"C M Kornbluth - Theory Of Rocketry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

to try him." He gulped his coffee and headed across the cafeteria.



Edel sat there, mildly thunderstruck at Fuqua's folly and his



own daring. Fuqua had told them the kind of bird he was by checking "Yes" or "No" on the silly-clever
statements. He had told them that he liked a drink, that he thought most people were stupider than he,
that he talked without thinking first, that he ate too much, that he was lazy, that he had an eye for a pretty
ankle тАФthat he was a human being not much better or worse than any other human being. But that wasn't
the way to do it, and damned well Fuqua had known it. You simply told yourself firmly, for the duration
of the test, "/ am a yuk. I have never had an independent thought in my life; independent thinking scares
me. I am utterly monogamous and heterosexual. I go bowling with the boys. Television is the greatest of
the art forms. I believe in installment purchasing. I am a yuk."



That these parlor games were taken seriously by some people was an inexplicable but inexorable fact of
life in the twentieth century. Edel had yukked his way through scholarships, college admissions, faculty
appointment and promotions and had never thought the examination worse than a bad cold. Before
maturity set in, in the frat house, they had eased his qualms about psychometric testing with the ancient
gag "You ain't a man until you've had it three times."



Brave of him, pretty brave at that, to back up FuquaтАФif Roland could find six others.
Roland came to him at four o'clock to say he had not even found one other. "I don't supposeтАФ No. I'm
not asking you to, Dave. TwoтАФit wouldn't be any good."



He went into the principal's office.



The next day a bright young substitute was teaching biology in his place and his student advisees had
been parceled out among other teachers. Mr. Edel found that young Foster had now become his charge.



The seventy-two pupils in his English 114 class sat fascinated and watched the television screen. Dr.
Henley Ragen was teaching them Macbeth, was teaching about nine hundred English 114 classes
throughout the state Macbeth, and making them like it. The classroom rapport was thick enough to cut
and spread with a shingle. The man's good, Edel thought, but that good? How



much is feedback from their knowing he's famous for his rapport, how much is awe of his stupendous