Slow Sculpture by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page A

uncomfortable, exhilarating, disturbing, exciting all at once. He compelled her and comforted her at the same time.
    She found her voice and answered him. “I just couldn’t sleep … like that. Suppose there was a fire?”
    “Who said that?” he snapped.
    “I beg your—”
    “Who said ‘suppose there’s a fire?’ Who told you that?”
    “Why, I suppose it—yes, it was my mother.”
    “Not your idea then. Figured as much. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Do you believe that?”
    “Of course!”
    “You do. How old were you when you learned that?”
    “I don’t—know. All children—”
    “Children seven, eight, nine? All right. How old were you when you were taught not to unpin your diapers? Not to let anyone
see
you?”
    She did not answer but the answer was there.
    “Wouldn’t you say you’d learned ‘thou shalt not expose thy body’ earlier, better, more down-deep than ‘thou shalt not kill?”
    “I—yes.”
    “Do you realize it’s a deeper commandment with you than any of the Ten? And aside from right-’n-wrong, isn’t it deeper than the deepest, strongest one of all—save thyself? Can’t you see yourself dying under a bush rather than walk naked out on the road and flag a car? ‘Suppose there’s a fire?’ Can’t you see yourself burn to death rather’n jump out a window without your bathrobe?”
    She didn’t answer except from her round eyes and her whole heart.
    “Does that make any
sense
, to believe a thing like that?”
    “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I—have to think.”
    Surprisingly, he said, “Retroactive.” He pointed to the window. “What can we do about that?” he asked.
    Absently she glanced at it. “Never mind it tonight, Mr. Bittelman.”
    “Sam. Okay. Goodnight, little lady.”
    She felt herself, abruptly, tottering on the edge of a bottomless pit. He had walked in here and disoriented her, ripped into shreds a whole idea-matrix which had rested undisturbed in the foundations of her thinking, like a cornerstone. Just at this startled second she had not made the admission, but she would have to admit to herself soon that she must think “retroactive,” as he had put it, and that when she did she would find that the clothes convention was not the only one she would have to reappraise. The inescapable, horizonless, unfamiliar task loomed over her like a black cloud—her only comfort, her only handhold was Sam Bittelman, and he was leaving. “No!” she cried. “No! No! No!”
    He turned back, smiling, and that magic happened again, hissureness and ease. She stood gasping as if she had run up a hill.
    “It’s all right, little lady.”
    “Why did you tell me all this? Why?” she asked pathetically.
    “You know something? I didn’t tell you a thing,” he said. “I just asked questions. They were all questions you could’ve asked yourself. And what’s got you scared is answers—answers that came from here—” He put a gentle knuckle against her damp forehead. “—and not from me. You’ve lived with it all quite a while; you got nothing to fear from it now.” And before she could answer he had waved one capable hand, winked, and was gone.
    For a long time she stood there, trembling and afraid to think. At last she let her open eyes see again, and although they saw nothing but the open door, it was as if some of Sam’s comfort slipped in with vision. She turned around, and around again, taking in the whole room and reaping comfort and more comfort from the walls, as if Sam had hung it for her to gather like ripe berries. She put it all in the new empty place within her, not to fill, but at least to be there and to live with until she could get more. Suddenly her gaze met the silly little wastebasket sitting against the door, holding it open, and to her utter astonishment she laughed at it. She picked it up, shook her head at it as if it had been a ridiculous puppy which had been eating her talcum powder; she even spanked it lightly, once, and