R. A. Lafferty - Stories 1

VIP免费
2024-12-22 0 0 478.34KB 172 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
STORIES BY R.A. LAFFERTY
* indicates outstanding stories
chronological notation taken from "An R.A. Lafferty Checklist"
Institute stories (found in RAL05 file)
*20. Seven Day Terror
*25. What's the Name of That Town?
*39. Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne
*43. The Hole On the Corner
*44. Land of the Great Horses
78. All But the Words
122. Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread
134. Smoe and the Implicit Clay
file A
*6 The Six Fingers of Time
*7. Adam Had Three Brothers
11. Snuffles
14. In the Garden
15. All the People
16. The Weirdest World
*17. Aloys
18. The Ugly Sea
*19. Rainbird
21. Dream
22. Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas
23. The Transcendent Tigers
26. Mad Man
27. The Man With the Speckled Eyes
28. Pig In a Pokey
*30. Slow Tuesday Night
31. Guesting Time
*32. In Our Block
*33. Hog-Belly Honey
*34. Nine Hundred Grandmothers
*35. Golden Trabant
*36. Among the Hairy Earthmen
*37. Narrow Valley
*38. Primary Education of the Camiroi
*41. Polity and Custom of the Camiroi
*42. Ginny Wrapped In the Sun
file B
*45. Camels and Drometaries, Clem
*46. The Ultimate Creature
47. How They Gave It Back
50. McGruder's Marvels
51. This Grand Carcass Yet
*52. Maybe Jones and the City
*53. One At a Time
55. Cliffs That Laughed
56. Configuration of the North Shore
59. Ride a Tin Can
61. Crocodile
*62. About a Secret Crocodile
63. The Cliff Climbers
66. Condillac's Statue
67. Entire and Perfect Chrysolite
*68. Continued On Next Rock
69. Old Foot Forgot
*70. All Pieces of a River Shore
*71. Interurban Queen
*72. Frog On the Mountain
file C
74. The Man Underneath
*76. Encased In Ancient Rind
*79. Boomer Flats
*81. World Abounding
*82. Groaning Hinges of the World
*83. Ishmael Into the Barrens
*84. Nor Limestone Islands
*85. Sky
86. When All the Lands Pour Out Again
91. Once On Aranea
*96 Eurema's Dam
*97. Dorg
*99. And Now Walk Gently Through the Fire
104. Seven Story Dream
*106. The World As Will and Wallpaper
108. By the Seashore
111. Days of Grass, Days of Straw
file D
*115. Mr. Hamadryad
116. The Man With the Aura
120. And Name My Name
121. Royal Licorice
126. Three Shadows of the Wolf
131. The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street
133. Or Little Ducks Each Day
135. The Hand With One Hundred Fingers
138. Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight
139a. Funnyfingers
139b. Cabrito
140. Horns On Their Heads
143. Berryhill
*145. Thou Whited Wall
*150. Fall of Pebble Stones
151. Quiz Ship Loose
152. Bequest of Wings
file E
*153. Bright Coins In Never-Ending Stream
*154. Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen-Seventies
155. Splinters
165. Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope
170. The Only Tune That He Could Play
*175. You Can't Go Back
179. Square and Above Board
180. Ifrit
184. Thieving Bear Planet
185. Golden Gate
*186. This Boding Itch
187. Tongues of the Madagora
*188. Make Sure the Eyes Are Big Enough
189. Marsilia V.
*190. One-Eyed Mocking-Bird
227. Magazine Section
240. Grey Ghost: A Reminiscence
245. Le Hot Spot
THE SIX FINGERS OF TIME
He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of
water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall
and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This would have surprised him if
he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out weakly for it.
Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a
weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the alarm. And
the low boom, when it came again, seemed to come from the clock.
He reached out and touched it gently, but it floated off the stand
at his touch and bounced around slowly on the floor. And when he picked it
up again it had stopped, nor would shaking start it.
He checked the electric clock in the kitchen. This also said six
o'clock, but the sweep hand did not move. In his living room the radio clock
said six, but the second hand seemed stationary.
"But the lights in both rooms work," said Vincent "How are the
clocks both stopped? Are the receptacles on a separate circuit?"
He went back to his bedroom and got his wristwatch. It also said
six; and its sweep hand did not sweep.
"Now this could get silly. What is it that would stop both
mechanical and electrical clocks?"
