"It is a perfect sky?"
"Well, it's always a perfect sky, Don."
"Are you telling me that even though it's changing every second, the sky is always a perfect sky?"
"Gee, I'm smart. Yes ?"
"And the sea is always a perfect sea, and it's always changing, too," he said "If perfection is stagnation, then heaven is a swamp! And the Is ain't hardly no swamp-cookie."
"Isn't hardly no swamp-cookie," I corrected, absently. "Perfect, and all the time changing. Yeah. I'll buy that."
"You bought it a long time ago, if you insist on time. "
I turned to him as we walked. "Doesn't it get boring for you, Don, staying on just this one dimension ?"
"Oh. Am I staying on just this one dimension ?" he said. "Are you ?"
"Why is it that everything I say is wrong?"
"Is everything you say wrong ?" he said.
"I think I'm in the wrong business."
"You think maybe real estate?" he said.
"Real estate or insurance. "
"There's a future in real estate, if you want one. "
"OK, I'm sorry " I said "I don't want a future. Or a past. I'd just as soon become a nice old Master of the World of Illusion. Looks like maybe in another week ?"
"Well, Richard, I hope not that long!" I looked at him carefully, but he wasn't smiling.
9
The Days blurred one into another. We flew as always, but I had stopped counting summer by the names of towns or the money we earned from passengers. I began counting the summer by the things I learned, the talks we had when flying was done, and by the miracles that happened now and then along the way to the time I knew at last that they aren't miracles at all.
Imagine
the universe beautiful
and just and
perfect,
the handbook said to me once.
Then be sure of one thing:
the
Is has imagined it
quite a bit better
than you
have.
