ref: cde05f4187aed1c77b8efb57ee5dabe8d5d5106d
dir: /troff/028.ms/
\" This master file produces text suitable for a 6"x9" paperback. .ds CH \" turn off page numbering (top) .B .nr HM 1i \" header margin .nr FM 1i \" footer margin .nr LL 4.25i \" line length .pl 9i \" page length .po .87i \" page offset (from left) .nr PS 8 \" font point size \" .kern \" pairwise kerning (groff only) .hy 14 \" automatic hyphenation \" .nr VS 24 \" double space .fp 1 R GA \" URW Garamond .fp 2 I GI .fp 3 B GM .fp 4 BI GMI .fp 5 CW H \" Helvetica .LP \& .nr % 73 \ " start with this page number .ds CF [%] \" first numbered page (bottom) .ps 10 .ce .B EXCLUSION \& .ps 8 tags: 1966, a_person, mars2, mímisbrunnr, mímir, tab2 .R .PP .ps 10 3 November, where were we? .PP .ps 10 TAB2's respirator had fogged over his visor. He leaned over Mímir's well, A.\ Person staring back up at him from the de\-indexed depths. He could still smell it, dark wafts of outgassing black mold from the open burn pits. Well, that had put a tin lid on the whole valley, hadn't it? He had to get out of there. .PP .ps 10 "You're not really alive, are you?" TAB2 eyed his own reflection, still uncertain to whom it was he was really addressing all these witty comments. .PP .ps 10 "How am I supposed to answer that?" A.\ Person replied. The water rippled, irritably, for the entire basis of this forced interrogation seemed an error condition, an impossible contradiction in terms. His annoyance echoed around the rim of the well, obsessively recapitulating the same historicist preamble to his aesthetically defunct rhetorical situation. Why couldn't his doppelgänger understand? .PP .ps 10 Enough of this. .PP .ps 10 TAB2 pulled on his jacket and continued uprange. North, to the mountains, where he was likewise unwelcome. The families who had stayed there had really \fIstayed,\fR and wanted nothing to do with leftover refugees from the test site, no matter who they might be or how their parents might once have been connected to their mountain community. Even Piro had given up on exterminating them. These people, and their goats, were simply staying put, a prim shawl drawn tight around the flesh\-colored ridges straddling the site. .PP .ps 10 They guarded the mountain.