Interstellar Pig Read Online Free

I'd been there for several hours, and yet I'd found out almost nothing about them. Mom and Dad quizzed me about their ages, their professions, their financial status, their relationships with one another, and where they came from. All I knew were their first names, that they traveled a lot and were addicted to Interstellar Pig.
    "I'm surprised at you, Barney," Mom said. "You're usually so inquisitive."
    And I was surprised at Mom and Dad. The neighbors were much younger than they were and had no obvious social position. Yet, for some reason, they were fascinated by them. It wasn't like them at all.
    I looked carefully at the marks around the windows in my room that night.
    There was no message of any sort, only random wounds etched into the wood. When I got into bed, the scars, by some trick of the lamplight, emerged in sharp relief, like welts. I couldn't concentrate on my book, and turned out the light. The wheezing and gasping of the bedsprings as I tried to find a comfortable position made me think of an old man struggling to breathe. I assured myself that, ancient though it was, this could not possibly be the bed in which the prisoner had slept.
    And if his ghost remained, it was too feeble a specter even to materialize in my dreams. It was Zena I dreamed of, leading me by the hand across the floor of a gigantic arena. It was patterned, like their game, with the images of planets and stars, and curving pathways of light. Zena was telling me over and over again something I could not grasp, something terribly important, of great beauty and significance.
    The next day, Sunday, was what Mom calls a perfect day: blistering hot without a trace of cloud in the sky. Immediately after breakfast, she and Dad headed out for the beach. It was the first such day we'd had for a while, and Mom was way behind on her tan. I accompanied them just to see who was there. It was well before noon, but the usual beach denizens were already ensconced: the old ladies with short-legged beach chairs and decks of cards, withered pink flesh drooping out of their ruffled suits; the shrieking toddlers with buckets and plastic swim toys; the gleaming adolescents, as stiff and carefully positioned as dark sarcophagi beside their radios, coming to life only to anoint themselves with more oil and solemnly, ritualistically press their blackened forearms together. In minutes, Mom joined their ranks, her comparative pallor giving her the look of a greased corpse. I retreated to the safe darkness of the house.
    I decided to take my book out to the front porch, which offered a view of the bay—not to mention a view of the patio next door, where our neighbors were setting up a table for breakfast. I didn't know them well enough yet to feel comfortable about joining them uninvited. But I did want them to see that I was available and idle, ready to be included in any games or expeditions. I pretended to read.
    They still seemed preoccupied by their game of the night before. They spoke in hushed voices, but I could hear enough to tell that they were arguing about the best escape route from a maze on some foreign planet.
    Then, abruptly, and in a much louder voice, Zena announced, "These tomatoes taste ersatz."
    Joe remarked in equally artificial tones that the word ersatz came from a German noun meaning "substitute," first used in 1875.1 wondered if they had realized I was listening, and were changing the subject for my benefit.
    "How come I never know obscure little data like that?" asked Manny.
    "Because you never read a word besides fantasy and science fiction," said Zena disdainfully.
    "You should mention! Regard the books you brought here. The Flame, the Power and the Passion; The Body in the Library."
    "But I also brought Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy," she pointed out. "Unlike you, I'm not totally self-involved."
    They were both beginning to giggle. "Self-involved!" Manny exclaimed. "How can anybody vain enough to let her fingernails grow as