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nightmare.
8. The "Hofstadter Passion" dream sequence.
So you can see that their happy carnal encounters, following this evenly
spaced schedule of dream, would be pretty well strewn out through the night.
"I wonder if poor people ever dream?" Emily speculated once.
But, for them, every night and day, every hour and every minute (by
quintessential third-powering they could have as many as 216,000 minutes in
every hour) was crammed and overflowing with pleasure and fulfillment.
And it went on that way for many happy years.
"Wrangler Hoxie back at the progressive institution, used to wonder
about the astonishing consumption of angular momentum in our vicinity," Karl
Riproar the Lord Torpedo and Lord Gyroscope said one day. "He said that all
that angular momentum had to come from somewhere."
"Whatever made you think of that?" Emily asked with her smiles (she
could smile as many as twelve different smiles at one time). "It wasn't the
Chairman of the Environmental Quality Board who is puffing up the incline to
our front door?"
"Yes" Lord Karl said. "He is wondering about the same old questions.
Have we been shearing our sheep too closely, do you suppose?"
"Oh yes, we have. There should have been enough of them to keep both of
us. But, Karl, we have increased our consumption of everything so very much as
the years go by."
The Chairman of the Environmental Quality Board came in and talked to
them for ten minutes. For ten minutes! Why that was almost the equivalent of
ten days' experience the way they usually compressed it. And they had to slow
down to voice speed to carry on the talk with him.
"The attainment levels of the three thousand genius families in the
'Pleasant Meadows Home Development Project' aren't as high as they should be,"
the Chairman of the Environmental Board said in a guarded voice.
"They are higher than for any other group of equal numbers in the
world," Emily told him. "Best in the world isn't bad." Emily was luxuriating
her bare feet on the floor before her. She was receiving through the soles of
her feet. There were elite soles-of-the-feet broadcast and reception programs
for persons of extraordinarily fine sensibilities. There were two such
programs, and Emily was enjoying one with each foot.
"Yes, the attainment levels of the people in the Pleasant Meadows
Project are higher than any group anywhere else," the board chairman agreed.
"And yes, it is higher than we could logically expect it to be. But --"
"But is it as high above what you might logically expect as you might
logically expect it to be?" Emily asked. "Is that your question?"
"Yes. Considering your own unique elevating influence, that is my
question," the board chairman said challengingly.
"A thing that big is hard to hide forever," said Karl Riproar the Lord of
Torpedo and Gyroscope.
Then the three of them looked at each other for a while.
"Where does all that personal and psychic energy, all that angular
momentum come from?" the board chairman asked. "You consume colossal amounts
of it."
"Oh, it comes from the sheep," Karl said, "from the pleasant genius
sheep of Pleasant Meadows. We shear them but we do not butcher them. Why were
you not afraid to come here alone?"
"I'm not alone. I have back-up," the board chairman said. "But I'm not
afraid because when you do kill (and I suppose that it is accidental when you
do it) you kill very slowly. It takes about three years for it to happen. But
I intend to settle you two in about three minutes. I have only to blow this
whistle that I wear around my neck. There is no way you can prevent me blowing
it. And it is tuned --"
"I know what it is tuned to," Karl Riproar said, "and I know that we
can't prevent it blowing, since it will blow of itself." Then the whistle did
begin to blow, apparently by itself. It did not blow an alarm though. It blew
a pleasant little tune that went out over the aether. Why should the pleasant
little tune, or the whistle blowing by itself, have frightened the board
chairman? Oh, because he didn't expect anything like that, and he didn't know
what was going on.
The board chairman held the whistle in his hands now, and still it blew
by itself. The board chairman turned white, and he pulled the whistle from
around his neck and flung it across the room.
"My you are nervous!" Emily smiled to the board chairman. The whistle
still blew of itself on the floor across the room. And the burden of its
message was "All clear. No difficulty. You can go now." That was the message
that the whistle sent out over the aether. And back-up vehicles fifty meters
away were seen and heard to leave.
"How?" the board chairman croaked.
"Simple ventriloquism," Karl said. "Were you never young and tricky? A
childhood hobby of mine. I could make pianos and violins seem to play by
themselves, seem to play quite well too. And, as 'Ultra-Departmental Director'
of the region for life, I am the one who has set up all codes and signals."
"You are vampires," the board chairman said. "The energy consumed by
your dazzling simultaneities comes from the blood of others.
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