Hayden Howard

Name: The Un-Reconstructed Woman
Author: Hayden Howard

The Un-Reconstructed Woman

Summary

“The Un-Reconstructed Woman”, is a work by Hayden Howard. It explores elements such as mouse, Paul and peaches.

Quotes from The Un-Reconstructed Woman (Hayden Howard)

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ When that last manmade sun was lost in the sky and the loud sound was the blowing of the leaves, Paul limped back up the hill, whistling. But she did not come. And he did not find her or her tracks.
The leaves fluttered with amazement, flew up in familiar patterns that frightfully burst. The hill surged red as the sun found the horizon. Down through the alien treetops, across the leaf-shrouded peaches, its bent rays javelinned the mouse on the trunk of the tree. Chittering, it vanished.
Paul cried out and ran. Down the hill toward the shed, the leaves were rattling together. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ When his face nuzzled the leaves, bean rows sprang higher than a man, leghorns were scratching everywhere and the spacemen came with bright sheaves of credits in their fists. The bean rows spread beyond the horizon and the dust of plowing tractors rose like smoke against the sky, while Paul and Harry, hardly distinguishable, for Paul was only three minutes older, proudly led a ragged old man and a slack-jawed captain through the flowering avenue of peach trees. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ A chip of damp leaves, dark side up with alien things dragging their larvae from the sun, down the slope another, he pursued scars in the leaves over the hill, down, lost the trail in the dry watercourse, zig-zagging, circling like a hound dog, found it again. Ran. His leg muscles were soft from months without gravity. Steep hills. Rollercoasters. Winded.
Resting, listening to his heart, listening, smiling: the mouse was not the largest fauna in his private world. Doubtless the thing that ran like a man was hills and valleys ahead, a world to hide in. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ Above this continuing racket, Paul shouted: "A smart guy could get richer here than on one of those damned rocks."
The old man's voice came between blows. "You won't get rich anywhere." He said something Paul couldn't hear. "—not the type." He smiled as though it were a compliment. "But if you're thinking of watching peaches ripen—" The hammering drowned him out. "—and the drooling lip because that's what men get all alone on alien planets." ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ The afternoon he charged into a world of shrieks and crashing leaves and saw a bronzed, hair-whirling fury, her leaf-clotted mane glinted blue in the sunlight, straining from the humming wire with the self-destroying terror of a filly trapped in a cattle guard, he stared, then ran for the wire snips. When he cautiously approached he saw the wire had bitten deep into her ankle. As she squawled, she was beating the leaves with blood. It would be many afternoons before she would run again, if ever. If he loosed this lone thing now, she would die. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ Sometimes when he would push her away she would snarl and squawl at him, other times, she would stand with her lip pushed out and her eyes blinking so that he was near tears himself. He listened for the rocket with eager unhappiness.
In the ninth month, without warning, she bit the tip off his ear. The impetus of the pain swung his fist against her mouth. When she stumbled to her feet, she tore off her dress, spitting blood and hatred, and fled into the woods. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ To every man who ever died away from home, Paul thought as he ran over the leaves. Harry brother, there she stands, boy.
She was going. Already tiny figures were dismantling the well rig. They had refilled the tanks with water, the fist for the mighty arm that was the power pile. The heat exchanger was the wrist. The steam, disassociated into H and O by the manmade sun, would provide the mass to push back, pushing them forward to a rock in the sky where there might be heavy metals and there might not. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ The old man, who still felt uncomfortable from what he might have seen on the hill, reinforced this with a mutter: "Only man in a world, with a hole for a belly and a spook for a shoulder."
To his own surprise almost as much as theirs, Paul set his feet firmly. "I'm going to cash in my sixteenth of this space coffin for supplies we got for the Mormon colony on Smith. I'll get rich here!" ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ When she began to relax, he pried loose three of the bars, quickly poured a solution of nutrient tablets into the rubber glove, pricked a hole in the thumb and wriggled into the cage, almost filling it. While he held her head so she would not see him if she opened her eyes, very gently he began her training.
Sometimes he would sing to her, and she would smile. Gradually he saw himself transformed in her eyes from the horrible thing that gives fear and pain to something that gives food. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ At sleeping time, his dreams of beautifully gowned women leaning over the piano and beckoning, bending in velvet curves to refill his glass, dancing up to him with their arms outstretched, standard spacemen's dreams, no longer gave him pleasure because he could never be sure when they disrobed in their softly lit apartments that they might not turn revealed, the nameless girl. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ It seemed far too complicated for an animal incapable of consistently picking ripe tomatoes from among the green or of hoeing a bean row for more than a few minutes without losing interest and running over to hug him. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ If they intended to stay, they could try the other side of the planet, he'd tell them that. This land was staked.
When they reached him, the one who was a doctor pounced on his ankle the way the nameless girl would pounce on a mouse.
When he enquired for the Doric, they shook their heads. Their farming supplies had never arrived, but it made no difference now. They were being forced out of the system, which was not the first time they had been pushed around, their bearded leader said.
"You are lucky we paused here to fill the water tanks for the long trip in. We are the last ship. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ You need not be afraid of our ways. We do not try to convert spacemen in any case." The doctor took a forward step but stopped, off balance, when Paul's hand slapped the automatic.
"My wife—," Paul had a perplexed, embarrassed look.
The old man was right about him never getting rich. "We have decided to stay here. This is our home."
He saw the doctor raise an eyebrow: no doubt he had run across spacemen who dreamed that convincingly of women many times before. It was difficult when they awoke. Paul had seen a guy in a cage once that had had that happen to him. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Hayden Howard, The Un-Reconstructed Woman

“ Then they died while you were quite small, perhaps five or six years old, and you forgot whatever was left to forget of man's five hundred thousand years of cumulative learning. It isn't like instinct ”

Hayden Howard

Summary

Quotes from The Un-Reconstructed Woman (Hayden Howard)

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