After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off.
Wandering alone in the library, letting his broom tell him things no one else could hear, he had heard the whistle and the disjointed calliope hymns.
I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them. And the Government, seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about passionate lips and the fist in the stomach, circled the situation with your fire-eaters.
It was seven o’clock, supper over, and the boys gathering one by one from the sound of their house doors slammed and their parents crying to them not to slam the doors.
What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box-lids, and rain.
He and thousands of others like him, if they had any sense, would go to Mars. See if they wouldn’t! To get away from wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science!
Moonlit reflections trembled in the glass like schools of disturbed silver minnows.
This car,” he said, “somewhere along the way does it turn into a plane?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Somewhere along the way do you turn into my pilot?” “It could be. I’ve never done this before.” “But you’re willing to try?” I nodded.
The leaf-light flickered on the paper-thin skin of the old men’s wrists, the shadows alternating with fading sunlight. They moved in a soft whisper.
There, on the precipice of earth, a small steam feather uprose like the first of a storm cloud yet to come.
This child can’t be allowed to have normal playmates; why, they’d pester it to death in no time.
What are you looking at so hard, Dad?” “I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility.” “All that up there?” “No. I didn’t find it. It’s not there any more. Maybe it’ll never be there again.
Doesn’t an old thing always know when a new thing comes?
He surveyed the lake of grass below, all the dandelions gone, a touch of rust in the trees, and the smell of Egypt blowing from the far east.
At eleven that hot night everyone in Texas was awake because of the heat.
If some people didn’t have something juicy to chew on, their choppers would prolapse, their souls with them.
When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange – we’re so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in.
Perhaps Time itself was draining off down an immense glass, with powdered darkness falling after to bury all.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?