"Gordon R. Dickson - Idiot Solvant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"More lately," said Art.
"Yes," said Arlie, "that's the way it always is just before people outgrow
these flashes тАУ you know that."
There was a slight pause.
"Yes," said Art.
"You have now outgrown these flashes. You have had your last flash.
Flashes belong to childhood. You have had a delayed growing-up, but from
now on you will think like an adult. Logically. You will think like an adult.
Repeat after me."
"I will think like an adult," intoned Art.
Arlie continued to hammer away at his point for a few more minutes; then
he brought Art out of his trance, with a final command that if Art felt any
tendency to a recurrence of his flashes he should return to Arlie for further
help in suppressing them.
"Oh, hello, Doctor," said Art to Hank, as soon as he woke up. "Say, how
much longer are you going to need me as a test subject?"
Hank made a rather unhappy grimace. "In a hurry to leave?" he said.
"I don't know," said Art, enthusiastically, rubbing his long hands together
as he sat up in the chair, "but I was just thinking maybe it's time I got to
work. Settled clown. As long as I'm going to be a married man shortly."
"We can turn you loose today, if you want," said Hank.




Illustration by RICK BRYANT


When Art stepped once more into his room, closing the door behind him
and taking off his leather jacket to hang it up on the hook holding his
bagpipes, the place seemed so little changed that it was hard to believe ten
full days had passed. Even the raccoon was back asleep in the
wastebasket. It was evident the landlady had been doing her duty about
keeping the small animal fed тАУ Art had worried a little about that. The only
difference, Art thought, was that the room seemed to feel smaller.
He sighed cheerfully and sat down at the desk, drawing pencil and paper
to him. The afternoon sun, shooting the gap of the missing slat on the
venetian blind at the window, splashed fair in Art's eyes, blinding him.
"Blast!" he said aloud. "Got to do something about that тАУ"
He checked himself suddenly with one hand halfway up to shield his
eyes, and smiled. Opening a drawer of the desk, he took out a pair of heavy
kitchen scissors. He made a single cut into the rope slot at each end of the
plastic slat at the bottom of the blind, snapped the slat out of position, and
snapped it back in where the upper slat was missing.
 Still smiling, he picked up the pencil and doodled the name Margie with a
heart around it in the upper left-hand corner as he thought, with gaze
abstracted. The pencil moved to the center of the piece of paper and
hovered there.
After a moment, it began to sketch.
What it sketched was a sort of device to keep the sun out of Art's eyes.