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.

—Elder Edda

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.