"Henry Kuttner - The Lion and the Unicorn UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

He was quick to understand. He asked questions. And, after a while, so did Barton.
"Jesse James Hartwell's behind the raids. Yeah, I was in on 'em. You mean you all wear them wigs?"
"Naturally. It's a big civilization, and we belong to it. We're part of the whole set-up."
"And... and nobody laughs at you for being bald?" "Do I look bald?" Barton asked. "There are drawbacks, sure. But there are plenty of advantages."
"I'll say!" Line breathed deeply. "People ... the same sort ... your own sort-" He was inarticulate.
"The non-Baldies didn't always give us an even break. They were afraid of us, a little. We're trained from childhood never to take advantage of our telepathic powers with humans."
"Yeah, I can see that. It makes sense."
"Then you know why I came, don't you?"
"I can sort of understand it," Line said slowly. "These
raids ... people might start thinking a Baldy's involved- I'm a Baldy!"
Barton nodded. "Hedgehounds don't matter. A few raids- we can take care of them. But to have one of Us involved is bad medicine."
"I told Jesse James Hartwell tonight I was having no part in any more raiding." Line said. "He won't push me."
"Yes- That helps. Listen, Line. Why don't you come home with me?"
Years of training made Line pause. "Me? Go into a town? We don't do that."
"You?"
"The ... Hedgehounds. I ain't a Hedgehound, am I? Gosh, this is-" He rubbed his jaw. "I'm all mixed up, Barton."
"Tell you what. Come with me now, and see how you like our sort of life. You never were trained to use your telepathic function, so you're like a half-blind man. Take a look at the set-up, and then decide what you want to do."
On the verge of mentioning Cassie, Line paused. He was half afraid that if he spoke of her, Barton might withdraw his offer. And, after all, it wasn't as if he intended to leave Cassie permanently. It'd be just for a week or two, and then he could come back to the tribe. Х
Unless he took Cassie with him now-
No. Somehow he'd feel shamed in admitting that he, a Baldy, had married a Hedgehound. Though he was proud of Cassie herself, all right. He'd never give her up. It was only-
He was lonely. He was horribly, sickeningly lonely, and what he had glimpsed in Barton's mind and Barton's words drew him with overpowering force. A world where he belonged, where no one called him skinhead, where he'd never ,feel inferior to the bearded men of the tribe. A wig of his own.
Just for a few weeks. He couldn't miss this chance. He couldn't! Cassie would be waiting for him when he came back.
"I'll go with you," he said. "I'm ready right now. O.K.?"
But Barton, who had read Line's mind, hesitated before he answered.
"O.K.," he said at last. "Let's go."
Three weeks later Barton sat in McNey's solarium and shaded his eyes wearily with one hand. "Line's married, you
know," he said, "to a Hedgehound girl. He doesn't know we know it."
"Does it matter?" McNey asked. He was looking very tired and troubled.
"I suppose not. But I thought I'd better mention it, because of Alexa."
"She knows her own mind. And she must know about Line being married, too, by this time. She's been giving him telepathic coaching for weeks."
"I noticed that when I came in."
"Yeah," McNey said, rubbing his forehead. "That's why we're being oral. Telepathic conversations distract Line when there's more than one; he's still learning selectivity." "How do you like the boy?"
"I like him. He's not... quite what I'd expected, though." "He grew up with the Hedgehounds." "He's one of Us," McNey said with finality. "No symptoms of paranoid tendencies?" "Definitely not. Alexa agrees."
"Good," Barton said. "That relieves me. It was the one thing I was afraid of. As for the Hedgehound girl, she's not one of Us, and we can't afford to weaken the race by intermarriage with humans. That's been an axiom almost since the Blowup. My own feeling is that if Line marries Alexa or any other one of Us, it's all to the good, and we can forget about previous entanglements."
"It's up to her," McNey said. "Any more Hedgehound raids?"
"No. But they're the least of my troubles. Sergei Callahan's gone underground. I can't locate him, and I want to." "Just to kill him?"
"No. He must know other key paranoids. I want to drag that information out of him. He can't blur his mind permanently-and once I get him where I want, he'll have few secrets left."
"We're fighting a losing battle." "Are we?"
"I can't talk yet," McNey said, with subdued violence. "I can't even let myself think about the problem. I... it works out this way. There's crux, a single equation, that must be solved. But not yet. Because the moment I solve it, my mind can be read. I've got to work out all the minor details first Then-" "Yes?"
McNey's smile was bitter. "I don't know. I'll find an answer. I haven't been idle."
"If we could crack the Power," Barton said. "If we could only tap the paranoid's code-"
"Or," McNey said, "if we had a code of our own-"
"Unbreakable."
"Which is impossible, by any mechanical means. No scrambler could work, because we'd have to know the key, and our minds could be read by paranoids. I don't want to think about it any more for a while, Dave. The details, yes. But not the problem itself. I... might solve it before I'm ready."
"The paranoids are plenty busy," Barton said. "Their propaganda's spreading. That talk about Galileo's secret weapon is still going around."
"Haven't the Galileans made any denials?"
"It isn't that tangible. You can't buck a whispering campaign. That, Darryl, is what's apt to cause a bust-up. You can fight a person or a thing, but you can't fight a wind. A wind that whispers."
"But the atomic bombs! After all-"
"I know. Just the same, some hothead is going to get scared enough to take action one of these days. He'll say, 'Galileo's got a secret weapon. We're not safe. They're going to attack us.' So he'll jump the gun. After that, there'll be other incidents."
"With Us in the middle. We can't stay neutral. I think there'll be a pogrom, Dave, sooner or later."