"C M Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl - Critical Mass (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)
"Yes, sir. I'd like to show you a-"
"I do not," said Dr. Flowers, "want you to be a beloved old George Washington Carver humbly bending over his reports and test tubes. Academic research is of no immediate importance."
"No, sir. I-"
"The power centers of America," said Dr. Flowers, "are government, where our friend Mr. Wilkins is
ably operating, and the executive levels of the large corporations, where I am attempting to achieve what is necessary. I want you to be an executive in a large corporation, Brubacker. You have been trained for that purpose. It is now perhaps barely possible for you to obtain a foothold. It is inconceivable to me that you will not make the effort, neither for me or for your people."
Brubacker looked at him hi misery, and at last put his face into his hands. His shoulders shook.
Dr. Flowers said scornfully: "I take it you are declining to make that effort. Good-bye, Brubacker. I do not want to see you again."
The young man stumbled from the room, carrying a large pigskin valise which he had not been permitted to open.
As he had expected to overwhelm his benefactor with what he had accomplished he had made no plans for this situation. He could think only of returning to the university he had just left where, perhaps, before his little money ran out, he might obtain a grant. There was not really much hope of that. He had filed no proposals and sought no advice.
It did not help his mood when the overnight coach to Chicago was filling up in Grand Central. He was among the first and took a window seat. Thereafter the empty place beside him was spotted gladly by luggage-burdened matrons, Ivy-League-clad youngsters, harrumphing paper-box salesmen-gladly spotted- and then uncomfortably skimmed past when they discovered that to occupy it they would have to sit next to the gorilla-rapist-illiterate-tapdancer-mugger-men-ace who happened to be Dr. Ensal Brubacker.
But he was spared loneliness at the very last. The fellow who did drop delightedly into the seat beside him as the train began to move was One of His Own Kind. That is, he was unwashed, unlettered, a quarter drunk on liquor that had never known a tax stamp,
and agonizingly high-spirited. He spoke such pure Harlem jive that Brubacker could not understand one word in twenty.
But politeness and a terror of appearing superior forced Brubacker to accept, at 125th Street, a choking swallow from the flat half-pint bottle his seamate carried. And both of these things, plus an unsupportable sense of something lost, caused him to accept his seatmate's later offer of more paralyzing pleasures. In ten months Brubacker was dead, in Lexington, Kentucky, of pneumonia incurred while kicking the heroin habit, leaving behind him a badly puzzled staff doctor. "They'll say everything in withdrawal," he confided to his wife, "but I wonder how this one ever heard the word 'cryptesthesia.'"
It was about a month after that that Myrion Flowers received the package containing Brubacker's effects. There had been no one else to send them to.
He was shaken, that controlled man. He had seen many folk-gods of his people go the same route, but they were fighters, entertainers or revivalists; he had not expected it of a young, brilliant university graduate. For that reason he did not immediately throw the junk away, but mused over it for some minutes. His next visitor found him with a silvery-coppery sort of helmet in his hands.
Flowers's next visitor was a former Corporation Counsel to the City of New York. By attending Dr. Powell's church and having Dr. Flowers take care of his health he kept a well-placed foot hi both the principal political camps of the city. He no longer much needed political support, but Flowers had pulled him through one coronary and he was too old to change doctors. "What have you got there, Myrion?" he asked.
Flowers looked up and said precisely, "If I can believe the notes of the man who made it, it is a receiver and amplifier for beta-wave oscillations."
The Corporation Counsel groaned, "God preserve
me from the medical mind. What's that in English?" But he was surprised to see the expression of wondering awe that came onto Flowers's withered face.
"It reads thoughts," Flowers whispered.
The Corporation Counsel at once clutched his chest, but found no pain. He complained testily, "You're joking."
"I don't think I am, Wilmot. The man who constructed this device had all the appropriate dignities -summa cum laude, Dean's List, interviewed by mail by nearly thirty prospective employers. Before they found out the color of his skin, of course. No," he said reflectively, "I don't think I'm joking, but there's one way to find out."
He lifted the helmet toward his head. The Corporation counsel cried out, "Damn you, Myrion, don't do that!"
Flowers paused. "Are you afraid I'll read your mind and learn your secrets?"
