"Yeah, only malted. With lettuce and chocolate sprinkles."
"Who you kiddin'?" the waitress said, and turned to go.
"No, hold it. Tell Joe to please scramble them on both sides."
"What you _talkin'_ about?" the waitress said. "We ain't got no one
here called Joe."
"So okay, Joseph, then. Tell him just a boiled egg sunny side up."
The waitress left, frowning.
"Our Miss Framis," one of the boys said, meaning the girl, and the
others smiled. They looked as though they were sneering at the same
time and hoped they would be taken for juvenile delinquents.
There were two very odd-looking men in the booth opposite and they
were listening to the conversation. Their oddness lay in an atmosphere
rather than in any physical abnormality. The girl noticed them and
nudged one of the boys.
The three boys looked at the men resentfully and one of them said
something under his breath, but the girl said, "Button it." Then she
asked the men opposite, "Lookin' for someone, mister?"
The two men looked away, and this made the boys feel brave. One of them
said, "Let's give 'em the works."
"No, leave it to me." The girl got up and went across to the two men.
"Me and my friends was wondering. Maybe you gentlemen would like to
come to a trake in the gort later?"
The three boys snickered and the men looked up at the girl and waited
with blank faces.
"Or maybe you'd rather we put on a hanse for you?" she said.
"No, sit down," one of the men--the bigger one--said, and moved back to
make room for her. She glanced at him with surprise for a moment and
sat down next to him.
One of the boys started to get up when he saw this, but the others
pulled him down again.
"What did you say to us just now?" the big man asked. "It was too small
in here."
She shook her head and frowned. "Why, that was just ... I said did you
want for us to put on a hanse, is all." She had a rather feeble grin.
"Yes," the big man said. "We do."
She glanced back at her friends nervously, and then at the man again.
"I don't get you," she said.
"Neither do we," the smaller man said.
The boys across the room were listening quietly and then one of them
said, "Go on, tell 'em, Miss Framis."
"We just want you to quint," the big man said, "and won't thursday on
it."
She stared at him without expression and got up slowly. She went over
to her friends. "Let's get out of here," she said.
She was shivering.
* * * * *
Q. You say you object to this line of questioning?
A. (She) No, I just don't like being spied on. And it made the kids
... mad. They wrecked the car and that meant starting all over again.
Q. The car?
A. Yes, their hot-rod. When we got outside, they acted the way
teen-agers do and went too fast. They were sore at those
spies--they took it out on the car, so it went off the road. It
turned over three times and we were all killed.
Q. They were not spies. They were acting on their own.
A. _I_ didn't know that. I just knew something was funny. Anyway,
how can you say that? They're a waste. And it would have been part
of you, just as I am. It was more of a waste if I hadn't been
split. The other part was only about eleven years old and I had to
wait another six years to--
Q. It is your own fault if you were split. You cannot blame us.
This has happened before--you have aimed badly and arrived wrong.
Don't forget about the help.
A. Well, in this case it's a lucky thing I did; otherwise the whole
thing would have been wasted. And the kelp--that was dreadfully
dull. I wanted to try a really primitive form, but not _that_
primitive. Then I got washed up and it led to the cat. After
they got the iodine out of the kelp, I was suddenly a cat.
Q. This has not been reported.
A. I'm reporting it now. It wasn't dull in the least, but they were
very superstitious about cats in those days, and they decided I was
possessed.
Q. They saw through you?
A. Oh, yes. People usually do.
Q. You couldn't have been very successful if they saw through you.
A. It doesn't make any difference if they see through you. The
important thing is to see through them.
Q. But you were a cat.
A. Cats are in a very good position to see through people. I think
they sensed that. Anyway, I was ... done away with.
Q. Burned again?
A. Yes.
Q. Seems to be a habit of yours. What happens? How does it feel?
A. I cannot explain it to you, but I know what to do. It's not _my_
habit--it's one of theirs, but it's dying out in most places now.
And there was a time when it would never have occurred to them.
They were too frightened of it.
Q. Frightened of what?
A. Of fire. It was very new then....
* * * * *
The hunters came back to the cave at dusk, and one of them went to the
fire that was kept going constantly in front of the opening. He took a
dry branch and held it in the fire until the end caught. Then he held
it up. "If we take this, we can hunt in the dark," he said. "And when
it is nearly eaten by the fire, we can take another branch and start it
again. That way we do not need the moon."
"That way we can hunt until we are tired," said the other.
"That way we can kill twice as much game," said the first.
"There is so much game in the cave now," a young woman said, "that it
is beginning to smell."
The older hunter glanced at her apprehensively; she made him feel
foolish, always finding fault with his plans. "Perhaps so," he said.
"But at other times we starve."
"Besides," she said, "if you take the fire with you to see where you
are going and to see the game, the game will see you."
The hunters looked at one another and shrugged. The woman went into
the cave and returned with an earthenware pot. There were pieces of
raw meat and some water in it and she put it on the fire, propping it
in position with three stones. The second hunter looked at the pot
curiously. He was a younger brother from the other side of the valley,
where he lived with his mates. He pointed at the pot and looked
inquiringly at the older brother.
"She made it out of mud," the older brother said.
"Why doesn't it fall apart with the water in it?"
"I put it into the fire first, for a long time," the young woman said.
"A very big fire. The mud gets red--and then it gets hard so it won't
melt when the water is in it."