"Horace Gold - Inside Man & Other Science Fiction Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold Horace)

the closet.
"Well?" she said. "Did you find your answers?"
"Ah тАУ you bet," said Les, carefully dropping his clothes to the floor.
"In a bottle."
"Over a bottle. With the most profound тАУ makes your Dr. Hyde sound тАУ listening
with the third ear when he should be using all three!"
"Okay, go on," she said resignedly.
"Nothing to it. I'm a specialist."
"A specialist?"
He sat down on the bed to tangle with his shoelaces. "A born mechanic."
"Now look here, Lester Shay! If you think you're going to give up a perfectly good
business to go rummaging around in carsтАУ"
"Don't have to," he answered peacefully. "Just gotta harden myself. That's what the
Prof says. He's not really a professor, only talks that way because he claims it
intimidates people."
"A bum!"
"No, sweetheart. A different kind of specialist. Damn shoelaces!" He snapped them
and kicked his shoes across the room. "His notion is that evolution always starts
with simple, general types and works up to highly specialized ones."
"Like born mechanics!"
He smiled delightedly. "That's it. Or born mathematicians. Or born laborers. Or born
artists, salesmen, farmersтАУ"
"Bums."
"Oh, just the very, very, very, good ones," he corrected her owlishly. "The others
work at it, but they're not specialists. Way he puts it, the difference is in the degree
of success."
"And," she said, "you're a born mechanic."
"Right. Just never got a chance to start. Better this way, though. You see, I know
what machines feel because I feel it, too. If I'd been doing that all these years, I'd be
nothing but nerves. A lot of people don't treat machines right, you know. Feeling
how the machines suffer would put me in just as bad shape as they are."
She sat up interestedly. "This Prof of yours sounds bright. Did he tell you how to
get rid of your тАУ yourтАУ"
"Affliction, darling. It's like when a surgeon goes down the street and he sees people
in drastic need of operations and can't do anything about it. Couldn't club them, haul
them away to the hospital, operate on them, could he?"
"No, of course not."
"So he has to steel himself. Or take the gardener who feels what flowers feel. And
grass. Shrubbery. He has to cut the flowers, mow the lawn, clip the hedges. If he felt
every slash into every bit of vegetation, weeds included well, you can imagine."
She thought. "Yes, I think I can. And what about you, darling?"
"Same thing. Steel myself. The Prof says I can't take care of all the machines in the
world and he's right. So I gotta shut out the cries and groans and moans of the
machinery. You see?"
"I see, but can you do it?" she asked worriedly.
"Diversion does the trick. If I receive, I just make sure I receive something else. The
Prof suggested trying people. So I did, down at the tavern."
"How did you make out?"
"Noisy damned place," he said. "And full of alcoholic thoughts. But I concentrated
and it blanked out the screeching fan and the pump in the cellar that needs cleaning