"Asimov, Isaac - The Currents of Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

"Oh. But, Rik, how can anyone have a job not analyzing anything? That's not a job."
"I didn't say I didn't analyze anything. I said I analyzed Nothing. With a capital N."
"Isn't that the same thing?" It was coming, she thought. She was beginning to sound stupid to him. Soon he would throw her off in disgust.
"No, of course not." He took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I can't explain though. That's all I remember about that. But it must have been an important job. That's the way it feels. I couldn't have been a criminal."
Valona winced. She should never have told him that. She had told herself it was only for his own protection that she warned him, but now she felt that it had really been to keep him bound tighter to herself.

It was when he had first begun to speak. It was so sudden it had frightened her. She hadn't even dared speak to the Town-man about it. The next idle-day she had withdrawn five credits from her life-hoard-there would never be a man to claim it as dowry, so that it didn't matter-and taken Rik to a City doctor. She had the name and address on a scrap of paper, but even so it took two frightening hours to find her way to the proper building through the huge pillars that held the Upper City up to the
sun.

She had insisted on watching and the doctor had done all sorts of fearful things with strange instruments. When he put Rik's head between two metal objects and then made it glow like a kyrt fly in the night, she had jumped to her feet and tried to


make him stop. He called two men who dragged her out, struggling wildly.
Half an hour afterward the doctor came out to her, tall and frowning. She felt uncomfortable with him because he was a Squire, even though he kept an office down in the Lower City, but his eyes were mild, even kind. He was wiping his hands on a little towel, which he tossed into a wastecan, even though it looked perfectly clean to her.
He said, "Where did you meet this man?"
She had told him the circumstances cautiously, reducing it to the very barest essentials and leaving out all mention of the Townman and the patrollers.
"Then you know nothing about him?"
She shook her head. "Nothing before that."
He said, "This man has been treated with a psychic probe. Do you know what that is?"
At first she had shaken her head again, but then she said in a dry whisper, "Is it what they do to crazy people, Doctor?"
"And to criminals. It is done to change their minds for their own good. It makes their minds healthy, or it changes the parts that make them want to steal and kill. Do you understand?"
She did. She grew brick-red and said, "111k nevчr stole anything or hurt anybody."
"You call him Rik?" He seemed amused. "Now look here, how do you know what he did before you met him? It's hard to tell from the condition of his mind now. The probing was thorough and brutal. I can't say how much of his mind has been permanently removed and how much has been temporarily lost through shock. What I mean is that some of it will come back, like his speaking, as time goes on, but not all of it. He should be kept under observation."
"No, no. He's got to stay with me. I've been taking good care of him, Doctor."
He frowned, and then his voice grew milder. "Well, I'm thinking of you, my girl. Not all the bad may be out of his mind. You wouldn't want him to hurt you someday."
At that moment a nurse led out Rik. She was making little sounds to quiet him, as one would an infant. 111k put a hand to


his head and stared vacantly, until his eyes focused on Valona; then he held out his hands and cried, feebly, "Lona----"
She sprang to him and put his head on her shoulder, holding him tightly. She said to the doctor, "He wouldn't hurt me, no matter what."
The doctor said thoughtfully, "His case will have to be reported, of course. I don't know how he escaped from the authorities in the condition he must have been in."
"Does that mean they'll take him away, Doctor?"
"I'm afraid so."
'Please, Doctor, don't do that." She wrenched at the handkerchief, in which were the five gleaming pieces of credit-alloy. She said, "You can have it all, Doctor. I'll take good care of him. He won't hurt anyone."
The doctor looked at the pieces in his hand. "You're a mill-worker, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"How much do they pay you a week?"
"Two point eight credits."
He tossed the coins gently, brought them together in his closed palm with a tinkle of metal, then held them out to her. "Take it, girl. There's no charge."
She accepted them with wonder. "You're not going to tell anyone, Doctor?"
But he said, "I'm afraid I have to. It's the law."
She had driven blindly, heavily, back to the village, clutching Rik to her desperately.
The next week on the hypervideo newscast there had been the news of a doctor dying in a gyro-crash during a short failure in one of the local transit power-beams. The name was familiar and in her room that night she compared it with that on the scrap of paper. It was the same.
She was sad, because he had been a good man. She had received his name once long before from another worker as a Squire doctor who was good to the mill hands and had saved it for emergencies. And when the emergency had come he had been good to her too. Yet her joy drowned the sorrow. He had not had the time to report 111k. At least, no one ever came to the village to inquire.


Later, when Rik's understanding had grown, she had told him what the doctor had said so that he would stay in the village and be safe.

Rik was shaking her and she left her reveries.
He said, "Don't you hear me? I couldn't be a criminal if I had an important job."