Coming back from my Wilderness Week, I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time we didn’t talk; I was mending stockings and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Longdistance coal-burner, with Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable. | Copyright 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Originally published in THE NEW ATLANTIS AND OTHER NOVELLAS OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Robert Silverberg. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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