"Dick, Philip K - Martian Time Slip v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

As Jack Bohlen lowered the Yee Company 'copter toward the landing field of the Public School directly below, he glanced at Manfred and wondered what the boy was thinking. Wrapped up in his thoughts, Manfred Steiner stared sightlessly out, his features twisted into a grimace that repelled Jack and made him instantly look away.
Why did he have anything to do with this boy? Jack wondered. Doreen was right; he was in over his head, and the unstable, schizophrenic aspects of his own personality were being stirred into life by the presence beside him. And yet he did not know how to get out; somehow it was too late, as if time had collapsed and left him here, for eternity, caught in a symbiosis with this unfortunate, mute creature who did nothing but rake over and inspect his own private world, again and again.
He had imbibed, on some level, Manfred's world-view, and it was obviously bringing about the stealthy disintegration of his own.
Tonight, he thought. I have to keep going until tonight: somehow I must hold out until I can see Arnie Kott. Then I can jettison all this and return to my own space, my own world; I will never have to look at Manfred Steiner again.
Arnie, for Christ's sake, save me, he thought.
"We're here," he said as the 'copter bumped to a halt on the roof field. He switched off the motor.
At once Manfred moved to the door, eager to get out.
So you want to see this place, Jack thought. I wonder why. He got to his feet and went to unlock the door of the 'copter; at once Manfred hopped out onto the roof and scampered toward the descent ramp, almost as if he knew the way by heart.
As Jack stepped from the ship the boy disappeared from sight. On his own he had hurried down the ramp and plunged into the school.
Doreen Anderton and Arnie Kott, Jack said to himself. The two people who mean the most to me, the friends with whom my contacts, my intimacy with life itself, is the strongest. And yet it's right there that the boy has managed to infiltrate; he has unfastened me from my relationships where they are the strongest.
What's left? he asked himself. Once I have been isolated there, the rest--my son, my wife, my father, Mr. Yee--all follow almost automatically, without a fight.
I can see what lies ahead for me if I continue to lose, step by step, to this completely psychotic boy. Now I can see what psychosis is: the utter alienation of perception from the objects of the outside world, especially the objects which matter: the warmhearted people there. And what takes their place? A dreadful preoccupation with--the endless ebb and flow of one's own self. The changes emanating from within which affect only the inside world. It is a splitting apart of the two worlds, inner and outer, so that neither registers on the other. Both still exist, but each goes its own way.
It is the stopping of time. The end of experience, of anything new. Once the person becomes psychotic, nothing ever happens to him again.
And, he realized, I stand on the threshold of that. Perhaps I always did; it was implicit in me from the start. But this boy has led me a long way. Or, rather, because of him I have gone a long way.
A coagulated self, fixed and immense, which effaces everything else and occupies the entire field. Then the most minute change is examined with the greatest attention. That is Manfred's state now; has been, from the beginning. The ultimate stage of the schizophrenic process.
"Manfred, wait," he called, and followed slowly after the boy, down the ramp and into the Public School building.


Seated in June Henessy's kitchen, sipping coffee, Silvia Bohlen discoursed on her problems of late.
"What's so awful about them," she said, meaning Erna Steiner and the Steiner children, "is that, let's face it, they're vulgar. We're not supposed to talk in terms like that, but I've been forced to see so much of them that I can't ignore it; my face has been rubbed in it every day."
June Henessy, wearing white shorts and a skimpy halter, padded barefoot here and there in the house, watering from a glass pitcher her various indoor plants. "That's really a weird boy. He's the worst of all, isn't he?"
Shuddering, Silvia said, "And he's over all day long. Jack is working with him, you know, trying to make him part of the human race. I think myself they ought to just wipe out freaks and sports like that; it's terribly destructive in the long run to let them live; it's a false mercy to them and to us. That boy will have to be cared for for the rest of his life; he'll never be out of an institution."
Returning to the kitchen with the empty pitcher, June said, "I want to tell you what Tony did the other day." Tony was her current lover; she had been having an affair with him for six months now, and she kept the other ladies, especially Silvia, up to date. "We had lunch together over at Geneva II, at a French restaurant he knows; we had escargots--you know, snails. They serve them to you in the shells and you get them out with a horrible-looking fork that has tines a foot long. Of course, that's all black-market food; did you know that? That there're restaurants serving exclusively black-market delicacies? I didn't until Tony took me there. I can't tell you the name of it, of course."
"Snails," Silvia said with aversion, thinking of all the wonderful dishes she herself would have ordered, if she had a lover and he had taken her out.
