The Deadly Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

a cadaver, and if Mr. Somely accepted him it would be because Somely was a gangster.
    “It won’t do you any good to take your displeasure out on me,” said Sargoth after I went home.
    I went down into the lab and studied my antenna to see why it would bother with something as far away as a satellite.
    “I’ve never asked you this,” I said, “but how could you willingly give up your body parts?”
    It wasn’t the truth. I had been asking him that very same question once a week for as long as I had known him.
    “The idea appealed to me,” he said.
    “Certainly it didn’t appeal to your sense of humanity since you’re no longer human.”
    “Anything born of woman is human no matter what is done to it later.”
    “There’s a purpose in being human and that is to follow the same path everybody follows. You play, grow, love, reproduce, age and die. If you don’t do any of those things your being is purposeless.”
    Sargoth made a clicking sound while he intensified the greenness of his eye. “What about spiritual and mental growth? Is a mind incapable of those?”
    “For what reason? If you were born to be happy as a complete soul, you destroy your purpose when you become less than a complete soul. Besides,” I continued, growing emotional, “getting your arms and then your legs and then your torso and finally your head cut away like so much beef is a sin, a crime and a moral disaster. And why is it done that way, anyhow? Why do they cut off your arms first and then the rest a piece at a time? Why don’t they just take out your brain and put it in that glass?”
    He wouldn’t talk to me when I got upset. Now he turned and walked away, and I watched him go and thought about having my legs severed. Was my society really all that holy if it permitted its members to maim themselves?
    “I don’t believe any of it!” I called after him. “I don’t care how hard you try to convince me, I think there’s something you aren’t telling me!”
    On Thursday Mr. Somely refused to tell Willmett whether he had passed the personality tests or not.
    “There’s more than one series, you know,” he said.
    Willmett was peeved. “I took more than one series. I took ten altogether.”
    “If you take ten times that amount, will you consider it to be excessive? We aren’t dealing with hamburger in this institution.”
    “He’s gross,” I said to my friend outside. “Can’t you see that you’ve already been disqualified?”
    “I see nothing of the sort! He’s being a pain in the backside.”
    “He’s trying to let you down gently.”
    “Ha! Listen to me, I’ve taken more personality tests than a guinea pig. These were no different. In fact they were simple.”
    “Simpleminded?” I said.
    He pulled away from me. “A lot you care! If they accept me I’ll get rid of my suffering. I can have most of the good things in life without any of the negatives.”
    “That’s impossible,” I said, but he wasn’t having any of it, turned his back on me and strode away.
    On an impulse I went into the building again and approached Somely. “I want to take the tests.”
    He smiled. He said,. “Really?”
    After I sat for three hours filling out forms and answering questions concerning everything from the impressions of my remotest daydreams to the present state of my viscera, he wouldn’t tell me my scores.
    “Come back next Thursday,” he said, seemingly entertained by my annoyance. “Though if you want my opinion I think you passed.” He was one person I thoroughly disliked. No matter what he said I wouldn’t believe him.
    “You what?” Sargoth said when I told him.
    “It’s strictly to expose that bunch. They’re destroying lives and I think it’s past time to put them out of business.”
    “What an extraordinary intention!”
    In my younger days I had vented some of my frustrations by calling him a tinkling buzzard. I longed to call him that now but refrained with effort. It would do me no good