"David Gerrold - Chtorr 2 - A Day for Damnation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

"Well, dreams. Sort of. I don't know if I should even be telling you this. Maybe I should plug into Dr.
Davidson-"
"Yes, you should be telling me this!" Duke looked annoyed and impatient now. "'Cause if you don't, I'm
going without you." He started to rise.
I said quickly, "I've been-hearing things." Duke sat back down.
"And," I continued, "-I've been remembering things. Mostly when I'm asleep or dozing. But it's things I've
never heard or seen before. And-this one is the most confusing; you know how most people dream in
pictures? Well, last night, I dreamed in sound. A symphony. It was cold and ghostly. It sounded like it
was coming from another world, or another plane of existence. I thought I was dying. I woke up in a
sweat, it scared me so."
Duke studied me like a father. His eyes were sharp. "Dreams, huh? That's what's been bothering you?"
I nodded.
He didn't say anything immediately. He looked away, out the window, then looked back to me. "I have
dreams all the time," he admitted. "Nightmares actually. I keep seeing all the faces of all the people-" He
stopped in the middle of the sentence. He dropped his gaze and looked at his hands. His huge old
battered hands. I wondered if I should say something. Abruptly he looked back up at me, and he was
Duke again-and he'd left several volumes unsaid. "But I don't let it stop me. Jim, do you hear what I'm
saying?"
"Uh huh. It's just-"
"What?"
I was embarrassed to admit it. "It's just that I'm afraid of going out of control," I said. "It's almost like
there are voices-I think if I could just make out what they're saying, I'd know the answer and everything
would be all right. But I can never quite make it out. It feels like distant whispering." There. It was out. I
waited for his reaction.
Duke looked troubled. He looked as if he couldn't find the answer he was looking for. He looked out the
window at the chopper again. When he came back at me, his expression was unhappy.
"By all rights," he said, "I should ground you pending a medical exam. Except, I can't. I need you for this
mission. That's the way this whole damn war is being run. There's not a one of us that doesn't deserve a
couple of years of R and R. But we'll never see it. Instead, we'll just keep getting kicked from one crisis
to the next and we'll have to take care of our sanity at the stoplights." He studied me sharply. "Do you
think you're crazy?"
I shrugged, "I don't know. I certainly don't think I'm normal."
Abruptly, he grinned. "Now-that's normal! Nobody's normal on this planet, Jim. If you're aware of that,
you're not crazy. It's only when you start insisting that you're sane that we're going to lock you up."
I blinked and hesitated-and then I got the joke. Sanity. If you thought you had it, you probably didn't.
The evidence that you have it is that you wonder if you do. You can go crazy thinking about that one too
long.
"Jim-" Duke said, "put all that aside for the moment. What are you here for? What's the job?"
"I'm here to kill worms. The job is to stop the Chtorran infestation of the Earth. By whatever means
possible."
"Good," Duke said. "Now, let me ask you another question. Do you have to be sane or fit some standard
of `normality' to do that job?"
I thought about it. I looked at the answer inside my head. Obviously not. "No," I said.
"Good. So you see, it doesn't matter if you're crazy or not. There's only one thing I need to know. Can I
count on you today?"
Now it was my turn to grin. "Yes, you can count on me."
"Absolutely."
"Absolutely." And I meant it.
"Good," he said. "Grab your kit and let's go."
I didn't move. There was one more thing. "Uh-"