Read Online Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany - Free Book Online

–’
    ‘Which are the four smallest?’
    ‘Mesetin, Hebel-E, Tinert, and –’
    ‘– and Eudo is
the
smallest,’ she said, while he said:’
    ‘– Eudo.’
    She said:
‘Every
body knows Eudo’s the smallest, of course – don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those facts – but I don’t think anybody but a professional geographer could tell you the other three. You see, in terms of data at hand, right now you’re on a par with the Skahadi Library itself –’ which, when her tongue lifted for the initial sibilant, he had never heard of before but which, by the time it fell from the final vowel, he knew had been founded in ’12 in Lower Cogonak, back when it had still been officially a part of Abned, before the Severance Decision of ’80 – which was when the Yellows had won their first major electoral victory. ‘You’re in touch,’ sheexplained, ‘at this point, with a good deal more information than I am. I certainly couldn’t have told you the
four
smallest. Anyway, I figured we’d put all that to some use. Like I said, the carton’s filled with catalogue cubes – about five hundred of them. They’re not there at random: they’re all texts I’ve wanted to read but never got around to. There’re more than a few in it I’ve discussed in great detail with various people, just as though I
had
read them. There’re a whole lot that I’ve read the first chapters of and have meant to read the rest for years. And there’re lots I read when I was much too young and have been intending to reread. Oh yes, and there’re about ten or fifteen I’ve read and reread a lot and just like a lot. Anyway. The instructions on the box your glove came in say that I – ordinary mortal that I am – can only absorb texts from the broadcast band at about one every ten minutes. But, as you may have figured out by now, I’m a lazy bitch. It says that if you’ve been through Radical Anxiety Termination, you can absorb them about one every point-thirty-two seconds; that’s without turning your mind into wet sand. You see, what I want to do is
talk
to somebody who’s read everything I should have read. I want to control such a man, make him lie down in the sand and lick my toes.’ She grinned in the dark. ‘The glove will give you the texts verbatim. On hot, hazy nights, I’ll let you recite choice passages to me so that I can pick and choose. I can always get them myself with the glove later. But I think this way is more useful, more interesting.’ She pushed another pedal. ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Go in the back,’ she said, ‘and read a few dozen books. Then come up here, and we’ll discuss literature while I decide where to drive us tonight.’ She pushed a switch on the dashboard. A pale ceiling plate behind them put hands of light on her shoulders.
    ‘I … I don’t read too good.’
    She smiled. ‘Yes, you do. Now.’ In the dim cabin her lips were still underlit. ‘Besides, all you have to do is read the titles. The library broadcast takes care of imprinting the text on your mind. In half a second. Go on.’
    He moved from beneath the bar and stood, slowly. The transport’s shaking was mostly in his knees. Turning, he walked to the back.
    The carton was obviously the open octagonal one, stuck about with packing tape. Upside down against it, flap open on to the floor, the lizard-embossed bag leaned where she’d tossed it. He squatted, knees winging either side. With his gloved hand, he held the box’s ragged rim. With his naked one, he pushed down among the dice and pulled one loose. The cubes were not smaller than most people’s fingertips; but they were smaller than his. He turned the smoky die between his great crowns with their bitten nails and read:
The Nu-7 Poems—
the collected poems and poetic fragments that a mail-routing engineer, Vro Merivon, had stored over many years in the unused Nu-7 memory bin of her communications department computer, perhaps seventy years ago now.