"Aldiss, Brian W - Short Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

1. Man in His Time
2. Outside
3. Super-Toys Last All Summer
4. The Saliva Tree
5. There is a Tide


One of the editors of this volume does not know that this
story is going into it. There has been collusion in high places.
The President of SFWA, Damon Knight, and the other editor
have overruled in advance any complaints that Brian W.
Aldiss might make. This story was one of three that tied for
the Best Short Story award and is, in its own right, a fine
piece of fiction. Here is art, in the interweaving of idea and
dialog, and here is something vital being said about the
human condition. It has earned its place in this book.
H.H.

MAN IN HIS TIME

Brian W. Aldiss

His absence
Janet Westermark sat watching the three men in the office:
the administrator who was about to go out of her life, the
behaviourist who was about to come into it, and the husband
whose life ran parallel to but insulated from her own.
She was not the only one playing a watching game. The
behaviourist, whose name was Clement Stackpole, sat
hunched in his chair with his ugly strong hands clasped round
his knee, thrusting his intelligent and simian face forward, the
better to regard his new subject. Jack Westermark.
The administrator of the Mental Research Hospital spoke
in a lively and engaged way. Typically, it was only Jack
Westermark who seemed absent from the scene.
Your particular problem, restless
His hands upon his lap lay still, but he himself was restless,
though the restlessness seemed directed. It was as if he were
in another room with other people, Janet thought. She saw
that he caught her eye when in fact she was not entirely
looking at him, and by the time she returned the glance, he
was gone, withdrawn.
"Although Mr. Stackpole has not dealt before with your
particular problem," the administrator was saying, "he has
had plenty of field experience. I know"
"I'm sure we won't," Westermark said, folding his hands
and nodding his head slightly.
Smoothly, the administrator made a pencilled note of the
remark, scribbled the precise time beside it, and continued. "I
know Mr. Stackpole is too modest to say this, but he is a great