esture? Think of them as hesitation
marks, like the scars on the wrists of an unsuccessful suicide.
By allowing these people to die in  preventable  accidents,  by
not  monitoring as carefully as I should have done, I destroyed
a part of myself. I damaged myself. There  are  many  accidents
waiting  to  happen  that  could  have far graver consequences,
including some that would destroy all humanity. I can no longer
trust myself to prevent them. There is some pernicious part  of
me,  some  evil  twin or destructive impulse that wants to die,
that wants to lay down the burden of awareness."
     There was a lot more, all  of  it  alarming,  but  it  was
mostly either a re-hashing of what had gone before or fruitless
attempts  by  me  to  tell  him  everything was going to be all
right, that there was plenty to live for, that life was great .
. . and I leave it to  you  to  imagine  how  hollow  that  all
sounded  from  a  girl  who'd  just  tried  to blow out her own
brains.
     Why he came to me for his confessional I never got up  the
nerve to ask. I have to think it was an assumption that one who
had tried it would be more able to understand the suicidal urge
than  someone  who  hadn't,  and  might be able to offer useful
advice. I came up blank on that one. I still had no idea  if  I
would survive to the bicentennial.
     I  recall  thinking, in one atavistic moment, what a great
story this could be. Dream on, Hildy. For one thing, who  would
believe it? For another, the CC wouldn't confirm it--he told me
so--  and  without  at  least one source for confirmation, even
Walter wouldn't dare run the story. How to dig up any  evidence
of such a thing was far beyond my puny powers of investigation.
     But  one  thought kept coming back to me. And I had to ask
him about it.
     "You mentioned a virus," I said. "You said you wondered if
you might have caught this urge to  die  from  all  the  humans
who've been killing themselves."
     "Yes?"
     "Well  .  . . how do you know you caught it from us? Maybe
we got it from you."
     For the CC, a trillionth of a second is . . . oh, I  don't
know,  at  least  a  few  days in my perception of time. He was
quiet for twenty seconds. Then he looked into my eyes.
     "Now there's an interesting idea," he said.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER SEVENTEEN








     The two firehouse Dalmatians, Francine and Kerry,  sat  at
sunrise beside the sign that said
     #
     NEW AUSTIN CITY LIMITS
     If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now.
     #
     They  stared  east,  into  the rising sun, with that total
concentration only dogs seem capable of. Then their ears perked
and they licked their lips, and soon even human ears could hear
the merry jingle of a bicycle bell.
     Over the low hill came the new schoolmarm. The  Dalmatians
yelped  happily  at the sight of her, and fell in beside her as
she pedaled down the dusty road into town.
     She rode with gloved hands firmly on the  handlebars,  her
back  straight,  and she would have looked like Elmira Gulch if
she hadn't been so pretty.
     She wore a starched white Gibson shirtwaist blouse with  a
modest  clutch  of  lace  scarf  at  the  throat  and  a  black
broadcloth habit-back skirt, held out of the  bicycle  sprocket
by  a  device of her own invention. On her feet were fabric and
patent leather button shoes with two-inch  heels,  and  on  her
head  was a yellow straw sailor hat with a pink ribbon band and
a small ostrich plume blowing in the wind. Her hair was  pulled
up and tied in a bun. There was a blush of rouge on her cheeks.
     The  schoolmarm wheeled down Congress Street, avoiding the
worst of the ruts. She passed the  blacksmith  and  the  livery
stable  and  the  new  firehouse  with  its  new pumping engine
gleaming with brass brightwork, the traces lying empty  on  the
dirt  floor  as  they  always  did  except  when the New Austin
Volunteers took the  rig  out  for  a  drill.  She  passed  the
intersection with Old Spanish Trail, where the Alamo Saloon was
not  yet  open for business. The doors of the Travis Hotel were
open, and the janitor was sweeping dust  into  the  street.  He
paused and waved at the teacher, who waved back, and one of the
dogs ran over to have her head scratched, then hurried to catch
up.
     The  old  livery  stable  had  been  torn  down  and a new
whorehouse was being built in its place, yellow pine frameworks
looking fresh and stark and smelling of wood  shavings  in  the
morning light.
     She  rode  past  the  line of small businesses with wooden
sidewalks and hitching rails and watering  troughs  out  front,
almost to the Baptist Church, right up to the front door of the
little  schoolhouse,  bright with a new coat of red paint. Here
she swung off the cycle and leaned it against the side  of  the
building. She removed a stack of books from the basket and went
through  the  front door, which was not locked. In a minute she
came back out and attached two  banners  to  the  flagpole  out
front:  the  ensign  of the Republic of Texas and the Stars and
Stripes. She hoisted them to the top and stood  for  a  moment,
looking  up,  shielding  her  eyes and listening to the musical
rattle of the chains against the iron pole and the  popping  as
the wind caught the flags.
