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

"Not unheard of. You know that."
"Blood pressure a hundred and five systolic, sixty-five diastolic. Pulse,
fifty-five a minute. Height, six feet four, weight when he came in here a
hundred and forty-two. We've been feeding him upward of six thousand
calories a day since he came in and I swear he still looks hungry. No history
of childhood diseases. All his wisdom teeth. No cavities in any teeth. Shall I
go on?"
"How is he mentally?"
"I checked up with the university testing bureau. They rate him in the
genius range. He's started in six separate colleges and dropped out of
each one. No trouble with grades. He gets top marks for a while, then
suddenly stops going to class, accumulates a flock of incompletes, and
transfers into something else. Arlie," said Hank, breaking off suddenly,
lowering his voice and staring hard at the other, "I think we've got a new sort
of man here. A mutation."
"Hank," said Arlie, crossing his legs comfortably, "when you get to be my
age, you won't be so quick to think that Gabriel's going to sound the last
trump in your own particular backyard. This boy's got a few physical
peculiarities, he's admittedly bright, and he's conning you. You know our
recent theory about sleep and sanity."
"Of course I тАУ"
"Suppose," said Arlie, "I lay it out for you once again. The human being
deprived of sleep for any length of time beyond what he's accustomed to
begins to show signs of mental abnormality. He hallucinates. He exhibits
paranoid behavior. He becomes confused, flies into reasonless rages, and
overreacts emotionally to trifles."
"Arthur Willoughby doesn't."
"That's my point." Arlie held up a small, square slab of a hand. "Let me
go on. How do we explain these reactions? We theorize that possibly sleep
has a function beyond that of resting and repairing the body. In sleep we
humans, at least, dream pretty constantly. In our dreams we act out our
unhappinesses, our frustrations, our terrors. Therefore sleep, we guess,
may be the emotional safety valve by which we maintain our sanity against
the intellectual pressures of our lives."
"Granted," said Hank, impatiently. "But Art тАУ"
"Now, let's take something else. The problem-solving mechanism тАУ"
"Damn it, Arlie тАУ"
"If you didn't want my opinion, why did you ring me in on this . . . what was
that you just said, Hank?"
"Nothing. Nothing."
"I'll pretend I didn't hear it. As I was saying тАУ the problem-solving
mechanism. It has been assumed for centuries that man attacked his
intellectual problems consciously, and consciously solved them. Recent
attention to this assumption has caused us to consider an alternate
viewpoint, of which I may say I" тАУ Arlie folded his hands comfortably over
his bulging shirtfront "was perhaps the earliest and strongest proponent. It
may well be тАУ I and some others now think тАУ that man is inherently
incapable of consciously solving any new intellectual problem."
"The point is, Art Willoughby тАУ what?" Hank broke off suddenly and
stared across the crumpled paper bags and wax paper on his desk, at