10

left her to cruise the sky until the her power pack ran out. Drifting like some errant member of the Wild
Hunt with her long blonde hair streaming behind her as a banner in the wind. She put her hand on my
arm. " Was that when you decided to quit flying? " " Somewhere along in there. " When had I decided?
Or had I even made a conscious decision? Had I just floated back down to earth in the same way I had
floated away in the first place? Roz obviously felt the subject needed changing. " I wanted to thank you
for whatever you said to Jason. " " Oh? " " He told me he's going to stay in school next year. He said it
was some things you said to him. " I rolled over to look at her. " Roz, he's going to leave eventually. " " I
know, " she said, staring at the ceiling. " They always do, even if they don't go flying off. But he's so

14

uncomfortable. BRETT# Sir, we do have a lot of cameras throughout the store. I just want to make sure
you're aware of that. BRETT# I just wanted to make sure that he's not bothering anyone over here, you
guys are okay? KRYSTAL-HARRISON# Why would he be bothering us? BRETT# I just wanted to make sure.
I don't, I want to make sure our customers are... KRYSTAL-HARRISON# Well... BRETT#... I would rather be
spending my time and attention with, you know, ladies like you that are obviously able to afford, you
know, clothing in this store. KRYSTAL-HARRISON# How do you know that he's not able to afford...
CUSTOMER# But I don't even have a job. KRYSTAL-HARRISON# She doesn't, she's in med school. BRETT#
But it's obvious, I mean... KRYSTAL-HARRISON# And I'm a stay at home mom. BRETT#... come on, you
guys. You have a Louis Vuitton bag, you guys have... KRYSTAL-HARRISON# I mean, honestly. He probably
has more money than we do

23

political program. His tactic was evidently based on not bringing down the branch while shaking off the
most offensive of the rotting apples. Yet, truly and finally, changing the Soviet system and eradicating its
excesses demand a clear knowledge of its entire history -- of how it came to the present state of locally
proclaimed disaster. # The independent historian must assist in moving matters along by means of a little
historical perestroika. However fearful that Soviet past may be, the still current debate over Stalin in the
former Soviet Union and abroad will obviously not be easily cleared away because Gorbachev first
wished it so and then contrived to obfuscate the facts so that he can have the story only his way. In any
case, the quest for the truth about Stalin has long since acquired its own domestic dynamic. Even if
Gorbachev's history was, and still is, necessary to him, it is clearly out of style with many of his
successors and surely unnecessary to independent Westerners. (n3) # It was the Soviet journalist and
history writer Lev Bezymenskii who, in 1968
74

continued my wife, " I don't understand how they can remove Frank's knees without hurting him.
Admittedly he's not much of a hubby, but it will bother me if he's going to bleed all over the place. " " Look,
Mavis, they've got this Dr. Dowling stored away in their clandestine laboratory, " he pointed out. " The guy
ought to be able to perform a simple goddamn knee operation. " " But then Frank won't have any knees. "
" Don't be obtuse, hon. They'll obviously force him to replace the knees with new ones. " His voice was
sounding a bit impatient. " These spies sounded pretty humane to me. " " You haven't mentioned what
country they represent. " " The United Kingdom, I think. " " Aren't you sure? " " Well, the three of them are
very polite and well behaved. They wear tweedy clothes and have BBC accents, " Edmond explained. "
I'd say they're Brits, though they haven't

They'll obviously force him to replace the knees with new ones

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sent back that particular image, he admits, the lab published it " only for laughs. " # But still other
members of the scientific community -- even some at NASA -- believe the face and nearby objects merit
further study. Mark Carlotto, a former division staff analyst with the image-computing technology division
at TASC -- an analytic services corporation that performs satellite-based image processing -- began
examining the Viking data in 1985 after reading about Hoagland's studies. Carlotto's expertise in
analyzing satellite images has made him a key player in the investigation. # " The
mesa obviously looks like a face, " says Carlotto. " It always did to me, and that was the intriguing thing
that piqued my curiosity to make me take a closer look at the data. " Carlotto, author of The Martian
Enigmas, has specifically attempted to test the validity of NASA's trick-of-lighting explanation for the face.
Using a " shape-from-shading " image-analysis technique that creates a three-dimensional image from
two-dimensional data, he has concluded that " the impression of a face is not a trick of lighting.