"Judith Merril - Beyond Human Ken" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

The dining room table seemed to reach up slightly to receive the gear he dropped upon it. He patted
it and headed for the kitchen.
Water still changed into whisky at his unspoken whim; as he desired, it also changed into onion soup,
tomato juice and Na-poleon brandy. The refrigerator, he found, was full of every-thing he might want,
from five or six raw tenderloins to a large bottle of heavy cream complete with the brand name he usually
asked far when shopping by himself.
The sight of the food made him hungry; he had missed sup-per. A steak suffocating under heaps of
onions, surrounded by beans and washed down with plenty of hot coffee would be in-teresting. He
started for the dining room to collect his gear.
His haversack still rested on the near side of the table. On the far side . . . On the far side, there
reposed a platter contain-ing a thick steak which supported a huge mound of onions and held an
encircling brown mass of beans at edible bay. Gleaming silverware lay between the platter and a veritable
vase of coffee.
Paul found himself giggling hysterically and shook fear-wisps out of his head. Everything was
obviously channeled for his comfort. Might as well pull up a chair and start eating. He looked around for
one, in time to see a chair come gliding across the floor; it poked him delicately behind the knees and he
sat down. The chair continued to the appointed position at the table
It was while he was spooning away the last of the melon he had imagined into existence for
dessertтАФit had been exuded, complete with dish, from the table topтАФthat he noticed the lighting fixtures
were also mere decorative devices. Light came from the wallsтАФor the ceilingтАФor the floor; it was
omnipresent in the house at just the right intensityтАФand that was all.
The dirty dishes and used silverware vanished into the table when he had finished, like sugar
dissolving into hot solution.
Before he went up to bed, he decided to look in at the library. Surely, he had originally imagined a
library? He decided he couldn't be certain, and thought one up next to the living room.
 All the books he had ever enjoyed were in the warm little space. He spent a contented hour
browsing from Aiken to Ein-stein, until he hit the beautifully bound Britannica. The first volume of the
Encyclopedia he opened made him understand the limitations of his establishment.
The articles he had read completely were complete, those he had read in part showed only the
sections he had touched. For the rest, there was a curious blur of not-quite print which puzzled him until
he realized that this was just the picture the eyes retained while the pages of a book were flipped before
it.
He climbed the narrow stairs to bed.
Yawningly tired, he noted vaguely that the bed was just the width he had always wanted. As fast as
he dropped his clothes to the bedside chair, they were shaken off and pushed along a writhing strip of
floor to the corner closet where he imagined they were hung neatly.
He lay down finally, repressing a shudder as the sheets curled up and over him of their own accord.
Just before he fell asleep, he remembered he'd spent the largest parts of the past three nights playing
chess and was likely to oversleep. He'd intended to rise early and examine his delightfully subservient
property in detail, but since he hadn't thought to bring an alarm clock ...
Did that matter?
He raised himself on one elbow, the sheet still hugging his chest. "Listen, you," he told the opposite
wall sternly. "Wake me exactly eight hours from now. And do it pleasantly, under-stand?"

Wakefulness came with a sense of horror that somehow merely nibbled at his mind. He lay still,
wondering what had prodded him so.
"Paul, darling, please wake up. Paul, darling, please wake up. Paul, darling, please . . ."
Caroline's voice ! He leaped out of bed and looked around crazily. What was Caroline doing here?
The telegram he'd sent asking her to come up and look at their new house had probably not arrived until
breakfast. Even a plane ...