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

White-faced, Anna staggered backwards through the door.

Chapter Seven
Bell's hurried footsteps were just behind her as she burst into her office and collapsed on the consultation
couch. Her eyes were shut tight, but over her labored breathing she heard the psychogeneticist sit down
and leisurely light another cigar.

Finally she opened her eyes. "Even you found out something that time. There's no use asking me what he
meant."
"Isn't there? Who will dance the part of The Student on opening night?"

"Ruy. Only, he will really do little beyond provide support to the prima ballerina, The Nightingale, that is,
at the beginning and end of the ballet."

"And who plays The Nightingale?"

"Ruy hired a professionalтАФLa Tanid."

Bell blew a careless cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. "Are you sure you aren't going to take the part?"

"The role is strenuous in the extreme. For me, it would be a physical impossibility."

"Now."

"What do you meanтАФnow?"

He looked at her sharply. "You know very well what I mean. You know it so well your whole body is
quivering. Your ballet premiere is four weeks offтАФbut you know and I know that Ruy has already seen
it. Interesting." He tapped coolly at his cigar. "Almost as interesting as your belief he saw you playing
the part of The Nightingale."

Anna clenched her fists. This must be faced rationally. She inhaled deeply, and slowly let her breath out.
"How can even he see things that haven't happened yet?"

"I don't know for sure. But I can guess, and so could you if you'd calm down a bit. We do know that the
pineal is a residuum of the single eye that our very remote sea-going ancestors had in the center of their
fishy foreheads. Suppose this fossil eye, now buried deep in the normal brain, were reactivated. What
would we be able to see with it? Nothing spatial, nothing dependent on light stimuli. But let us approach
the problem inductively. I shut one eye. The other can fix Anna van Tuyl in a depthless visual plane. But
with two eyes I can follow you stereoscopically, as you move about in space. Thus, adding an eye adds a
dimension. With the pineal as a third eye I should be able to follow you through time. So Ruy's awakened
pineal should permit him at least a hazy glimpse of the future."

"What a marvelousтАФand terrible gift."

"But not without precedent," said Bell. "I suspect that a more or less reactivated pineal lies behind every
case of clairvoyance collected in the annals of para-psychology. And I can think of at least one historical
instance in which the pineal has actually tried to penetrate the forehead, though evidently only in
monolobate form. All Buddhist statues carry a mark on the forehead symbolic of an 'inner eye'. From
what we know now, Buddha's 'inner eye' was something more than symbolic."