Old legs magenta
Summer and winter the chemmy lab had a smell all its own, a sharp half-sweet nuance like the scent of dust magnified many times. It came from the storage shelves to the left of the door where bottles of chemicals stood in rows on shelves of dark orange wood. Here were sulphates and thiosulphates, oxides and hydroxides, phosphorus coiled like Devils spaghetti in its thick oil, shining miniature slagheaps of iodine. There were other things too, a microscope on loan from Biology next door, a balance, its brasswork shining butter-yellow from its protective case; and a crystal of CuSO4, meridian-bright in its tall vat. The jar in which the crystal hung stood on top of the highest shelf and seemed in itself to be a focus of light; reflections burned deep inside it like elongated turquoise suns. Private Richard Starbuck, formerly a star forward on the Center High basketball team, looked at his watch and wondered, as he waited, if being shot in the gut would be anything like cutting your head on the pavement. It was funny he should have thought of that now. He hadnt thought of the Martins for months. He wondered if they would be watching. He wondered, if they did, if they would recognize the sixteen-year-old boy who had bled on their living room couch four years ago. He wondered if he recognized that sixteen-year-old boy himself.* * * * Miss Marilyn Mayberry, on the other hand, was impatient with unseen phantoms. Tranquil since teething, tranquil she would remain. Undoubtedly she too had been disturbed by Miss Luptiks doll, but she refused to nurse its ugly hunger. Her mother had warned her not to play jacks with the Wind People. There was too much going on, hope chests to fill, the promise of weddings and babies. So, a true child of science, she drew the gods and nearly killed them all. On the contrary. His name was Raymond Sonderberg, the proprietor of a cigar store in Gunpowder Alley. Herminia wanted to know why he did not eat his frijoles. He said he had eaten many peaches this afternoon at Mr. Johannsens and was not hungry. With embroidered casualness he announced he was going to cut some kindling and went out. Hank blinks a couple of times. "Hi, there," Jay said. "Id prefer you didnt tell anyone about this." old legs magenta The other half of the storys genesis was some remarks In Loren Eiseley’s essay, The Fire Apes,’ with which I didn’t entirely agree.... Have you ever seen the radiator grille of a car after its run into a lamppost? Well, one section of the grid looked very much like that. Something had battered it in, as if a gargantuan madman had gone to work on it with a sledge hammer. Poloscki had put down the coffee now and was dangling the chain. An whirled to stare. Oddly, Dr. Mannfried seemed drawn to me after Pallas left for Hong Kong. He enjoyed talking about her, the bastard; even mentioning my first wife made his mouth water, although he hadnt made a pass at her because that was before his son had graduated from college and he said hed taken a solemn oath in his youth not to screw up his life until his boy was 21. I'm not much of a talker, but I'm a good listener— and I listened as I patted sandwich loaf into patterns of desire. I kept sculpting women; it was a compulsion. As I dictate this, Im sitting here below the ancient battlements of Fort Frederick, watching the moon come up over the Indian Ocean. If everything goes well, this will serve as the opening of the book that Joe has been badgering me to write. If it doesn’t—then hello, Joe, I’m talking toyou now. Please edit this for publication in any way you think fit, and my apologies to you and Lev for not giving all the facts before; now you’ll understand why. Meantime, science fiction is leaping ahead of science, on todays frontiers. The exciting new work is not in rocketry but in biochemistry, in behavioral psychology, in parapsychology, in anthropology and information theory and communications. And in a backwards way, this is bringing back the space story, but a different kind of space story.* * * * Hush. Be a mouse. One settled to the floor with a triple-stringed instrument faintly resembling asamisen. The other held a simple woodblock and two drumsticks. "Nothing," said Hejar, savagely..
