—let’s see now the integral of log x dx well make a substitution suppose we call y equal to log x then this is interesting i wonder who wrote that line about euclid has looked on beauty bare—
Kane’s cigarette fell from his mouth.
It seemed that the wild hammering of his heart must drown out the double thought that rivered in his brain, the thought of a physics student, a very ordinary young man save that he was quite wrapped up in the primitive satisfaction of hounding down a problem, and the other thought, the one that was listening in.
—she—
He stood with closed eyes, away on his feet, breathing as if he ran up a mountain. —are You there? are You there?
—not daring to believe: what do i feel?—
—i was the man on the train—
—& i was the woman—
A shuddering togetherness.
«Hey! Hey, mister, is anything wrong?»
Almost Kane snarled. Her thought was so remote, on the very rim of indetectability, he could get nothing but subvocalized words, nothing of the self, and this busybody—«No, thank, I’m OK, just a, a little winded.» —where are You, where can i find You o my darling?—
—image of a large white building/ right over here & they call it dwinelle hall & i am sitting on the bench outside & please come quickly please be here i never thought this could become real—
Kane broke into a run. For the first time in fifteen years, he was unaware of his human surroundings. There were startled looks, he didn’t see them, he was running to her and she was running too.
—my name is norman kane & i was not born to that name but took it from people who adopted me because i fled my father (horrible how mother died in darkness & he would not let her have drugs though it was cancer & he said drugs were sinful and pain was good for the soul & he really honestly believed that) & when the power first appeared i made slips and he beat me and said it was witchcraft & i have searched all my life since & i am a writer but only because i must live but it was not aliveness until this moment—
—o my poor kicked beloved/ i had it better/ in me the power grew more slowly and i learned to cover it & i am twenty years old & came here to study but what are books at this moment—
He could see her now. She was not conventionally beautiful, but neither was she ugly, and there was kindness in her eyes and on her mouth.
—what shall i call you? to me you will always be You but there must be a name for the mindmutes & i have a place in the country among old trees & such few people as live nearby are good folk/ as good as life will allow them to be—
—then let me come there with you & never leave again—
They reached each other and stood a foot apart. There was no need for a kiss or even a handclasp… not yet. It was the minds which leaped out and enfolded and became one.
—I REMEMBER THAT AT THE AGE OF THREE I DRANK OUT OF THE TOILET BOWL/ THERE WAS A PECULIAR FASCINATION TO IT & I USED TO STEAL LOOSE CHANGE FROM MY MOTHER THOUGH SHE HAD LITTLE ENOUGH TO CALL HER OWN SO I COULD SNEAK DOWN TO THE DRUGSTORE FOR ICE CREAM & I SQUIRMED OUT OF THE DRAFT & THESE ARE THE DIRTY EPISODES INVOLVING WOMEN—
—AS A CHILD I WAS NOT FOND OF MY GRANDMOTHER THOUGH SHE LOVED ME AND ONCE I PLAYED THE FOLLOWING FIENDISH TRICK ON HER & AT THE AGE OF SIXTEEN I MADE AN UTTER FOOL OF MYSELF IN THE FOLLOWING MANNER & I HAVE BEEN PHYSICALLY CHASTE CHIEFLY BECAUSE OF FEAR BUT MY VICARIOUS EXPERIENCES ARE NUMBERED IN THE THOUSANDS—
Eyes watched eyes with horror.
—it is not that you have sinned for i know everyone has done the same or similar things or would if they had our gift & i know too that it is nothing serious or abnormal & of course you have decent instincts & are ashamed—
—just so/ it is that you know what i have done & you know every last little wish & thought & buried uncleanness & in the top of my head i know it doesn’t mean anything but down underneath is all which was drilled into me when i was just a baby & i will not admit to ANYONE else that such things exist in ME—
A car whispered by, homeward bound. The trees talked in the light sunny wind.
A boy and girl went hand in hand.
The thought hung cold under the sky, a single thought in two minds.
—get out. i hate your bloody guts.—
HEINLEIN’S STORIES
Far-faring, star-faring,
Robert A. Heinlein, sir,
Please tell more stories of
Men who are strong
And of those well-endowed,
Ultradesirable
Women—the kind who make
Lazarus Long.
LOGIC
Brother bringeth
brother his bane,
and sons of sisters
break kinship’s bonds.
Never a man
spareth another.
Hard is the world.
Whoredom prevaileth.
Axe-time, sword-time,
—shields are cloven—
wind-time and wolf-time.
Ere the world waneth.
He was nearly always alone, and even when others were near him, even when he was speaking with them, he seemed to be standing on the far side of an unbridgeable gulf. His only companion was a gaunt gray mongrel with a curiously shaped head and a savage disposition, and the two had traveled far over the empty countryside, the rolling plains and straggling woods and high bluffs several miles down the river. They were an uncanny sight, walking along a ridge against the blood-flaring sunset, the thin, ragged, big-headed boy, like a dwarf from the legends of an irretrievable past, and the shaggy, lumpish animal skulking at his heels.
Roderick Wayne saw them thus as he walked home along the river. They were trotting rapidly along the other side. He hailed them, and they stopped, and the boy stared curiously, almost wonderingly. Wayne knew that attitude, though Alaric was only a grotesque outline against the fantastically red sky. He knew that his son was looking and looking at him, as if trying to focus, as if trying to remember who the—stranger—was. And the old pain lay deep in him, though he called out loudly enough: «Come on over, Al!»
Wayne had had a hard day’s work in the shop, and he was tired. Fixing machinery was a long jump down from teaching mathematics in Southvale College, but the whole world had fallen and men survived as best they could in its ruins. He was better off than most—couldn’t complain.
Of old he had been wont to stroll along the river that traversed the campus, each evening after classes, smoking his pipe and swinging his cane, thinking perhaps of what Karen would have for supper or of the stark impersonal beauty of the latest development in quantum mechanics—two topics not as unrelated as one might suppose. The quiet summer evenings were not to be spent in worry or petty plans for the next day, there was always too much time for that. He simply walked along in his loose-jointed way, breathing tobacco smoke and the cool still air, watching the tall old trees mirror themselves in the river or the molten gold and copper of sunset. There would be a few students on the broad smooth lawns who would hail him in a friendly way, for Bugsy Wayne was well liked; otherwise only the river and himself and the evening star.