Destiny Doll

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The place was white and there was something aloof and puritanical and uncaring about the whiteness, as if the city stood so lofty in its thoughts that the crawling scum of life was as nothing to it.

And yet, I told myself, the trees towered over all. It had been the trees, I knew, when the ship started coming down toward the landing field, riding on the homing beam we’d caught far out in space, that had made me think we’d be landing at a village. Perhaps, I had told myself, a village not unlike that old white New England village I had seen on Earth, nestled in the valley with the laughing brook and the flame of autumn maples climbing up the hills. Watching, I had been thankful, and a bit surprised as well, to find such a place, a quiet and peaceful place, for surely any creatures that had constructed such a village would be a quiet and peaceful people, not given to the bizarre concepts and outlandish mores so often found on an alien planet.

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