Myrion Flowers chose to ignore the latter part of what his patient had said. "I don't expect it to electrocute me, and I don't expect this will affect your heart, Wilmot. In any event, I don't propose to be wondering about this thing for any length of time, I don't want to try it when I'm alone and there's no one else here." He plopped the steel bowl on his head. It fit badly and was very heavy. An extension cord hung from it, and without pausing Flowers plugged it into a wall socket by his chair.
The helmet whined faintly and Flowers leaped to his feet. He screamed.
The Corporation Counsel moved rapidly enough to make himself gasp. He snatched the helmet from
Flowers's head, caught him by the shoulders and lowered him into his chair again. "You all right?" he growled.
Flowers shuddered epileptically and then controlled himself. "Thank you, Wilmot. I hope you haven't damaged Dr. Brubacker's device." And then suddenly, "It hit me all at once. It hurt!"
He breathed sharply and sat up.
From one of his desk drawers he took a physicians' sample bottle of pills and swallowed one without water. "Everyone was screaming at once," he said. He started to replace the pills, then saw the Corporation Counsel holding his chest and mutely offered him one^
Then he seemed startled.
He looked into his visitor's eyes. "I can still hear you."
"What?"
"It's a false angina, I think. But take the pill. But-" he passed a hand over his eyes-"You thought I was electrocuted, and you wondered how to straighten out my last bill. It's a fair bill, Wilmot. I didn't overcharge you." Flowers opened his eyes very wide and said, "The newsboy on the corner cheated me out of my change. He-" He swallowed and said, "The cops in the squad car just turning off Fulton Street don't like my having white patients. One of them is thinking about running in a girl that came here." He sobbed, "It didn't stop, Wilmot."
"For Christ's sake, Myrion, lie down."
"It didn't stop. It's not like a radio. You can't turn it off. Now I can hear-everybody! Every mind for miles around is pouring into my head WHAT IT THINKS ABOUT ME-ABOUT ME-ABOUT US!"
Ensal Brubacker, who had been a clinical psychologist and not a radio engineer, had not intended his helmet to endure the strain of continuous operation nor had he thought to provide circuit-breakers. It had been meant to operate for a few moments at most, enough to reroute a few neurons, open a blocked path
or two. One of its parts overheated. Another took too much load as a result, and in a moment the thing was afire. It blew the fuses and the room was in darkness. The elderly ex-Corporation Counsel managed to get the fire out, and then picked up the phone. Shouting to be heard over the screaming of Myrion Flowers, he summoned a Kings County ambulance. They knew Flowers's name. The ambulance was there in nine minutes.
Flowers died some weeks later in the hospital-not Kings County, but he did not know the difference. He had been under massive sedation for almost a month until it became a physiological necessity to taper him off; and as soon as he was alert enough to do so he contrived to hang himself in his room.
His funeral was a state occasion. The crowds were enormous and there was much weeping. The Corporation Counsel was one of those permitted to cast a clod of earth upon the bronze casket, but he did not weep.
No one had ever figured out what the destroyed instrument was supposed to have been, and Wilmot did not tell. There are inventions and inventions, he thought, and reading minds is a job for white men. If even for white men. In the world of Myrion Flowers many seeds might sturdily grow, but some ripe fruits would mature into poison.
No doubt the machine might have broken any mind, listening in on every thought that concerned one. It was maddening and dizzying, and the man who wore the helmet would be harmed in any world; but only in the world of Myrion Flowers would he be hated to death.
THE GIFT OF GARIGOLLI
This is the last story of the posthumous collaborations to be published, and in one sense it is the most dated of them. It is a pretty damn sexist story. Sbirl is Dorothy Vaneman Seaton out of Anita Loos: pretty, kind, charming and possessed of the I.Q. of a toad. Nobody would have written this story in the 1970's, not Cyril, and certainly not I, and over a good many years I would from time to time look at the tattered manuscript again and try to find some way of detoxifying it. There never was one. There was a great deal of brightness and charm, but it was all bound up in the empty-headedness of Shirl. I couldn't change that without destroying everything Cyril had put on paper, and so I finally took my courage in my hands, pretended that it was 1953 instead of 1973 and finished it up.
Garigolli to Home Base
Greeting, Chief,
I'm glad you're pleased with the demographics and cognitics studies. You don't mention the orbital mapping, but I suppose that's all complete and satisfactory.
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