"Alfred Bester - Demolished Man, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

Alfred Bester. The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester

The Demolished Man

1951

-------------------

1

Explosion! Concussion! The vault doors burst open. And deep inside,
the money is racked ready for pillage, rapine, loot. Who's that? Who's
inside the vault? Oh God! The Man With No Face! Looking. Looming. Silent.
Horrible. Run... Run...
Run, or I'll miss the Paris Pneumatique and that exquisite girl with
her flower face and figure of passion. There's time if I run. But that
isn't the Guard before the gate. Oh Christ! The Man With No Face. Looking.
Looming. Silent. Don't scream. Stop screaming...
But I'm not screaming. I'm singing on a stage of sparkling marble
while the music soars and the lights burn. But there's no one out there in
the amphitheater. A great shadowed pit... empty except for one spectator.
Silent. Staring. Looming. The Man With No Face.

And this time his scream had sound.
Ben Reich awoke.
He lay quietly in the hydropatlhic bed while his heart shuddered and
his eyes focused at random on in the room, simulating a calm he could not
feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin
whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-clock that
radiated the time of three planets and six satellites, the bed itself, a
crystal pool flowing with carbonated glycerine at ninety-nine point nine
Fahrenheit.
The door opened softly and Jonas appeared in the gloom, a shadow in
puce sleeping suit, a shade with the face of a horse and the bearing of an
undertaker.
"Again?" Reich asked.
"Yes, Mr. Reich."
"Loud?"
"Very loud, sir. And terrified."
"God damn your jackass cars," Reich growled. "I'm never afraid."
"No, sir."
"Get out."
"Yes, sir. Good night, sir." Jonas stepped back and closed the door.
Reich shouted: "Jonas!"
The valet reappeared.
"Sorry, Jonas."
"Quite all right, sir."
"It isn't all right," Reich charmed him with a smile. "I'm treating