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

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 you like a
relative. I don't pay enough for the privilege."
"Oh no, sir."
"Next time I yell at you, yell right back. Why should I have all the fun?"
"Oh, Mr. Reich..."
"Do that and you get a raise." The smile again.
"That's all, Jonas. Thank you."
"Thank you, sir." The valet withdrew.
Reich arose from the bed and toweled himself before the cheval mirror,
practicing the smile. "Make your enemies by choice," he muttered, "not by