"Avram Davidson - No Fire Burns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

No Fire Burns

by Avram Davidson



Doctor Colles was a thin, pale man with receding hair. Mr. Melchior's chauffeured car had picked him up
at his stuffy little office, crowded with papers. He had begun to talk almost at once, and he was still at it
now. While waiting for the traffic light to change and listening to Doctor Colles' conversation, Mr.
Melchior took a long green cigar from his case and lit it.

"A breakdown of function and structure," said Colles. "An absolute lack of communication. Isn't it so?"
Mr. Taylor, a trim, blond young man, who looked like an ad for expensive shirts, listened carefully, said
nothing. Melchior looked impressedтАФand uncomprehending. Colles took his arm just above the elbow,
pressed it. "Look at that fellow over there," he said. "The one in the brown suitтАФsee? Now: can I
communicate with him? Or can you? On any save the most primitive level? No. Impossible, I assure you.
I've only to look at him to know." The crowd flowed across the street. The men in the car watched the
vanishing brown suit.

"We think of, let us say, world problems. He thinks of bowling. We discuss art and letters. He watches
the dog acts on TV. We are concerned with our vanishing natural resources. He wonders if he can put a
dollar-fifty cab bill on his swindle sheet. Am I correct?" The car moved forward. "What do you think?"

Mr. Melchior thought he agreed one hundred percent. Taylor smiled faintly. "Just the same," Melchior
said, "there has to be some way of reaching these type people, getting inside of them."

Dr. Colles cleared his throat. "Psychology," he began.

"Good!" said Melchior. "Good. Go aheadтАФOh. Here we are. You'll have to explain this to me when
we're inside, Doctor."

They went up the steps of what appeared to be a small parochial school, but which was, in fact, a
clubтАФand not the sort at which members were fined for not using first names in addressing one another.
The guests' dining room was small and dark. "A brandy to begin with, Doctor?"

"I hold with the ancient grammarian," Dr. Colles said, suddenly jovial. "It is better to decline six nouns
than one drink. Ha Ha!"

Melchior rolled his eyes toward Taylor, who nodded. It was so ordered. "Would you believe it, Doctor,"
said Melchior, after the second sip, "I never tasted brandy till I was twenty-five years old? Times change
тАж Ah. Good. Here's the menu. Anything you especially like."

The food came. They ate slowly, with grave pleasure appropriate. "Times change," Melchior repeated,
presently. "Take, for example, business: When my business began to get too big for me to handle the
paper work myself, I hired my brother-in-law's cousin to keep the books. But that family-style operation
is outmoded. So now I have my personnel manager, Mr. Taylor here, he's a college man himself, help me
select the top men from the accountants' college for Melchior Enterprises. Taylor knows what the score
is."

Dr. Colles inquired the precise nature of these enterprises. His host said that they included importing,