"We're berthing! We're berthing!" cried Mitchey the invalid just as a forboding nimbus appeared over the rubber pile. "That's right, Mitchey. We've berthed. Where are your shoes?" replied Captain McWickle.

You say to me that you think God is in the birds and the trees and the grass and the bees. All I can say to you is: the bees?

The Falconer and the Stone

"Why can't I feel my leg?" cried the Falconer.

"Why can't I feel my leg?" he repeated.

"Did you try rubbing it a little?" inquired Bartlbous the Steward

"That really seems to help." explained the Falconer, relieved.

"What kind of a life is this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This is mad. Running electrical currents into your body will not make you more appealing to her."

"If I thought that you thought that that was why I'm doing this...well I just don't know what I'd do."

"OK, then why are you doing it?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Well maybe that's true but your hat seems to have caught fire again."

""

"You don't even want to know why I'm doing it?"

"You just said I wouldn't understand."

"Try and guess."

"No."

"Leave me."

"Alright, alright...Is it for science?"

"Yes, but what science?"

"I don't know."

"A curse on you and that little tart of yours."

"OK, alchemy?"

"No, but that'll do. Tell me, if you will, what is it that seperates us from mere stones?"

"Life, consciousness, reason, emotion, volition, movement..."

"I'm not so sure that you have more reason than a stone if that's your best answer."

"Well what then. Night falls even as your brilliant mind begins to light the way."

"I am brilliant."

"Just tell me already."

"Why, so you can continue to pluck what petals my dear step-mother has left?"

"Get on your mule."

"OK, OK...stones want, stones feel, stones roll, they just do it very slowly. Stones know everything that goes on around them. Not in the way that we focus our senses on a single thing at a time and then make broader sense of it later. They know everything that's ever happened and everything that ever will happen. They may not make shows of their freedom but that's only because they feel no disassociation with which to regret on the one hand and then revel in on the other. If they had a similar tragic fall they decided to stay right where they landed."

"So why are you doing this?"

"Promise me you'll leave my step-mother alone."

"Come on."

"Leave me at once!"

"How'd you like it if I brained you with this stone-companion of yours?"

"How'd you like it if I stole your shoes again?

"Just tell me."

"OK. So if we agree that stones enjoy more freedom than humans I'll proceed."

"I didn't agree to that."

"You can't protect your precious chickens when you're asleep. It'd be a shame if any harm befell them."

"We don't have chickens."

"..."

"Where was I? . . . What else could we rightly say enjoys more freedom than humans?"

"If stones do then surely we can say that logs are just behind."

"No, but I admire your answer... It's Falcons!"

"So what?"

"I'll tell you what. The only reason Rorfie the falcon left me was because I wasn't free enough to go along with him. And you know what? He was right. I would've held him back."

"..."

"So surely there's no way to become any more like a falcon. But there's certainly a way that I can become more like a stone--another thing that knows freedom everlasting."

"By laying on this hill with your shirt off?"

"My shirt's off?"

"Yes"

"No, you fool. By giving myself more of what divides us from stones thus making me more free than a stone."

"Electricity?"

"At last. It is by electricty that we think. It's by electricty that we feel. It's by electricity that we act."

"Wouldn't being more electric make you less free if less like a stone?"

"Good question. We now know that many remedies work by ostensibly exacerbating the problem to a point where it simply corrects itself."

"Your step-mother is waiting."

"You leave her alone!"

"I'm your father, you tit!"

"Look" said the Saxon "I told you that that strange intoxicating scent could only mean we were in Old Rangoon." "Get below deck" thundered the captain "you know perfectly well we're on the Missouri River."