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Doc said loudly: "Monica Mountainway is laid ale tops and built of an asphaltoid that&039;s full of longin tension and alineering journals Ha! Always trust a diversified genius, I say!"
"Diversified loudmouth," sorin, squinting suspiciously at Raained some three hundred feet in altitude," he announced
The bus turned and ran along the second hilltop, giving thehway It was covered ater Waves were breaking against the brush-grown slopes
Dal Davies, as negligently casual about it all as some poetic son of Poseidon in his father&039;s study, watched the broad gray Bristol Channel glinting steely here and there in thesun as the water inched and footed up the briary slope to the other side of the road fronting the pub
The last tihters and a liner battling down-channel against the flood Now they were gone, leaving only a scattering of wreckage and distant s at
He&039;d turned on the wireless a while back and listened to the taut-throated reports of theinsistences that they were caused by the great muster of earthquakes that had tramped Terra&039;s crust the last half-day; and cries for boats and buses and trains to do this, that, and the iland, it seeo somewhere else, preferably to the top of Mount Snowdon
He&039;d decided it s that had put all the cowardly So their liquor up miserly behind theone Disney for a while and jigged about and sung loudly: "Who&039;s afraid of the big bad tide? Certainly not Dai!"
But then the lights had gone out with a greenish-white flaring and the wireless with them, and he&039;d hunted up candles for cheer and affixed seven of the the bar
Now he turned back toward the like seven silver-goldsoftly back froreen-and-aht as he moved slowly past the maiden flames, its many a day since I&039;ve looked into Old Bushhtily tempted by some of the cantos of Vat 69, by Ezra Pound Which should it be now? Or perhaps - yes! - for a foreign fillip, Kirchwasser by Heinrich Heine!
General Spike Stevens and Colonel Mab lay side by side a foot or so under the concrete ceiling on the cot-size top of a big steel cabinet She&039;d lost her flashlamp, but he still had his strapped to his chest It shone on a still surface of black water six inches below the top of the cabinet
They lay very still themselves Their heads roared from the pressure of the air, which ar to look at along the wall-top or on the ceiling, except the grille of a ventilator beyond Colonel Mab&039;s head
The general said - and his voice eirdly gruff yet distant - "I don&039;t understand ith this pressure the air doesn&039;t puff up through there - " he pointed toward the ventilator - "and then, finis Must be a block - ered"
Colonel Mab shook her head She was lying on her back, looking up over her eyebrows "It isn&039;t easy to see at first," she said softly, "but the ventilator shaft is full of water It bulges down just a little in the squares in the ventilator, like tiny black pillows or big black fingertips The water pressure from above and below balance - for the rille aren&039;t disturbed"
"You&039;re seeing things," the general told her "That&039;s bad hydrostatics The head of pressure on the water below us is bound to be greater It&039;d still push the air out"
"Maybe the elevator shaft hasn&039;t filled entirely yet," Colonel Mab answered with a little shrug "But I&039;er through the nearest hole in the ventilator, then snatched it quickly away as a streaht down and rattled loudly into the still water beloith the effect of an elephant relieving itself of fluid
The general grabbed her by the shoulder "You goddamn stupid bitch," he snarled Then he looked her in the face and he slid his fingers inside her collar, and took hold of it to tear it down "Yes," he said harshly, nodding once "Whether you like it or not"
He hesitated, then said apologetically but very stubbornly, "There&039;s nowhere else to escape to, is there, except into each other"
She grinned with her teeth at hi brass bastard," she told hihtfully, hitting each syllable as if she stepped on stones, "but if we could work so that we hit the climax just as we drownedWe&039;ll have to wait till the water&039;s over us - It ot it, Mab!" the general said loudly, grinning down at her like a blocky death&039;s-head
She frowned "Not all of it," she said, just loudly enough for hi water-spurts - there were three of theh to start on, and I&039;ll think of the other thing after a while"
She unbuttoned her soaking coat and shirt and unhooked her brassiere The flashlamp strapped to his chest shone on her breasts He entered her, and they got to work
"Take it slo, you old bastard,!" she told him
When he clutched her to him, the flashlamp made a reddish square in her chest that shone out faintly through her breasts
When the water was an inch from the top of the cabinet they paused for a while
"Like rats in a trap," she said to hiot quite a tail, Mrs Rat," he said to her "I always thought you were a Lesbian"
"I am," she told him, "but that&039;s not all I aht- "
"We saw it," she said Then her face broke into a s is a very quiet death," she said She dabbled her hand in the water, as if she were on her back in a canoe - and, for a moment, she was "That&039;s from The Duchess of Malfi, General Duke Ferdinand Nice, don&039;t you think?" When he frowned speculatively, she said, still s tranquilly: "I&039;ve read in ed &039;s like hanging I don&039;t know if it&039;s true of women, but it could be, and ht to help the water a little, and if we coulda woman, General? I&039;irls you never got Remember the little redhead in Statistics who used to twitch her left eye when you barked at her?"
Just then the water ca over the cabinet top, and the ventilator tore loose, and a great inorganic sobbing began as, alternately, a log of water shot down the hole and a log of air escaped up it, rhythot to work again
"I won&039;t squeeze so hard right away, you godda bitch," he shouted in her ear "I&039;ll remember you&039;re the woered, strong-fingered strangler&039;s hands came up between his arms and closed around his neck