Feghoot IX: What-so-ever-you-so, sew shall you reap.



The Ismaili Institute of Higher Studies always rewarded the annual Hayworth Memorial Lecturer with his weight in diamonds but only if he withstood the attacks of the faculty.

Ferdinand Feghoot, lecturing on "Space Colonization and the Human Emotions," ran this gantlet successfully in 2883. "Everywhere man has gone," he declared, "and no matter how he has changed, you always find some small, homey, nostalgic reminder of old Mother Earth."

At once he was challenged. "What about the planet Candide?" a professor demanded. "They are infidels, cannibals! How could anything there remind one of Earth?"

For an instant, Feghoot was taken aback. Then he smiled. "I would have said you were right," he replied, "if it hadn't been for one thing. As you know, the Candideans especially relish the plump juicy buttocks of slaves raised on large farms for the purpose. And it was on one of these farms that I saw something which took me right back to my boyhood, and brought tears to my eyes."

"What was it?" everyone asked.

"It stood on a shelf in the kitchen," signed Ferdinand Feghoot. "It was just an old . . . Fanny Farmer's Cook Book."

(Copyright © 1958 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1958.).