How would it be to have an affair? Difficult, but surely worth it, if she could keep it from her husband. The problem, of course, was David. And now Jack worked a good deal of the time at home, and her father-in-law was visiting as well. And she could never have him, her lover, at the house, because of Erna Steiner next door; the big baggy hausfrau would see, comprehend, and probably at once, out of a Prussian sense of duty, inform Jack. But then, wasn't the risk part of it? Didn't it help add that--flavor?
"What would your husband do if he found out?" she asked June. "Cut you to bits? Jack would."
June said, "Mike has had several affairs of his own since we've been married. He'd be sore and possibly he'd give me a black eye and go off for a week or so with one of his girl friends, leaving me stuck with the kids, of course. But he'd get over it."
To herself, Silvia wondered if Jack had ever had an affair. It did not seem probable. She wondered how she would feel if he had and she found out--would it end the marriage? Yes, she thought. I'd get a lawyer right away. Or would I? There's no way to tell in advance . . . .
"How are you and your father-in-law getting along?" June asked.
"Oh, not badly. He and Jack and the Steiner boy are off somewhere today, taking a business trip. I don't see much of Leo, actually; he came mainly on business--June, how many affairs have you had?"
"Six," June Henessy said.
"Gee," Silvia said. "And I haven't had any."
"Some women aren't built for it."
That sounded to Silvia like a rather personal, if not outright anatomical, insult. "What do you mean?"
"Aren't constituted psychologically," June explained glibly. "It takes a certain type of woman who can create and sustain a complex fiction, day after day. I enjoy it, what I make up to tell Mike. You're different. You have a simple, direct sort of mind; deception isn't your cup of tea. Anyhow, you have a nice husband." She emphasized the authority of her judgment by a lifting of her eyebrows.
"Jack used to be gone all week long," Silvia said. "I should have had one then. Now it would be so much harder." She wished, fervently, that she had something creative or useful or exciting to do that would fill up the long empty afternoons; she was bored to death with sitting in some other woman's kitchen drinking coffee hour after hour. No wonder so many women had affairs. It was that or madness.
"If you're limited to your husband for emotional experience," June Henessy said, "you have no basis of judgment; you're more or less stuck with what he has to offer, but if you've gone to bed with other men you can tell better what your husband's deficiencies are, and it's much more possible for you to be objective about him. And what needs to be changed in him, you can insist that he change. And for your own part, you can see where you've been ineffective and with these other men you can learn how to improve yourself, so that you give your husband more satisfaction. I fail to see who loses by that."
Put that way, it certainly sounded like a good healthy idea for all concerned. Even the husband benefited.
While she sat sipping her coffee and meditating about that, Silvia looked out the window and saw to her surprise a 'copter landing. "Who's that?" she asked June.
"Heaven's sake, I don't know," June said, glancing out.
The 'copter rolled to a halt near the house; the door opened and a dark-haired, good-looking man wearing a bright nylon shirt and necktie, slacks, and stylish European loafers stepped out. Behind him came a Bleekman who lugged two heavy suitcases.
Inside her, Silvia Bohlen felt her heart quiver as she watched the dark-haired man stroll toward the house, the Bleekman following with the suitcases. This was the way she imagined June's Tony to look.
"Gosh," June said. "I wonder who he is. A salesman?" A rap sounded at the front door and she went to open it. Silvia set down her cup and followed along. At the door June halted. "I feel sort of--undressed." She put her hand nervously to her shorts. "You talk to him while I run into the bedroom and change. I wasn't expecting anybody strange to drop by; you know, we have to be careful, we're so isolated and our husbands are away--" She darted off to the bedroom, her hair flying.
Silvia opened the door.
"Good day," the good-looking man said, with a smile revealing perfect white Mediterranean teeth. He had a faint accent. "Are you the lady of the house?"
"I guess so," Silvia said, feeling timid and ill at ease; she glanced down at her own self, wondering if she were dressed modestly enough to be standing out here talking to this man.
"I wish to introduce a very fine line of health foods which you may be familiar with," the man said. He kept his eyes on her face, and yet Silvia had the distinct impression that somehow he managed at the same time to examine the rest of her detail by detail. Her self-consciousness grew, but she did not feel resentful; the man had a charming manner, simultaneously shy and yet oddly forthright.
"Health food," she murmured. "Well, I--"
The man gave a nod, and his Bleekman stepped up, laid down one of the suitcases, and opened it. Baskets, bottles, packages . . . she was very much interested.
"Unhomogenized peanut butter," the man declared. "Also dietetic sweets without calories, to keep your lovely slimness. Wheat germ. Yeast. Vitamin E; that is the vitamin of _vitality_ . . . but of course for a young woman like yourself, not yet appropriate." His voice purred along as he indicated one item after another; she found herself bending down beside him, so close to him that their shoulders touched. Quickly she drew away, startled into apprehension.