He went to the window and looked out at the advertising clock on the
Mutual Insurance Building. It said six o'clock, and the second hand did not
move. "Well, it is possible that the confusion is not limited to myself. I
heard once the fanciful theory that a cold shower will clear the mind. For
me it never has, but I will try it. I can always use cleanliness for an
excuse."
The shower didn't work. Yes, it did: the water came now, but not
like water; like very slow syrup that hung in the air. He reached up to
touch it hanging down there and stretching. And it shattered like glass when
he touched it, and drifted in fantastic slow globs across the room. But it
had the feel of water. It was wet and pleasantly cool. And in a quarter of a
minute or so it was down over his shoulders and back, and he luxuriated in
it. He let it soak on his noggin, and it cleared his wits at once.
"There is not a thing wrong with me. I am fine. It is not my fault
that the water is slow this morning and other things are awry."
He reached for the towel and it tore to pieces in his hands like
porous wet paper.
He now became very careful in the way he handled things. Slow1y,
tenderly and deftly he took them so that they would not break. He shaved
himself without mishap in spite of the slow water in the lavatory also.
Then he dressed himself with the greatest caution and cunning,
breaking nothing except his shoe laces, and that is likely to happen at any
time. "If there is nothing the matter with me, then I will check and see
if there is anything seriously wrong with the world. The dawn was fairly
along when I looked out, as it should have been. Approximately twenty
minutes have passed; it is a clear morning: the sun should now have hit the
top several stories of the Insurance Building."
But it had not. It was still a clear morning, but the dawn had not
brightened at all in the twenty minutes. And that big clock still said six.
It had not changed.
Yet it had changed, and he knew it with a queer feeling. He pictured
it as it had been before. But the sweep second hand had moved. It had swept
a third of the dial.
So he pulled up a chair at the window and watched it. He realized
that, though he could not see it move, yet it did make progress. He watched
it for perhaps five minutes. It moved through a space of perhaps five
seconds.
"Well, that is not my problem. It is that of the clock maker, either
a terrestrial or a celestial one."
But he left his rooms without a good breakfast, and he left them
very early. How did he know that it was early since there was something
wrong with the time? Well, it was early at least according to the sun and
according to the clocks, neither of which institutions seemed to be working
properly.
He left without a good breakfast because the coffee would not make
and the bacon would not fry. And in plain point of fact the fire would not
heat. The gas flame sprung up from the pilot like a slowly spreading stream
or an unfolding flower. Then it burned far too steadily. The skillet
remained cold when placed over it; nor would water even heat. It had taken
at least five minutes to get the water out of the faucet in the first place.
He ate a few pieces of leftover bread and some scraps of meat.
In the street there was no motion, no real motion. A truck, first
seeming at rest, moved very slowly. There was no gear in which it could move
so slowly. And there was a taxi which crept along, but Charles Vincent had
to look at it carefully for some time to be sure that it was in motion. Then
he received a shock. He realized by the early morning light that the driver
of it was dead. Dead with his eyes wide open!
Slow as it was going, and by whatever means it was moving, it should
really be stopped. Vincent walked over to it, opened the door, and pulled on
the brake, Then he looked into the eyes of that dead man. Was he really
dead? It was hard to be sure. He felt warm. But, even as Vincent looked, the
eyes of the dead man had begun to close. And close they did and open again
in a matter of about twenty seconds.
This was weird. The slowly closing and opening eyes sent a chill
through Vincent. And the dead man had begun to lean forward in his seat.
Vincent put a hand in the middle of the man's chest to hold him upright, but
he found the forward pressure to be as relentless as it was slow. He was
unable to keep the dead man up.
So he let him go, watching curiously; and in a few seconds the
driver's face was against the wheel. But it was almost as if it had no
intention of stopping there. It pressed into the wheel with dogged force.
The man would surely break his face. Vincent took several holds on the dead
man and counteracted the pressure somewhat. Yet the face was being damaged,
and if things were normal blood would have flowed.
The man had been dead so long however, that though he was still warm
his blood must have congealed, for it was fully two minutes before it began
to ooze.
"Whatever I have done, I have done enough damage," said Vincent.
"And, in whatever nightmare I am in, I am likely to do further harm if I
meddle more. I had better leave it alone."
He walked on down the street. Yet whatever vehicles he saw now were
moving with an incredible slowness as though driven by some fantastic gear
reduction. And there were people here and there frozen solid. It was a
chilly morning, but it was not that cold. They were immobile in positions of
motion, as though they were playing the children's game of Statues.
