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.It's to put me at my ease, he thought.They talked from screen to screen to screen and the computeritself, with its set of on-offs, gave him astigmatism.Evne's group nextflashed into view in the foundations of Hotel Six; they took the elevatorand came out in the center of the bubble, and at that moment with the air ofa tremendous joke the bubble disappeared.It remained as warm as ever.Far off on the horizon, almost where the regular houses began, five dotssprang into existence following a leader dot: Joseph K leaning on a staff, asheepskin tied around his neck, led them through the freezing gale, andleaving the prints of their naked feet in the grit of the desert floor,they walked across the Gobi for eleven miles and then into the weather bubbleas if it no longer existed, as indeed it did not.There was only a dome of hotair and a collection of chairs and mirrors that some madman had put out on thehigh plains in mid-November.And they, too, saw themselves as clever and good.Can you, said dark Joseph K (visions of frills, innocent delight, childish dancing)provide us with clothes? With food? (primitives make slobbering spectacles of themselves)People to meet, perhaps? (unthinkably sadistic)Aloud, about decorativeFranz, his alabaster-pale-marble-milkglass-fairy-bottle brother:"Mama meant us for book-ends.""We've few extreme racial types left," said the man with the computer console.He spoke after a hair's-breadth hitch, as he always did whenreceiving instructions from the computer network;a good servant, he had told Jai Vedh, but a bad master.Echoes upon echoes wrapped him round, the endless gossip of themachines, an awful clattering; he looked out through the flashing plaidof his instructions with genuine agony; pale, he put his hand to hisheart, excused himself, and sat down.Franz, the scholar, was pullingthe stuffing out of a chair.The third dot, a handsome, naked, old woman withcollapsed breasts, a bagful of bones as if on stilts, a mass of wrinkles withthe face of an old hawk, says, "Sit down.All sit," and they do.They're athome.They were, to Jai, so fat, so round, so skinny, so tall, that they wereobviously meant to be part of the cosmic joke: the tall, pale, lax girl withPage 83ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlbig hands and feet, the globular, buck-toothed boy (TheMemory Zip) and a young girl who had no name at all, an exquisiteChinese figurine about whom somebody had been very, very careless; she had abad scar on her face.She smiled beautifully, turning her head from side toside as if she were slightly deaf.Evne, who had gotten herself into whitefeathers and diamonds, an incredible costume considering where she was,was to Jai (who knew her) luxurious as as eel; she was going to be seductiveand civilized.She was thinking of huge populations, planet-wide cities,millions of salons, a life of stupefying publicity.She said, "My, what a lovely silence."Winds of gale force, fifty degrees below freezing, play with the top of theairy weather dome."What you call psionics," said Evne, handling her feathers, "is the result ofperception and education, nothing more, although you don't believethat.The silent areas of our brains are really silent.There areno extra radio programs.If it were radiation, you would have found it outlong ago.I have told you the fable of the Squirrel and the Ivy; now I will tell you thefable of the Inside and the Outside; Inside is Outside and OutsideisInside.Action at a distance.Isn't that too bad? Any system of organizationmust be tied to an organic body, so there are limits, which you think youknow; the rules are the rules of the Inside and that's too bad, too.IamAdelina Patti and I sing: O Space, Time, and Mass! This is anactor.Space, time, and mass.He's a dancer.Space, time, and mass.Here'sto you.Space, time, and mass.""We hitched a lot of rides to get here," said The Memory Zip inthe voice of a slow and homesick saw."You can't beam things close to a planetbecause of the gravity.The gravity of what would happen.We hitched a rideon the Erewhon.We hitched a ride on the Constellation.We hitched a ride onthe Elizabeth IV.We hitched a ride on "Another lovely silence, said Evne the Dressed-Up.Oh, learn to concentrate, gentlemen!she added.Learn to sing!"They're ineducable," said Joseph K, and bringing back the weatherdome with a group flip of the wrist, they all got up.Laced arms."My considered opinion," said Joseph K."Bad environment."But the pros were hard, the pros were tough and tragic; in their seated ranks,so walled off from each other, so lonely, every last one of them, theynonetheless thought (impelled by the irresistible likeness of their prisons)the same thought."War!" said one."I speak aloud for convenience's sake.""Hell, you can't find us," said Joseph K."Now can you? That thing you bombed,that was nothing, that was uninhabited.But you thought it was us."We can be distracted, thought Evne reasonably."You can be distracted," said another."You can't pay attention toeverything at once.Now can you?""We'll manage," said Joseph K."We'll move.""Teach us or be damned," said a third."You can't read a computer'smind," and rising all together(They're right, said Evne.It's in code.It would take too long)Page 84ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html, directed their but no, it was coming through the computer console, madwith flip-flops, directing a radio beam to all those bloody antique mirrors,which Jai knew had been there for some otherreason, and what do you want with micro-circuitry on the backs ofmirrors anyhow? Machines have no feelings.Machines don't leave traces.No one at the meeting had known anything about it
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