The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
And the pork sausages and the teacher with the mustache and poems you
loved and
_page 24, paragraph 3, maximum speed on a live-cattle walkway is three
miles per hour: older walkways hold this speed with reduction gears
coupled to a standard 18-inch ehrenhafter unit. Standard practice in new
construction calls for holding speed by direct drive from a
specially-wound ehrenhafter. This places a special obligation in
breakdown maintenance men, who must distinguish between the two types,
carry two sets of wiring diagrams and a certain number of
mutually-uninterchangeable parts, though good design principles hold
these to a minimum. The main difference in the winding of a standard
18-incher and a lowspeed ehrenhafter rotor--_
Of course things are better now, Max Wyman, you owe a great debt to Jim
Hogan, Father of the Buffalo Syndic, who fought for your freedom in the
great old days, and to his descendants who are tirelessly working for
your freedom and happiness.
And bow-happiness is a girl named Inge Klohbel now that you're almost a
man.
You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of
Buffalo Syndic Territory.
And Inge Klohbel is why you put away the crazy dream of scholarship, for
her lips and hair and eyes and legs mean more to you than anything, more
than
_Later phonologic changes include palatal mutation; i.e., before_ cht
_and_ hs _the diphthongs_ eo, io, _which resulted from breaking, became_
ie (i, y) _as in_ cneoht, chieht, _and_ seox (_x equalling_ hs), siex,
six, syx....
the crazy dream of scholarship, what kind of a way is that to repay the
Mob and
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
repay the Syndic and young Mike Hogan all over the neighborhood suddenly
and Inge says he did stop and say hello but of course he was just being
polite.
so you hit the manuals hard and one day you go out on a breakdown call
and none of the older men could figure out why the pump was on the blink;
a roaring, chewing monster of a pump it was, sitting there like a dead
husk and the cattlefeed backed up four miles to a storage tank in the
suburbs and the steers in the yards bawling with hunger, and you traced
the dead wire, you out with the spot-welder, a zip of blue flame and the
pump began to chew again and you got the afternoon off.
* * * * *
And there they were.
_Lee Falcaro: (Bending over the 'muttering, twitching carcass)
Adrenalin. Brighter picture and louder sound._
_Assistant: (Opening a pinch cock in the tube that enters the arm,
increasing video contrast, increasing audio): He's weakening._
_Lee Falcaro: (In a whisper) I know. I know. But this is IT._
_Assistant: (Inaudibly) You cold-blooded bitch._
You are Max Wyman, you are Max Wyman,
and you don't know what to do about the Syndic that betrayed you, about
the girl who betrayed you with the living representative of the Syndic,
about the dream of scholarship that lies in ruins, the love that lies in
ruins after how many promises and vows, the faith of twenty years that
lies in ruins after how many declarations.
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
And a double whiskey with a beer chaser.
_Lee Falcaro: The alcohol. (It drips from a sterile graduate, trickles
through the rubber tubing and into the arm of the mumbling, sweating
carcass. The molecules mingle with the molecules of serum: In seconds
they are washed against the cell-walls of the forebrain. The cell-walls
their structure as the alcohol molecules bumble against them; the
lattices of jelly that wall in the cytoplasm and nuclear jelly become
thinner than they were. Streams of electrons that had coursed in
familiar paths through chains of neurones find easier paths through the
poison-thinned cell-walls. A "Memory" or an "Idea" or a "Hope" or a
"Value" that was a configuration of neurones linked by electron streams
vanishes when the electron streams find an easier way to flow a New
"Memories," "Ideas," "Hopes" and "Values" that are configurations of
neurones linked by electron streams are born.)_
Love and loyalty die, but not as if they had never been. Their ghosts
remain, Max Wyman and you are haunted by them. They hound you from
Buffalo to Erie, but there is no oblivion deep enough in the Mex joints,
or in Tampa tequila or Pittsburgh zubrovka or New York gin.
You tell incurious people who came to the place on the corner for a shot
and some talk that you're the best breakdown man that ever came out of
Erie; you tell them women are no God-damn good, you tell them the
Syndic--here you get sly and look around with drunken caution, lowering
your voice--you tell them the Syndic's no God-damned good, and you
drunkenly recite poetry until they move away, puzzled and annoyed.
_Lee Falcaro: (Passing a weary hand across her forehead) well, he's had
it. Disconnect the tubes, give him a 48-hour stretch in bed and then get
him on the street pointed towards Riveredge._
_Assistant: Does the apparatus go into dead storage?_
_Lee Falcaro: (Grimacing uncontrollably) No. Unfortunately, no._
_Assistant: (Inaudibly, as she plucks needle-tipped tubes from the
carcass' elbows) who's the next sucker?_