Read Ebook: From an Unseen Censor by Brown Rosel George Dillon Diane Illustrator Dillon Leo Illustrator

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Ebook has 273 lines and 11754 words, and 6 pages

"Not Uncle Izzy," I said. "He wouldn't be at all likely to spend a freezing night out on Alvarla, even for a good joke."

"Radar equipment's in perfect shape," Rene said, shifting his activities to another segment of the ship's equipment. "I wonder why he didn't leave it on so we could locate him easier. Not that we had any trouble. Or why he didn't continue broadcasting for help until he died.... Mind if I take some of the equipment?"

"You haven't been exactly generous with me."

"I intend to subtract its value from the cost of supplies and mileage on my ship. I never said I was generous, but, by God, I'm honest."

Rene slid out the compartment of lunch packages, dumped them on the floor.

"All unopened," he was saying disgustedly. Then he picked up a heavy, square object with sharp corners, open on three sides. "What the hell is this?"

"A book," I informed him.

I hung the book by the covers and let the pages flip open. Nothing fell out. I sighed. I'd have to go through the whole damn thing.

"I'm going back to your ship and read in comfort," I told Rene.

"You're no help here anyway," he said, putting the lunch packages in a large plastic bag he'd found somewhere. "No use letting these go to waste."

I didn't tell him I had the clue to Uncle Isadore's fortune in my hand. He didn't know Uncle Isadore, so he wouldn't have believed me.

Still, I read it all the way through. It wasn't too bad. Not like Edgar Guest, of course, who was the only ancient author I liked in General Studies. But I found there was a sort of Grilch Hop beat to it that reminded me of the Footlooses I used to go to in Middle School. I grinned. It was funny to think of now.

I found no clues in the book. The only thing to do was read it again, more carefully.

No, I sighed, she wouldn't have done for a studs and neck clasp man. But I couldn't help wondering where she was now and what she was like now. Did she remember me, and did she think about me when she heard that song we used to dance to, because it was about a girl named Sally?

Once I knew a girl named Sally Met her at a Footloose rally

I began humming the Grilch Hop tune to the ancient poem in Uncle Algy's book. It was fantastic how closely it fitted, though, of course, the words in the poem were plain silly.

But imagine finding a poem with a perfect Grilch Hop beat before anybody even knew what a grilch was! Before Venus was even discovered. Jump on both feet. Hop three times on the left foot. Jump. Hop three times on the right foot. The rhythm was correct, right down to the breakaway and four-step at the end of each run.

It was while I was singing this poem to a Grilch Hop tune that I noticed the clue. The poem was named "The Dodo." And the rhyming was very smooth until I came to the lines:

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, Thou," I said, "art like a Raven Ghastly, grim, and ancient Dodo, Wandering from the Nightly shore; Tell me what thy lordly name is On the Night's Plutonian shore." Quoth the Dodo, "Isadore."

Now the author had gone to a lot of trouble in the previous verse not to break the Grilch Hop rhyme scheme. He made "thereat is" rhyme with "lattice" and "that is." Why did he follow "shaven" and "raven" with "Dodo"?

Furthermore, it had not struck me the first time I read the poem quickly that there was anything odd about a bird being named "Isadore." People who keep pet grilches frequently name them after famous Reed players and Isadore is a common name.

I got out a magnifying glass to examine the ancient print. Sure enough, it had been tampered with. The print looked so odd to me, anyway, I hadn't noticed the part that had been changed. But it was obvious under the glass that "Dodo" had been substituted for a word of almost equal length. The same with "Isadore."

Sitting back, I thought about what I had read. It made no sense at all. Was I to look for a white bird, "grim, ungainly, ghastly"? And what if I found him? Why was he like a raven? What was this perfume from an unseen censor? I could picture the ghost of Uncle Isadore, knowing his financial imagination, as the "unseen censor" because he always criticized me. Was I to look for perfume? Did he have a fortune in perfume stowed somewhere? It seemed to me it would take an awful lot of even the most expensive perfume to comprise a fortune.

I decided to start with the bird. I went outside Rene's ship and looked around. No birds.

"Rene!" I called. He was still looking through Uncle Izzy's ship. "Have you seen an ungainly white bird around?"

"What!" he snapped, sticking an indignant face out of the door.

"Obviously," Rene said. "I don't know why you can't find your own spoor. I noticed the droppings immediately."

"Where are the birds?"

"How the hell would I know?" But he couldn't contain his special knowledge. "They're probably night birds," he said.

"Oh, yes." It checked. "Wandering from the Night's Plutonian shore."

He looked at me suspiciously. "You ever had a nervous breakdown?"

"Some people crack on alien planets," he said. "I have a padded room in my ship. You'd be surprised how often I have to use it."

I told him about the poem I found in Uncle Izzy's book. "We look for a white bird," I said. "Or perfume."

"You're nuts," he pointed out with some justice, because he hadn't known Uncle Isadore. "How do you know these changes weren't made by somebody else a long time ago? Maybe this ancient printer printed it wrong and had to change it afterward."

"I don't think they were that primitive back then."

"All right," I said. "You look your way and I'll look my way."

"We're not looking any more any way today," Rene said, emerging from Uncle Isadore's ship loaded down with removings. "It'll be night and below freezing in half an hour."

"What do you think," I asked, "a dodo would like to eat?"

"The birds. I want to put something out to attract them. Crackers or something?"

"I think you're crazy. If you have any idea of sitting outside to wait for them, you'll freeze to death. Not only that, there's no moon. You wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face."

"How do the birds see?"

"Maybe they aren't night birds. Maybe they migrated somewhere else."

"And if I use a light, it might scare them away," I mused. "Well, maybe I'm not supposed to wait outside, anyway."

Rene went in and switched on the heat and lights.

"Leave the outside port open," I said.

"Why?"

"So the birds can knock."

"Well, it's possible," I said defensively. "It won't hurt anything to leave it open."

"All right," he consented, curving his mouth around unpleasantly, "just to show you what a jackass you are."

Rene had the heat turned low, for sleeping, and the lights off, as soon as we had eaten and fed the converter. I hydrated a package of crackers so that they were full-sized but not soggy, broke them into pieces and tossed them out.

I admit I felt a little embarrassed.

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