"Bradbury, Ray - The Illustrated Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

УWhat would a psychologist want with a nursery?Ф

УYou know very well what heТd want.Ф His wife paused in the middle of the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for four.

УItТs just that the nursery is different now than it was.Ф

УAll right, letТs have a look.Ф

They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them. Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity.

УWell,Ф said George Hadley.

They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as much as the rest of the house. УBut nothingТs too good for our children,Ф George had said.

The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.

George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.

УLetТs get out of this sun,Ф he said. УThis is a little too real. But I donТt see anything wrong.Ф

УWait a moment, youТll see,Ф said his wife.

Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on George HadleyТs upturned, sweating face.

УFilthy creatures,Ф he heard his wife say.

УThe vultures.Ф

УYou see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now theyТre on their way to the water hole. TheyТve just been eating,Ф said Lydia. УI donТt know what.Ф

УSome animal.Ф George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his squinted eyes. УA zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.Ф

УAre you sure?Ф His wife sounded peculiarly tense.

УNo, itТs a little late to be sure,Ф be said, amused. УNothing over there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for whatТs left.Ф

УDid you hear that scream?Ф she asked.

УNo.Ф

УAbout a minute ago?Ф

УSorry, no.Ф

The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-yellow eyes.