"Henry Kuttner - The Time Axis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

She locked the door behind us.

Certainly De Kalb didn't look his forty-seven years any more than a Greek statue does. He looked
like a young man, big and well proportioned. His sleek hair lay flat and short upon his head, and
his face was handsome in the vacant way the Belvedere's is.

There was no latent expression upon it and you felt that no emotions had ever drawn lines about
the mouth or between the brows. Either he had never felt any or his control was such that he could
suppress all feeling. There was the same placidity you see in the face of Buddha.



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There was something odd about his eyesтАФI couldn't make out their color. They seemed to be filmed
as though with a cat's third eyelid. Light blue, I thought, or gray, and curiously dull.

He gave me a strong handshake and collapsed into an overstaffed chair, hoisted his feet to a
hassock. Grunting, he blinked at me with his dull stare. There was a curious clumsiness to his
motions, and when he spoke, a curious ponderous quality in his diction. He seemed to feel
something like indulgent contempt for the rest of the world. It was all right, I suppose. Nobody
had better reason. The man was a genius.

"Glad you're here, Mr. Cortland," he said hoarsely. "I need you. Not for your intelligence which
is slight. Not for your physical abilities, obviously sapped by years of waste-

ful and juvenile dissipation. But I have an excellent reason to think we may work well together."

"I was sent to get an interview for Spread," I told him.

"You were not." De Kalb raised a forefinger. "You err through ignorance, sir. Robert Allister, the
publisher of Spread is a friend of mine. He has money. He has agreed to do the world and me a
service. You are under contract to him, so you do as he says. He says you will work with me. Is
that clear?"

"Lucid," I told him. "Except I don't work that way. The contract says I'm to handle news
assignments. I read the fine print too. There was no mention of peonage."

"This is a news assignment. I shall give you an interview. But first, the Record. I see no point
in futile discussion. Dr. Essen, will you be kind enoughтАФ" He nodded toward a cupboard.

She got out a parcel wrapped in cloth, handed it to De Kalb. He held it on his knee, unopened,
tapped his fingers on its top. It was about the size and shape of a portable typewriter case.

"I have showed the contents of this," he said, "only to Dr. Essen. AndтАФ"

"I am convinced," Dr. Essen said dryly. "Oh yes, Ira. I am

convinced I"