Texture entertain longing
He dreamt it as active, warm, secret, the size of a closed fist, of garnet color in the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; with minute love he dreamt it, for fourteen lucid nights. Each night he perceived it with greater clarity. He did not touch it, but limited himself to witnessing it, observing it, perhaps correcting it with his eyes. He perceived it, lived it, from many distances and many angles. On the fourteenth night he touched the pulmonary artery with his finger, and then the whole heart, inside and out. The examination satisfied him. Deliberately, he did not dream for a night; then he took the heart again, invoked the name of a planet and set about to envision another of the principal organs. Within a year he reached the skeleton, the eyelids. The innumerable hair was perhaps the most difficult task. He dreamt a complete man, a youth, but this youth could not rise nor did he speak nor could he open his eyes. Night after night, the man dreamt him as asleep. When we were halfway up the stairs I figured she wasnt there. I felt just the same. Maybe she was with them in the ship. When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the spot where Purnie had been standing. I still cant believe it. The Twerlik was abruptly aware, then, of yet another new sensation: gratitude.This tall thing, it said, and at the same time filed away its first knowledge of differentiation in heights for later reference, “has done theme a service, in a moment, and theme isbettered, andgrateful!” "Hey, kid-boy! Isnt the golden still at Alegras?" Fleetingly in Marthas shattered face he saw the ghost of the girl he had married thirty years ago. She had a touch of the living beauty that lighted the face Allie Andries turned on Jim. Cordice said good-by to the ghost, numb with fear.* * * * I gave the man my Look, too, and he appeared very ill at ease, because sometimes even grown people feel overawed when they walk into a school. Especially the kind of grown people who used to get called to the principals office all the time. All right. Well elope then, and get a place of our own. It won’t be hard when anyone sees what Ash can do. And we won’t have to have good land. She left it at that, giving him plenty of time to think over all the implications. He gave in. Grudgingly, angrily. But he gave in. If he could regard his absurd dilemma merely as a struggle for survival, another chapter in his own Robinson Crusoe story, he might get to the bottom of this mechanized vortex alive and sane. He thought proudly that many people in his position could not have adjusted, would have gone mad. Holy Halmos, I whispered. If this sounds like a travelogue, its just because it is. I doubt that anyone who read Desertion when it was first published in Astounding, or later as part of the prize-winning book. City, has ever quite forgotten the fresh tingling scent of that ammonia storm… . I had my doubts about the value of what she was doing, but for what it was, she was good. She knew her business.* * * * All right, we decided, no arguments. We put Big Bill Sugar on the mantelpiece, propped him up against the wall, and left him there. With Mike, there was no use trying to understand. Afterwards, of course, the rest of us talked about it a lot, trying to figure out why Mike was so anxious to have Big Bill Sugar on his mantelpiece, right there in his living room. Everyone had his own ideas about that, but no one knew for, sure. Miss Hutton rose, folded her arms, walked quickly across the dais to the window, looked down into the corner of the quad. She said,Over the years I have come to have a special feeling about the sound the school makes as it empties. To me it seems that the building becomes a great conduit full of very fresh clear water; and the footsteps and the voices tinkle and splash along the corridors and down stairs until the last one is gone. Do you understand me, Susan? "I want a ladys coat, hat and shoes. Are these enough?" So I kissed her, as the breath of fallen cloth extinguished the lamp..
