Remain relieved stew
You probably wont like it—right away. (And then you find it doesn’t goaway.) They got out of the Mercedes beyond the city, took off their leather coats and led Hutzvalek deep into the woods, following secret paths. Nobody said a word to him and he thought he was going to be executed. He tried to explain how he had come by all that lanolin, to soften their hearts, but nobody answered, although his German was quite good, really. Sabina Its the 16th, corrected Harrison. The third? After I had left the proke-group— fled them, I suppose, guilty and embarrassed over something I couldnt name, still having nightmares once a month that woke me screaming about what was going to happen to the kids, even though I knew one point of group marriage was to prevent the loss of one, two, or three parents being traumatic — still wondering if I wasnt making the same mistakes my parents made, hoping my brood wouldn't turn out like me, or worse like the kids you sometimes read about in the paper (like Ratlit, though I hadn't met him yet), horribly suspicious that no matter how different I tried to be from my sires, it was just the same thing all over again ... Anyway, I was on the ship bringing me to the Star-pit for the first time. I'd gotten talking to a golden who, as golden go, was a pretty regular gal. We'd been discussing inter-and intragalactic drives. She was impressed I knew so much. I was impressed that she could use them and know so little. She was digging in a very girl-way the six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-ten-pound drive mechanic with mildly grimy fingernails that was me. I was digging in a very boy-way the slim, amber-eyed young lady who had seen itall. From the view deck we watched the immense artificial disk of the Star-pit approach, when she turned to me and said, in a voice that didn't sound cruel at all, "This is as far as you go, isn't it?" And I was frightened all over again, because I knew that on about nine different levels she was right. We have been here one hundred thirty-three days owing to an oversight. Although now we are not sure what is oversight, what is plan. Perhaps the plan is for us to stay here permanently, or if not permanently at least for a year, for three hundred sixty-five days. Or if not for a year for some number of days known to them and not known to us, such as two hundred days. It may be that they are pleased with us, with our behavior, not in every detail but in sum. Perhaps the whole thing is very successful, perhaps the whole thing is a experiment and the experiment is very successful. I do not know. But I suspect that the only way they can persuade sun-loving creatures into their pale green sweating reinforced concrete rooms under the ground is to say that the system is twelve hours on, twelve hours off. And then lock us below for some number of days known to them and not known to us. We eat well although the frozen enchiladas are damp when defrosted and the frozen devils food cake is sour and untasty. We sleep uneasily and acrimoniously. I hear Shotwell shouting in his sleep, objecting, denouncing, cursing sometimes, weeping sometimes, in his sleep. When Shotwell sleeps I try to pick the lock on his attaché case, so as to get at the jacks. Thus far I have been unsuccessful. Nor has Shotwell been successful in picking the locks on my attaché case so as to get at the .38. I have seen the marks on the shiny surface. I laughed, in the latrine, pale green walls sweating and the air conditioning whispering, in the latrine. I write descriptions of natural forms on the walls, scratching them on the tile surface with a diamond. The diamond is a two and one-half carat solitaire I had in my attaché case when we went down. It was for Lucy. The south wall of the room containing the console is already covered. I have described a shell, a leaf, a stone, animals, a baseball bat. I am aware that the baseball bat is not a natural form. Yet I described it. The baseball bat, I said, “is typically made of wood. It is typically one meter in length or a little longer, fat at on end, tapering to afford a comfortable grip at the other end. The end with thehandhold typically offers a slight rim, or lip, at the nether extremity, to prevent slippage.” My description of the baseball bat ran to 4500 words, all scratched with a diamond on the south wall. Does Shotwell read what I have written? I do not know. I am aware that Shotwell regards my writing-behaviour as strange. Yet it is no stranger than his jacks-behaviour, or the day he appeared in black bathing trunks with the .25 caliber Beretta strapped to his right calf and stood over the console, trying to span with his two arms outstretched the distance between the two locks. He could not do it, I had already tried, standing over the console with my two arms outstretched, the distance is too great. I was moved to comment but did not comment, comment would have provoked counter-comment, comment would have led God knows where. They had in their infinite patience, in their infinite foresight, in their infinite wisdom already imagined a man standing over the console with his two arms outstretched, trying to span with his two arms outstretched the distance between the locks. "Hes quite a boy." I scooped up the mail that had come in after lunch, started to go through it but put it down to hunt for my coveralls. There was in fact a California State Woman Suffrage Convention held in San Francisco in November of 1896. Its delegates wore badges such as the one described here, and the campaign was in fact headed by Susan B. Anthony. Unfortunately, her tireless efforts and those of dedicated proponents such as Sabina and Amity Wellman were in vain. The proposed amendment to the state constitution giving women the right to vote was soundly defeated, owing in large part to the powerful Liquor Dealers League and the considerable clout the organization wielded with both Democratic and Republican politicians. It was not until 1911, thanks to a new, more widespread, more determined suffragist movement risen phoenix-like from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake, that California women were finally granted voting rights. Some of them are similar. I was reminded of them as I watched Braxa-but Ive never seen anything exactly like hers. Miss Ambushs tiny mouth opened several times and finally she said, I gotta go home, and, clutching her purse tightly against herself with both hands, she left and walked rapidly down the corridor. A pleasure to see you again so soon, dear Mrs. Carpenter. A pleasure indeed. And what may I do for you this fine morning? It was risky to make such jokes around Karpukhin, and no one was at all amused. Not even me; for by this time I was beginning to think that he might have something. The critter was discouraged. It walked around the shed looking for something and seemed unable to find it. It came back to Mose and made its despairing, pleading gesture. Mose showed it iron and steel; he dug into a carton where he kept bolts and clamps and bushings and scraps of metal and other odds and ends, finding brass and copper and even some aluminium, but it wasnt any of these. He has worked on wire-service news desks in Chicago, Washington, and New York, for Transradio Press and then Reuters.The Carson Effect grew out of his own experience at the New York Reuters desk, trying to write a “forward-throwing” story for London on the eve of Caryl Chessmans execution in California.* * * * Mangon attempted to say something, but his voice had died. He pulled himself away from Merrill, pushed past into the corridor. He lived to a ripe age, left a fortune and a legacy of sunshine after him and was eternally revered for having found a means to eliminate authors and to enrich the material and spiritual life of his country and his times. His remains lie in a marble tomb ten feet high, and on the door of this tomb, these words are graven. Stories, legends—but nothing else. They silenced as she approached, but I heard Elkes say under his breath to Churchill,Look at their pots! Thats where they keep their sex organs. You get outside ones put on your inside ones. Darlie’s got a big male thing on hers, it sticks out a mile..
