"Lem - Seventh Voyage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

satellite, which produced a brief eclipse of the sun every eleven
minutes and four seconds. To calm my nerves I calculated till
evening the components of its trajectory, as well as the orbital
perturbation caused by the presence of the lost wrench. I figured
out that for the next six million years the sirloin, rotating about
the ship in a circular path, would lead the wrench, then catch up
with it from behind and pass it again. Finally, exhausted by these
computations, I went to bed. In the middle of the night I had the
feeling someone was shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes and
saw a man standing over the bed; his face was strangely familiar,
though I hadn't the faintest idea who this could be.
"Get up," he said, "and take the pliers, we're going out and
screwing on the rudder bolts..."
"First of all, your manner is somewhat unceremonious, and we haven't
even been introduced," I replied, "and secondly, I know for a fact
that you aren't there. I'm alone on this rocket, and have been now
for two years, en route from Earth to the constellation of the Ram.
Therefore you are a dream and nothing more."
However he continued to shake me, repeating that I should go with
him at once and get the tools.
"This is idiotic," I said, growing annoyed, because this dream
argument could very well wake me up, and I knew from experience the
difficulty I would have getting back to sleep.
"Look, I'm not going anywhere, there's no point in it. A bolt
tightened in a dream won't change things as they are in the sober
light of day. Now kindly stop pestering me and evaporate or leave in
some other fashion, otherwise I might awake."
"But you are awake, word of honor!" cried the stubborn apparition.
"Don't you recognize me? Look here!"
And saying this, he pointed to the two warts, big as straw berries,
on his left cheek. Instinctively I clutched my own face, for yes, I
had two warts, exactly the same, and in that very place. Suddenly I
realized why this phantom reminded me of someone I knew: he was the
spitting image of myself.
"Leave me alone, for heaven's sake!" I cried, shutting my eyes,
anxious to stay asleep. "If you are me, then fine, we needn't stand
on ceremony, but it only proves you don't exist!"
With which I turned on my other side and pulled the covers up over
my head. I could hear him saying something about utter nonsense;
then finally, when I didn't respond, he shouted:
"You'll regret this, knucklehead! And you'll find out, too late,
that this was not a dream!"
But I didn't budge. In the morning I opened my eyes and immediately
recalled that curious nocturnal episode. Sitting up in bed, I
thought about what strange tricks the mind can play: for here,
without a single fellow creature on board and confronted with an
emergency of the most pressing kind, I had--as it were--split myself
in two, in that dream fantasy, to answer the needs of the situation.