（外文电子版资料）Sturgeon, Theodore - Slow Sculpture.pdf

file:///G|/rah/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20Slow%20Sculpture.txt VERSION 1.0 DTD 032600 SLOW SCULPTURE Theodore Sturgeon He didnt know who he was when she met him--well, not many people did. He was in the high orchard doing some- thing under a pear tree. The land smelled of late summer and wind--bronze, it smelled bronze. He looked up at a compact girl in her mid-twenties, at a fearless face and eyes the same color as her hair, which was extraordinary because her hair was red-gold. She looked down at a leather-skinned man in his forties, at a gold-leaf electroscope in his hand, and felt she was an intruder. She said, Oh in what was apparently the right way. Because he nodded once and said, Hold this and there could then be no thought of intrusion. She kneeled down beside him and took the instrument, holding it exactly where he positioned her hand. He moved away a little and struck a tuning fork against his kneecap. Whats it doing? He had a good voice, the kind of voice strangers notice and listen to. She looked at the delicate leaves of gold in the glass shield of the electroscope. Theyre moving apart. He struck the tuning fork again and the leaves pressed away from one another. Much? About forty-five degrees when you hit the fork. Good--thats about the most well get. From a pocket of his bush jacket be drew a sack of chalk dust and dropped a small handful on the ground. Ill move now. You stay right there and tell me how much the leaves separate. He traveled around the pear tree in a zigzag course, striking his tuning fork while she called out numbers ten degrees, thirty, five, twenty, nothing. Whenever the gold foil pressed apart to maximum--forty degrees or more--he dropped more chalk. When he was finished the tree was surrounded by a rough oval of white dots. He took out a notebook and diagramed them and the tree, put away the book and took the electroscope out of her hands. . Were you looking for something? he asked