"How is it," said Charles Vincent, "that this young girl, who I
believe works across the street from us, should have died standing up and in
full stride? But, no. She is not dead. Or if so she died with a very alert
expression. And, oh my God, she's doing it too!"
For he realized that the eyes of the girl were closing, and in a
space of a few seconds they had completed their cycle and were open again.
Also, and this was even stranger, she had moved, moved forward in full
stride. He would have timed her if he could. How could he time her when all
the clocks in the world were crazy? Yet she must have been taking about two
steps a minute.
Vincent went into the cafeteria. The early morning crowd that he had
often watched through the window was there. The girl who made flapjacks in
the window had just flipped one and it hung in the air. Then it floated over
as though caught by a slight breeze, and sank slowly down as if settling in
water.The early morning breakfasters, like the people in the street, were
all dead in this new way, moving with almost imperceptible motion. And all
had apparently died in the act of drinking coffee, eating eggs, or munching
toast. And if there was only time enough, there was an even chance that they
would get the drinking, eating, and munching done with, for there was a
shadow of movement in them all.
The cashier had the register drawer open and money in her hand, and
the hand of the customer was out-stretched for it. In time, somewhere in the
new leisurely time, the hands would come together and the change be given.
And so it happened. It may have been a minute and a half, or two minutes, or
two and a half. It is always hard to judge time, and now it had become all
but impossible.
"I am still hungry," said Charles Vincent, "but it would be
foolhardy to wait on the service here. Should I help myself? They would not
mind if they are dead. And, if they are not dead, in any case it seems that
I am invisible to them."
He wolfed several rolls. He opened a bottle of milk and held it
upside-down over his glass while he ate another roll. Liquids had all become
so perversely slow.
But he felt better for his erratic breakfast. He would have paid for
it, but how?
He left the cafeteria and walked about the town as it seemed still
to be quite early, though one could depend on neither sun nor clock for the
time any more. The traffic lights were unchanging. He sat for a long time in
a 1ittle park and watched the town and the big clock in the Commerce
Building tower; but like all the clocks it was either stopped or the hand
would creep too slowly to be seen.
It must have been just about an hour till the traffic lights
changed, but change they did at last. By picking a point on the building
across the street and watching what moved by it, he found that the traffic
did indeed move. In a minute or so, the entire length of a car would pass a
given point.
He had, he recalled, been very far behind in his work, and it had
been worrying him. He decided to go to the office, early as it was or seemed
to be.He let himself in. Nobody else was there. He resolved not to look at
the clock and to be very careful of the way he handled all objects because
of his new propensity for breaking things. This considered, all seemed
normal here. He had said the day before that he could hardly catch up on his
work if he worked for two days solid. He now resolved at least to work
steadily until something happened, whatever it was.
For hour after hour he worked on his tabulations and reports. Nobody
else had arrived. Could something be wrong? Certainly something was wrong.
But today was not a holiday. That was not it.
Just how long can a stubborn and mystified man work away at his
task? It was hour after hour after hour. He did not become hungry nor
particularly tired. And he did get through a lot of work.
"It must be half done. However it has happened, I have caught up at
least a day's work; I will keep on."
He must have worked silently for another eight or ten hours.
He was caught up completely on his back work.
"Well, to some extent I can work into the future. I can head-up and
carry over. I can put in everything but the figures of the field reports."
And he did so.
"It will he hard to bury me in work again. I could almost coast
for a day. I don't even know what day it is, but I must have worked twenty
hours straight through and nobody has arrived. Perhaps nobody ever will
arrive. If they are moving with the speed of the people in the nightmare
outside, it is no wonder they have not arrived."
He put his head down in his arms on the desk. The last thing he saw
before he closed his eyes was the misshapen left thumb that had always been
his and which he had always tried to conceal a little by the way handled he
his hands.
"At least I know that I am still myself. I'd know myself anywhere by
that."Then he went to sleep at his desk.
Jenny came in with a quick click-click-click of high heels, and he
wakened to the noise.
"What are you doing dozing at your desk, Mr. Vincent? Have you been
here all night?"
"I don't know, Jenny. Honestly I don't."
"I was only teasing. Sometimes when I get here a little early I take
a catnap myself."
The clock said six minutes till eight, and the second hand was
sweeping normally. Time had returned to the world. Or to him. But had all
that early morning of his been a dream? Then it had been a very efficient
dream. He had accomplished work he could hardly have done in two days. And
it was the same day that it was supposed to be.
He went to the water fountain. The water now behaved normally. He
went to the window. The traffic was behaving as it should. Though sometimes
slow and sometimes snarled, yet it was in the pace of the regular world.
