Read Dark Of The Woods for Free Online

seeking the droplets of envy, worship, and appreciation that were to be found in the hearts and minds of his fans, was trying to synthesize love out of that mixture. The Alliance rep had been correct.
    "There's Mr. Alsace," Mrs. Bunter said. The beetle crawled on her breast.
    Suddenly, whatever these people had done to fill the empty can of his soul was drained away. He felt rusted again, dying. Had that been why he had told Leah he was married? If he fought this in court or smuggled her out of Demos and was discovered, the masses would look down on him, disapprove of his racially mixed marriage. By marrying the winged girl, he would be giving up the worship of the reading club people all over the Alliance worlds. So he had lied to her, trying to hang on to the only thread of appreciation he could rely on. He had chosen the adoration of historical novel fans over the love of a woman.
    The ceiling bobbled dangerously close.
    Vomit tingled in the back of his throat. He forced it down, tore himself free of Alice Bunter.
    "Mr. Davis! Stauffer!"
    But he was out the door, staggering, leaving them behind to discuss the strange behavior of the Nobel winner who was long overdue for the Alliance Literature Prize.
    Proteus floated next to him.
    He found the car, almost closed the robot out. It was fortunate that he had not, for the machine would have vibra-beamed the door away if he had. He pulled the grav car onto the highway, ignoring the coordinates and taking manual control. The port city whizzed away and was replaced by grassy hills. The trees came, still dropping leaves. It began to snow…
    How long had he been fooling himself? Years. Many of them. He had played the role of the uncaring, the isolationist without need for human companionship. Give me my typewriter, he cried, and I will converse with my own soul! That is sufficient! he had shouted. But it had never been sufficient, not for a second. He had accepted the adulation of his fans, relied upon it. It had become his only contact with people, and without it he would have been shallow and incomplete. He realized now that he had been searching for love, searching for what two dead parents had never given him, had denied him in their bitterness and their determination to destroy one another no matter what the cost. Stauffer, Stauffer, Stauffer… Wife against husband, both of them against the son. When he had grown and they could not live to see his accomplishments, to see that he had made it despite them, he had turned to the masses, opened his heart and wrote for their pleasure and their praises. That had become so important to him that the true love of a winged girl had been momentarily displaced, lost in the greater need for acceptance. But not now. Not any longer…
    He drove faster.
    Proteus gurgled noisily.
    Snow bulleted the windscreen, danced whitely across the hood. It covered the leaves along the road, began decking the trees in soft shrouds…
    What would he say to her? Could he make her reject her winged angel to come with him? Could he convince her that he would love and cherish her more than her Demosian lover? He would have to. There was nothing else he could imagine now. There could be no going back to the reading clubs for a hint of love, admiration, appreciation. He knew the phoniness of that, at last, and it was not going to be possible to delude himself with the same routine any longer.
    The gyros whined to keep the car as stable as possible while he poured the stress power from the grav plates into the propelling mechanism.
    They swept past the towers of the aviaries and onward toward the Sanctuary. The twin breasts were the breasts of a fair maiden now, frosted with snow. He turned toward the ugly black block of the "orphanage" and accelerated. He was afraid she would say no, would stay with the winged boy, leaving him without anything but his loneliness and longing. He constructed arguments as sound as those required to breach the gates of Hell or