"George Alec Effinger - Relatives" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

precision. And Sokol, the foreman. He was the boss. He prowled with more freedom, and Ernest envied
him. But Sokol wasn't a real person to Ernest, either. Sokol was only the man who watched him.
 It was as if everyone were like a rough crystal, with dozens of different facets. Here in the factory
Ernest saw only one facet of each person, the same facet every day. And in return he didn't want these
strangers to have access to more than one of his own facets. There were thirty million people in the New
York metropolitan area, and he could feel the presence of every individual of those masses. There wasn't
any way to escape it. The only privacy available was inside; to defend it there could be no hints of one's
feelings, no tentative gestures of friendship or loneliness. And there was a terrible loneliness.
Ernest enforced his own alienation; he ignored the multiple facets of the millions of others. Each
person had to work out his own salvation; idealism to the contrary, there was no way for Ernest to
submerge himself in the incessant dramas of his neighbors and maintain his own mind. So he held himself
apart from the shopping-bag ladies who lived their meager lives on the subway, and the kids who shaved
a round area on their skulls where three wires poked out, and the others who could so easily upset him.
He concentrated on those friendships he wished to endure; and when those people ignored him, he found
only a deeper depression. There was only trouble when one person presented the wrong facet to
another.
There was no one to whom a person like Ernest could turn for help. He was certain that thousands of
other people were making the same depressing realizations every day; the environment was becoming
less attractive, and more and more people were turning inward, only to discover there a growing
madness. Coping with the mere physical presence of thirty million people was an exhausting occupation.
The Representatives had long ago made a declaration which had effectively crippled the psychiatric
industry; they had decided that relying on psychic crutches could only weaken the popular mind.
Nevertheless, Ernest often felt the need to lessen the emotional burden he carried.
The only person he could address legally was the fuser assigned to the modapt building. The fuser had
no special training in psychology; in fact, the idea of public fusers in each modapt building originally came
from the office of the Representative of Asia, so they had the government's blessing. But, unskilled as
they were, the fusers were vital to the new, highly mobile culture. They were given authority to decide
disputes among tenants and, by extension, to make many other decisions which in earlier times had been
concluded between neighbors and friends. Few people stayed in one place long enough to form those
kinds of relationships, and their places had to be taken by professional strangers. But while minor
domestic hassles could be solved by arbitration, there were unfortunately no such solutions beyond the
limits of the private residence.
Ernest's job provoked him more as the day went on, and his thoughts moved from simple to abstract.
When they became too frightening, usually just before lunch, he thought about Gretchen. She no longer
had any facets of her own that he could respond to. Gretchen was the cement that filled the gaps among
his other relationships. She was a bland, even unattractive, substitute, but she was dependable. From
there he thought about the lack of depth in their marriage; the even shallower relationship he had with
almost everyone else; how such a willingness to ignore people guaranteed his freedom to do as he
pleased (how, after all, misanthropy was the surest safeguard of liberty); how such an attitude led to
community apathy; and then, just as the lunch bell rang, he realized that apathy was what had deluded
them all into accepting the world they lived in.
As he walked toward the plant's cafeteria, he met Sokol by the tool cage. "You going to lunch now,
Sokol?" he asked.
"In a little while."
"Do you foreman types get longer lunch breaks?" Sokol only glared. "I was thinking," said Ernest. "If
you look at the way we're watched in here, you wonder if maybe we're being watched outside, too. I
mean, like at home."
Sokol leaned against the iron mesh of the tool cage and yawned. "Maybe we are. But if we're
watched by people like plant foremen, then we don't have anything to worry about. They're probably just
people who got put into the job just to get them off the streets. They do their work and nobody pays any