing of interest. Idly, he picked up a brochure-like thing on glossy paper. It had failed to attract his preoccupied attention earlier. Do you know Noah Rideout? Prominent businessman and farmer on Schyler Island in the delta. One. His department was about to lose a secretary— Sullivans Miss Willow. He hadnt told Sullivan. But maybe Sullivan knew already. Maybe even Miss Willow knew. These things always seemed to get around. He didn't mind interdepartmental promotions for the girls. He'd used it himself on occasion. But he didn't like the way Harvey Jayne was usingcompany personnel policy to pressure him. And right now was a bad time to lose a secretary, with all those Neol cases to get out. As an army travels on its stomach, so his Patent Department traveled on its typewriters, or, more exactly, on the flying fingers of its stenographers as applied to the keys of those typewriters, 'thereby to produce', as they say in patentese, a daily avalanche of specifications, amendments, appeals, contracts, and opinions. Sure, mathenauts are mathenuts. But as we found out, not quite mathenutty enough. A giant beech grew before the stone façade of her home, so close that it was hard to determine whether it did not help support the ancient building. A crumbling balcony jutted from the first floor. Reaching up, Dandi seized the balustrade and hauled herself on to the balcony. "Dont know. Either that or itll be too late to do what they want. Are you coming?" The clerk looked disdainfully at the coin.Really, sir, he said, but the tenor of his voice and a hint of avarice in his pale eyes belied the disdain. As does David Masson, who has supplied only this much information about himself:In my view the finished story is important or of public interest, but not the man.The symbolic overtones are also important but it is better if the reader discover these for himself. I will however say that my age is between forty-five and fifty, that I have a university post, and that I am married with a family. Oh, I said. Ive never come across your word for `flower’, but I was actually thinking of an Earth flower, the rose.” Thats right, son. Get into the car and I’ll tell you all about it. You know about yourself? Quite certain. What happened to Mr. Sonderberg? How in hell do you think Ill get to sleep if I’m not pickled? he retorted. And he was probably right there, too. He went on, You wouldn’t know, I guess: what it’s like to lie in bed, staring into the dark, without a Contact anywhere. It makes the whole world seem hateful and dark and hostile. . . .” This was the beginning of the dissection, analysis, study of the monster. It began then; it had never finished. Some of what you had learned from it was merely important; some of the rest—vital. Our first astronauts then must be the wisest and most temperate men, slow to revulsion, quick to sympathy, capable even of having their concepts of male-female sexuality shaken. On the planets of Tau Ceti sexes may be combined in one body or, worse from our lusty view, may be lacking altogether because more efficient if less invigorating ways have been found by nature to keep a race going.* * * * Claim? No doubt about it, my boy. Ash tray? He lifts his hand. An ash tray on an end table across the room comes sailing on the air like a miniature ceramic UFO to light gently upon his upturned palm. Mr. Wilier sets it down and closes his eyes. I dont need you, Gilfoyle barked. Get out of here or I may decide I don’t even want you.” Not always. And the likelihood is not enough to satisfy me. Blast Titus Wrixton, too. I dont understand the likes of him. What kind of man goes blithely on making a confounded fool of himself over a woman? Hitchcock didnt let go of his bags. He glanced at the harnessed Floppers. Thank you, he said stiffly—and his teeth rattled with the cold. “I prefer to walk.”.
