"Robert A. Heinlein - The Door into Summer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

I wasnтАЩt terribly interested in the chance to get rich. Oh, I had read H.
G. WellsтАЩs When The Sleeper Wakes, not only when the insurance companies started
giving away free copies, but before that, when it was just another classic
novel; I knew what compound interest and stock appreciation could do. But I was
not sure that I had enough money both to buy the Long Sleep and to set up a
trust large enough to be worth while. The other argument appealed to me more: go
beddy-bye and wake up in a different world. Maybe a lot better world, the way
the insurance companies would have you believe . . . or maybe worse. But
certainly different.
I could make sure of one important difference: I could doze long enough to
be certain that it was a world without Belle Darkin-or Miles Gentry, either, but
Belle especially. If Belle was dead and buried I could forget her, forget what
she had done to me, cancel her out . . instead of gnawing my heart with the
knowledge that she was only a few miles away.
LetтАЩs see, how long would that have to be? Belle was twenty-three-or
claimed to be (I recalled that once she had seemed to let slip that she
remembered Roosevelt as President). Well, in her twenties anyhow. If I slept
seventy years, sheтАЩd be an obituary. Make it seventy-five and be safe.
Then I remembered the strides they were making in geriatrics; they were
talking about a hundred and twenty years as an attainable тАЮnormalтАЬ life span.
Maybe I would have to sleep a hundred years. I wasnтАЩt certain that any insurance
company offered that much.
Then I had a gently fiendish idea, inspired by the warm glow of Scotch. It
wasnтАЩt necessary to sleep until Belie was dead; it was enough, more than enough,
and just the fitting revenge on a female to be young when she was old. Just
enough younger to rub her nose in it-say about thirty years.
I felt a paw, gentle as a snowflake, on my arm. тАЮMooorrre!тАЬ announced
Pete.
тАЮGreedy gut,тАЬ I told him, and poured him another saucer of ginger ale. He
thanked me with a polite wait, then started lapping it.
But he had interrupted my pleasantly nasty chain of thought. What the
devil could I do about Pete?
You canтАЩt give away a cat the way you can a dog; they wonтАЩt stand for it.
Sometimes they go with the house, but not in PeteтАЩs case; to him I had been the
one stable thing in a changing world ever since he was taken from his mother
nine years earlier. . . I had even managed to keep him near me in the Army and
that takes real wangling.
He was in good health and likely to stay that way even though he was held
together with scar tissue. If he could just correct a tendency to lead with his
right he would be winning battles and siring kittens for another five years at
least.
I could pay to have him kept in a kennel until he died (unthinkable!) or I
could have him chloroformed (equally unthinkable)-or I could abandon him. That
is what it boils down to with a cat: you either carry out the Chinese obligation
you have assumed-or you abandon the poor thing, let him go wild, destroy its
faith in the eternal rightness.
The way Belle had destroyed mine.
So, Danny Boy, you might as well forget it. Your own life may have gone as
sour as dill pickles; that did not excuse you in the slightest from your
obligation to carry out your contract to this super-spoiled cat.