"David Gerrold - Chtorr 3 - A Rage for Revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

The big man looked angrier. I could see his fists clenching. But he didn't know what to say. It was as if he
could already see all of the answers he might be given. There was nothing for him to do but return to his
seat.
He exhaled loudly, scowled in annoyance, shook his head and shrugged as if to say, "You can't fight
these tyrants," then turned and headed back toward his empty chair. He clumped loudly and resentfully
all the way. The gesture said it all: "Fuck you too." He sat down with a righteous expression and folded
his arms across his chest.
Then, for a while, nothing happened. We sat and waited.
We got bored.
And after we were through being bored, we got angry. We sat and stewed. We glared at the
assistants-and each other. We hated the ones who hadn't shown up yet, who were keeping us waiting for
them.
I wanted to get up and protest, but I didn't. I was afraid to.
There were other people sitting in the room who were afraid, too. I turned around in my chair and
looked. Some of the people wouldn't meet my eyes.
One woman was crying quietly. She was weeping into her hands. Nobody went to her aid.
I started hating the assistants. And then I was bored again.
And then, suddenly, I realized something! I knew what was going on! This was a test! We were
supposed to sit here and wait. We were supposed to discover something in the waiting.
I began to pay attention. I started looking around to see what everybody else was doing. I wasn't the
only one. There were a couple of other trainees looking around with iriterest. They recognized me and
smiled. I-grinned back. We'd figured it out! This was about the way we waited!
Somebody started giggling. Pretty soon, the whole room was laughing. I looked back at the Course
Manager. She was sitting stony-faced. Or was she? She covered her mouth with one hand, and coughed,
then turned to face the wall.
As the giggling began to die away, one of the doors opened and six of the missing trainees were ushered
into the room. Two assistants led them to their seats.
A moment later, Foreman strode into the room. He came straight up the aisle opposite me and stepped
onto the dais. Today he was wearing a copper-colored tunic and slacks. "Good morning," he said. He
looked at his watch. "It is ten forty-five. We are starting an hour and forty-five minutes late. The
instructions were that no session would start until everyone was in their seats. There are six of you still
missing. Forty-two of you were late this morning. That's forty-eight people who didn't keep their word,
almost one out of ten! That's the integrity of this group! Ten percent of the time you can't be trusted! And
you wonder why you don't produce results?"
He was angry. Or was it a performance? I wasn't sure. He stepped off the dais and strode straight back
to speak to the Course Manager. They conferred quietly together for a few minutes, then he came back
to the dais and looked us over again.
"So, you're probably wondering about your missing six members. It's this simple. They're out of the
program. They quit when they didn't show up this morning. They failed the test. They're untrainable. Their
commitment to failure is larger than their commitment to success.
"There are no grades here. There's no right way, there's no wrong way to do this course. The only way
to fail is to not show up. Show up, and no matter what happens, you automatically succeed. It's like life.
The only way to fail it is to be dead.
"So we asked you to make a commitment to be here and in your seat, on time, every day for six weeks.
And each of you gave your word. This is how you kept it. One out of ten of you can't be trusted. This is
not an impressive start.
"I want to demonstrate something," he said. He looked around the group as if he were looking for
someone. "Who were the people who were late this morning'? Would you stand up please?"
About thirty people stood up.
"There were forty-two people who were not in their chairs at nine A.M. If you were not in your chair as