He Who Shapes

He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny Page A

Book: He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online
Authors: Roger Zelazny
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction
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wavering.
    He bared the table, he banished the restaurant. They were
    back in the glade. Through the transparent fabric of the world
    he watched a hand moving along a panel. Buttons were being
    pushed. The world grew substantial again. Their emptied table
    was set beside the lake now, and it was still nighttime and
    summer, and the tablecloth was very white under the glow of
    the giant moon that hung overhead.
    "That was stupid of me," he said. "Awfully stupid. I should
    have introduced them one at a time. The actual sight of basic,
    oral stimuli can be very distressing to a person seeing them for
    the first time. I got so wrapped up in the Shaping that I forgot
    the patient, which is just dandy! I apologize."
    "I'm okay now. Really I am."
    He summoned a cool breeze from the lake.
    ". . . And that is the moon," he added lamely.
    She nodded, and she was wearing a tiny moon in the center
    of her forehead; it glowed like the one above them, and her hair
    and dress were all of silver.
    The bottle of Romanee-Conti stood on the table, and two
    glasses.
    "Where did that come from?"
    She shrugged. He poured out a glassful.
    "It may taste kind of flat," he said.
    "It doesn't. Here-" She passed it to him.
    As he sipped it he realized it had a tastea fruite such as
    might be quashed from the grapes grown in the Isles of the
    Blest, a smooth, muscular charnu, and a capiteux centrifuged
    from the fumes of a field of burning poppies. With a start, he
    knew that his hand must -be traversing the route of the
    perceptions, symphonizing the sensual cues of a transference
    and a counter-transference which had come upon him all
    unawares, there beside the lake.
    "So it does," he noted, "and now it is time we returned."
    "So soon? I haven't seen the cathedral yet . . ."
    "So soon."
    He willed the world to end, and it did.
    "It is cold out there," she said as she dressed, "and dark."
    "I know. I'll mix us something to drink while I clear the
    unit."
    "Fine."
    He glanced at the tapes and shook his head. He crossed to his
    bar cabinet.
    "It's not exactly Romanee-Conti," he observed, reaching for
    a bottle.
    "So what? I don't mind."
    Neither did be, at that moment. So he cleared the unit, they
    drank their drinks, and he helped her into her coat and they
    left.
    As they rode the lift down to the sub-sub he willed the world
    to end again, but it didn't.
    Dad,
    I hobbled from school to taxi and taxi to spaceport, for the
    local Air Force ExhibitOutward, it was called. (Okay, I
    exaggerated the hobble. It got me extra attention though.)
    The whole bit was aimed at seducing young manhood into a
    five-year hitch, as I saw it. But it worked. I wanna join up. I
    wanna go Out There. Think they'll take me when I'm old
    enuff? I mean take me Outnot some crummy desk job.
    Think so?
    I do.
    There was this dam lite colonel ('scuse the French) who
    saw this kid lurching around and pressing his nose 'gainst the
    big windowpanes, and he decided to give him the subliminal
    sell. Great! He pushed me through the gallery and showed
    me all the pitchers of AP triumphs, from Moonbase to
    Marsport. He lectured me on the Great Traditipns of the
    Service, and marched me into a flic room where the Corps
    had good clean fun on tape, wrestling one another in null-G
    "where it's all skill and no brawn," and making tinted water
    sculpture-work way in the middle of the air and doing
    dismounted drill on the skin of a cruiser. Oh joy!
    Seriously though. I'd like to be there when they hit the
    Outer Fiveand On Out. Not because of the bogus balonus
    in the throwaways, and suchlike crud, but because I think
    someone of sensibility should be along to chronicle the thing
    in the proper way. You know, raw frontier observer. Francis
    Parkman. Mary Austin, like that. So I decided I'm going.
    The AF boy with the chicken stuff on his shoulders wasn't
    in the least way patronizing, gods bepraised. We stood on
    the balcony and watched ships lift off and he told me to go
    forth and study real

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