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

outlandish long time.
Well, he would go to the doctor. A man is obliged to refrain from
making a fool of himself to the world at large, but to his lawyer, his
priest, or his doctor he will sometimes have to come as a fool. By their
callings they are restrained from scoffing openly.
He went to the doctor at noon.
Dr. Mason was not particularly a friend. Charles Vincent realized
with some unease that he did not have any particular friends, only
acquaintances and associates. It was as though he were of a species slightly
apart from his fellows. He wished a little now that he had a particular
friend.
But Dr. Mason was an acquaintance of some years, had the reputation
of being a good doctor, and besides, Vincent had now arrived at his office
and been shown in. He would either have to -- well, that was as good a
beginning as any.
"Doctor, I am in a predicament. I will either have to invent some
symptoms to account for my visit here, or to make an excuse and bolt, or
tell you what is bothering me, even though you will think that I am a new
sort of idiot."
"Vincent, every day people invent symptoms to cover their visits
here, and I know that they have lost their nerve about their real reason for
corning. And every day people do make excuses and bolt. But experience tells
me that I will get a larger fee if you tackle the third alternative. And,
Vincent, there is no new sort of idiot."
"It may not sound so silly if I tell it quickly," Vincent said. "I
awoke this morning to some very puzzling incidents. It seemed that time
itself had stopped, or that the whole world had gone into super-slow motion.
The water would neither flow nor boil, and the fire would not heat food. The
clocks, which I at first believed had stopped, crept along at perhaps a
minute an hour. The people I met in the streets appeared dead, frozen in
life-like attitudes. It was only by watching them for a very long tune that
I perceived that they did indeed have motion. One taxi I saw creeping slower
than the most backward snail, and a dead man at the wheel of it. I went to
it, opened the door, and put on the brake. I realized after a time that the
man was not dead. But he bent forward and broke his face on the steering
heel. It must have taken a full minute for his head to travel no more than
ten inches, yet I was unable to prevent him from hitting the wheel. I then
did other bizarre things in a world that had died on its feet. I walked many
miles through the city, and then I sat for countless hours in the park. I
went to the office and let myself in. I accomplished work that must have
taken me twenty hours. I then took a nap at my desk. When I awoke on the
arrival of others it was six minutes till eight in the morning of the same
day, today. Not two hours had passed from my rising, and time was back to
normal. But there were things that happened in that time that could never be
compressed into two hours."
"One question first, Vincent. Did you actually accomplish the work,
the work of many hours?"
"I did. It was done and done in that time. It did not become undone
on the return of time to normal."
"A second question: had you been worried about your work, about