Visions and Venturers by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

She slept. Somehow the moon had moved around to the east again. No: it wasn’t the moon. It was a cloudless dawn, a dilution; light staining the hem of the sky. I sank back with my elbow in the hole I had dug and my armpit on the me-shaped hummock, and looked at the sleeping girl. I knew now what the single thing was that made her different. She was as changeable as bubble-colors; she felt, immediately and noticeably, all the emotions except one. And that was her difference. She was absolutely fearless.

That story ... so simply told, and then, “They died.”

Cloven hooves.

“They died.” People like that ... for a time I was angrier at such a death than I was, even, at the ugly excrescence that was once a foot. Dr. Ponder seemed to know a lot about these things. “Chitinous podomorphia.” Oh, fine. That meant “Change of a foot into chi-tin—hoof, horn, and fingernail material.” I hadn’t gone to Ponder. I couldn’t really say why. Maybe Luana was the reason for that. Somehow I couldn’t take the idea of Luana writing up my case history on her neat file cards. And there was no other doctor in town. Here was Claire with the same trouble, and I’d been in on that from the word go. I just did for my foot what Ponder had done for Claire’s, and hoped that Luana would never hear about it. What girl would give a tumble to a man with a cloven hoof?

The sun poked a flaming forehead over the wall of hills. By its light I studied Claire’s relaxed face. She was not beautiful, by any means. She had a round, pleasant face. When she laughed, a transverse crease appeared under her nose; she was the only human being with that particular upper lip that I had ever liked. Her lashes were thick but not long, and now, with her eyes closed, half the beauty she had was cloaked, for she had the most brilliant eyes I had ever seen. Her jaw was round and small, slightly cleft. She missed being square and stocky by fractional proportions.

“I must be out of my mind,” I muttered. Claire was a wonderful person ... a wonderful person. Genuine, honest, full of high humor, and, for me, no fireworks.

But Luana, the beautiful secretary of Dr. Ponder, now, that was a different story. She had an odd, triangular face and a skin that seemed lit softly from underneath. Her cheeks were a brighter rose than the sides of her neck but you couldn’t tell just where the gradations began. Her hair was the extremely dark but vivid red of black-iron in a forge just beginning to heat. Her hands were so delicate and smooth you’d think they’d break on a typewriter, and her canine teeth were a shade too long, so that her head looked like a flower with fangs. She had one expression—complete composure. Her unshakable poise made me grind my teeth; some way, somehow, I wanted it broken.

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