The memory was a treasured one--the old man had perished in a 'copter
crash several years ago--and for a long while Blake did not move.
He had never been in his own mind before. Consequently he was more
affected than he might otherwise have been. Finally, stirring himself,
he walked out into the kitchen. On a shelf above the sink stood a gaily
colored box of his mother's favorite detergent with a full-length
drawing of Vera Velvetskin, the company's blond and chic visual symbol,
on the front. His mother was standing before the huge automatic range,
preparing a meal she had served twenty-three years ago. He regarded her
with moist eyes. She had died a dozen years before his father, but the
wound that her death had caused had never healed. He wanted to go up
behind her and touch her shoulder and say, "What's for supper, mom?"
but he knew it would do no good. For her he had no reality, not only
because he was far in her future, but because in his mind-world she was
a mortal and he, a god--a picayune god, perhaps, but a real one.
As he was about to turn away, the name-plate on the range caught his
eye, and thinking that he had read the two words wrong, he stepped
closer so that he could see them more clearly. No, he had made no
mistake: the first word was "Sabrina", and the second was "York".
He stepped back. Odd that a kitchen range should have the same name as
his quarry. But perhaps not unduly so. Giving appliances human names
had been common practice for centuries. Even a name like "Sabrina
York", while certainly not run-of-the-mill, was bound to be duplicated
in real life. Nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness accompanied him when
he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
He went through each room systematically, but saw no sign of Sabrina
York. He lingered for some time in his own room, wistfully watching his
fifteen-year-old self lolling on the bed with a dog-eared copy of _The
Galaxy Boys and the Secret of the Crab Nebula_, then he stepped back
out into the hall and started to descend the stairs.
At the head of the stairs a narrow window looked out over the front
yard and thence out over the meadow. He glanced absently through the
panes, and came to an abrupt halt. His three pursuers were wading
through the long meadow grass less than a quarter of a mile away--not
close enough as yet for him to be able to make out their faces, but
close enough for him to be able to see that two of them were wearing
dresses and that the third had on a blue skirt and blouse, and a kepi
to match. He gasped. It simply hadn't occurred to him that his pursuers
might be women. To his consternation he discovered that he was even
more loath to go back and accost them than he had been before. He
actually had an impulse to flee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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