Bimbos of the Death Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

he would like to talk to someone about his book.
     
    Before Marion had finished apologizing, he had invited her out to lunch, and over a couple of roast beef sandwiches at Bogen’s, he explained to her that he had written a novel, based on a theoretical problem in engineering.
     
    “You see,” he’d said, finishing off the last of her potato chips, “the story involves a sun that emits rays causing slow but steady brain damage. But it affects only the women at the research station.”
     
    Marion, one of the more outspoken members of the Women’s Network, gave him a wary nod. “Go on.”
     
    “The really important thing is that it affects the computers. What I’m actually concerned with is the effects of sunspot activity in relation to polymer acrylic on capacitive interaction among high-frequency micro-components in …”
     
    “The really important thing?” said Marion. “The really important thing is the
machines
, not the women?”
     
    Sensing that he had said something wrong, he halted his narrative. “Well … from an engineering standpoint, I mean. What do you think?”
     
    What did she think?
     
    Marion thought that James Owens Mega was an ugly duckling who had not noticed his transition to swandom. She was sure that he had been a runty undergrad who had spent all his free time rewiring circuits, and who made good grades because he’dhad no social life to distract him. She recognized the type from her own student days, when she’d hung around the wargames club, where it was okay for a woman to be smart and not pretty. Thank god she’d outgrown her pariah phase, she thought, adjusting one amethyst earring. Substituting aerobics classes for lit classes had done her a world of good. She’d gotten out of a miserable marriage to a fellow outcast who was going to remain in grad school forever, and, freed of the guilt of surpassing him, she’d earned her Ph.D. in two years. Now, in a new job at the English department at Tech, Marion had finally reached the stage of accepting herself as both smart
and
pretty.
     
    She looked at her lunch partner, who was unselfconsciously finishing off a butterscotch ice-cream cone. He must have filled out a bit since his scraggly adolescence, and the contact lenses he’d gotten “for better peripheral vision” did wonders for his dark eyes. He’d probably worn safety glasses before, she thought, and he’d have looked like a mosquito in them. Marion looked at his hair, the color of the butterscotch, and at the fine bone structure of his face. He’s adorable, she thought. And he hasn’t been notified.
     
    “Are you still thinking about the plot?” he asked again.
     
    “What? Oh, the plot. Why don’t you leave the novel with me, and I’ll read it and let you know. Actually, the idea of women getting progressively stupid is pretty exciting from a publisher’s standpoint. It feeds the male hostility toward the competitive modern woman.” She looked at him closely. “Did you do that on purpose?”
     
    He blushed. “No. I just threw that in because Irealized that some diseases are sex-linked, and it seemed plausible. My main concern was the computers.”
     
    Marion sighed. “It would be.”
     
    By the time Marion had tinkered with the characterization in his novel, and advised him through rewrites, chapter outlines, and query letters, he had become used to her, in much the same way that a stray cat gets used to belonging to someone. Marion had used a similar method of “taming”: no sudden moves, a calm and friendly manner, and regular offers of food. She hadn’t completely conquered his shyness, though. Marion sometimes felt just before they kissed that he was gearing up for it as one might approach the high-dive—with careful planning and much trepidation. She thought he was making progress, though. And his diffidence was certainly preferable to the first-date lunges of other professors she’d been out with, the post-divorce swingers.
     
    Marion