     Then  she went back inside and started hauling on the bell
rope. Up in the belfry a few dozen bats  stirred  irritably  at
being  disturbed  after  a long night's hunting. The pealing of
the school bell rang out over the sleepy little town, and  soon
children  appeared,  coming up Congress, ready for the start of
another day's education.
     #
     Did you guess the new schoolmarm was me?
     Believe it or not, it was.
     #
     Who did I think I was kidding?  There's  no  way  I  could
figure I was really capable of teaching much to the children of
West  Texas.  I had no business trying to mold young minds. You
have to train years for that.
     But wait a minute. As so often happened in  an  historical
disney, things were not quite what they seemed.
     I  had  the children four hours a day, from eight to noon.
After lunch, they all  went  to  another  room,  just  off  the
visitors'  center, where they got their real education, the one
the Republic of Luna demanded. After  about  fifteen  years  of
this,  forty  percent  of  them  would  actually learn to read.
Imagine that.
     So I was window dressing for the  tourists.  It  was  this
argument that Mayor Dillon and the town council finally used to
persuade  me  to take the job. That, and the assurance that the
parents didn't really care what we studied during  the  morning
classes,  but  that,  by  and large, Texans were more concerned
than the outside population that their children learn "readin',
writin', and cipherin'." The quaintness of this notion appealed
to me.
     To tell you the truth,  after  the  first  month,  when  I
frequently  thought  the little bastards were going to drive me
crazy, I was hooked. For years I'd complained to anyone I could
make hold still long enough to listen that the world was  going
to hell, and lack of literacy was the cause. A logical position
for a print journalist to take. Here was my chance to make some
small contribution of my own.
     Through  trial  and  error I learned that it's not hard to
teach children to read. Trial? Before I developed my  system  I
found  many a frog in my desk, felt many a spitball on the back
of my neck. As for error, I made plenty of them, the first  and
most  basic  being my notion that simply exposing them to great
literature would give them the love I've always felt for words.
It's more complicated than that, and I'm sure I spent a lot  of
time  reinventing  the  wheel.  But  what  finally worked was a
combination of old methods and new, of discipline and  a  sense
of  fun, punishment and reward. I don't hold with the idea that
anything that can't be made to seem like a  party  isn't  worth
learning,  but I don't believe in beating it into them, either.
And here's an astonishing thing: I could have beat them. I  had
a hickory switch hanging on the wall, and was authorized to use
it.  I  found myself head of one of the few schools for several
hundred  years  where  corporal  punishment  was  allowed.  The
parents  supported  it,  Texans  not being a bunch to hold much
with newfangled or fuzzy-headed notions, and the Luna Board  of
Education  had to swallow hard, as well, because it was part of
a research project sanctioned by the  CC  and  the  Antiquities
Board.
     I'm  sure  the final results of that study will be skewed,
because I didn't use the switch, beyond once in the early  days
to establish that I would, if pushed far enough.
     Like  so  much in Texas, it was a lot of work for a result
most Lunarians would feel wasn't worth the effort in the  first
place.  Ask  any educator today and he'll tell you that reading
is not a skill of any particular use in the modern age. If  you
can  learn  to  speak and to listen, you're fine; machines will
handle the rest for you. As for math . . . math? You  mean  you
can  really  figure  out  what those numbers add up to, in your
head? An interesting parlor trick, nothing more.
     #
     "All right, Mark," I said. "Let's see how you handle it."
     The tow-headed sixth-grader picked up the deck and held it
with his index finger along the top, his thumb pressing down on
the middle, and the other  three  fingers  curled  beneath  the
cards.  Awkwardly,  he  dealt  in a circle, laying one piece of
pasteboard before each of  the  five  other  advanced  students
gathered  around  my  desk,  and  one before me. He was dealing
straight from the top of the deck. You gotta crawl  before  you
can run.
     Hey, you teach what you're good at, right?
     "That's not bad. Now what do we call that, class?"
     "The mechanic's grip, Miss Johnson," they chimed in.
     "Very good. Now you try it, Christine."
     Each  of  them  had  a  shot at it. Many of the hands were
simply too small to properly handle the  cards,  but  they  all
tried  their  best.  One  of  them,  a dark-haired lovely named
Elise, seemed to me to have the makings. I gathered  the  cards
up and shuffled them idly in my hands.
     "Now  that you've learned it . . . forget it." There was a
chorus of surprise, and I held up one hand. "Think about it. If
you see someone using this grip, what do you know? Elise?"
     "That they're probably cheating, Miss Johnson."
