Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 by Mike Resnick;C. J. Cherryh;Steve Cameron;Robert Sheckley;Martin L. Shoemaker;Mercedes Lackey;Lou J. Berger;Elizabeth Bear;Brad R. Torgersen;Robert T. Jeschonek;Alexei Panshin;Gregory Benford;Barry Malzberg;Paul Cook;L. Sprague de Camp Read Free Book Online Page A

your esteemed family. I leave you now to pick your pimples in peace.”
    ***
    Reviewing the scene later, Cordle decided that he had performed quite well in his maiden appearance as a carrot. True, his closing lines had been a little forced and overintellectualized. But the undertone of v i ciousness had been convincing.
    Most important was the simple resounding fact that he had done it. And now, in the quiet of his hotel room, instead of churning his guts in a frenzy of self-loathing, he had the tranquilizing knowledge of having put someone else in that position.
    He had done it! Just like that, he had transformed himself from onion into carrot!
    But was his position ethically defensible? Presumably, the clerk could not help being detestable; he was a product of his own genetic and social environment, a victim of his conditioning; he was naturally rather than intentionally hateful—
    Cordle stopped himself. He saw that he was engaged in typical onionish thinking, which was an inability to conceive of carrots except as an aberration from oniondom.
    But now he knew that both onions and carrots had to exist; otherwise, there would be no Stew.
    And he also knew that a man was free and could choose whatever vegetable he wanted to be. He could even live as an amusing little green pea, or a gruff, forceful clove of garlic (though perhaps that was scratching at the metaphor). In any event, a man could take his pick between carrothood and oniondom.
    There is much to think about here, Cordle thought. But he never got around to thinking about it. Instead, he went sightseeing, despite the rain, and then continued his travels.
    ***
    The next incident occurred in Nice, in a cozy little restaurant on the Avenue des Diables Bleus, with red-checkered tablecloths and incomprehensible menus written in longhand and purple ink. There were four waiters, one of whom looked like Jean-Paul Belmondo, down to the cigarette drooping from his long lower lip. The others looked like run-of-the-mill muggers. There were several Scandinavian customers quietly eating a cassoulet , one old Frenchman in a beret and three homely English girls.
    Belmondo sauntered over. Cordle, who spoke a clear though idiomatic French, asked for the ten-franc menu he had seen hanging in the window.
    The waiter gave him the sort of look one reserves for pretentious beggars. “Ah, that is all finished for today,” he said, and handed Cordle a 30-franc menu.
    In his previous incarnation, Cordle would have bit down on the bullet and ordered. Or possibly he would have risen, trembling with outrage, and left the restaurant, blundering into a chair on the way.
    But now—
    “Perhaps you did not understand me,” Cordle said. “It is a matter of French law that you must serve from all of the fixed-price menus that you show in the window.”
    “ M’sieu is a lawyer?” the waiter inquired, his hands perched insolently on his hips.
    “No. M’sieu is a troublemaker,” Cordle said, giving what he considered to be fair warning.
    “Then m’sieu must make what trouble he desires,” the waiter said. His eyes were slits.
    “Okay,” Cordle said. And just then, fortuitously, an elderly couple came into the restaurant. The man wore a double-breasted slate-blue suit with a half-inch white pin stripe. The woman wore a flowered o r gandy dress. Cordle called to them, “Excuse me, are you folks English?”
    A bit startled, the man inclined his head in the barest intimation of a nod.
    “Then I would advise you not to eat here. I am a health inspector for UNESCO. The chef has apparently not washed his hands since D Day. We haven’t made a definitive test for typhoid yet, but we have our suspicions. As soon as my assistant arrives with the litmus paper. …”
    A deathly hush had fallen over the restaurant.
    “I suppose a boiled egg would be safe enough,” Cordle said.
    The elderly man probably didn’t believe him. But it didn’t matter, Cordle was obviously trouble.
    “Come,