"Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Prisoner In The Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

medical care. But then, Norman had such unusual talents!

Fowler, to salve his uneasiness, ceased to lock the door of the windowless room. By now he had discovered it was
unnecessary, anyhow. Norman was like a subject in deep hypnosis. He would obey when told not to leave the room.
Fowler, with a layman's knowledge of law, thought that probably gave him an out. He pictured himself in the dock
blandly stating that Norman had never been a prisoner, had always been free to leave the house if he chose.

Actually, only hunger would rouse Norman to disobey Fowler's commands to stay in his room. He would have to be
almost famished, even then, before he would go to the kitchen and eat whatever he found, without discrimination and
apparently without taste.

Time went by. Fowler was reorienting, though he scarcely knew it yet, toward a whole new set of values. He let his
illustrating dwindle away until he almost ceased to accept orders. This was after an abortive experiment with Norman in
which he tried to work out on paper an equivalent of the telepathic pictures on glass. If he could simply sit and think
his drawings onto bristol boardтАФ

That was, however, one of Norman's failures.

It wasn't easy to refrain from sharing this wonderful new secret with Veronica. Fowler found himself time and again
shutting his lips over the information just in time. He didn't invite her out to the house any more; Norman was too
often working at odd jobs around the premises. Beautiful visions of the future were building up elaborately in Fowler's
mindтАФVeronica wrapped in mink and pearls, himself commanding financial empires all based on Norman's
extraordinary talents and Norman's truly extraordinary willingness to obey.

That was because of his physical weakness, Fowler felt sure. It seemed to take so much of Norman's energy simply to
breathe and eat that nothing remained. And after the solution of a problem, a complete fatigue overcame him. He was
useless for a day or two between jobs, recovering from the utter exhaustion that work seemed to induce. Fowler was
quite willing to accept that. It made him even surer of hisтАФguest. The worst thing that could happen, of course, would
be Norman's recovery, his return to normalтАФ

Money began to come in very satisfactorily, although Fowler wasn't really a good business man. In fact, he was a
remarkably poor one. It didn't matter rnuch. There was always more where the first-had come from; тАв

With some of the money Fowler started cautious inquiries about missing persons. He wanted to be sure no indignant
relatives would turn up and demand an accounting of all this money. He questioned Norman futilely.
Norman simply could not talk. His mind was too empty for coherence. He could produce words, but he could not
connect them. And this was a thing that seemed to give him his only real trouble. For he wanted desperately
sometimes to speak. There was something he seemed frantic to tell Fowler, in the intervals when his strength was at its
peak.

Fowler didn't want to know it. Usually when Norman reached this pitch he set him another exhausting problem. Fowler
wondered for awhile just why he dreaded hearing the message. Presently he faced the answer.

Norman might be trying to explain how he could be cured.

Eventually, Fowler had to face an even more unwelcome truth. Norman did seem in spite of everything to be growing

stronger.

He was working one day on a vibratory headset gimmick later to be known as a Hed-D-Acher, when suddenly he threw