The other workers arrived. They were not balls of fire, but neither
was it necessary to observe them for several minutes to he sure that they
weren't dead.
"It did have its advantages," Charles Vincent said. "I would be
afraid to have it permanently, but it would be handy to go into the state
for a few minutes a day and accomplish the business of hours. I may be a
case for the doctor. But just how would I go about telling a doctor what was
bothering me?"
Now it had surely been less than too hours from his first rising
till the time that he wakened from his second sleep to the noise of Jenny.
And how long that second sleep had been, or in which time enclave, he had no
idea. But how account for it all? He had spent a long time in his own rooms,
much longer than ordinary in his confusion. He had walked the city mile
after mile in his puzzlement. And he had sat in the little park for hours
and studied the situation. And he had sat and worked at his own desk for an
outlandish long time.
Well, he would go to the doctor. A man is obliged to refrain from
making a fool of himself to the world at large, but to his lawyer, his
priest, or his doctor he will sometimes have to come as a fool. By their
callings they are restrained from scoffing openly.
He went to the doctor at noon.
Dr. Mason was not particularly a friend. Charles Vincent realized
with some unease that he did not have any particular friends, only
acquaintances and associates. It was as though he were of a species slightly
apart from his fellows. He wished a little now that he had a particular
friend.
But Dr. Mason was an acquaintance of some years, had the reputation
of being a good doctor, and besides, Vincent had now arrived at his office
and been shown in. He would either have to -- well, that was as good a
beginning as any.
"Doctor, I am in a predicament. I will either have to invent some
symptoms to account for my visit here, or to make an excuse and bolt, or
tell you what is bothering me, even though you will think that I am a new
sort of idiot."
"Vincent, every day people invent symptoms to cover their visits
here, and I know that they have lost their nerve about their real reason for
corning. And every day people do make excuses and bolt. But experience tells
me that I will get a larger fee if you tackle the third alternative. And,
Vincent, there is no new sort of idiot."
"It may not sound so silly if I tell it quickly," Vincent said. "I
awoke this morning to some very puzzling incidents. It seemed that time
itself had stopped, or that the whole world had gone into super-slow motion.
The water would neither flow nor boil, and the fire would not heat food. The
clocks, which I at first believed had stopped, crept along at perhaps a
minute an hour. The people I met in the streets appeared dead, frozen in
life-like attitudes. It was only by watching them for a very long tune that
I perceived that they did indeed have motion. One taxi I saw creeping slower
than the most backward snail, and a dead man at the wheel of it. I went to
it, opened the door, and put on the brake. I realized after a time that the
man was not dead. But he bent forward and broke his face on the steering
heel. It must have taken a full minute for his head to travel no more than
ten inches, yet I was unable to prevent him from hitting the wheel. I then
did other bizarre things in a world that had died on its feet. I walked many
miles through the city, and then I sat for countless hours in the park. I
went to the office and let myself in. I accomplished work that must have
taken me twenty hours. I then took a nap at my desk. When I awoke on the
arrival of others it was six minutes till eight in the morning of the same
day, today. Not two hours had passed from my rising, and time was back to
normal. But there were things that happened in that time that could never be
compressed into two hours."
"One question first, Vincent. Did you actually accomplish the work,
the work of many hours?"
"I did. It was done and done in that time. It did not become undone
on the return of time to normal."
"A second question: had you been worried about your work, about
being behind in your work?"
"Yes. Emphatically."
"Then here is one explanation. You retired last night. But very
shortly afterward you arose in a state of somnambulism. There are facets of
sleep-walking which we do not at all understand. The time-out-of-focus
interludes were parts of a walking dream of yours. You dressed and went to
your office and worked all night. It is possible to do routine tasks while
in a somnambulistic state. rapidly and even feverishly, to perform
prodigies. You may have fallen into a normal sleep there when you had
finished, or you may have been awakened directly from your somnambulistic
trance on the arrival of your co-workers. There. That is a plausible and
workable explanation. In the case of an apparently bizarre happening it is
always well to have a rational explanation to fall back on. This will
usually satisfy a patient and put his mind to rest. But often the
explanation does not satisfy me."
"Your explanation very nearly satisfies me, Dr. Mason, and it does
put my mind considerably at rest. I am sure that in a short while I will be
able to accept it completely But why does it not satisfy you?"
