Both of Them
Entropy and Energy
The Opaque Part of the Body
If your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may
easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a
seventh continent, upon some Atlantis, and you find there unheard
of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air without the
aid of wings or aeros, stones lifted into the air by the power of
a gaze,--in brief, imagine that you see things that cannot come to
your mind even if you suffer from dream-sickness. That is how I feel
now. For you must understand that no one has ever gone beyond the
Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years' War, as I already have told
you.
I know that it is my duty to you, my unknown friends, to give more
details about that unsuspected strange world which opened to me
yesterday. But for the time being I am unable to return to that
subject. Everything is so novel, so novel it is like a rainstorm,
and I am not big enough to collect it all. I spread out the folds of
my unif, my palms,--and yet pailfuls splash past me and only drops
can reach these pages....
At first I heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. I
recognized her voice, the voice of I-330, tense, metallic--and
another one, almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler, the voice of
U-. Then the door came open with a crack and both of them shot into
the room. _Shot_ is the right word.
I-330 put her hand on the back of my armchair and smiled over her
shoulder but only with her teeth, at U-. I should not care to stand
before such a smile.
"Listen," she said to me, "this woman seems to have made it her
business to guard you from me like a little child. Is it with your
permission?"
"But he _is_ a child. Yes! That is why he does not notice that you
... that it is only in order.... That all this is only a foul game!
Yes! And it is my duty...."
For a second (in the mirror) the broken, trembling line of brows.
I leaped, controlling with difficulty the other self within me,
the one with the hairy fists; with difficulty, pushing every word
through my teeth, I cried straight into her face, into her very
gills:
"Get out of here at once! Out! At once!"
The gills swelled at first into brick-red lumps, then fell and
became gray. She opened her mouth to say something but without a
word she slammed it shut and went out.