Georgia on My Mind and Other Places Read Online Free PDF

dinosaur story for a new book he was editing. I didn’t, and at the time I was not writing anything because I was busy reading deeply about parasitic diseases and cancer treatment. I also know nothing about dinosaurs.
    Naturally, I wrote back at once and said yes; I gave him my proposed title, “The Feynman Saltation,” and I started to write. But I could not get my mind far away from the morbid fascinations of glioblastomas and chemotherapy and antimetabolite drugs. If this tale seems to be more about cancer than dinosaurs, you now know why.

The Bee’s Kiss
    The moth’s kiss, first!
    Kiss me as if you made believe
    You were not sure, this eve,
    How my face, your flower, had pursed
    Its petals up; so, here and there
    You brush it, till I grow aware
    Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.
    * * *
    “Your guilt is not in question. Nor, given the outrage of your offense against the Mentor, is your punishment. Yet the past few days have provided anomalies for which a curious mind still asks an explanation. Will you tell?”
    The room where Gilden sat was huge, low-ceilinged, dim-lit, and smoky. The face of the Teller seemed to float on the dead air in front of him, pale and thoughtful, and the questioning voice, as always, was gentle and reasonable.
    Gilden shook his head the fraction of an inch that the metal brace permitted. The past few days. He grasped that phrase and kept his mind focused on it. He could have been sitting in this chair for months or years, drifting in and out of consciousness as the drugs ebbed and surged within his body. But here was a data point.
    Or was the Teller lying, for her own inquisitorial purposes? Perhaps it had been a year, five years, ten years since the arrest. Perhaps his location had been changed a score of times. Perhaps, even, he was no longer on Earth, but transported to one of the Linkworlds within the Mentor’s domain.
    “You are a clever man.” The Teller, patient to infinity, had waited a full two minutes before speaking again. “You think, so long as you have information of value to the Mentor, or interesting to me, so long will your punishment be delayed. But that is a false conclusion. Permit me to demonstrate.”
    Gilden’s forearms were clamped to the arms of the chair. The Teller leaned forward and pressed a blunt cylinder to the upward-facing palm of Gilden’s right hand. The flat disk at its end glowed white-hot. Flesh sizzled and sputtered, black smoke swirled. The stench of charring flesh filled the room.
    Gilden screamed and writhed. The pain was unendurable, beyond description or comprehension. Somehow he remained conscious as the disk burned through to the bare bones of his hand. Then, at last, the Teller lifted the cylinder.
    “One taste of torment. But observe.” She nodded, to where Gilden’s palm was renewing itself. New flesh pooled eerily into the blackened cavity, new skin crept in to cover it. “We are of course in derived reality. Your body is unmarked. But before you take comfort from that, let me point out the implications. Your condign punishment can continue—and will continue—for many, many years, at the level of pain that you experienced for only a few moments. For although your specific offense is unprecedented, the nature of your punishment is not. Do you recall the name of Ruth el Fiori Skandell, Bloody Ruth, who sabotaged one of the Mentor’s aircars and thereby assassinated two of his lesser sons?”
    Gilden grunted, deep in his throat. The Teller took it as a sign of assent, and went on.
    “Skandell holds a melancholy record within the Linkworlds. After her sentencing she lived on for sixty-three years, enduring at every moment an agony at least as bad as yours. Virtual punishment is no boon, when pain exceeds reality. Someday, some unfortunate will break Skandell’s record. It could be you, Arrin Gilden. Behold, one more time, the reenactment of your crime.”
    The room darkened further. The Teller’s pallid face vanished. Only her