The Celestial Blueprint and Others Stories Read Free

watching the Six Flying Stars, Jean-Jacques?”
    “Oui. I do so every time they come over.”
    “Why do you eat your heart out because you cannot fly up to them and then voyage among the stars on one of them?”
    He refused to give her the satisfaction of knowing his real reason. He did not want her to realize how little he thought of Mankind and its chances for surviving—as humanity— upon the face of this planet, L’Bawpfey.
    “I look at them because they remind me that Man was once captain of his soul.”
    “Then you admit that the Land-walker is weak?”
    “I think he is on the way to becoming nonhuman, which is to say that he is weak, yes. But what I say about Landman goes for Seaman, too. You Changelings are becoming more Amphibian every day and less Human. Through the Skins, the Amphibs are gradually changing you. Soon you will be completely sea-people.”
    She laughed scornfully, exposing perfect white teeth as she did so.
    “The Sea will win out against the Land. It launches itself against the shore and shakes it with the crash of its body. It eats away the rock and the dirt and absorbs it into its own self. It can’t be worn away nor caught and held in a net. It is elusive and all-powerful and never-tiring.”
    Lusine paused for breath. He said, “That is a very pretty analogy, but it doesn’t apply. You Seafolk are as much flesh and blood as we Landfolk. What hurts us hurts you.”
    She put a hand around one bar. The glow-light fell upon it in such a way that it showed plainly the webbing of skin between her fingers. He glanced at it with a faint repulsion under which was a countercurrent of attraction. This was the hand that had, indirectly, shed blood.
    She glanced at him sidewise, challenged him in trembling tones. “You are not one to throw stones, Jean-Jacques. I have heard that you eat meat.”
    “Fish, not meat. That is part of my Philosophy of Violence,” he retorted. “I maintain that one of the reasons man is losing his power and strength is that he has so long been upon a vegetable diet. He is as cowed and submissive as the grass-eating beast of the fields.”
    Lusine put her face against the bars.
    “That is interesting,” she said. “But how did you happen to begin eating fish? I thought we Amphibs alone did that.” What Lusine had just said angered him. He had no reply. Rastignac knew he should not be talking to a Sea-changel-ing. They were glib and seductive and always searching for ways to twist your thoughts. But, being Rastignac, he had to talk. Moreover, it was so difficult to find anybody who would listen to his ideas that he could not resist the temptation.
    “I was given fish by the Ssassaror, Mapfarity, when I was a child. We lived along the seashore. Mapfarity was a child, too, and we played together. ‘Don’t eat fish!’ my parents said. To me that meant ‘Eat it!’ So, despite my distaste at the idea, and my squeamish stomach, I did eat fish. And I liked it. And, as I grew to manhood, I adopted the Philosophy of Violence and I continued to eat fish although I am not a Changeling.”
    “What did your Skin do when it detected you?” Lusine asked. Her eyes were wide and luminous with wonder and a sort of glee as if she relished the confession of his sins. Also, he knew, she was taunting him about the futility of his ideas of violence so long as he was a prisoner of the Skin.
    He frowned in annoyance at the reminder of the Skin. Much thought had he given, in a weak way, to the possibility of life without the Skin.
    Ashamed now of his weak resistance to the Skin, he blustered a bit in front of the teasing Amphib girl.
    “Mapfarity and I discovered something that most people don’t know,” he answered boastfully. “We found that if you can stand the shocks your Skin gives you when you do something wrong, the Skin gets tired and quits after a while. Of course, your Skin recharges itself and the next time you eat fish it shocks you again. But, after very many