"C M Kornbluth - The Little Black Bag" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

steps, out the front door and down the sidewalk. But first- He snapped the bag open again on his kitchen
table, and pored through the medication tubes. "Anything to sock the autonomic nervous system good
and hard," he mumbled. The tubes were numbered, and there was a plastic card which seemed to list
them. The left margin of the card was a run-down of the systems- vascular, muscular, nervous. He
followed the last entry across to the right. There were columns for "stimulant," "depressant," and so on.
Under "nervous system" and "depressant" he found the number 17, and shakily located the little glass
tube which bore it. It was full of pretty blue pills and he took one.

It was like being struck by a thunderbolt.

Dr. Full had so long lacked any sense of well-being except the brief glow of alcohol that he had
forgotten its very nature. He was panic-stricken for a long nioment at the sensation that spread through
him slowly, finally tingling in his fingertips. He straightened up, his pains gone and his leg tremor stilled.

That was great, he thought. H&d be able to run to the hock shop, pawn the little black bag and get
some booze. He started down the stairs. Not even the street, bright with mid-morning sun, into which he
emerged made him quail. The little black bag in his left hand had a satisfying authoritative weight. He was
walking erect, he noted, and not in the somewhat furtive crouch that had grown on him in recent years. A
little self-respect, he told himself, that's what I need. Just because a man's down doesn't mean- "Docta,
please-a come wit'!" somebody yelled at him, tugging his arm. "Da

lift-la girl, she's-a burn' up!" It was one of the slum's innumerable flat-faced, stringy-haired women, in a
slovenly wrapper.

"Ah, I happen to be retired from practice-" he began hoarsely, but she would not be put off.

"In by here, Docta!" she urged, tugged him to a doorway. "You come look-a da litt-la girl. I got two
dolla, you come look!" That put a different complexion on the matter. He allowed himself to be towed
through the doorway into a messy, cabbage-smelling flat. He knew the woman now, or rather knew who
she must be-a new arrival who had moved in the other night. These people




moved at night, in motorcades of battered cars supplied by friends and relatives, with furniture lashed to
the tops, swearing and drinking until the small hours. It explained why she had stopped him: she did not
yet know he was old Dr. Full, a drunken reprobate whom nobody would trust. The little black bag had
been his guarantee, outweighing his whiskey face and stained black suit.

He was looking down on a three-year-old girl who had, he rather suspected, just been placed in the
mathematical center of a freshly changed double bed. God knew what sour and dirty mattress she usually
slept on. He seemed to recognize her as he noted a crusted bandage on her right hand. Two dollars, he
thought. An ugly flush had spread up her pipe-stem arm. He poked a finger into the socket of her elbow,
and felt little spheres like marbles under the skin and ligaments roll apart. The child began to squall thinly;
beside him, the woman gasped and began to weep herself.

"Out," he gestured briskly at her, and she thudded away, still sobbing.

Two dollars, he thought. Give her some mumbo jumbo, take the money and tell her to go to a clinic.
Strep, I guess, from that stinking alley. It's a wonder any of them grow up. He put down the little black