"The World Jones Made" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"Like what?"

"I mean, here we have a man with this wonderful talent . . . he can do something we've never done. We don't have to guess any more. We know. We can be sure where we're going."

"I like to guess," Cussick said flatly.

"Do you? Maybe that's where the fault lies . . . maybe you don't realize that most people want certainty. You've rejected Jones. Why? Because your system, your government, is built around not-knowing, around guesswork. It assumes nobody can know." She raised her cold blue eyes. "But now we can know. So in a way, you're outmoded."

"Well," Tyler said, amused, "then I'm out of a job."

"What did you do before you came to Security?" Cussick asked her.

"I didn't do anything: this is my first job. I'm only seventeen. I feel a little out of place with you people . . . I really don't have any experience."

Indicating the girl's glass, Kaminski said: "I can tell you one thing: that wormwood'll rot your nervous system away. It attacks the upper spinal ganglia."

"Oh, no," Tyler said quickly. "I'm doped against it." She touched her purse. "For this, I have to depend on a synthetic neutralizer. Or I wouldn't want to take it."

Cussick's respect for her rose another notch. "What part of the world do you come from?" he asked curiously.

"I was born in China. My father was a policy-level official in the Kweiping secretariat of the Chinese People's Communist Party."

"Then you were born on that side of the war," Cussick said, amazed. "You grew up on"--he grimaced--"what people used to call the Jewish-atheist-Communist side."

"My father was a devout Party-worker. He fought with all his soul and heart against the Mohammedans and the Christian fanatics. He brought me up; my mother was killed by bacterial toxins. Since she wasn't an official, she wasn't entitled to shelter. I lived with my father in the Party offices, a mile or so underground. We were there until the war ended." She corrected herself: "That is, I was there. My father was shot by the Party near the end of the war."

"Shot for what?"

"Deviationism. The Hoff book was being circulated in our area, too. My father and I set up portions by hand . . . we circulated them among Party workers. It was quite revolutionary; many of us had never heard of the multiple-value system. The idea that everybody might be right, that everybody was entitled to his own way of life, had a startling effect on us. The Hoff concept of personal style of living . . . it was exciting. Neither religious dogma nor anti-religious dogma; no more wrangling over which interpretation of the sacred texts was correct. No more sects, splinter groups, factions; no more heretics to shoot and burn and lock up."

"You're not Chinese," Nina said.

"No, I'm English. My family were Anglican missionaries before they became Communists. There was a community of English Communists living in China."

"Do you remember much about the war?" Kaminski asked her.

"Not much. The Christian raiding parties from Formosa . . . mostly just the printing at night. The secret distribution."

"How did you get off?" Cussick asked. "Why didn't they shoot you, too?"

"I was eight years old--too young to shoot. One of the Party chiefs adopted me, a very kind old Chinese gentleman who still read Laotze and had gold carvings cut into his teeth. I was a ward of the CP when the war ended and the Party apparatus disintegrated." She shook her head. "It was all such a terrible waste . . . the war could so easily have been avoided. If people had only been just a little less fanatic."

Nina had gotten to her feet. "Darling," she said to her husband, "please, could you do me a favor? I'd like to dance."

One section of the crowded floor had been cleared for dancing; a few couples pushed mechanically back and forth. "You really feel like it?" Cussick asked warily, as he got to his feet. "Maybe for a minute."

"She's a lovely girl," Nina said distantly, as the two of them found their way out onto the packed floor.

"It's interesting, her circulating Hoff's material among Party officials."