Georgia on My Mind and Other Places Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Remember how it felt when you were four years old, and you woke up in the morning, and you knew it was your birthday? That’s how it used to be, all the time for all of us. But ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: immature forms pass through the evolutionary stages of their ancestors. And that applies to feelings as well as bodies. Little kids feel the way all the animals used to feel, a long time ago. That’s the way I am when I’m there. Fantastic, marvelous. And the farther I go, the better it gets. You looked at my pictures. If I’ve been going back, how far did I get?”
    Julia hesitated. She was torn. Half of her wanted to believe her brother, to see more of those marvelously detailed drawings and to analyze them. The other half told her she was dealing with a mind already hopelessly twisted by disease.
    “Your last picture shows the period of the earliest dinosaurs. They’re all thecodonts, nothing that most people would recognize. The fossil record is very spotty there. We don’t know nearly as much about them as we’d like to.”
    “And what would be next—going backward, I mean?”
    “The Permian. No dinosaurs. And at this end of the Permian, over ninety percent of all the lifeforms on earth died off. We don’t know why.”
    He was nodding. “The barrier. I can feel it, you know, when I’m trying to jump. I went through one, when all the dinosaurs died off. This one is bigger. I’ve been trying to fight my way through. I’m nearly there, but it’s taking every bit of energy I have.”
    “Col, anything that tires you or upsets you is bad . You need rest. Why are you climbing imaginary walls?”
    “You don’t know the feeling. If I could jump all the way back, right to the first spark of life, I bet the intensity of life force and joy would be just about too much to stand. I’m going there, Julie. Across the barrier, into the Permian, all the way to the beginning. And I’m never coming back. Never .”
    As though on cue, the thin body arched up from the bed, arms flailing. The mouth widened to a rictus of infernal torment and breath came hoarse and loud. Julia cried out, just as the nurse appeared. Wollaston was right behind her.
    “Grand mal.” He was bending over Colin, grabbing at a rubber spatula and pushing it into the mouth just as the teeth clenched down. “Hold this, nurse, we don’t want him swallowing his tongue.”
    But the spasm ended as quickly as it had started. Colin Trantham lay totally at ease, his breath slow and easy. His face smoothed, and the fixed grin faded. In its place came a look of infinite calm and blissful peace.
    “Dr. Wollaston!” The nurse was watching the monitors, her hand on Colin’s pulse. “Dr. Wollaston, we have arrhythmia. Becoming fainter.”
    Wollaston had the hypodermic with its six-inch needle in his hand, the syringe already filled. It was poised above Colin Trantham’s chest when he caught Julia’s eye.
    She shook her head. “No, Jim. Please. Not for one month more pain.”
    He hesitated, finally nodded, and stepped away from the bed.
    “Dr. Wollaston.” The nurse looked up, sensing that she had missed something important but not sure what. She was still holding Colin Trantham’s wrist. “I can’t help him. He’s going, doctor. He’s going.”
    Julia Trantham moved to grip her brother’s other hand in both of hers.
    “He is,” she said. “He’s going.” She leaned forward, to stare down into open eyes that still sparkled with a surprised joy. “He’s going. And I’d give anything to know where.”

Afterword to “The Feynman Saltation”
    Anthony Trollope said, “A genius must wait for inspiration. I am not a genius, so I write every day.”
    I am not a genius, and I don’t write every day, either, but there is one guaranteed way to get a story from me. You ask me for one, on some specialized subject, and my brain juices start to flow at once.
    This story began with a letter from Robert Silverberg, asking if I had a