"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

"I am a little bored with you," said Vincent, "but I would
appreciate it if you'd do your glass-filling trick once more."
"I have just done so again. And you are not bored; you are
frightened."
"Of what?" asked Vincent, whose glass had in fact filled again.
"Of reentering a dream that you are not sure was a dream. But there
are often advantages to being both invisible and inaudible."
"Can you be invisible?"
"Was I not so when I went behind the bar just now and fixed you a
drink?"
"How?"
"A man in full stride goes at the rate of about five miles an hour.
Multiply that by sixty, which is the number of time. When I leave my stool
and go behind the bar I go at the rate of three hundred miles an hour. So I
am invisible to you, particularly if I move while you blink."
"One thing does not match. You might have got around there and back.
But you could not have poured."
"Shall I say that mastery over liquids and other objects is not
given to beginners? But for us there are many ways to outwit the slowness of
matter."
"I believe that you are a hoaxer. Do you know Dr. Mason?"
"I know of him, and that you went to see him. I know of his futile
attempts to penetrate a certain mystery. But I have not talked to him of
you."
"I still believe that you are a phony. Could you put me back into
the state of my dream of a month ago?"
"It was not a dream. But I could put you again into that state."
"Prove it."
"Watch the clock. Do you believe that I can point my finger at it
and stop it for you? It is already stopped for me."
"No, I don't believe it. Yes, I guess I have to, since I see that
you have just done it. But it may be another trick. I don't know where the
clock is plugged in."
"Neither do I. Come to the door. Look at every clock you can see.
Are they not all stopped?"
"Yes. Maybe the power has gone off all over town."
"You know it has not. There are still a few lighted windows in those
buildings, though it is quite late."
"Why are you playing with me? I am neither on the inside nor the
outside. Either tell me the secret or say that you will not tell me."
 "The secret isn't a simple one. It can only be arrived at after all
philosophy and learning has been assimilated."
"One man cannot arrive at that in one lifetime."
"Not in an ordinary lifetime. But the secret of the secret, if I may
put it that way, is that one must use part of it as a tool in learning. You
could not learn all in one lifetime but, by being permitted the first step,
to be able to read, say, sixty books in the time it took you to read one, to
pause for a minute in thought and use up only one second, to get the day's
work accomplished in eight minutes and so have time for other things -- by
such ways one may make a beginning. I will warn you, though. Even for the