Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

\ . , s, labor, he told himself. It was his conviction that with a more equitable distri- home. As he walked between the cyclopean tiers of potted shrubs, the great _ joy came upon him. He felt confident that she would be sitting relaxed in ‘really unjust that he should be compelled to devote five hours a week to social bution of leisure and a more rigidly planned economy the work quotas could be substantially reduced. “Your turn, V67,” said an impatient, red-haired bio-chemist on the opposite side of the chute. © — V67 nodded, climbed up and relaxed on the broad, unstable slide.-The is slide tilted and released him. He thought of many things as he shot down- “i ward in the darkness. The faces of Mechanical Companion GH8 and his = wite vied for supremacy in his mind, Eventually they merged into a single image, and he sighed in rapture. It was a mystical ideal he beheld now—the composite of all feminine loveliness. Mechanical Companion GH8 was simply another aspect of his wife’s personality. It was absurd to imagine that the concept woman did not BP embrace a variety of lovely forms. Individual women were merely facets, Pa isolated aspects of one eternal and glorious reality—the feminine principle, ee imperishable, mysterious and sublime. “My own sweet wife and dear companion,’ he murmured, in mystical adoration. Down, down he swept. The blood throbbed in his temples, his pulses ached. Finally a droning began and he felt something collide with his nether extremities. Then the steel-cold arms of the jointed basal slide crept about him, and his consciousness reverted to a more practical level. | \ ge He emerged in a glare of incandescence. The sun-simulating arc lamps which lined the cityward wall of Suburban Home Level RH shone down a upon him in radiant splendor, and a tempered buoyancy came upon him as he climbed from the slide and turned his steps in the direction of his suburban home. He hoped that his wife had based no disquieting rumors, The sky gardens were far removed, both spatially and spiritually, from the quiet haven of his domed aquariums with their myriads of brilliant-hued and exotic fishes and erustaceans, and felt upon his brow the warm sea breezes still redolent with the spices of far islands and archipelagoes as they emerged from hundreds of swinging odorphones, a look of supreme contentment came into his face. So rapidly did he walk that he traversed the distance between the chute exit and the portals of his suburban home without meeting anyone. Stepping into the vacuum lift he was whirled up fifty-five stories, and emerged in the community corridor adjoining his wife’s quarters. The corridor was deserted. He was glad of this, for he did not wish to talk to dull and gossipy B54, or exuberant and boisterous C88, or any of the other tenants of Story 55. As he tiptoed across the floor to the door of his wife’s television room a great the darkness, enjoying an African or Asian telolog. He would steal up behind her and implant a fifteen-second kiss on the nape of her neck, immediately beneath the two blond curls which intertwined so adorably below her coiffure. 10 : oO Comichdoo