"Philip Jose Farmer - The Sliced Crosswise Only on Tuesday W" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

would be difficult to resist. Nobody knew better than he about that.
He whistled a little on his way to the cylinder. Inside, he pressed the button and
looked at his watch. Five minutes to midnight. The light on the huge screen above the
computer in the police station would not be flashing for him. Ten minutes from now,
Wednesday's police would step out of their stoners in the precinct station, and they
would take over their duties.
There was a ten-minute hiatus between the two days in the police station. All hell
could break loose in these few minutes and it sometimes did. But a price had to be
paid to maintain the walls of time.
He opened his eyes. His knees sagged a little and his head bent. The activation was
a million microseconds fast-from eternium to flesh and blood almost instantaneously
and the heart never knew that it had been stopped for such a long time. Even so, there
was a little delay in the muscles' response to a standing position.
He pressed the button, opened the door, and it was as if his button had launched the
day. Mabel had made herself up last night so that she looked dawn-fresh. He
complimented her and she smiled happily. But he told her he would meet her for
breakfast. Halfway up the staircase, he stopped, and waited until the hall was empty.
Then he sneaked back down and into the stoner room. He turned on the recorder.
A voice, husky but also melodious, said, "Dear Mister Pym. I've had a few
messages from other days. It was fun to talk back and forth across the abyss between
the worlds, if you don't mind my exaggerating a little. But there is really no sense in it,
once the novelty has worn off. If you become interested in the other person, you're
frustrating yourself. That person can only be a voice in a recorder and a cold waxy
face in a metal coffin. I wax poetic. Pardon me. If the person doesn't interest you, why
continue to communicate? There is no sense in either case. And I may be beautiful.
Anyway, I thank you for the compliment, but I am also sensible.
"I should have just not bothered to reply. But I want to be nice; I didn't want to hurt
your feelings. So please don't leave any more messages."
He waited while silence was played. Maybe she was pausing for effect. Now would
come a chuckle or a low honey-throated laugh, and she would say, "However, I don't
like to disappoint my public. The run-offs are in your room."
The silence stretched out. He turned off the machine and went to the dining room
for breakfast.
Siesta time at work was from 14:40 to 14:45. He lay down on the bunk and pressed
the button. Within a minute he was asleep. He did dream of Jennie this time; she was a
white shimmering figure solidifying out of the darkness and floating toward him. She
was even more beautiful than she had been in her stoner.
The shooting ran overtime that afternoon so that he got home just in time for
supper. Even the studio would not dare keep a man past his supper hour, especially
since the studio was authorized to serve food only at noon.
He had time to look at Jennie for a minute before Mrs. Cuthmar's voice screeched
over the intercom. As he walked down the hall, he thought, "I'm getting barnacled on
her. It's ridiculous. I'm a grown man. Maybe тАж maybe I should see a psycher."
Sure, make your petition, and wait until a psycher has time for you. Say about three
hundred days from now, if you are lucky. And if the psycher doesn't work out for you,
then petition for another, and wait six hundred days.
Petition. He slowed down. Petition. What about a request, not to see a psycher, but
to move? Why not? What did he have to lose? It would probably be turned down, but
he could at least try.
Even obtaining a form for the request was not easy. He spent two nonwork days