"Henry Kuttner - Mutant (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"I've-learned. As most sensible Baldies have. That's why I'm not a wealthy man, or in politics. We're really buying safety for our species by foregoing certain individual advantages. Hostages to destiny-and destiny spares us. But we get paid too, in a way. In the coinage of future benefits- negative benefits, really, for we ask only to be spared and accepted-and so we have to deny ourselves a lot of present, positive benefits. An appeasement to fate."
"Paying the pipery" Quayle nodded.
"We are the pipers. The Baldies as a group, I mean. And our children. So it balances; we're really paying ourselves. If I wanted to take unfair advantage of my telepathic power
-my son wouldn't live very long. The Baldies would be wiped out. Al's got to learn that, and he's getting pretty antisocial."
"All children are antisocial," Quayle pointed out. "They're utter individualists. I should think the only reason for worrying would be if the boy's deviation from the norm were connected with his telepathic sense."
"There's something in that." Burkhalter reached out left-handedly and probed delicately at Quayle's mind, noting that the antagonism was considerably lessened. He grinned to'himself and went on talking about his own troubles. "Just the same, the boy's father to the man. And an adult Baldy has got to be pretty well adjusted, or he's sunk."
"Environment is as important as heredity. One complements the other. If a child's reared correctly, he won't have much trouble-unless heredity is involved."
"As it may be. There's so little known about the telepathic mutation. If baldness is one secondary characteristic, maybe
-something else-emerges in the third or fourth generations. I'm wondering if telepathy is really good for the mind."
Quayle said, "Humph. Speaking personally, it makes me nervous-" "Like Reilly."
"Yes," Quayle said, but he didn't care much for the comparison. "Well-anyhow, if a mutation's a failure, it'll die out. It won't breed true."
"What about hemophilia?"
"How many people have hemophilia?" Quayle asked. "I'm trying to .look at it from the angle of psychohistorian. If there'd been telepaths in the past, things might have been different."
"How do you know there weren't?" Burkhalter asked.
Quayle blinked. "Oh. Well. That's true, too. In medieval times they'd have been called wizards-or saints. The Duke-Rhine experiments-but such accidents would have been abortive. Nature fools around trying to hit the ... ah... the jackpot, and she doesn't always do it on the first try."
"She may not have done it now." That was habit speaking, the ingrained caution of modesty. "Telepathy may be merely a semisuccessful try at something pretty unimaginable. A sort of four-dimensional sensory concept, maybe."
"That's too abstract for me." Quayle was interested, and his own hesitancies had almost vanished; by accepting Burkhalter as a telepath, he had tacitly wiped away his objections to telepathy per se. "The old-time Germans always had an idea they were different; so did the Japanese. They knew, very definitely, that they were a superior race because they were directly descended from gods. They were short in stature; heredity made them self-conscious when dealing with larger races. But the Chinese aren't tall, the Southern Chinese, and they weren't handicapped in that way."
"Environment, then?"
"Environment, which caused propaganda. The Japanese took Buddhism, and altered it completely into Shinto, to suit then- own needs. The samurai, warrior-knights, were the ideals, the code of honor was fascinatingly cockeyed. The principle of Shinto was to worship your superiors and subjugate your inferiors. Ever seen the Japanese jewel-trees?"
"I don't remember them. What are they?"
"Miniature replicas of espaliered trees, made of jewels, with trinkets hanging on the branches. Including a mirror- always. The first jewel-tree was made to lure the Moon-goddess out of a cave where she was sulking. It seemed the lady was so intrigued by the trinkets and by her face reflected in the mirror that she came out of her hideout. All the Japanese morals were dressed up in pretty clothes; that was the bait. The old-time Germans did much the same thing.
The last German dictator, Hitler, revived the old Siegfried legend. It was racial paranoia. The Germans worshiped the house-tyrant, not the mother, and they had extremely strong family ties. That extended to the state. They symbolized Hitler as their All-Father, and so eventually we got the Blowup. And, finally, mutations."
"After the deluge, me," Burkhalter murmured, finishing his dramzowie. Quayle was staring at nothing.
"Funny," he said after a while. "This All-Father business-"
"Yes?"
"I wonder if you know how powerfully it can affect a man?"
Burkhalter didn't say anything. Quayle gave him a sharp glance.
