"Dickson, Gordon - Dorsai 03 Soldier, Ask Not Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"Five," she said. "Mark is one, of course. Of the other four, one is dead and the other three"-she hesitated, staring at me-"weren't fit."

There was a different note to her voice that I heard now for the first time. But I forgot it entirely as, abruptly, the figures she had mentioned struck home.

Five people only, in forty years! Like a body blow the message jarred me that what had happened to me in the Index Room was no small thing; and that this moment with Torre and Padma was not small either, for them as well as myself.

"Oh?" I said; and I looked at Torre. With an effort, I made my voice casual. "What does it mean, then, when someone hears something?"

He did not answer me directly. Instead he leaned forward with his dark old eyes beginning to shine brilliantly again, and stretched out the fingers of his large right hand to me.

"Take hold," he said.

I reached out in my turn and took his hand, feeling his swollen knuckles under my grasp. He gripped my hand hard and held on, staring at me for a long moment, while slowly the brilliance faded and finally went out; and then he let go, sinking back into his chair as if defeated.

"Nothing," he said dully, turning to Padma. "Still-nothing. You'd think he'd feel something-or I would."

"Still," said Padma, quietly, looking at me, "he heard."

He fastened me to my chair with his hazel-colored Exotic eyes.

"Mark is disturbed, Tarn," he said, "because what you experienced was only voices, with no overburden of message or understanding."

"What message?" I demanded. "What kind of understanding?''

"That," said Padma, "you'd have to tell us." His glance was so bright on me that I felt uncomfortable, like a bird, an owl, pinned by a searchlight. I felt the hackles of my anger rising in resentment.

"What's this all got to do with you, anyway?" I asked.

He smiled a little.

"Our Exotic funds," he said, "bear most of the financial support of the Encyclopedia Project. But you must understand, it's not our Project. It's Earth's. We only feel a responsibility toward all work concerned with the understanding of Man by man, himself. Moreover, between our philosophy and Mark's there's a disagreement."

"Disagreement?" I said. I had a nose for news even then, fresh out of college, and that nose twitched.

But Padma smiled as if he read my mind.

"It's nothing new," he said. "A basic disagreement we've had from the start. Put briefly, and somewhat crudely, we on the Exotics believe that Man is improvable. Our friend Mark, here, believes that Earth man-Basic Man-is already improved, but hasn't been able to uncover his improvement yet and use it."

I stared at him.

"What's that got to do with me?" I asked. "And with what I heard?"

"It's a question of whether you can be useful to him-or to us," answered Padma calmly; and for a second my heart chilled. For if either the Exotics or someone like Mark Tbrre should put in a demand for my contract from the Earth government, I might as well kiss good-bye all hopes of working my way eventually into the News Services Guild.

"Not to either of you-I think," I said, as indifferently as I could.

"Perhaps. We'll see," said Padma. He held up his hand and extended upward his index finger. "Do you see this finger, Tarn?"

I looked at it; and as I looked-suddenly it rushed toward me, growing enormously, blocking out the sight of everything else in the room. For the second time that afternoon, I left the here and now of the real universe for a place of unreality.