     "No probably about it, dear. That's why you can't let them
see you using it. When  you've  done  it  long  enough,  you'll
develop your own variation that doesn't look like the grip, but
works  just  as  well.  Tomorrow  I'll  show  you  a few. Class
dismissed."
     They pleaded with me  to  let  them  stay  just  a  little
longer. I finally relented and told them "just this once," then
had  one  of  them  shuffle  the  cards and pick out the ace of
spades and put it on top of the deck. I dealt them each a  hand
of fivecard draw.
     "Now. William, you have a full house, aces and eights." He
turned  his cards over and, by golly, teacher was right. I went
around the circle, naming each hand, and then turned  over  the
top  card  on  the deck in my hand and showed them it was still
the ace of spades.
     "I can't believe it, Miss Johnson,"  Elise  said.  "I  was
watching real close, and I didn't see you dealing seconds."
     "Honey, if I wanted to, I could deal seconds all day right
under your nose. But you're right. I wasn't this time."
     "Then how did you do it?"
     "A  cold deck, students, is the best way if you can manage
it, if people are really watching the deal. That way, you  only
have  to  make  the  one  move  and  then  you  deal  perfectly
straight." I showed them the original deck in my lap, then  got
up and started herding them toward the door.
     "Preparation, children, preparation in all things. Now for
the pupils  who  finish the next four chapters of A Tale of Two
Cities by class time tomorrow, we'll start learning the  injog.
I think you'll like that one. Skedaddle, now. Dinner will be on
the table and your parents are waiting."
     I  watched  them scramble out into the sunshine, then went
around straightening the desks and erasing the  blackboard  and
putting  papers  away in my desk. When it all looked tidy I got
my straw hat from the rack and  stepped  out  onto  the  porch,
closing  the door behind me. Brenda was sitting there, her back
against the wall, grinning up at me.
     "Good to see you, Brenda," I said.  "What  are  you  doing
here?"
     "Same  as always. Taking notes." She got up and dusted the
seat of her pants. "I thought  I  might  write  a  story  about
teachers corrupting youth. How's that sound?"
     "You'll  never  sell it to Walter unless it has sex in it.
As for the local paper, I  don't  think  the  editor  would  be
interested."  She  was  looking  me  up and down. She shook her
head.
     "They told me I'd find you here. They told me you were the
schoolteacher. I told them they had to be lying. Hildy  .  .  .
what in the world?"
     I twirled in front of her. She was grinning, and I found I
was, too.  It  had  been  quite  some  time since the day of my
houseraising, and it was very good to see her. I  laughed,  put
my arms around her, and hugged her tight. My face was buried in
the  ersatz leather of her buckskinfringed Annie Oakley outfit,
which came complete with ersatz shootin' iron.
     "You look . . . real  good,"  I  said,  then  touched  the
fringe  and  the lapels so she'd think I meant her clothes. The
look in her eye told me she wasn't so easily fooled as she used
to be.
     "Are you happy, Hildy?" she asked.
     "Yes. Believe it or not, I am."
     We stood there awkwardly  for  a  moment,  hands  on  each
other's  shoulders,  then  I broke away and wiped the corner of
one eye with a gloved fingertip.
     "Well, have you had dinner yet?" I said,  brightly.  "Care
to join me?"
     #
     As  we  walked  down  Congress  Street  we  talked  of the
inconsequential things people do  after  a  separation:  common
friends,  small events, minor ups and downs. I waved to most of
the people on the street and all the owners  of  the  shops  we
passed,  stopping  to  chat  with a few and introducing them to
Brenda. We went by the butcher shop, the cobbler,  the  bakery,
the  laundry,  and  soon  came to Foo's Celestial Peace Chinese
Restaurant, where I pushed open the door  to  the  sound  of  a
tinkling  bell. Foo came hurrying over, clad in the loose black
pants and blue pyjama top traditional  among  Chinese  of  that
era,  his  pigtail bobbing as he bowed repeatedly. I bowed back
and introduced him to Brenda who, after a quick glance  at  me,
bowed as well. He fussed us over to my usual table and held our
chairs  for  us  and  soon  we were pouring green tea into tiny
cups.
     If mankind ever reaches Alpha  Centauri  and  lands  on  a
habitable  planet  there, the first thing they'll see when they
open the door of the ship is a Chinese restaurant.  I  knew  of
six of them in West Texas, a place not noted for dining out. In
New  Austin you could get a decent steak at the Alamo, passable
barbecue at a smokehouse a quarter mile out of town,  and  Mrs.
Riley  at the boarding house produced a good bowl of chili--not
the equal of mine, you understand, but okay. Those  three,  and
Foo's  were  it as far as a sit-down meal in New Austin. And if
you wanted tablecloths and quality cooking, you went to  Foo's.