"One reason is a man, a taxi-driver, whom I treated very early this
morning. He had his face smashed, and he had seen -- or almost seen -- a
ghost: a ghost of in credible swiftness that was more sensed than seen. The
ghost opened the door of his car while it was going a full speed, jerked on
the brake, and caused him to crack his head. This man was dazed and had a
slight concussion. I have convinced him that he did not see an ghost at all,
that he must have dozed at the wheel and run into something. As I say, I am
harder to convince than my patients. But it may have been coincidence.
"I hope so. But you also seem to have another reservation as to my
case. "After quite a few years in practice, I seldom see or hear anything
new. Twice before I have been told a happening or a dream on the line of
what you experienced."
"Did you convince your other patients that they were only dreams?"
"I did. Both of them. That is, I convinced them the first few times
it happened to them."
"Were they satisfied?"
"At first they were. Later not entirely. But they both died within a
year of their coming to me.
"Of nothing violent, I hope."
"Both had the most gentle deaths. That of senility extreme."
"Oh. Well I'm too young for that."
"Vincent, I would like you to come back in a month or so."
"I will, if the delusion or the dream returns. Or if I do not feel
well."After this Charles Vincent began to forget about the incident. He
only recalled it with humor sometimes when again he was behind in his work.
"Well, if it gets bad enough I may do another sleepwalking jag and
catch up. But if there is another aspect of time and I could enter it at
will, it might often be handy."
Charles Vincent never saw the man's face at all. It is very dark in
some of those clubs and the Coq Bleu is like the inside of a tomb. Vincent
went to the clubs only about once a month, sometimes after a show when he
did not want to go home to bed, sometimes when he was just plain restless.
Citizens of the more fortunate states may not know of the mysteries
of the clubs. In Vincent's the only bars are beer bars, and only in the
clubs can a person get a drink, and only members are admitted. It is true
that a small club as the Coq Bleu had thirty thousand members, and at a
dollar a year this is a nice sideline. The little numbered membership cards
cost a penny each for the printing, and the member wrote in his own name.
But he was supposed to have a card or a dollar for a card to gain
admittance.
But there could be no entertainment in the clubs. There was nothing
there but the little bar room in the near darkness. The near darkness of the
clubs was custom only but it had the force of the law.
The man was there, and then he was not, and then he was there again.
And always where he sat it was too dark to see his face.
"I wonder," he said to Vincent (or to the bar at large, though there
were no other customers and the bartender was asleep). "I wonder if you have
read Zubarin on the relationship of extradigitalism to genius?"
"I have never heard of the work nor of the man," said Vincent.
"Doubt if either exist."
"I am Zubarin." said the man.
Vincent instinctively hid his misshapen left thumb. Yet it could not
have been noticed in that light, and he must have been crazy to believe that
there was any connection between it and the man's remark. It was not truly a
double thumb. He was not an extradigital, nor was he a genius.
"I refuse to become interested in you," said Vincent. "I am on the
verge of leaving. I dislike waking the bartender, but I did want another
drink."
"Sooner done than said."
"What is?"
"Your glass is full."
"It is? So it is. Is it a trick?"
"Trick is a name for anything either too frivolous or too mystifying
for us to comprehend. But on one long early morning a month ago you also
could have done the trick, and nearly as well."
"Could I have? How do you know about my long early morning --
assuming there to have been such?"
"I watched you for a while. Few others have the equipment with which
to watch you when you're in the aspect."
So they were silent for some time, and Vincent watched the clock and
was ready to go.
"I wonder," said the man in the dark, "if you have read
Schimmelpenninck on the sexagintal and the duodecimal in the Chaldee
Mysteries."
"I have not, and I doubt if anyone else has. I would guess that you
are also Schimmelpenninck, and that you have just made up the name on the
spur of the moment."
"I am Schimm, it is true, but I made up the name on the spur of the
moment many years ago."
"I am a little bored with you," said Vincent, "but I would
appreciate it if you'd do your glass-filling trick once more."
"I have just done so again. And you are not bored; you are
frightened."
"Of what?" asked Vincent, whose glass had in fact filled again.
"Of reentering a dream that you are not sure was a dream. But there
are often advantages to being both invisible and inaudible."
"Can you be invisible?"
"Was I not so when I went behind the bar just now and fixed you a
drink?"
"How?"
"A man in full stride goes at the rate of about five miles an hour.
Multiply that by sixty, which is the number of time. When I leave my stool
and go behind the bar I go at the rate of three hundred miles an hour. So I
am invisible to you, particularly if I move while you blink."
"One thing does not match. You might have got around there and back.
