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Show Jeffries, Section 3, Page 39 "Exotic," the officer continued, writing on his clipboard. "Outsiders like the fire ant and the walking fish. But just give 'em a foot in the door and I can see unrestricted and uncontrollable breeding. On the beaches and in the swamps." Dorian Clayton was taken into the presence of the Grand Pooh-bah of Irate. When he cared to, the man would speak perfect English. Polished and Oxonian. 'The happiest days of my life were on the quad--' Or correcting that Near East was the more scholarly term than Middle East. And when Dorian mentioned a mannerism endemic to the Persian Gulf, the Pooh-bah cut in "--more accurately the Arabian Gulf." The king was defining a geopolitical perspective. "I'd fight at the slightest provocation," he concluded, "real or imagined. Now as for yourself," he looked at Dorian Clayton skeptically, "are you a. . .warrior?" "Well," Dory began, looking around at the entourage and the hotel people and thinking of Effman, "in the recent opportunity to cover myself with glory, my draft status was 2-A, occupationally deferred. . "Then you're not battle-tested; you don't know war, war-the natural state of things: whether the alarming sobriety of conquest, or the ordered peace of defeat." |