"Yes," the writer said quietly. "You're a man, after all. I owe you an apology, you know."
Burkhalter smiled. "You can forget that."
"I'd rather not," Quayle said. "I've just realized, pretty suddenly, that the telepathic sense isn't so important. I mean -it doesn't make you different. I've been talking to you-"
"Sometimes it takes people years before they realize what you're finding out," Burkhalter remarked. "Years of living and working with something they think of as a Baldy."
"Do you know what I've been concealing in my mind?" Quayle asked.
"No. I don't."
"You lie like a gentleman. Thanks. Well, here it is, and I'm telling you by choice, because I want to. I don't care if you got the information out of my mind already; I just want to tell you of my own free will. My father ... I imagine I hated him ... was a tyrant, and I remember one time, when I was just a kid and we were in the mountains, he beat me and a lot of people were looking on. I've tried to forget that for a long time. Now"-Quayle shrugged-"it doesn't seem quite so important."
"I'm not a psychologist," Burkhalter said. "If you want my personal reaction, I'll just say that it doesn't matter. You're not a little boy any more, and the guy I'm talking to and working with is the adult Quayle."
"Hm-m-m. Ye-es. I suppose I knew that all along-how unimportant it was, really. It was simply having my privacy violated.... I think I know you better now, Burkhalter. You can-walk in."
"We'll work better," Burkhalter said, grinning. "Especially with Darius."
Quayle said, "I'll try not to keep any reservation in my mind. Frankly, I won't mind telling you-the answers. Even when they're personal."
"Check on that. D'you want to tackle Darius now?"
"O.K." Quayle said, and his eyes no longer held suspicious wariness. "Darius I identify with my father-"
It was smooth and successful. That afternoon they accomplished more than they had during the entire previous fortnight. Warm with satisfaction on more than one point, Burkhalter stopped off to tell Dr. Moon that matters were looking up, and then set out toward home, exchanging thoughts with a couple of Baldies, his co-workers, who were knocking off for the day. The Rockies were bloody with the western light, and the coolness of the wind was pleasant on Burkhalter's cheeks, as he hiked homeward.
It was fine 'to be accepted. It proved that it could be done. And a Baldy often needed reassurance, in a world peopled by suspicious strangers. Quayle had been a hard nut to crack, but-Burkhalter smiled.
Ethel would be pleased. In a way, she'd had a harder time than he'd ever had. A woman would, naturally. Men were desperately anxious to keep their privacy unviolated by a woman, and as for non-Baldy women-well, it spoke highly for Ethel's glowing personal charm that she had finally been accepted by the clubs and feminine groups of Modoc. Only Burkhalter knew Ethel's desperate hurt at being bald, and not even her husband had ever seen her unwigged.
His thought reached out before him into the low, double-winged house on the hillside, and interlocked with hers in a warm intimacy. It was something more than a kiss. And, as always, there was the exciting sense of expectancy, mounting and mounting till the last door swung open and they touched physically. This, he thought, is why I was born a Baldy; this is worth losing worlds for.
At dinner that rapport spread out to embrace Al, an intangible, deeply-rooted something that made the food taste better and the water like wine. The word home, to telepaths, had a meaning that non-Baldies could not entirely comprehend, for it embraced a bond they could not know. There were small, intangible caresses.
Green Man going down the Great Red Slide; the Shaggy Dwarfs trying to harpoon him as he goes.
"Al," Ethel said, "are you still working on your Green Man?"
Then something utterly hateful and cold and deadly quivered silently in the air, like an icicle jaggedly smashing through golden, fragile glass. Burkhalter dropped his napkin and looked up, profoundly shocked. He felt Ethel's thought shrink back, and swiftly reached out to touch and reassure her with mental contact. But across the table the little boy, his cheeks still round with the fat of babyhood, sat silent and wary, realizing he had blundered, and seeking safety in complete immobility. His mind was too weak to resist probing, he knew, and he remained perfectly still, waiting, while the echoes of a thought hung poisonously in silence.
Burkhalter said, "Come on, Al." He stood up. Ethel started to speak.
"Wait, darling. Put up a barrier. Don't listen in." He touched her mind gently and tenderly, and then he took Al's hand and drew the boy after him out into the yard. Al watched his father out of wide, alert eyes.