[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
About an hour out of San Francisco on the flight to Los Angeles, I made
the discovery. I had finished reading the _Chronicle_, folded and put
it beside me, turned and looked out the window, expecting to see the
San Joaquin Valley but finding only a sea of clouds instead. So I
returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed
gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats
before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde.
I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now
she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and
calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a
window where there was nothing to see.
I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a
togetherness-type-magazine reader.
Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I
should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles
for, and not wanting to.
So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps
that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever
complained.
It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore
the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers
and--well, human beings. But human beings aren't worth the trouble.
It's like swimming through spaghetti. And I've got to stay away from
electric wires. They hurt. Now don't ask me _how_ they hurt.
Maybe you think it's fun. For the most part, it really isn't. I always
knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and
therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can't feel
the color of anything, just its consistency. An apple senses about the
same as a potato, except for the core and the stem. I can't even tell
if there's writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn't much. Just
the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to
become pretty good at guessing.
Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object
in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it--a lipstick. A round, hard
object with dust inside--a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small
book, probably an address book, money in a change purse--a few bills
and coins. Not much else.
I was a little disappointed. I've run across a gun or two in my time.
But I never say anything.
* * * * *
I learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when
Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat
my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some
of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction.
Lunchtime was nearly over and we'd both finished eating; she said she'd
be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during
her absence, which I dutifully did.
Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for
her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and
looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while
she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which
she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.
"It's in your purse," I blurted out.