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

it... as I judge you're suggesting I should."
"Maybe I am," Reich said intently. "Maybe I'm hinting it could be worth your
while to break the peeper pledge. Maybe I'm thinking in terms of money ... more
than you or any 2nd Class peeper ever sees in a lifetime."
"Forget it, Ben. Not interested."
"So you bust your pledge. What happens?"
"We're ostracized."
"That's all? Is that so awful? With a fortune in your pocket? Smart peepers have
broken with the Guild before. They've been ostracized. So what? Clever-up,
Ellery."
West smiled wryly: "You wouldn't understand, Ben."
"Make me understand."
"Those ousted peepers you mention... like Jerry Church. They weren't so smart.
It's like this..." West considered. "Before surgery really got started, there
used to be a handicapped group called deaf-mutes."
"No-hear no-talk?"
"That's it. They communicated by a manual sign language. That meant they
couldn't communicate with anybody but deaf-mutes. Understand? They had to live
in their own community or they couldn't live at all. A man goes crazy if he
can't talk to friends."
"So?"
"Some of them started a racket. They'd tax the more successful deaf-mutes for
weekly hand-outs. If the victim refused to pay, they'd ostracize him. The victim
always paid. It was a choice of paying or living in solitary until he went mad."

"You mean you peepers are like deaf-mutes?"
"No, Ben. You normals are the deaf-mutes. If we had to live with you alone, we'd
go mad. So leave me alone. If you're nursing something dirty, I don't want to
know."
West cut off the phone in Reich's face. With a roar of rage, Reich snatched up a
gold paper-weight and hurled it into the crystal screen. Before the shattered
fragments finished flying, he was in the corridor and on his way out of the
building.
His peeper secretary knew where he was going. His peeper chauffeur knew where he
wanted to go. Reich arrived in his apartment and was met by his peeper
house-supervisor who at once announced early luncheon and dialed the meal to
Reich's unspoken demands. Feeling slightly less violent, Reich stalked into bis
study and turned to bis safe, a shimmer of light in the corner.
It was simply a honey-comb paper rack turned out of temporal phrase with a
single-cycle beat. Each second when the safe phase and the temporal phase
coincided, the rack pulsed with a brilliant glow. The safe could only be opened
by the pore-pattern of Reich's left index finger which was irreproducible.
Reich placed the tip of his finger in the center of the glow. It faded and the
honey-comb rack appeared. Holding his finger in place, he reached up and took
down a small black notebook and a large red envelope. He removed his index
finger and the safe pulsed out of phase again.
Reich flipped through the pages of the notebook... ABDUCTION... ANARCHISTS...
ARSONISTS... BRIBERY (PROVEN)... BRIBERY (POTENTIAL)... Under (POTENTIAL) he
found the names of fifty-seven prominent people. One of them was Augustus Tate,
Esper Medical Doctor 1. He nodded with satisfaction.