"Philip E. High - The Mad Metropolis" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Phillip E)

the recreation facilities that science could provide. There were
gymnasiums, parks and, with hypnad techniques, a blazing summer beach
complete with swaying palms, dreamy lagoons and Atlantic rollers.

Generally speaking, a Prole lived, mated, procreated and died in the
block. An intelligence quota of only ninety seldom asked or desired more.
This was a pleasant, secure and gently regulated life, and few had the
ambition to step beyond it.

In these pleasantly familiar surroundings Cook had left his cubicle and
descended by the gravity shaft to his favorite bar for the customary
evening drink. There, for no comprehensible reason, he had been crowded
against a door which should have been sealed and pushed into the street.
Now, persons unknown, perhaps quite unaware of his predicament, had
re-sealed the door with him on the outside.

Cook rated his chances of receiving grievous bodily harm at a
conservative one hundred and fifty percent, his chances of survival at an
optimistic two. If he survived, hospitalization would be painful and
protracted.

He didn't move, apart from his eyes and an uncontrollable twitch at the
corner of his mouth; he stood perfectly still against the section of the
building which was now an undistinguishable emergency door. Sweat
trickled slowly down his face, but he had enough self-control to confine his
breathing to near silence.

One never knew what was out there or what kind of devices were alert
for such minor signals as the respiration of the lungs, the beat of the
human heart or the chemical processes of sweat.

Above him the building which he had just left soared upwards until it
was lost in shadow, and before him stretched the street.

It was a brilliantly lit thoroughfareтАФa mile-wide river of non-reflecting
blackness, yet somehow dwarfed by the soaring buildings on either side.

A street where one stood as naked and as visible as a black fly on a sheet
of white paperтАФOh God, Oh God, what am I going to do?

From the opposite side of the street, a red light flashed on and off like a
beckoning, be-ringed finger.

A woman? Perhaps he could make her apartment and stay there until
dawn? Hope died within him almost as soon as he had thought of it. In the
first place he'd never get across the street, and, in the second, a woman
who could afford a call-light would regard his meager supply of green
exchange with the contempt it deserved. She was after bigger game, the
wealthy wolves, the prowlers and the psychos, who could afford to risk the
night in hypnad flyers.