Cuts on the vagina
In a sense, the biggest news of the year is that it is harder than ever to locate on the literary map any reliable boundary line between s-f and anything else. The other side of the coin, whose tail is the lack of focus andesprit in the specialty field here, is, I suppose, the diminishment of spirited opposition or snobbism directedat the field. To some extent, this is a self-reproducing cycle; to a greater degree, the changing faces on both sides are being shaped by pressures initiating entirely outside the local literary scene, particularly such adjacent areas as education, advertising, psychology, and the Think Factory phenomenon. The s-f label becomes ludicrous, not to say invisible, when advertisements like the star-sprinkled page with the cute little capsule through whose wide-vision window a cheery astronaut and his mouth organ illustrate the pitch:Three billion people will look up to you ... on Dec. 16, 1965, the Hohner Harmonica became the first musical instrument to be played in outer space, appear in the same sort of magazines which now publish such stories as “Game,” “Somewhere Not far from Here,” “The Girl Who Drew the Gods,” “The Drowned Giant” (and Stanley Elkins “Perlmutter at the East Pole” in the Post), with neither apologies, explanations, nor exclamation points. What happened next was magnificent, and almost cleared my mind. Mans first walk in space. (Actually the second, after the USSR.) As usual, I had been called to the Cape to head the decontamination and sterilisation crew, getting Gemini 4 ready for space. The planets must not be a dumping ground for human waste. This was drill— preparation for our coming flight to the moon. After Gemini 4 all my space flights would beetc.— all my systems were go. But I didnt know it then. No, when I was in the Force. They had a long run on outdoor workers at one stage, and it was often a cop or a postie. I tell you, Sheriff, said Mose. ‘This thing came here from somewhere and it died. I don’t know where it came from and I don’t know what it was and I don’t hanker none to know. To me it was just a living thing that needed help real bad. It was alive and it had its dignity and in death it commanded some respect. When the rest of you refused it decent burial, I did the best I could. And that is all there is to it.’ Nevertheless, Mars may well shock us from our provincial views. We must remember that here on Earth some germs thrive in purest sulphur, microbes generate in boiling Yellowstone springs. At Los Alamos our water-immersed nuclear reactors are often clouded by the micro-organism called Pseudomonas which survives radiation dosages 10,000 times stronger than those needed to kill a man. Similarly Mars, in its harsh natural laboratory, may have evolved fantastic chemical cycles that produce life forms heretofore unguessed. "Oh," she said blankly. "I wonder why? I havent done anything." At the point where I re-entered their ionosphere, the dear curves of Our being— which they term body, and I must not forget to call 'my' — nearly reversed themselves, but thanks to the extreme elasticity of our mental curvature, these held. Shortly after, I entered that condition, common enough among us, which however sounds so regrettably silly in their language — and is indeed almost impossible to gauge in one where theamount of things so consistently takes precedence over theirunanimity. There's no help for it. I became more Here than There. From then on it was easier; they tell me that things done for the second time here usually are. A 'second time' is one facet of their concept of two-ness that I had no trouble with, a kindly sign that the curves of our not quite cognate worlds do somewhere intersect. As I crossed, the far, reddish spectrum of Out There faded, gradually receded, whelmed by the increasing blue ozone of Right Here. From twenty thousand up, the daily height of their own traffic, once again their planet looked as extraordinary as any planet of the universe must look to the resident of another, up that close. Yes, I had done this before, experiencing no difficulty with their numerical progressions, and almost none with their time-sequences. It is only the two-ness of people that still gives me unutterable pause. In Bucks, I was told that monotheists here suffer almost the same tension over the many-goddedness which with us is so restful, all Our people being One. My pleasure, Charlie. Hate to have you miss your car when the action starts. He stood there scratching his head and looking about him like a workman who is being paid by the hour.Ambush, ambush, he said, and went up the bank again to where John was watching the woods. What he did there was like this: He tied two machine pistols to two trees about thirty yards apart. He fastened a length of twine to the trigger of each, and lashed the loose ends to Johns elbows, saying, all in a breath, “If you see or hear them, John, bring your elbows together. Those guns are cocked. There will be a burst in their direction from two sides.” A young man who doubled as bellhop and elevator operator took Candron up to the third floor. Candron tipped him generously, but not extravagantly, and then proceeded to unpack his suitcase. He hung the suits in the closet and put the shirts in the clothes chest. By the time he was through, it looked as though Ying Lee was prepared to stay for a considerable length of time. About what? This he spoke to each one who made obeisance to him, and each one responded:Show me the path! That, madam, is none of your business. But what does he want? Caseys voice was flat. I have killed many nine-year-old boys, Senator. cuts on the vagina As had been planned, we ran without lights, too, to keep Joe Lee from smelling the trap until it was too late. I tightened my seat belt and peered at the moonlit road. Lazeer had estimated we could make it to the far end in ten minutes or a little less. The world was like a photographic negative—white world and black trees and brush, and no shades of grey. As we came quickly up to speed, the heavy sedan began to feel strangely light. It toe-danced, tender and capricious, the wind roar louder than the engine sound. I kept wondering what would happen if Joe Lee stopped dead up there in darkness. I kept staring ahead for the murderous bulk of his vehicle. I looked. As I believe it usually does to others, it struck me with a sort of horror to see this thing alive, a collapsed sort of dumpling with ordinary human skin, sitting in its case like a part of a corpse that had been cut off..
