"Card, Orson Scott - Worthing Chronicle 01 - Capital" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

"Hypothesis. Remarkable things are carried on the genes. Things we never supposed. A proclivity for surmounting all obstacles. A tendency to divorce sex from business. How can that be genetic? All I can guess is that something in the DNA, or a relationship between various proteins, is compatible with certain responses to the environment and incompatible with others. It's in the genes. In which case, what the hell is a psychotherapist good for?"

George shrugged. "I've always wondered that."

For a moment Dr. Manwaring looked annoyed. Theo he laughed. "So have I. We don't help very many people, and we never help the people who need help the most. You aren't a psychotherapist, are you? Yet I would have been pleased, despite all my years of training, if one of my dialogues with Marian Williamson had gone so smoothly."

"Thank you. You've been a tremendous help."

"Let me read the paper you write."

"I will. You don't mind my using a tape of this conversation?"

"Not at all. What are you going to call it?"

"Call what?"

"This effect. How about, 'The Soul Syndrome.'"

"Scientists who talk seriously about the soul get laughed out of symposiums, Dr. Manwaring."

"Then at least do me a favor and title the article 'The Discovery of the Soul.' Because I think that's what you found here. It may not live on after death, but it sure as hell is an inner force that controls the outer actions. The genuine unconscious. Freud would be proud of you. Even though Freud was an idiot."

They laughed. They had dinner together. And the next day, after George took Dr. Manwaring to the airport, he sat watching the planes take off. It surprised him, vaguely, that the planes were still following their normal domestic schedules. France had surrendered the day before-- millions of American soldiers were coining home under terms of the surrender treaty. Britain was becoming a client state of Russia. A war had been fought and lost in thirty weeks, and during all that time America hadn't stopped, hadn't gone on rationing, hadn't even buckled her belt a little tighter. The airlines still flew. And George Rines had an uninterrupted budget for researching into the human soul, of all things.

No wonder we lost, George thought. We don't even know when we're at war.

He went back to the laboratory and made a decision. The next experiment would have an entirely different purpose. The sleepers were beyond saving. But somec wasn't. Somec might be useful.

In the morning he had his own brain taped. And then, while the assistants were busy speculating on why the boss had done that, he went into another laboratory, put the normal dosage of somec into a syringe, and in front of a horrified graduate student he injected himself with the drug.

It coursed through him quickly and painfully and it surprised him. "Dr. Rines," the graduate student shouted. "That was somec."

"I know," he answered impatiently, "and it hurts like hell. The braintapers have a tape of my own brain. Leave me for a couple of days, revive me, and play myself back into me."

"Why did you do this to yourself?"

"It's against the law to use human beings as guinea pigs. I promised myself I wouldn't sue." And then the somec turned hot in his veins and his memories fled out of his mind and he was asleep.

***

He awoke disoriented. He remembered sitting down to be taped, remembered the helmet on his head with the needles that carried the currents. And now, abruptly, he was lying on a bed in the patient section of the lab, surrounded by his assistants.

"Good morning," he said.

"You're an idiot," said Doran Waite. "Scientists don't try their own magic potions anymore."

"I couldn't legally ask anyone else to do this, and we had to know."

"So we'll know. And if we were wrong about the rats and even your own brain patterns don't fit inside your head anymore, what will you do then?"