"Philip Jose Farmer - Dayworld rebel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

The man now calling himself William St.-George Duncan sat in a chair in the office of the
psychicist, Doctor Patricia Ching


Arszenti. Having just become conscious, he was still a little confused. Breathing in truth mist
did that to anyone. A few seconds later, his senses, jigsaw pieces, fell into the proper places.
The digits on the wall chronometer told him that, as always, he had been under the mist for thirty
minutes. His muscles ached; his back hurt; his mind quivered like a diving board just after the
diver had sprung.
What had she learned in that time?
Arszenti smiled, and she said, "How do you feel?"
He sat up straight and massaged the back of his neck.
"I had a dream. I was a cloud of tiny iron particles swirling around in a wind in a vast room.
Somebody thrust a huge magnet into the room. I, the cloud of particles, flew to the magnet. I



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became one solid mass of iron."
"Iron? You're more like putty. Or thermoplastic. You shape yourself into another-or an Other-at
will."
"Not that I know of," he said.
"What shape was the solid mass of iron?"
"A two-edged sword."
'~'m not here to psychoanalyze you. That image, however, is significant to me."
"What does it mean?"
"What it means to you may not be what it means to me."
"Whatever I told you," he said, "has to be the truth. Nobody can lie when they've breathed in the
mist."
"I've always believed that," she said. She paused, then said, "Until now."
"Until now? Why? You could tell me why you think I'm different from all others. Rather, you should
tell me. I think you won't because you can't."
He leaned forward and glared at her. "You have nothing but irrational suspicion to back your
statement. Or you've got orders from your superiors, who are crazy with suspicion. You know and
they should know that I am not immune to truth mist. You have no proof otherwise. Thus, I'm not
the persons arrested for daybreaking and belonging to a subversive organi


zation. I'm not responsible for their crimes because I'm not them. I'm as innocent as a just-born
baby."
"A baby is a potential criminal," she said. "However . .
They were silent for a while. He leaned back, relaxed, and smiled. Arszenti sat as motionless as a
healthy adult could, her twitches and shiftings almost undetectable. She was no longer looking at
him. Her stare was at the window. Though she could not see the big yard and the high wall beyond
it, she could see the right side of the street and the building beyond the wide sidewalk. At lunch
hour, the junction of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas Avenue was crowded.
Pedestrians jammed the sidewalks; bicyclists, the street. One-seventh of Manhattan's population