"Henry Kuttner - Mutant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

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BY HENRY KUTTNER
RETURN TO OTHERNESS
BYPASS TO OTHERNESS
FURY
MAN DROWNING
AHEAD OF TIME
THE BRASS RING
THE DAY HE DIED
A GNOME THERE WAS
ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
AND THE FAIRY CHESSMEN MUTANT

by HENRY KUTTNER
Baliantine Books
New York
Copyright 1953 by lewis Padgett
MUTANT
IS based upon published material originally copyrighted by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., 1945
& 1953
Alt Rights Reserved
Only short passages from this book for editorial usage may be
reproduced without prior permission. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-12601
Printed in the United States of America
BALIANTINE BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N.Y.
CONTENTS
One 7 THE PIPER'S SON
Two 34 THREE BLIND MICE
Three 68 THE LION AND THE UNICORN
Four 105 BEGGARS IN VELVET
Five 150 HUMPTY DUMPTY
Six 190
One
Somehow I had to stay alive until they found me. They would be hunting for the wreck of my plane,
and eventually they'd find it, and then they'd find me, too. But it was hard to wait.
Empty blue day stretched over the white peaks; then the blazing night you get at this altitude,
and that was empty too. There was no sound or sight of a jet plane or a helicopter. I was
completely alone.
That was the real trouble.
A few hundred years ago, when there were no telepaths, men were used to being alone. But I
couldn't remember a time when I'd been locked in the bony prison of my skull, utterly and
absolutely cut off from all other men. Deafness or blindness wouldn't have mattered as much. They
wouldn't have mattered at all, to a telepath.
Since my plane crashed behind the barrier of mountain peaks, I had been amputated from my species.
And there is something in the constant communication of minds that keeps -a man alive. An
amputated limb dies for lack of oxygen. I was dying for lack of... there's never been any word to
express what it is that makes all telepaths one. But without it, a man is alone, and men do not
live long, alone.