"Charles L. Grant - Glow of Candles, Unicorn's eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

and strode bellowing off toward the setting of the next .
scene-the earthquake. _
Slowly, testing one limb at a time, I unwrapped myself from the plastic tree and snatched
at the robe one of the .` crewmen held out for me. After a moment's hard glare at the ' water and
the sky, I stumbled off to the dressing room we all used in common. There was no one inside the
long, narrow building when I arrived, and for that one small favor I was eternally grateful. I
dried myself as best I could with my hands refusing to close, my arms disobeying the commands
from my muddled brain, then I sat in front of my mirror and watched a single drop of water fall
from my chin.
I stared at my reflection. Stared at the array of small and large jars, long and short
tubes, hairpieces and skin dyes, falseflesh and false eyes. Stared at them all until they blurred
into a parody of a rainbow; stared, grunted, and swung my fist into their midst, smashing until
all were scattered on the floor.
Stared at the mirror, at the reflection, at the high creased forehead and brown eyes and
slightly hooked nose and slightly soft chin. My fist came up to my shoulder. Trembled. I wanted to
split open my knuckles on that face in the mirror, and drive cracks through the world that existed
behind my back.
But at the moment-and only at the moment-it was all the world I had, and my hand dropped
slowly to the table, where it rested on a ragged bit of cloth I used out of habit to wipe off my
face.
In the beginning the idea had been a tempting one. Begun by the British and expanded by
the Americans, the tapes were the foundation of a dream-induced system through which young people
would hopefully be matured without actually suffering through the birth pangs of adolescence.
Hospital wards with soft colors, nurses with kind faces, and for two hours and twenty minutes
every other day the young were wired and hooked and taped to a machine, which I and others like
me, those actors with no place to go, inhabited. We -wrestled with tigers, endured floods, endured
women and men and disasters personal. It was, as the narration stressed again and again and again-
who knows how often? -all very symbolic, and all very real.
Watch! the voice ordered.
Take care, the voice cautioned.
Watch, and take care, and listen, and apply . . . apply... apply . . . listen . . .
apply...
A debriefing, then, which lasted for something like an hour. More, if you were new to
growing without aging. Less, if you'd been in the system for a year or more.
The first children/adults would not be through the entire program for, the director once
told me, at least another ten months. But, if you listened to him carefully and believed his
raving, things were moving along just splendidly.

I could see it without much prompting.
Eleven-year-olds with graying hair and wrinkles and a walk that bordered on the burlesque
of infirmity.
A girl twelve with the mind of a woman.
A boy ten with the rebellion sponged-exorcised out of him, exorcised and leaving him
without dreams of how it had been when he had been ...but he never had been ...young.
It was, admittedly, exciting. And the nightmares I had about the possible consequences
were only just that. So I rationalized whenever I went to the studio. After all, frankly, it was a
job. An actor's job. Just about the only one left.
I had been in Lofrisco, wandering about that coast-long cityplex, when Vivian-my-agent
called me and brought me back to Philayork. It was the break, she told me confidentlythe chance