"David Brin - Senses Three and Six" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

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Senses Three and Six
By

David Brin
I lean here against this polished wooden surface, while the drums pound and the
smoke blows around, and my mind feels like a wild thing, completely out of control.
For days I've hardly slept, dreading the dreams that have come back... eyes in the
sky and a fiery mountainside.
Even as I stand here, this damned day keeps throwing memories at me, like soggy
rags dragged out of a pile of old discarded clothes--things I thought I'd buried away
for good.
Right now, for instance, I can't help remembering how weird I thought my old
man was, when I was a kid.
Oh, he was a pip, he was. Whenever he caught me in a lie, he would beat me
twice.
The first thing he'd do was he'd take me into the house and lecture me really
reasonable-like about how it was immoral to tell lies, how a real man would face the
truth, and all that stuff. Then he'd make me bend over and take my licking like a man.
That part was okay, I guess. I didn't like the lecture, but he didn't hit very hard.
It was later in the day he'd scare me half to death. And all the time in between I'd
be so frightened I couldn't hardly breathe. I think, now that you get right down to it,
he punished me three times each time he found out I'd lied... a spanking indoors for
being unethical, a Chinese water torture of a wait, and then a terrific pasting out next
to the garage for getting caught.
I think the wait was so I could think about how I could have talked my way out of
it without lying... or come up with a better lie, one without holes in it.
When he knocked me around outside he kept telling me how stupid it was to
waste an untruth--how a man's credibility was as important to his survival as his
wind, his stamina, or his ability to make friends.
 My lather was like that. Indoors he talked as if he were trying to teach me how to
be moral and upright. Outside, in the twilight, he acted as if tomorrow I was going to
be dumped into the Amazon, or Devil's Island, or deepest darkest Wall Street, and it
was his job to see to it I could make it in a jungle.
One of the good things I can say about him is that he never got mad when I told
him to his face he was nuts. He just laughed and said it was an interesting
proposition--and that his duty to teach me to survive didn't include policing my
opinions.
In all mis smoke and noise and stream-of-consciousness rambling tonight, it
occurs to me for the first time that maybe my old man was right after all.
Maybe he had a feeling I'd wind up in a place like this, hunted, trapped, my
survival depending on the credibility of a lie.