Urania 1096 - Azazel by Asimov Isaac

Author:Asimov, Isaac [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: ita
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mancante
Publisher: Mondadori
Published: 1989-03-02T23:00:00+00:00

Logic Is Logic

George was not one of those craven souls who felt that the fact that he was not paying for a meal deprived him of the right to criticize it. He expressed his disappointment to me, therefore, with as much delicacy as he could — or as much as he thought I deserved, which is not quite the same thing, of course.

“This smorgasbord,” he said, “is distinctly inferior. The meat balls are not hot enough, the herring is not salty enough, the shrimp are not crisp enough, the cheese is not sharp enough, the deviled eggs are not peppery enough, the —”

I said, “George, that's the third heaping plate you've devoured. One more bite and you will have to undergo surgery to release the gastric pressure. Why are you eating so much of this inferior material?”

George said haughtily, “Is it for me to humiliate my host by refusing to eat his food?”

“It's not my food; it's the restaurant's.”

“The owner of this miserable hovel is he to whom I am referring. Tell me, old man, why don't you belong to some good club?”

“I? Pay enormous sums for dubious returns?”

“I mean a good club, which I can then grace as your guest in return for a sumptuous meal. But no,” he added querulously, “that is a mad dream. What good club would compromise its position by allowing you to be a member?”

“Any club that would allow you as a guest would certainly allow me —” I began, but George was already lost in reminiscence.

“I remember,” he said, eyes glistening, “when I dined at least once a month at a club that featured the most lavish and the most intricate buffet that ever graced any groaning board since the days of Lucullus.”

“I presume you freeloaded as someone's guest.”

“I don't know that that is a necessary presumption, but by sheer chance you happen to be correct. It was Alistair Tobago Crump, VI, who was actually the member and, which is more important, my occasional host.”

“George,” I said, “is this going to be another story in which you and Azazel combine to hurl some poor soul down a declivity of misery and despair in your misguided efforts to help him?”

“I don't know what you mean. We granted him his heart's desire out of sheer kindness and the abstract love of humanity — and my somewhat more concrete love of the buffet. But let me tell you the story from the beginning.”

Alistair Tobago Crump, VI, had been a member of the Eden from birth, for his father, Alistair Tobago Crump, V, entered his son's name on the rolls as soon as a personal inspection assured him that the doctor's initial estimate of the infant's sex had been correct. Alistair Tobago Crump, V, had similarly been entered by his father, and so on back to the days when Bill Crump, while sleeping off a drunken stupor, had been pressed into the British Navy just in time to find himself an indignant member of the crew of one of the ships of the fleet that captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664.

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