Azazel - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,56

is important to me is travel.' Can you beat that? And that submoronic bit. Still trying to sweet-talk me.

You've got to understand, old fellow, that this was one of Azazel's first jobs for me and he hadn't learned control And I had asked him to have Sophocles travel without his wife on occasion.

There was still the advantage to such a situation that I had foreseen from the start "Boom-Boom," I said, "let's talk over the divorce together between Asbury - "

"And you, you miserable wimp. Whatever magic, or whatever you did, I don't care. Just stay out of my life because I know a guy who will squash you into pancakes as soon as I give him the word. And he kipples, too, because he does everything else."

Boom-Boom, I'm afraid, had gone Bust-Bust, though not in a way I would have wanted her to or, knowing her measurements and style, expected her to.

I called on Azazel but, though he tried, there was no way he could undo what he had done. And he flatly refused to try anything toward making Boom-Boom more reasonable toward me. He said that would be too much for anyone. I don't know why.

He kept track of Sophocles for me, however. The man's mania grew. He crossed the Continental Divide on his hands. He went up the Nile on water skis, all the way to Lake Victoria. He crossed Antarctica on a hang glider.

When President Kennedy announced in 1961 that we would reach the moon by the end of the decade, Azazel said, "That's my adjustment doing its work again."

I said, "You mean that whatever you did to his brain gives him the power to influence the President and the space program?"

"He doesn't do it on purpose," said Azazel, "but I told you the adjustment was strong enough to shake the universe."

And he did go on to the moon, old chap. Remember Apollo 13, that was supposedly wrecked in space on the way to the moon in 1970, with the crew just barely getting back to Earth? Actually, Sophocles had stowed away on it and had taken a portion of it to the moon, leaving the actual crew to get back to Earth as best they could with the rest.

He's been on the moon ever since, traveling all over its surface. He has no air, no food, no water, but his adjustment to continual travel must somehow take care of that. In fact, something may have worked out by now to take him to Mars - and elsewhere.

George shook his head sadly. "So ironic. So ironic."

"What's ironic?" I asked.

"Don't you see? Poor Sophocles Moskowitz! He is a new and improved version of the Wandering Jew, and the irony is that he isn't even Orthodox."

George put his left hand to his eyes and fumbled for his napkin with his right hand. In doing so, he accidentally picked up the ten-dollar-bill I had placed at the side of the table as a tip for the waiter. He mopped his eyes with his napkin but I didn't see what happened to the ten-dollar-bill He left the restaurant sobbing, and the table bare.

I sighed and put out another ten-dollar-bill.
The Eye of the Beholder
George and I were sitting on a bench at the boardwalk and contemplating the broad expanse of the beach and the sparkling sea in the distance. I was immersed in the innocent pleasure of watching the young ladies in their bikinis and wondering what they could get out of the beauties of life that was half as much as they contributed.

Knowing George as I did, I rather suspected his own thoughts to be considerably less nobly aesthetic than mine. I was certain that they would deal with the more useful aspects of those same young ladies.

It was with considerable surprise, then, that I heard him say, "Old man, here we sit drinking in the beauties of nature in the shape of the female form divine - to coin a phrase - and yet surely true beauty is not, and cannot be, so evident. True beauty, after all, is so precious that it must be hidden from the eyes of trivial observers. Have you ever thought that?"

"No," I said, "I've never thought that and, now that you mention it, I still don't. What's more, I don't think that you have ever thought that."

George sighed. "Talking with you, old chap, is like swimming in molasses -