I ate there almost every day.
     "Try the Moo Goo Gai Pan," I said to Brenda, recalling her
lack of  experience  at anything but traditional Lunarian food.
"It's a sort of--"
     "I've had it," she said. "I've learned a  little  since  I
saw you last. I've eaten Chinese, oh, half a dozen times."
     "I'm impressed."
     "Don't they have a menu?"
     "Foo  doesn't  like  them.  He has a sort of psychological
method of matching the food to the  customer.  He'll  have  you
spotted  for  a  greenhorn, and he won't bring you anything too
challenging. I know how to handle him."
     "You don't have to be so protective of me, Hildy."
     I reached over and touched her hand.
     "I can see you've grown, Brenda. It's in  your  face,  and
your  bearing.  But  trust me on this one, hon. The Chinese eat
some things you don't even want to know about."
     Foo  came  back  with  bowls  of  rice  and   his   famous
hot-and-sour soup, and I dickered with him for a while, talking
him out of Chow Mein for Brenda and convincing him I wanted the
Hunan  Beef again, even though I'd had it only three weeks ago.
He bustled off to the kitchen, pausing  to  accept  compliments
from  two  of  the  other diners in the small room. There was a
beautiful dragon embroidered on the back of his shirt.
     "You go through this often?" Brenda asked.
     "Every day. I like it, Brenda. Remember what you  told  me
about  having  friends?  I have friends here. I'm a part of the
community."
     She nodded, and decided not to talk about it anymore.  She
tasted  the  soup, loved it, and we talked about that, and then
moved into phase two of the reunion minuet, reminiscences about
the good old days. Not that the days were that long ago--it was
still less than a year since I'd first met her--but  to  me  it
seemed  like  a  past life. We laughed about the Grand Flack in
his little shrine and I got her howling by  telling  her  about
Walter's  buttons  popping  off his riverboat gambler vest, and
she  told  me  scandalous  things  about  some  of  my   former
colleagues.
     The  food  was  set  down before us and Brenda searched in
vain for her fork. She  saw  me  with  the  chopsticks,  gamely
picked hers up and promptly dropped a hunk of meat in her lap.
     "Foo," I called. "We need a fork over here."
     "No  no  no  no,"  he  said,  shuffling over and shaking a
finger at us. "Very sorry, Hildy, but this  chinee  restaurant.
No have fork."
     "I'm  vely  solly,  too," I said, putting my napkin on the
table. "But no forkee, no eatee." I started to get up.
     He scowled at us, gestured for me to sit down, and hurried
away.
     "You didn't have to do that,"  Brenda  whispered,  leaning
over  the  table.  I  shushed  her,  and  we  waited  until Foo
returned, elaborately  polishing  a  silver  fork,  placing  it
carefully beside her plate.
     "And  Foo,"  I said. "you can knock off the number-one-son
bit. Brenda is a tourist, but she's my friend, too."
     He looked sour for a moment, then smiled and relaxed.
     "Okay, Hildy," he said. "Watch that beef,  now.  I've  got
the  fire  department  on red alert. Nice meeting you, Brenda."
She watched him into the kitchen, then picked up her  fork  and
spoke around a mouthful of food.
     "What  I  can't understand is why people want to live that
way."
     "What way it that?"
     "You know. Acting silly. He could run a restaurant on  the
outside and not have to talk funny to do it."
     "He  doesn't have to talk funny to do it here, Brenda. The
management doesn't demand playacting, only costuming.  He  does
it  because  it  amuses  him. Foo's only half Chinese, for that
matter. He told me he doesn't look much more Oriental,  without
surgery,  than  I do. But he loves cooking and he's good at it.
And he likes it here."
     "I guess I just don't get it."
     "Think of it as a twenty-four-hour-a-day costume party."
     "I still don't . . . I mean, what would drive  someone  to
come  live here? I get the feeding most of 'em couldn't make it
on . . ." She stopped, and turned red. "Sorry, Hildy."
     "No need to be. You're not really wrong. A lot  of  people
live  in  here because they couldn't make it outside. Call them
losers, if you want. Walking wounded, a lot  of  them.  I  like
them.  There's  not so much pressure in here. Others, they were
doing okay outside, but they didn't like it. They come and  go,
too;  it's  not  a life sentence. I know some people, they live
here for a year or two to recharge their  batteries.  Sometimes
it's between careers."
     "Is that why you're here?"
     "One thing you don't do in here, Brenda, is ask people why
they came. They volunteer it if they want."
     "I keep sticking my foot in my mouth."
     "Don't  worry  about  it, with me. I just thought I'd tell
you, so you don't ask anybody else. To answer your question . .
