"Gordon R. Dickson - The Last Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

 Naked under a thin sheet, being floated on an airborne grav table along a white and shining corridor to
the injection room, Etter Ho grinned ironically at the gleaming ceiling. The inner pain and fury of the last
seven months were set to the side now, under full control; he felt at peace. It came back to him abruptly
that there was a quotation that fitted the situation.

Daily, with knees that feign to quake-Bent head and shaded browтАФYet once again, for my fatherтАЩs
sake, In RimmonтАЩs House I bow*

*тАЬRimmonтАЭ by Rudyard Kipling

==========

Only it was not for his fatherтАЩs sake but for his brotherтАЩs that he was here, in a situation no different from
that of any ambitious deskworker gambling on bettering himselfтАФignorant of the beauty and freedom of a
wandererтАЩs existence on the open seas. His brother, Wally, had bowed down in this particular House of
Rimmon long since; now Etter was following him, after twenty-four years of being obligated to no one.
Now, at last, even in his own mind, he was no better than any of the billions of other individuals who had
ignored the chance of freedom on a CitizenтАЩs Basic Allowance, to scurry after the golden manacles of
occupation, position, and authority within the machinery that made possible their Utopian Earth.

His mind now seemed to be functioning at its best, as if newly sharp, cold, and crystal-clearтАФas if
viewing the world from behind a wall of transparent ice. Like everyone else requesting the RIV treatment,
Ett had been offered a tranquilizing agent to soothe his way during the process; but he had refused. In
part this was because of his long habit of trusting himself to no drugтАФnot even aspirin. HeтАЩd lived
forever, it seemed, with the fear that even the mildest drugтАФanything at all that might affect the nervous
system or the psycheтАФ might blur and slow the reflexes of his long-established defenses. His inner, true
self, protected by the facade of indifference he had established and maintained flawlessly since he was
eight years old, must be kept hiddenтАФwell enough that even he could forget it existed, most of the time.

And this was the time, above all others, when those defenses must be alert and ready. He could not
know in advance what the effect of the RIV would beтАФwhether it might raise his I.Q. a few points or
lower itтАФbut he felt he had to be fully aware of the change as it was taking place, whatever it might be.
And even if the freak chance that had struck Wally with a severe loss of his mental acuity, were to hit him
too, he wanted no anaesthesia, no blurring of the memory. He must be aware of that, too, as he had
insisted on being aware of all things else, as far back as he could remember.

Not, of course, that this worst of possible results was likely. The odds against it were literally millions to
one, nearly as impossible as the equally freak chance of the drug stimulating him to super-genius. In any
case, he must not think of either extreme possibility now. All possible happenings, everything, must be
made secondary to his own purposesтАФto his plan, and to his own ability to feel and know what would
happen to him. Those determinations were his personal imperatives, and he would not let go of them
while life was still in him.

The automated floating table on which he was being transported swung abruptly into a right-angle turn,
and a new stretch of corridor ceiling unreeled above him. He felt an impulse to raise his head to watch for
what was coming to himтАФ although actually he was the one in movementтАФ but he controlled it even as
his head was restrained by the padded rest it was cushioned in. At the same time the grav table slowed
for another ninety-degree turn, and he passed through a doorway into a room where the ceiling was a
soft pink. With that he realized that the corridor outside, tooтАФor at least its ceilingтАФhad been
imperceptibly building up its own tinge of pink as he had approached the door to this room.