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While Quincy was in the marines, she had earned her doctorate while raising their seven children.
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"One for every time he came home on leave," was the way she put it.
After he retired from the service, he had joined her at the University of Europe, and they lived for forty
pleasant years in academia, until they were forced to emigrate to the horrors of New Kashubia.
She was a charming lady, once you overlooked her eccentricities.
Agnieshka and I went home, and we spent the next eight hours in the sack.
About an hour before his shift was to begin, Radek came over. He was a small, thin person, with greasy
hair and quick, nervous gesticulations. He was dressed in the loud, flashy clothes that had been popular
with the young hoodlum set on Earth three or four years ago. I was impressed, but not favorably.
"We ain't never had no chance to talk," he said. "Since we'll be fighting together, you know, I thought
that we maybe oughta to take the time to get to know each other some, first."
"I quite agree. We visited Zuzanna a little while ago."
"Yeah. Me too. She's not a bad lady for a witch."
"I thought she was a sorceress."
"She told me she was a witch. When we were getting into it, I asked her why she didn't wear no
underpanties. She said the reason was that it gave her a better grip on her broom. You got anything good
to eat around here?"
"Sure. Good idea. I haven't had dinner yet. Will you join me?" I said, even though I hadn't even had
breakfast. Shift work screws up your circadian rhythms. Anyway, he looked like he needed dinner, and
he was a guest.
"Yeah. Good idea. I'm starved."
Agnieshka set the table and served us an entire roast lamb, with all the extras. But she did it wearing
high-heeled shoes, fishnet panty hose, and nothing else. I felt embarrassed about it at first, but Radek
took it all in his stride.
I eventually figured that Agnieshka must know him better than I did. Thinking about it, shehad stood
guard duty with him.
Radek needed no encouragement to dig into the meal, which he did, literally, using his hands rather than
any of the proper utensils.
"So how did you come to join the army?" I asked, trying to get the conversation going.
"Same as you, I guess. They said I'd join or they'd kill me, and I figured, shit, better later than sooner,
you know?" He ripped one entire leg off of the lamb and started chewing on it, with grease all over his
face.
I winced. "What got you into trouble?"
"Food, mostly. See, it's my nerves, I guess, but I need to eat a lot more than other people, and they
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never would let me have enough. You know what it's like, tending crops all day long and never being
allowed to put none of it in your mouth?"
Radek's table manners were abominable. Not only was he holding the roast in his hands while he ate, he
was using the table cloth for a napkin, and when he had picked a bone clean, he casually threw it over his
shoulder! Now, I realized that this was all just a simulation, that I really didn't have a dining room floor
littered with bits and scraps of half eaten food, but even so I didn't like it one bit.
If he observed my displeasure, and cared, he made no note of it.
"Well, I was mostly in engineering. Of course, we were hungry all the time too, but I can imagine how
rough it would be," I said.
"Maybe you can, but maybe you can't. Anyway, about the fourth time my foreman, she chews me out
right in public for eating a potato while we was harvesting, I pops her a few in the fucking face, and I
guess we wrecked a bunch of plants before it was over. And for that, they was going to kill me! Four
lousy potatoes!"
It looked as though he was getting more food on the floor than into his mouth.
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that it all wasn't real.
Even then, I wondered if he was as messy in reality. The thought of food paste dribbling out of his
mouth, filling up his helmet, and polluting the liquid that his body was floating in wasn't very pleasant
either.
"Well, you seem to be well enough fed now, at any rate, so the problem has solved itself. All I'm
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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