"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"Glad to, honey." He looked down at the prone figure on the clinic cot. "How's our friend?"

"Still unconscious, and under general analgesic. I called you in because I want to air some ideas about
this man that scare me when I think about them alone."
The psychogeneticist adjusted his spectacles with elaborate casualness. "Really? Then you think you've
found what's wrong with him? Why he can't read or write?"

"Does it have to be something wrong?"

"What else would you call it? A...gift?"

She studied him narrowly. "I mightтАФand you mightтАФif he got something in return for his loss. That would
depend on whether there was a net gain, wouldn't it? And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking
about. Let's get it out in the open. You've known the JacquesesтАФboth of themтАФfor years. You had me
put on his case because you think he and I might find in the mind and body of the other a mutual solution
to our identical aberrations. Well?"

Bell tapped imperturbably at his cigar. "As you say, the question is, whether he got enough in
returnтАФenough to compensate for his lost skills."

She gave him a baffled look. "All right, then, I'll do the talking. Ruy Jacques opened Grade's private
door, when Grade alone knew the combination. And when he got in the room with us, he knew what we
had been talking about. It was just as though it had all been written out for him, somehow. You'd have
thought the lock combination had been pasted on the door, and that he'd looked over a transcript of our
conversation."

"Only, he can't read," observed Bell.

"You mean, he can't read...writing?"

"What else is there?"

"Possibly some sort of thought residuum...in things. Perhaps some message in the metal of Grade's door,
and in certain objects in the room." She watched him closely. "I see you aren't surprised. You've known
this all along."

"I admit nothing. You, on the other hand, must admit that your theory of thought-reading is superficially
fantastic."

"So would writing beтАФto a Neanderthal cave dweller. But tell me, Matt, where do our thoughts go after
we think them? What is the extra-cranial fate of those feeble, intricate electric oscillations we pick up on
the encephalograph? We know they can and do penetrate the skull, that they can pass through bone, like
radio waves. Do they go on out into the universe forever? Or do dense substances like Grade's door
eventually absorb them all? Do they set up their wispy patterns in metals, which then begin to vibrate in
sympathy, like piano wires responding to a noise?"

Bell drew heavily on his cigar. "Seriously, I don't know. But I will say this: your theory is not inconsistent
with certain psychogenetic predictions."