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And sahat I saw:

Three h for pro basketball Three huge naked black s on their fingers Three naked black giants with their genitals painted bloody red

Looking our way, and grinning

Chapter 8

The thing to do, I thought, was not panic This thought didn’t do toois not fall, and the thing to do when swi to do when iants is not panic Sensational

One of the giants pointed at anda," he said, o Uhuru Godzilla Colorado Antigua"

I kept my eyes on the three of them and reached blindly to my left, where I had left my pants I fumbled in the pocket and found the Swiss Army pocketknife

"Matilda Piranha Daktari Laconic Malaysia Too Decatur"

I opened the knife as surreptitiously as I could under the circu as I ot the can-opener blade first try That wouldn’t do at all Next shot, I got the blade you use for punching holes in belts, if you’ve either lost soht or stolen a fatholes in people as well, and that I didn’t have time to search for a more conventional weapon Besides, the belt-hole maker was certainly more useful than, say, the nail file Or the tweezers

I held the knife in roped around with my left until I latched onto one of the forks hich we had been eating the la on the Modonoland Globetrotters held their ground, saying things like Toyota and Kon-Tiki and Mechanic to each other, and laughing their heads off between phrases The humor was overthat the ly

Surprise, I thought The good old eleured that ere paralyzed with fear – an understandablethey expected was an attack True, there were three of theh to astonish a Texan But they seemed to be unarmed, whereas I had a knife and a fork Well, a belt punch and a fork Well, that was so, wasn’t it?

" Corona," said the one in the middle, approximately "Melina Kandinsky Mercouri Gowanda Kenosha Cunni-"

I attacked

I did everything at once, because I had the feeling that there would be no second take, that all of this had to be done correctly first tied at them in one fine liquid h, face contorted in ned to curdle the blood of my opponents and freeze them in their tracks A phrase came unbidden to mind, a line from the advertisement of a factory-to-you discounter "It’s time to cut out theat theI knew I had left the ground and was flying ass over teacups through the air It was the da ever I never even had the sensation of physical contact with the man Obviously he did take hold of me and throw me, but it happened so very suddenly and with such ease and precision that I was never aware of it I even thought for a ht, or that there had been an earthquake, or that the world was co to an end Nor was I convinced that the three possibilities were mutually exclusive But I didn’t have too s out in my head because almost iround

I got up again as quickly as I could, which wasn’t very They looked quite as they had looked before, standing in a row taking things easy, the only change being that they had turned to face orical statue representing Surprise The s like Salaain This tiain for the man in the middle; then, halfway there, like any suburbanite I drifted to the right This, see, was strategy I see blindly ahead at the ive the ht a false sense of security To lull him into inattention

It didn’t work This ti the wall, and this tier to shake the errant confusion out of ot toI still had the fork, though Otherwise everything was as before – the saht, the same utter rout for our side

The ain Or ht I couldn’t be sure Nor could I catch what they were saying Before the words had been h, but now I couldn’t even pick up on the sound I suppose I was as close to sleep as it is possible to be while walking around, and closer than I had been in twenty years

I looked around for my breath and couldn’t quite find it, and then the one on either the right or left said soled and took a step forward, and I gathered that the third ti to be the charm My ht angle to it His hands assumed the traditional posture, one up in front of his face, the other just in front of his shoulder His face, so loose and composed before, was non and deeply sea forthe lead foot, bringing the rear foot up, constantlyat the sa to cutI could do about it

And the hell of it was that I was never absolutely beyond redeave me lessons in it before they shipped me to Korea, and a couple of times on those numbered hills I had a chance to shohat I had learned, and it ell enough I was never great but I was never awful, either, but these three cloere good enough to make my old judo instructors look like barroom brawlers

The man calanced aenitals, and at the others’ bright red genitals, and I thought again of the judo instructors andclicked

I dropped my hands I opened eny recapitulates phylogeny!"

Chapter 9

The three of the ood, and blinked, which wasn’t bad either Another just stood around looking puzzled, although ue had to me And the third man – the man in the middle, the tallest and broadest and blackest of thenition, surprise, and resolution

Then he ers extended, swinging in a sure backhand stroke that caught the standing-around-looking-puzzled man full in the throat As the blow landedout to the ht a shoulder and spun, and the other hand, no longer busy with the puzzled ers and stabbed at theupward