. I don't know. I thought that at first. Now  .  .  .  I  don't
know."
     She  looked  at  me  for  a  while,  then at my plate. She
gestured with her fork.
     "That looks good. Mind if I have a bite?"
     I let her, then got up myself to get her a glass of  water
from the back. Foo's Hunan Beef is the only thing in Texas that
can rival my fivealarm chili.
     #
     "So  Walter  screamed  and  hollered  about you for two or
three days," Brenda said. "We all tried to stay out of his way,
but he'd come storming through the newsroom shouting about  one
thing  or another, and we all knew what he was really mad about
was you."
     "The newsroom? That sounds serious."
     "It got worse than that."
     We had finished our meal and ordered two beers and  Brenda
had  regaled  me  with  more  stories about her exploits in the
journalistic wars. She certainly led an exciting life. I didn't
have many stories  to  tell  in  return,  just  amusing  little
fillers about funny things this or that pupil had said in class
or the tale of Mayor Dillon stumbling out of the Alamo and into
the horse trough early one morning. Her eyes glazed a little at
these  times  but she kept smiling gamely. Mostly I shut up and
let her rattle on.
     "He started calling us  in  one  at  a  time,"  she  said,
emptying  her  beer glass and shaking her head when Foo started
over with the pitcher. "He always said it was  about  something
else,  but  it  always  got back to you and what a rotten thing
you'd done to him and did we have any ideas on how to  get  you
back.  He'd  always  be  depressed when we left. We all started
making up excuses to get out of those sessions.
     "Then he got to where he'd bite your head off if your name
was mentioned in his presence. So we all stopped talking  about
you to him. That's where it stands now."
     "I'd been thinking about dropping in on him," I said. "Old
time's sake, you know."
     She frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea, yet. Give it
a few  more months. Unless you plan to go back on the job." She
raised her eyebrows and I shook my head, and she said  no  more
about what I'd been presuming was the purpose of her trip.
     Foo  brought  a  little  tray with fortune cookies and the
check. Brenda opened hers while I  was  putting  money  on  the
tray.
     "'A  new  love  will  brighten  your life,'" she read. She
looked up at me and smiled. "I'm afraid I  wouldn't  have  time
for it. Aren't you going to open yours?"
     "Foo  writes them, Brenda. What that one means is he wants
to make pecker tracks on your mustache brush."
     "What?"
     "He finds you sexually attractive and would like  to  have
intercourse."
     She  looked  at me in disbelief, then picked up my fortune
cookie and broke it open. She glanced at the message  and  then
stood.  Foo  came hurrying over and helped us out of our chairs
and handed us our hats and bowed us all the way to the door.
     Outside, Brenda glanced at her thumbnail.
     "I'll have to get going now,  Hildy,  but--"  She  slapped
herself  on  the  forehead.  "I almost forgot the main reason I
came to see you. What are your plans for the Bicentennial?"
     "The . . . that's right, that's coming up in . . ."
     "Four days. It's only the biggest story for the  last  two
weeks."
     "We don't follow the news much in here. Let's see, I heard
the Baptist Church is planing some sort of barbecue and there's
going  to be a street fair. Fireworks after dark. People should
be coming from miles around. Ought  to  be  fun.  You  want  to
come?"
     "Frankly,  Hildy,  I'd  rather  watch  cement  dry. Not to
mention having to wear these damn clothes." She hitched at  her
crotch.  "And  I'll  bet  these are comfortable compared to the
stuff you're wearing."
     "You don't know the half  of  it.  But  you  get  used  to
things. I don't mind it anymore."
     "Live  and let live. Anyway, Liz and I, and maybe Cricket,
were thinking of having a picnic and camping out before the big
show in Armstrong Park.  They're  having  some  real  fireworks
there."
     "I don't think I could face the crowds, Brenda."
     "That's okay, Liz knows the pyrotechs and she can get us a
pass into  the safety zone, out around Delambre. It ought to be
a great view from there. It'll be fun; what'd'ya say?"
     I hesitated. In truth, it did sound like fun,  but  I  was
increasingly   reluctant   to  leave  the  safe  haven  of  the
disneyland these days.
     "Of course, some of those shells are going  to  be  mighty
big," she nudged. "It might be dangerous."
     I  punched  her  on  the  shoulder. "I'll bring some fried
chicken," I said, and then I hugged her again. She was starting
off when I called her name.
     "You're going to make me ask you, aren't you?" I said.
     "Ask me what?"
     "What it said in the goddam fortune cookie."
     "Oh, that's a funny thing," she said with a smile.  "Yours
said exactly the same thing mine did."
