"Dick, Philip K - Vulcan's Hammer v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"Maybe I can tell you; I'll be a sort of substitute father, for a while. A 'healer' is a person who comes along with no degree or professional medical training and declares he can cure you by some odd means when the licensed medical profession has given you up. He's a quack, a crank, either an out-and-out nut or a cynical fake who wants to make some easy money and doesn't care how he goes about it. Like the cancer quacks-but you're too young; you wouldn't remember them." Leaning forward, he said, "But you may have heard of the radiation-sickness quacks. Do you remember ever seeing a man come by in an old car, with perhaps a sign mounted on top of it, selling bottles of medicine guaranteed to cure terrible radiation burns?"
She tried to recall. "I don't remember," she said. "I know I've seen men on television selling things that are supposed to cure all the ills of society."
Dill said, "No child would talk as you're talking. You've been trained to say this." His voice rose. "Haven't you?"
"Why are you so upset?" she said, genuinely surprised. I didn't say it was any Unity salesman."
"But you meant us," Dill said, still flushed. "You meant our informational discussions, our public relations programs."
She said, "You're so suspicious. You see things that aren't there." That was something her father had said; she remembered that. He had said, They're paranoids. Suspicious even of each other. Any opposition is the work of the devil.
"The Healers," Dill was saying, "take advantage of the superstitions of the masses. The masses are ignorant, you see. They believe in crazy things: magic, gods and miracles, healing, the Touch. This cynical cult is playing on basic emotional hysterias familiar to all our sociologists, manipulating the masses like sheep, exploiting them to gain power."
"You have the power," she said. "All of it. My father says you've got a monopoly on it."
"The masses have a desire for religious certainty, the comforting balm of faith. You grasp what I'm saying, don't you? You seem to be a bright child."
She nodded faintly.
"They don't live by reason. They can't; they haven't the courage and discipline. They demand the metaphysical absolutes that started to go out as early as 1700. But war keeps bringing it back-the whole pack of frauds."
"Do you believe that?" she said. "That it's all frauds?"
Dill said, "I know that a man who says he has the Truth is a fraud. A man who peddles snake oil, like your-" He broke off. "A man," he said finally, "like your father. A spellbinder who fans up the flames of hate, inflames a mob until it kills."
To that she said nothing.
Jason Dill slid a piece of paper before her eyes. "Read this. It's about a man named Pitt-not a very important man, but it was worth your father's while to have him brutally murdered. Ever hear of him?"
"No," she said.
"Read it!" Dill said.
She took the report and examined it, her lips moving slowly.
"The mob," Dill said, "led by your father, pulled the man from his car and tore him to bits. What do you think of that?"
Marion pushed the paper back to him, saying nothing.
Leaning toward her, Dill yelled, "Why? What are they after? Do they want to bring back the old days? The war and hatred and international violence? These madmen are sweeping us back into the chaos and darkness of the past! And who gains? Nobody, except these spellbinders; they gain power. Is it worth it? Is it worth killing off half of mankind, wrecking cities-"
She interrupted, "That's not so. My father never said he was going to do anything like that." She felt herself become rigid with anger. "You're lying again, like you always do."
"Then what does he want? You tell me."
"They want Vulcan 3."
"I don't get what you mean." He scowled at her. "They're wasting their time. It repairs and maintains itself; we merely feed it data and the parts and supplies it wants. Nobody knows exactly where it is. Pitt didn't know."
"You know."
"Yes, I know." He studied her with such ferocity that she could not meet his gaze. "The worst thing that's happened to the world," he said at last, "in the time that you've been alive, is your father's escape from the Atlanta Psych Labs. A warped, psychopathic, deranged madman . . ." His voice sank to a mutter.
"If you met him," she said, "you'd like him."
Dill stared at her. And then, abruptly, he began to laugh. "Anyhow," he said when he had ceased laughing, "you'll stay here in the Unity offices. I'll be talking to you again from time to time. If we don't get results we can send you to Atlanta. But I'd rather not."
He stabbed a button on his desk and two armed Unity guards appeared at the office door. "Take this girl down to the third subsurface level; don't let anything happen that might harm her." Out of her earshot, he gave the guards instructions; she tried to hear but she could not.
I'll bet he was lying when he said there'd be other kids for me to play with, she thought. She had not seen another child yet, in this vast, forbidding building.
Tears came to her eyes, but she forced them back. Pretending to be examining the big dictionary in the corner of
Director Dill's office, she waited for the guards to start ordering her into motion.

As Jason Dill sat moodily at his desk, a speaker near his arm said, "She's in her quarters now, sir. Anything else?"
"No," he said. Rising to his feet, he collected his papers, put them into his brief case and left his office.
A moment later he was on his way out of the Unity Control Building, hurrying up the ramp to the confined field, past the nests of heavy-duty aerial guns and on to his private hanger. Soon he was heading across the early evening sky, toward the underground fortress where the great Vulcan computers were maintained, carefully hidden away from the race of man.
Strange little girl, he thought to himself. Mature in some ways, in others perfectly ordinary. How much of her was derived from her father? Father Fields secondhand, Dill thought. Seeing the man through her, trying to infer the father by means of the child.
He landed, and presently was submitting to the elaborate examination at the surface check-point, fidgeting impatiently. The tangle of equipment sent him on and he descended quickly into the depths of the underground fortress. At the second level he stopped the elevator and got abruptly off. A moment later he was standing before a sealed support-wall, tapping his foot nervously and waiting for the guards to pass him.
"All right, Mr. Dill." The wall slid back. Dill hurried down a long deserted corridor, his heels echoing mournfully. The air was clammy, and the lights flickered fitfully; he turned to the right and halted, peering into the yellow gloom.
There it was. Vulcan 2, dusty and silent. Virtually forgotten. No one came here any more. Except himself. And even he not very often.
He thought, It's a wonder the thing still works.
Seating himself at one of the tables, he unzipped his brief case and got out his papers. Carefully, he began preparing his questions in the proper manner; for this archaic computer he had to do the tape-feeding himself. With a manual punch, he spelled out on the iron oxide tape the first series, and then he activated the tape transport. It made an audible wheezing sound as it struggled into life.
In the old days, during the war, Vulcan 2 had been an intricate structure of great delicacy and subtlety, an elaborate instrument consulted by the skilled technicians daily. It had served Unity well, in its time; it had done honorable service. And, he thought, the schoolbooks still laud it; they still give it its proper credit.
Lights flashed, and a bit of tape popped from the slot and fell into the basket. He picked it up and read:
Time will be required. Return in twenty-jour hours, please.
The computer could not function rapidly, now. He knew that, and this did not surprise him. Again taking up the punch, he made the balance of his questions into feeding data, and then, closing his brief case, he strode rapidly from the chamber, back up the musty, deserted corridor.
How lonesome it is here, he thought. No one else but me.
And yet-he had the sudden acute sensation that he was not alone, that someone was nearby, scrutinizing him. He glanced swiftly about. The dim yellow light did not show him much; he ceased walking, holding his breath and listening. There was no sound except the distant whirl of the old computer as it labored over his questions.
Lifting his head, Dill peered into the dusty shadows along the ceiling of the corridor. Strands of cobweb hung from the light fixtures; one bulb had gone dead, and that spot was black-a pit of total darkness.