But you could not have poured."
"Shall I say that mastery over liquids and other objects is not
given to beginners? But for us there are many ways to outwit the slowness of
matter."
"I believe that you are a hoaxer. Do you know Dr. Mason?"
"I know of him, and that you went to see him. I know of his futile
attempts to penetrate a certain mystery. But I have not talked to him of
you." "I still believe that you are a phony. Could you put me back into
the state of my dream of a month ago?"
"It was not a dream. But I could put you again into that state."
"Prove it."
"Watch the clock. Do you believe that I can point my finger at it
and stop it for you? It is already stopped for me."
"No, I don't believe it. Yes, I guess I have to, since I see that
you have just done it. But it may be another trick. I don't know where the
clock is plugged in."
"Neither do I. Come to the door. Look at every clock you can see.
Are they not all stopped?"
"Yes. Maybe the power has gone off all over town."
"You know it has not. There are still a few lighted windows in those
buildings, though it is quite late."
"Why are you playing with me? I am neither on the inside nor the
outside. Either tell me the secret or say that you will not tell me."
"The secret isn't a simple one. It can only be arrived at after all
philosophy and learning has been assimilated."
"One man cannot arrive at that in one lifetime."
"Not in an ordinary lifetime. But the secret of the secret, if I may
put it that way, is that one must use part of it as a tool in learning. You
could not learn all in one lifetime but, by being permitted the first step,
to be able to read, say, sixty books in the time it took you to read one, to
pause for a minute in thought and use up only one second, to get the day's
work accomplished in eight minutes and so have time for other things -- by
such ways one may make a beginning. I will warn you, though. Even for the
most intelligent it is a race."
"A race? What race?"
"It is a race between success, which is life, and failure, which is
death."
"Let us skip the melodrama. But how do I get into the state and out
of it?"
"Oh, that is simple, so easy that it seems like a gadget. Here are
two diagrams I will draw. Note them carefully. This first -- invision it in
your mind, and you are in the state. Now the second one -- invision, and you
are out of it."
"That easy?"
"That deceptively easy. The trick is to learn why it works -- if you
want to succeed, meaning to live."
So Charles Vincent left him and went home, walking the mile in a
little less than fifteen seconds. But he still had not seen the face of the
man.
There are advantages intellectual, monetary, and amorous in being
able to enter the accelerated state at will. It is a fox game. One must be
careful not to be caught at it, nor to break or harm that which is in the
normal state.
Vincent could always find eight or ten minutes unobserved to
accomplish the day's work. And a fifteen-minute coffee break could turn into
a fifteen hour romp around the town.
There was this boyish pleasure in becoming a ghost: to appear and
stand motionless in front of an onrushing train and to cause the scream of
the whistle, and to be in no danger, being able to move five or ten times as
fast as the train; to enter and to sit suddenly in the middle of a select
group and see them stare, and then virtually to disappear from the middle of
them; to interfere in sports and games, entering the prize ring and
tripping, hampering, or slugging the unliked fighter; to blue-shot down the
hockey ice, skating at fifteen hundred miles an hour and scoring dozens of
goals at either end while the people only know that something odd is
happening.
There is pleasure in being able to shatter windows by chanting
little songs, for the voice (when in the state) will be to the world at
sixty times its regular pitch, though normal to oneself. And for this reason
also he was inaudible to others.
There was fun in petty thieving and tricks. He could take a wallet
from a man's pocket and be two blocks away when the victim turned at the
feel. He could come back and stuff it into the man's mouth as he bleated to
a policeman.
He could come into the home of a lady writing a letter, snatch up
the paper and write three lines on it and vanish before the scream got out
of her throat.
He could take shoe and sock off a man's foot while he was in full
stride. No human face since the beginning of time ever showed such a look of
pure astonishment as that of the man to whom this first happened.
Discovering oneself half barefoot of a sudden in a crowded street has no
parallel in all experience.
摘要：

STORIESBYR.A.LAFFERTY*indicatesoutstandingstorieschronologicalnotationtakenfrom"AnR.A.LaffertyChecklist"Institutestories(foundinRAL05file)*20.SevenDayTerror*25.What'stheNameofThatTown?*39.ThusWeFrustrateCharlemagne*43.TheHoleOntheCorner*44.LandoftheGreatHorses78.AllButtheWords122.FlamingDucksandGian...

展开>> 收起<<
R. A. Lafferty - Stories 1.pdf

共172页,预览35页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：172 页 大小：478.34KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 172
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注