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

being behind in your work?"
"Yes. Emphatically."
"Then here is one explanation. You retired last night. But very
shortly afterward you arose in a state of somnambulism. There are facets of
sleep-walking which we do not at all understand. The time-out-of-focus
interludes were parts of a walking dream of yours. You dressed and went to
your office and worked all night. It is possible to do routine tasks while
in a somnambulistic state. rapidly and even feverishly, to perform
prodigies. You may have fallen into a normal sleep there when you had
finished, or you may have been awakened directly from your somnambulistic
trance on the arrival of your co-workers. There. That is a plausible and
workable explanation. In the case of an apparently bizarre happening it is
always well to have a rational explanation to fall back on. This will
usually satisfy a patient and put his mind to rest. But often the
explanation does not satisfy me."
"Your explanation very nearly satisfies me, Dr. Mason, and it does
put my mind considerably at rest. I am sure that in a short while I will be
able to accept it completely But why does it not satisfy you?"
"One reason is a man, a taxi-driver, whom I treated very early this
morning. He had his face smashed, and he had seen -- or almost seen -- a
ghost: a ghost of in credible swiftness that was more sensed than seen. The
ghost opened the door of his car while it was going a full speed, jerked on
the brake, and caused him to crack his head. This man was dazed and had a
slight concussion. I have convinced him that he did not see an ghost at all,
that he must have dozed at the wheel and run into something. As I say, I am
harder to convince than my patients. But it may have been coincidence.
"I hope so. But you also seem to have another reservation as to my
case.
"After quite a few years in practice, I seldom see or hear anything
new. Twice before I have been told a happening or a dream on the line of
what you experienced."
"Did you convince your other patients that they were only dreams?"
"I did. Both of them. That is, I convinced them the first few times
it happened to them."
"Were they satisfied?"
"At first they were. Later not entirely. But they both died within a
year of their coming to me.
"Of nothing violent, I hope."
"Both had the most gentle deaths. That of senility extreme."
"Oh. Well I'm too young for that."
"Vincent, I would like you to come back in a month or so."
"I will, if the delusion or the dream returns. Or if I do not feel
well."
After this Charles Vincent began to forget about the incident. He
only recalled it with humor sometimes when again he was behind in his work.
"Well, if it gets bad enough I may do another sleepwalking jag and
catch up. But if there is another aspect of time and I could enter it at
will, it might often be handy."

Charles Vincent never saw the man's face at all. It is very dark in