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Show Anting Alone pa g e 189 with a fire extinguisher or whipped him with a willow switch or kicked him in the stomach or spit in his hair or anything fun like that yet. Sam was not pleased to see his elfin boy twitch so uncomfortably there on his rock. Sam made a perhaps self-centered assumption now, based on his own Kanoradoan life, seen from his own Great Plains perspective: There was only one thing that could make a grown man twitch like this, and it wasn't a mere graveyard full of wakeful corpses. "No, no. Don't tell me," Sam yelled. "It's your grad committee down in Houston troubling you, isn't it?" Sam about left his shorts behind when a zombie right behind him suddenly hissed, "Shrimpmeat goes to the U of Chicago. Not Houston." When he was finally able to conquer the heebie-jeebies and separate his jaws, Sam said, "I - I didn't know they could talk." "They can't," said Axelrad. "All they can do is play back pre-programmed height jokes." "Yeah?- Well, anyway," said Sam, regaining through a mighty act of will a good bit of his composure and his train of thought, winding himself up for a selfless spiel intended to chin little Axlegrease up a bit (part of Sam's penitential rite, to make amends for torturing the youngster all their lives), "don't let any God-damned little pud committee ruin your life, Ax-honey! Don't let them buttfuck you out of a single moment's thought! Professors aren't worth the time it takes to pronounce their names. They are so indifferent toward reality and so reluctant in any case to make a definite statement or action that would betray a moral stance on anything, that they'll probably read your thesis and pass it on with no indication |