"H. L. Gold - At the Post" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold H. L)

felt free to talk, which he did enthusiastically. "Clocker's got a giant brain, Doc. Who was it said
Warlock'd turn into a dog in his third year? Clocker, the only dopester in the racket. And that's just
oneтАФ"
"Zelda was my best flesh act," interrupted Arnold Wilson Wyle, a ten-percenter whom video had
saved from alimony jail. "A solid boffola in the bop basements.
Nobody regrets her sad condi-tion more than me, Clocker, but it's a sure flop, what you got in mind.
Think of your public. For instance, what's good at Hialeah? My bar bill is about to be foreclosed and I
can use a long shot."
Clocker bounced his fist on the moist table. "Those couch artists don't know what's wrong with
Zelda. I do."
"You do?" Doc asked, startled.
"Well, almost. I'm so close, I can hear the finish-line camera clicking."
Buttonhole grasped Doc's lapel and hung on with characteristic avidity; he was perhaps Clock-er's
most pious subscriber. "Dop-ing races is a science. Clocker maybe never doped the human race, but I
got nine to five he can do it. Go on, tell him, Clocker."

DOC Hawkins ran together the rings he had been making with the wet bottom of his tum-bler. "I
shall be most interested," he said with tabloid irony, clearly feeling that immediate disillu-sionment was the
most humane thing for Clocker. "Perhaps we can collaborate on an article for the psychiatric journals."
"All right, look." Clocker pull-ed out charts resembling those he worked with when making turf
selections. "Zelda's got catatonia, which is the last heat in the schizophrenia parlay. She used to be a
hoofer before she started undressing for dough, and now she does time-steps all day."
Doc nodded into a fresh glass that the waiter had put before him. "Stereotyped movements are
typical of catatonia. They derive from thwarted or repressed in-stinctual drive; in most instances, the
residue of childhood frustra-tions."
"She dance all day, huh, Clocker?" asked Oil Pocket, the Oklahoma Cherokee who, with the income
of several wells, was famed for angeling bareback shows. He had a glass of tequila in one hand, the
salted half of a lemon in the other. "She dance good?"
"That's just it," Clocker said. "She does these time-steps, the first thing you learn in hoofing, over and
over, ten-fifteen hours a day. And she keeps talking like she's giving lessons to some jerk kid who can't
get it straight. And she was the kid with the hot rou-tines, remember."
"The hottest," agreed Arnold Wilson Wyle. "Zelda doing time-steps is like Heifetz fiddling at
weddings."
"I still like to put her in show," Oil Pocket grunted. "She stacked like brick tepee. Don't have to
dance good."
"You'll have a long wait," ob-served Doc sympathetically, "in spite of what our young friend here
says. Continue, y o u n g friend."
Clocker spread his charts. He needed the whole table. The others removed their drinks, Han-dy
Sam putting his on the floor so he could reach it more easily.
"This is what I got out of checking all the screwball fac-tories I could reach personal and by mail,"
Clocker said. "I went around and talked to the doctors and watched the patients in the places near here,
and wrote to the places I couldn't get to. Then I broke everything down like it was a stud and track
record."
Buttonhole tugged Doc's lapel. "That ain't scientific, I suppose," he challenged.
"Duplication of effort," Doc re-plied, patiently allowing Buttonhole to retain his grip. "It was all done
in an organized fashion over a period of more than half a century. But let us hear the rest."

"FIRST," said Clocker, "there are more male bats than fillies."
 "Females are inherently more stable, perhaps because they have a more balanced chromosome
ar-rangement."