"Radio Free Albemuth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

'They were mute. And deaf. -They were in round chambers like bathyspheres, with lots of wires running to them, like electronic booster equipment, communications equipment, phone-type wires. The wires and boosters were so they could communicate with us, so their thoughts would form words we could hear and understand, and so they could hear us back. It was difficult, a strain for
them.'
'I don't know if I want to hear this.'
'Hell, you write about it all the time. I've been reading some of your novels, finally. You - '
'Writing fiction,' I said. 'It's all fiction.'
Their craniums were enlarged,' Nicholas said.
'What?' I was having trouble following him; it was too
much for me.
'To accommodate the third eye. Massive craniums. A wholly different skull shape from ours, very long. The Egyptian Pharaoh had it - Ikhnaton. And Ikhnaton's two daughters, but not his wife. It was hereditary on his side.'
I open the bedroom door and walked back into the living room where Rachel sat reading.
'He's crazy,' Rachel said remotely, not looking up from
her book.
'Right,' I said. 'Completely. Nothing left. Only thing is, I don't want to be here when his programming fires.'
She said nothing; she turned a page.
Following me out of the bedroom, Nicholas approached the two of us; he held a piece of paper toward me, for me to see. 'This is a sign they showed me several times, two intersecting arcs arranged - well, you can see. It's a little like the Christian fish sign, the side of the fish with the arcs forming its body. The interesting thing is, if an arc intersects once -'
From the design on the extended piece of paper a pinkish-purple beam of light, an inch in diameter, fired upward into Nicholas's face. He shut his eyes, grimaced with pain, dropped the sheet of paper, and swiftly put his hand to his forehead. 'All of a sudden,' he said thickly, 'I have the most violent headache.'
'Didn't you see that beam of light?' I said. Rachel had set down her book and was on her feet.
Nicholas removed his hand from his forehead, opened his eyes, and blinked. 'I'm blind,' he said.
Silence. The three of us stood there, unmoving.
'I can see phosphene activity now,' he said presently. 'An after-light. No, I didn't see any beam of light. But I see a phosphene circle. It's pink. Now I can make outla few things.'
Rachel moved toward him, took him by the shoulder. 'You better sit down.'
In an odd, even voice, almost mechanical in quality, Nicholas intoned, 'Rachel, Johnny has a birth defect.'
'The doctor said nothing at all is -'
'He has a right inguinal strangulated hernia. It's already gone down into the scrota! sac. The hydroseal is broken, Johnny needs immediate surgery; go to the phone, pick it up, and dial Dr Evenston. Tell him you're bringing Johnny into the emergency room at St Jude Hospital in Fullerton. Tell him to be there.'
'Tonight?' Rachel said, appalled.
Nicholas intoned, 'He is in imminent danger of death.' With his eyes shut he then repeated it, word for word, exactly as he had said it; watching him, I got the impression, suddenly, that even though his eyes were shut he was seeing the words. He spoke as if reading them off a cue card, like a performer. It was not his tone of voice, his cadence; he was following words written out for him.
I accompanied them to the hospital. Rachel drove; Nicholas was still having trouble with his eyes, so he sat beside her holding the little boy. Their physician, Dr Evenston, very irritable, met them at the emergency room. First he told them that he had examined Johnny several times for possible herniation and found nothing; then he took Johnny off; time passed; Dr Evenston eventually returned and said noncommittally that there was indeed a right inguinal hernia, reducible but needing immediate surgery, since there was always the possibility of strangulation.
On the way back to the Placentia apartment, I said, 'Who are these people?'
'Friends,' Nicholas said.
'They certainly are interested in your welfare,' I said.
'And your baby's.'
'Nothing wrong can happen,' Nicholas said.
I said, 'But such powers!'
'They transferred information to my head,' Nicholas said, 'but they didn't heal Johnny. They just - '
'They healed him,' I said. Getting him to the doctor and calling the doctor's attention to the birth defect was healing him. Why exert supernatural powers when natural curative means lay at hand? I remembered something the Buddha said after he witnessed a supposed saint walk on water: 'For a penny,' the Buddha said, 'I can board a ferry and do that.' It was more practical, even for the Buddha, to cross the water normally. The normal and the supranormal were not antagonistic realms, after all.

Nicholas had missed the point. But he seemed dazed; as Rachel drove through the darkness he continued to massage his forehead and eyes.
The information was transferred simultaneously,' Nicholas said. 'Not sequentially. It's always that way. It's what's called analog, in computer science, in contrast to digital.'
'You're sure they're friends?' Rachel said sharply.
'Anyone who saves my boy's life,' Nicholas said, 'is a friend.'
I said, 'If they could convey all that exact information directly to your head like that, in one burst of colored light, they could let you know any time they want who they are, where they are from, and what they intend. Any confusion on your part regarding any of those issues is deliberate withholding of knowledge on their part. They don't want you to know.'
'If I knew, I'd tell people,' Nicholas said. 'They don't want to see - '
'Why not?' I said.
'It would defeat their purpose,' Nicholas said, after a pause. 'They're working against - ' He ceased talking, then.
'There's a great deal you haven't told me,' I said, 'that you know about them.'
'It's all in the written pages.' He was silent for a few blocks and then said, 'They're working against great odds. So it follows that they have to operate with great caution. Or it will fail.' He did not elaborate. He probably didn't know any more. Most of what he believed probably consisted of shrewd guesses, hatched out over long months of pondering.
I had worked up a little speech to give; now I gave it. There is a slight chance,' I said, 'admittedly a very slight one, that what you're dealing with is religious, that in fact you are being informed by the Holy Spirit, which is a manifestation of God. We're all from Berkeley, raised there and limited by the secular viewpoint of a college town; we're not inclined to theological speculation. But healing is a typical miracle of the Holy Spirit, or so I understand. You ought to know about that, Nicholas, from having been a Quaker.' 'Yes.' He nodded. 'When the Holy Spirit takes you
over it does heal.'
'Heard any non-English languages in your head?' I asked him. 'That you don't know?'
Presently he nodded. 'Yes. In my dreams.'