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

The Cork started to smile; then he frowned faintly. "What do you mean?"

"All motor acts are carried out in simple rhythmic patterns. We walk in the two-four time of the march.
We waltz, use a pickaxe, and manually grasp or replace objects in three-four rhythm."

"This nonsense is purely a play for time," interjected Martha Jacques. "Kill her."

"It is a fact," continued Anna hurriedly. (Would that Second Movement never begin?) "A decade ago,
when there were still a few factories using hand-assembly methods, the workmen speeded their work by
breaking down the task into these same elemental rhythms, aided by appropriate music." (There! It was
beginning! The immortal genius of that suicidal Russian was reaching across a century to save her!) "It so
happens that the music you are hearing now is the Second Movement that I mentioned, and it's neither
two-four nor three-four but five-four, an oriental rhythm that gives difficulty even to skilled occidental
musicians and dancers. Subconsciously you are going to try to break it down into the only rhythms to
which your motor nervous system is attuned. But you can't. Nor can any occidental, even a professional
dancer, unless he has had special training"тАФher voice wobbled slightlyтАФ"in Delcrozian eurhythmics."

She crashed into the table.

Even though she had known that this must happen, her success was so complete, so overwhelming, that it
momentarily appalled her.
Martha Jacques and The Cork had moved with anxious, rapid jerks, like puppets in a nightmare. But
their rhythm was all wrong. With their ingrained four-time motor responses strangely modulated by a
five-time pattern, the result was inevitably the arithmetical composite of the two: a neural beat, which
could activate muscle tissue only when the two rhythms were in phase.

The Cork had hardly begun his frantic, spasmodic squeeze of the trigger when the careening table
knocked him backward to the floor, stunned, beside Martha Jacques. It required but an instant for Anna
to scurry around and extract the pistol from his numbed fist.

Then she pointed the trembling gun in the general direction of the carnage she had wrought and fought an
urge to collapse against the wall.

She waited for the room to stop spinning, for the white, glass-eyed face of Martha Jacques to come into
focus against the fuzzy background of the cheap paint-daubed rug. And then the eyes of the woman
scientist flickered and closed.

With a wary glance at the weapon muzzle, The Cork gingerly pulled a leg from beneath the table edge:
"You have the gun," he said softly. "You can't object if I assist Mrs. Jacques?"

"I do object," said Anna faintly. "She's merely unconscious...feels nothing. I want her to stay that way for
a few minutes. If you approach her or make any unnecessary noise, I will probably kill you. SoтАФboth of
you must stay here until Grade investigates. I know you have a pair of handcuffs. I'll give you ten seconds
to lock yourself to that steam pipe in the cornerтАФhands behind you, please."

She retrieved the roll of adhesive patching tape from the floor and fixed several strips across the agent's
lips, following with a few swift loops around the ankles to prevent him stamping his feet.

A moment later, her face a damp mask, she closed the door leisurely behind her and stood there,
breathing deeply and searching the room for Grade.