"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

because they had arrested him as a freak, more special than any of the other specials. And
due to that everything had changed.
Local law prohibited the time-reversal faculty by which the dead returned to life; they had
spelled it out to him during his sixteenth year. He continued for another year to do it secret ,
in the still remaining woods, but an old woman whom he had never seen or heard of had told.
Without his parents' consent they Ч the killers Ч had bombarded the unique nodule which
had formed in his brain, had attacked it with radioactive cobalt, and this had plunged him
into a different world, one whose existence he had never suspected. It had been a pit of
corpses and dead bones and he had struggled for years to get up from it. The donkey and
especially the toad, the creatures most important to him, had vanished, had become extinct;
only rotting fragments, an eyeless head here, part of a hand there, remained. At last a bird
which had come there to die told him where he was. He had sunk down into the tomb world.
He could not get out until the bones strewn around him grew back into living creatures; he
had become joined to the metabolism of other lives and until they rose he could not rise
either.
How long that part of the cycle had lasted he did not now know; nothing had happened,
generally, so it had been measureless. But at last the bones had regained flesh; the empty
eyepits had filled up and the new eyes had seen, while meantime the restored beaks and
mouths had cackled, barked, and caterwauled. Possibly he had done it; perhaps the extra-
sensory node of his brain had finally grown back. Or maybe he hadn't accomplished it; very
likely it could have been a natural process. Anyhow he was no longer sinking; he had begun
to ascend, along with the others. Long ago he had lost sight of them. He found himself
evidently climbing alone. But they were there. They still accompanied him; he felt them,
strangely, inside him.
Isidore stood holding the two handles, experiencing himself as encompassing every other
living thing, and then, reluctantly, he let go. It had to end, as always, and anyhow his arm
ached and bled where the rock had struck it.
Releasing the handles he examined his arm, then made his way unsteadily to the
bathroom of his apartment to wash the cut off was not the first wound he had received while
in fusion with Mercer and it probably would not be the last. People, especially elderly ones,
had died, particularly later on at the top of the hill alien the torment began in earnest. I wonder
if I can go through that part again, he said to himself as he swabbed the injury. Chance of
cardiac arrest; he better, he reflected, if I lived in town where those buildings have a doctor
standing by with those electro-spark machines. Here, alone in this place, it's too risky.
But he knew he'd take the risk. He always had before. As did most people, even oldsters
who were physically fragile.
Using a Kleenex he dried his damaged arm.
And heard, muffled and far off, a TV set.
It's someone else in this building, he thought wildly, unable to believe it. Not my TV; that's
off, and I can feel the floor resonance. It's below, on another level entirely!
I'm not alone here any more, he realized. Another resident has moved in, taken one of the
abandoned apartments, and close enough for me to hear him. Must be level two or level
three, certainly no deeper. Let's see, he thought rapidly. What do you do when a new
resident moves in? Drop by and borrow something, is that how it's done? He could not
remember; this had never happened to him before, here or anywhere else: people moved
out, people emigrated, but nobody ever moved in. You take them something, he decided.
Like a cup of water or rather milk; yes, it's milk or flour or maybe an egg Ч or, specifically,
their ersatz substitutes.
Looking in his refrigerator Ч the compressor had long since ceased working Ч he found
a dubious cube of margarine. And, with it, set off excitedly, his heart laboring, for the level