The machete moved swiftly. The thin dry body fell headless to the floor. There was no blood.
The grip of the teeth did not relax. Pain coursed up Tallant’s left arm—a sharper, more bitter pain than you would expect from the bite. Almost as though venom—
He dropped the machete, and his strong white hand plucked and twisted at the dry brown lips. The teeth stayed clenched, unrelaxing. He sat bracing his back against the wall and gripped the head between his knees. He pulled. His flesh ripped, and blood formed dusty clots on the dirt floor. But the bite was firm.
His world had become reduced now to that hand and that head. Nothing outside mattered. He must free himself. He raised his aching arm to his face, and with his own teeth he tore at that unrelenting grip. The dry flesh crumbled away in desert dust, but the teeth were locked fast. He tore his lip against their white keenness, and tasted in his mouth the sweetness of blood and something else.
He staggered to his feet again. He knew what he must do. Later he could use cautery, a tourniquet, see a doctor with a story about a Gila monster—their heads grip too, don’t they?—but he knew what he must do now.
He raised the machete and struck again.
His white hand lay on the brown floor, gripped by the white teeth in the brown face. He propped himself against the adobe wall, momentarily unable to move. His open wrist hung over the deeply hollowed stone. His blood and his strength and his life poured out before the little figure of sticks and clay.
The female stood in the doorway now, the sun bright on her thin brownness. She did not move. He knew that she was waiting for the hollow stone to fill.
The Model of a Science Fiction Editor
I am the very model of a modern s f editor.
My publisher is happy, as is each and every creditor.
I know the market trends and how to please the newsstand purchaser;
With agents and name authors my relations can’t be courteouser.
I’ve a clever knack of finding out what newsmen want to write about
And seeing that their stories spread my name in black and white about.
I’ve a colleague to be blamed for the unpleasant sides of bossery,
And I know the masses never quite get tired of flying saucery.
In short, in matters monetary, social, and promotional,
I am the very model of a pro s f devotional.
I’ve a pretty taste in literature and know the trends historical
From Plato down to Bradbury in order categorical.
I can tell a warp in space from one that’s purely in chronology,
And every BEM I publish has his own strange teratology.
I make my writers stress the small scale human problems solely
Because the sales are better and you might be picked by Foley.
I can stump the highbrow critics with allusions to Caractacus,
A ploy that I’ve perfected by a plentitude of practicus.
In short, in matters cultural, esthetical and liter’y
I run the very model of a true s f outfittery.
Now if I had a smattering of knowledge scientifical,
If I were certain “terrene” didn’t simply mean “terrifical,”
If I could tell a proton from a neutron or a neuron,
How your weight on Mars will vary from the planet that now you’re on,
If I knew enough to know why Velikovsky is nonsensic
And why too close a Shaver can make even hardened fen sick,
If I’d read what men have learned from other planets’ spectranalysis,
In short, if I could tell the future Wonderland from Alice’s,
I might in logic, insight and inspired extrapolation
Produce the very model of ideal s f creation.
We Print the Truth
“All right, then, tell me this: If God can do anything—’’Jake Willis cleared his throat and paused, preparatory to delivering the real clincher.
The old man with the scraggly beard snorted and took another shot of applejack. “—can He make a weight so heavy He can’t lift it? We know that one, Jake, and it’s nonsense. It’s like who wakes the bugler, or who shaves the barber, or how many angels can dance how many sarabands on the point of a pin. It’s just playing games. It takes a village atheist to beat a scholastic disputant at pure verbal hogwash. Have a drink.”
Jake Willis glared. “I’d sooner be the village atheist,” he said flatly, “than the town drunkard. You know I don’t drink.” He cast a further sidewise glare at the little glass in Father Byrne’s hand, as though the priest were only a step from the post of town drunkard himself.
“You’re an ascetic without mysticism, Jake, and there’s no excuse for it. Better be like me: a mystic without any a trace of asceticism. More fun.”
“Stop heckling him, Luke,” Father Byrne put in quietly. “Let’s hear what if God can do anything.”
Lucretius Sellers grunted and became silent. MacVeagh said, “Go ahead, Jake,” and Chief Hanby nodded.
They don’t have a cracker barrel in Grover, but they still have a hot-stove league. It meets pretty regularly in the back room of the Sentinel. Oh, once in a while someplace else. On a dull night in the police station they may begin to flock around Chief Hanby, or maybe even sometimes they get together with Father Byrne at the parish house. But mostly it’s at the Sentinel.
There’s lots of spare time around a weekly paper, even with the increase in job printing that’s come from all the forms and stuff they use out at the Hitchcock plant. And Editor John MacVeagh likes to talk, so it’s natural for him to gather around him all the others that like to talk too. It started when Luke Sellers was a printer, before he resigned to take up