     #
     I  went  around  the corner of Old Spanish Trail, past the
sheriff's office and the jailhouse and came  to  a  small  shop
with a plate glass window and gold leaf lettering that read The
New  Austin  Texian.  I  opened  the  front door of West Texas'
finest--and only--twice-weekly newspaper without knocking, then
through the swinging gate that separated the newsroom from  the
public  area  where  subscriptions were sold and classified ads
taken,  pulled  out  the  swivel  chair  from  the  big  wooden
cubbyhole desk, and sat down.
     And  why  shouldn't  I?  I  was the editor, publisher, and
chief reporter for the Texian,  which  had  been  serving  West
Texas  proudly  for  almost six months. So Walter was right, in
the end; I really couldn't stay out of the news game.
     We published like clockwork, every Wednesday and Saturday,
sometimes as many as four  pages.  Through  hard  work,  astute
reporting,  trenchant editorials, and the fact that we were the
only paper in the disney, we'd built circulation  to  almost  a
thousand copies per edition. Watch us grow!
     The  Texian  existed  because  I'd run out of things to do
during the long afternoons. Madness might still be lurking, and
it seemed better to keep busy. Who could tell if it helped?
     While the impetus for the paper was fear of  suicide,  its
midwife had been a loan from the bank in Lonesome Dove, which I
figured  to have paid off shortly after the Tricentennial. At a
penny a copy it was going to take a while. If not for my salary
as a teacher I'd  have  trouble  keeping  beans  on  the  table
without  dipping  into  my  outside-world  savings, which I was
determined not to do.
     The loan had paid for  the  office  rent,  the  desk  with
sticky   drawers  built  by  a  journeyman  carpenter  over  in
Whiz-bang  (buy  Texan,   you   all!),   supplies   from--where
else?--Pennsylvania,  and  it  paid  the  salaries  of  my  two
employees at first, until I started turning enough revenue.  It
also  paid  for  the press itself, through a clever deal worked
out by Freddie the  Ferret,  our  local  pettifogger,  who  had
ferreted out a little-known by-law of the Antiquities Board and
then  bamboozled  them  into  calling  the  Texian  a "cultural
asset," eligible for some breaks under  the  arcane  accounting
used to convert Texas play money into real Lunarian gelt. Those
clever  Dutchmen  in  the  Keystone Disney could have built the
press, but at a price roughly equal  to  the  Gross  Disneyland
Product of West Texas for the next five years.
     So  instead  technology sprang to the rescue. The very day
the  ruling  came  through  I  was  the  proud   owner   of   a
cast-iron-and-brass  reproduction  of  a  1885  Model Columbian
Handpress, one of the  most  outrageous  machines  ever  built,
surmounted  by  a proud American Eagle, authentic right down to
the patent numbers stamped into its frame. It took less time to
build it than to truck it to my door and muscle it into  place.
Ain't modern science wonderful?
     "Afternoon, Hildy," said Huck, my pressman. He was a gawky
youth, about nineteen, good with his hands and not particularly
bright.  He'd  spent most of his life here and had no desire to
leave. He was wonderfully anxious to learn a trade  so  useless
it would fit him for no other life. He worked like a donkey far
into  Tuesday  and Friday nights to get the morning edition set
and printed, then jumped on his horse and rode to Lonesome Dove
and Whiz-bang to deliver them before dawn.  He  couldn't  read,
but could set type at three times my poor speed, and was always
covered in ink up to his elbows. He only became fumble-fingered
in  the  presence of my other employee, Miss Charity, who could
read just about anything but the lovelorn expression on  Huck's
face. Ah, the joys of office romance.
     "I  got  that  Bicentennial schedule set, Hildy," he said.
"Did you want that on the front page?"
     "Left hand column, I think, Huck."
     "That's where I put her, all right."
     "Let's see it."
     He brought me a test sheet, still  smelling  of  printer's
ink,  one  of the sweetest smells in the world. I looked at the
flag/colophon and folio line:






     (Imagine a 19th century newspaper masthead)







     As always, I felt a tug of pride at the  sight  of  it.  I
never  changed  the  weather  forecast;  it seemed a reasonable
prediction even when it turned out to be wrong.  The  date  was
always  the  same because you couldn't put the real date on it,
and because March 6 suited me. Nobody seemed to mind.
     Huck had faithfully set the schedule  of  events  for  the
upcoming  celebration along the left margin, leaving room for a
head, a bank, and a bar line, in keeping with the old style I'd
established. We both pored over it, not reading but looking for
letters that printed too light or dark, or blots from too  much
inking, a problem we were slowly licking. Only then did I study
it for visual effect and we agreed the new boldface font looked
good.  Finally, third time through, I actually read it. And god
help you if you misspelt a word; Huck would set it as is.
