"S" in the line "'Wretch,' I cried, 'Isadore hath sent thee....'"

Sitting back, I thought about what I had read. It made no sense at all. Was I to look for a white bird, "grim, ungainly, ghastly"? And what if I found him? Why was he like a raven? What was this perfume from an unseen censor? I could picture the ghost of Uncle Isadore, knowing his financial imagination, as the "unseen censor" because he always criticized me. Was I to look for perfume? Did he have a fortune in perfume stowed somewhere? It seemed to me it would take an awful lot of even the most expensive perfume to comprise a fortune.

I decided to start with the bird. I went outside Rene's ship and looked around. No birds.

"Rene!" I called. He was still looking through Uncle Izzy's ship. "Have you seen an ungainly white bird around?"

"What!" he snapped, sticking an indignant face out of the door.

"I guess you haven't. Can your woodsy lore tell if there are birds on this planet?"

"Obviously," Rene said. "I don't know why you can't find your own spoor. I noticed the droppings immediately."

"Where are the birds?"

"How the hell would I know?" But he couldn't contain his special knowledge. "They're probably night birds," he said.

"Oh, yes." It checked. "Wandering from the Night's Plutonian shore."

He looked at me suspiciously. "You ever had a nervous breakdown?"

"I have not. I test 10:9 on job adjustment and 10:8 on life adjustment."

"Some people crack on alien planets," he said. "I have a padded room in my ship. You'd be surprised how often I have to use it."

I told him about the poem I found in Uncle Izzy's book. "We look for a white bird," I said. "Or perfume."

"You're nuts," he pointed out with some justice, because he hadn't known Uncle Isadore. "How do you know these changes weren't made by somebody else a long time ago? Maybe this ancient printer printed it wrong and had to change it afterward."

"I don't think they were that primitive back then."

 Prev. P 11/24 next