"Damon Knight - Turncoat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

Eleven-five-two- six, Bass."
 The item that appeared on the screen was a complete costume in black pliovel, from
turkey-feathered hat to buckled sandalsтАФgala clothing, designed to be worn once, on an important
occasion, and to fall apart after. The price was Cr. 190.50.
Someone shouted, "Good for old Leggett!" A whisper of laughter swelled to a roar.
Only Leggett did not smile. He stared down with the faintest expression of boredom and disdain as
the fat man, legs planted, bracing himself against the laughter that swept round his ears, raised his fists to
the level of his scarlet jowls and then dashed them down again.
His expression did not change until the fat man, two tears of rage squeezed out of his eyes by the
swelling of his cheeks, opened a shapeless mouth and bellowed : "Die of a disease, y' rotted vice-eaten
mud-lick'n dogson!"
The crowd's voice died as if cold water had been flung in its collective face. With no more sound
than the scrape of one shoe, it moved back radially in every direction.
Into the silence that followed Leggett's voice dropped and burst
"A demon!"
Next instant, Leggett's hand slapped the panel in front of him, and a fiendish clangor burst out to
drown the crowd's noises as it surged away in panic. Bass saw clumps of people go down at either end
of the hall as force-screens sealed the doorways. He saw the fat man; fists still clenched at' his sides,
crouching a little, face all awry and as pale as a flour-sack. He saw the moon-faced boy, mouth open to
howl.
Then came a crackle aft flash at the nearer doorway; and the crowd split; turning away in redoubled
terror, as three horrid black-masked men came bounding across, truncheons in their fists, lightnings at
their heels.
Bass turned his head aside automati-cally, as from a blow: The last thing he saw was a glimpse of the
fat man between two uniformed backs, pale face upturned in a desperate question; before they bore him
away.

IN A few moments came the rustle of turning bodies and the gathering murmur that meant the
Guardsmen and their prisoners were gone. Bass turned to face the room again, and saw that the pulpit
above him was vacant. Leggett had retired to make his report to the Guard.
The customers were clotting at four or five points where, apparently, people had fainted or been
injured by the clos-ing of the force-screens. A white-robed medic came in, made a circuit of the room
and left. A few minutes later he was back with two assistants and an emergency cart, around which the
crowd eddied briefly until the bodies were loaded aboard and carried out. The murmur of talk had
increased to a loud, steady drone.
Someone at the back of the room be-gan to sing a hymn. Others took it up, and it contended for a
while with the crowd-noise but finally sank, defeated: More people were entering constantly from both
doorways. The sluggish flow past the platform gradually stopped; there was no longer any room to move.
Bass felt a trifle sick. He had heard tales of demonic possession ever since he could remember; cases
were reported al-most daily on the news channels; but that was not the same thing as witnessing one.
Hearing that man curse a SalesmanтАФand knowing that if his guardian angel had not been driven out,
he could no more have uttered a word of that anathe-ma than he could have committed murderтАФwas
like seeing an ordinary door suddenly flung open to show a coal-black fiend grinning and posturing
inside..
What had gone wrong? Every Child, when he was four and again at ten, was taken to the
Confirmation Chambers in the Store, where an angel entered his soul through the sacred machines; and
from then on, whenever he stretched out his hand to do a wrong thing, the angel appeared to him; so that
no man could sin. But sometimes the angels were driv-en out, and demons took their places.
Why? How did it begin?
And how did he feelтАФthe man himself, not his possessing demonтАФknowing that he was cut off from