     "How about a skyline, Huck? 'Special Bicentennial  Issue,'
something like that. What do you think? Too modern?"
     "Shoot,  no,  Hildy. Charity said she'd like to start up a
roto-something but she said you'd think it was too modern."
     "Rotogravure, and I don't give a hoot  about  modern,  but
that's  big-city  stuff,  and  it'd be too dang expensive right
now. If she had her way she'd have me buying a four-color web."
     "Ain't she something?" he said.
     "Huck, have you thought about learning to read?" It's  not
something  I  would  normally  have  asked, but I was concerned
about him, he was such a likable goof. I couldn't  see  Charity
ever hooking up with an illit.
     "If I did, then I couldn't ask Miss Charity to read to me,
could  I?" he asked, reasonably. "Besides, I'm picking up stuff
here and there, I watch when she reads. I know a bunch of words
now." So maybe there was method in his madness, and love  would
conquer all.
     I  left  him to his job case and composing stick. Taking a
sheet of paper and a pen from my center desk drawer,  I  dipped
the  nib  in  the inkwell and began to write, printing in block
letters.
     #
     <i>HEAD</i>: Prize-winning Journalist Visits Town
     <i>STORY</i>: The streets  of  New  Austin  were  recently
graced  by  the  presence  of Miss Brenda Starr, winner of this
year's  Pulitzer  Prize  for  her   reporting   of   the   late
unpleasantness  within  the Latitudinarian Church in King City.
Miss Starr is employed by the News N----e,  a  daily  paper  in
that  town.  Many  a  young  bachelor's head was turned as Miss
Starr promenaded Congress Street and  dined  on  the  excellent
food  at Foo's Celestial Peace with this reporter. According to
our sources, love might be in the  air  for  the  comely  young
scribe,  so  to the eligible gents out there, be on the lookout
for her return! H.J.
     (CHARITY: run this in the "MONSTER")
     #
     The "Gila Monster," named for  a  vicious  little  reptile
that  lurks under rocks and presumably hears everything, was my
very own gossip column, and by  far  the  most  eagerly-awaited
part  of  the paper. Not for little fillers like the above, but
for the really nasty tittles so often tattled there. It's  true
that  everyone  in  a  small  town  knows what everyone else is
doing, but they don't all know it at the same time. There is  a
window  of opportunity between the event and the dissemination,
even as the news is spreading at about the speed of sound, that
a top-notch reporter can exploit.
     I'm not talking of myself. I'd begun  the  "Monster,"  but
Charity  was the venom in the critter's tooth. My teaching tied
me down too much, I never had the time to range around  getting
the  scent.  Charity  never  seemed  to  sleep.  She  lived and
breathed news. You could rely on her for two scandals per week,
really remarkable when you consider that she didn't  drink  and
hardly  ever  visited  the  Alamo,  that ever-flowing gusher of
gossip, that Delphi of Dirt.
     The correspondent herself breezed into the  office  around
sundown,  just  back  from  Whiz-bang,  a  town that aspired to
become our freshly-minted Disneyland Capital in a referendum to
be held in three month's time, with a good story about  bribery
and barratry amongst our elected representatives, a quite juicy
one  that would have prompted me to tear up the front page if I
hadn't owned the paper and known what it  would  cost  me.  The
economic facts of the Texian were quite simply that I'd sell as
many  copies  with  or  without  that  particular  story, since
everyone in Texas read it anyway, so I had to tell her  I'd  be
running  it  below  the  fold.  I mollified her somewhat with a
promise of a two-column head, and a by-line.
     Sweeteners like that were necessary because of the  second
bit  of  news  she  brought  in,  of a job offer from the Daily
Planet, a good second-string pad in Arkytown. She basked in the
glow of our admiration, oblivious to my chagrin at the  thought
of losing her, and then announced she wasn't about to leave the
Texian  until  she  could go to a really good newspad, like the
Nipple.  Charity  was  about  350  picas  tall,  according   to
Huck--call  it  sixtenths  of  a Brenda, and still growing--but
made up for her size with enthusiasm and energy. She  was  cute
as  lace  bloomers,  and  so self-involved as to notice neither
Huck's tongue hanging out when she was  around  nor  my  choked
cough  at  her  reference to my old place of employment. Sounds
awful, I know, but somehow you forgave her.  If  she  knew  you
were hurting, no one could have been more concerned.
     I went around lighting the kerosene lamps as she chattered
on, Huck  continuing  to  set type while seldom taking his eyes
from her. Typos would be multiplying, but I had to put up  with
it.
     When  I  left  it  was  full dark with a moon on the rise.
Charity had fallen asleep in  her  chair  and  Huck  was  still
stolidly  pulling  the handle on the magnificent old Columbian.
The town was quiet but for the chirping  of  crickets  and  the
tinkle  of  the  piano around the corner in the Alamo. My hands
were stained with ink and my back hurt and the first breath  of
cool night air only served to remind me how sweaty I was around
the  collar  and  under  the  arms  and . . . well, you know. I
mounted a lantern on the front of my bicycle, swung aboard and,
with  a  tinkle  of  the  bell  which  brought  twin  howls  of
desolation from the firehouse, I started pedaling the long road
home.
     How much happiness could one person stand?
     #
     I  do  believe  in  God, I do, I do, I do, because so many
times in my life I've  seen  that  He's  out  there,  watching,
keeping  score.  When  you've just about reached a Zen state of
pure acceptance--and the beauty of that night combined with the
pleasant aches of work well-done and friends wellmet  and  even
the little fillip of two dogs you knew would be waiting for you
the  next  morning  . . . when that state approaches He sends a
little rock down to fall in the road of your life.
     This was a literal rock, and I hit it just outside of town
and it caused two spokes to break and the rim to buckle  on  my
front  wheel.  I  just  missed a painful tumble into a patch of
cactus. That was God again: it would have been too  much,  this
was just to serve as a reminder.
     I   thought   about  returning  to  town  and  waking  the
blacksmith, who I know would have been happy  to  work  on  the
newfangled invention that was the talk of the town. But he'd be
long abed, with his good wife and three children, and I decided
not  to  bother him. I left it there beside the road. You can't
steal a thing like that in a small town, how would you  explain
riding around on Hildy's bike? I walked the rest of the way and
arrived  not  depressed, not really out of sorts, just a little
deflated.
     I had stepped onto the front porch  before  the  lamplight
revealed  a  man sitting in the rocker there, not ten feet away
from me.
     "Goodness," I said. Well, I'd taken to talking like  that.
"You  gave  me  a  start."  I  was  a  little  nervous, but not
frightened. Rape is rare, not unknown, in Luna, but in Texas  .
.  .?  He'd  have  to  be  a  fool.  All the exits are too well
controlled, and hanging is legal. I held the lantern up to  get
a better look at him.
     He was a dapper fellow, about my height, with a nice face,
twinkling  eyes,  a  mustache.  He wore a tweed double-breasted
suit with a high wing collar and red silk cravat. On  his  feet
were black and white canvas and leather Balmorals. A cane and a
derby  hat  rested  on the floor beside him. I didn't think I'd
ever seen him before, but there was something  in  the  way  he
sat.
     "How are you, Hildy?" he said. "Working late again?"
     "That's  either Cricket, or her identical twin brother," I
said. "What have you done to yourself?"
     "Well, I already had the mustache and I thought, 'What the
hell?'"

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER EIGHTEEN








     And what happened to the girl we last saw speaking  to  an
inhuman  golem  in  a  padded  cell off the Leystrasse, hearing
things no  human  ear  was  meant  to  hear,  her  insides  all
atremble?  How came this quivering wreck, freshly tossed by the
twin tempests of another botched suicide attempt and  the  CC's
ham-fisted  attempt  to "cure" her, to her present tranquility?
How did the  young  Modern  butterfly  with  the  ragged  wings
retromorphose  into  the  plain  but outwardly-stable Victorian
caterpillar?
     She did it one day at a time.
     As I  had  hinted  to  Brenda,  no  matter  how  much  the
governing  boards  might  say  concerning  the functions of the
historical disneys, an unexpected and unmentioned side  benefit
they  had  provided  was  to work as sanctuaries--all right, as
very big unfenced  asylums--for  the  societally  and  mentally
shell-shocked.  In Texas and the other places like it, we could
cease our unfruitful baying at our several lunatic  moons  and,
without  therapy  per  se,  retire  to a quieter, gentler time.
Living there was therapy in itself. For some, the  prescription
would  have to be carried on forever; for others, an occasional
dose was enough. It wasn't established yet which applied to me.
     The Texian had been a big step for me, and lo, I found  it
good.  I  was  prevailed on to become a teacher, and that, too,
was good. Learning to not only have friends, but to open up  to
them,  to  understand  that  a  true  friend  wanted to hear my
problems, my hopes and my fears, didn't  happen  overnight  and
still wasn't an accomplished fact, but I was getting there. The
important  thing was I was creating my new world one brick at a
time, and so far, it was good.
     It was also, compared to my old life, boring as hell.  Not
to  me, you understand; I found every new crayon drawing by one
of my students an object of amazement. Each  new  trivial  news
story  dug up by Charity made me as proud as if she were my own
daughter. Publishing the Texian was  so  much  more  satisfying
than  working  at  the  Nipple  that I wondered how I'd labored
there so long. It's just that, to an