"Judith Merril - Connection Completed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

"Sure, doc. That's what they pay me for."
Todd shook his head impatiently, like clicking a telephone receiver, trying to clear the line. "Look," he
said slowly. "Right about the middle of the room there's a table I was sitting at. Then I went to the phone
booth. When I came back, the dishes were gone. Did you just clear that table off?"
"Listen, Mister, if you wasn't done with your coffee, you shouldn't of left it there. All I know is, a
table is empty, I clear it off. How should I know . . ."
"I was done." He made himself relax outwardly, realizing that his stance, his voice, his eyes were all
threatening the youngster. "It's all right. I was finished. All I want to know is, were there . . . did you take
a newspaper off of there?"
"A paper?" The boy looked doubtfully at the bottom rack of his pushwagon. "Lessee now . . . there
was a paper on one of them tables. . . ." He reached and brought forth a folded sheet. Todd gazed at it
helplessly. He hadn't noticed which paper she was reading. He couldn't tell if that was the one.
"Did you ... was that on a table with two coffee cups?"
"Gee, mister, I don't know. . . ." The boy was really trying to remember, Todd realized, with surprise.
Trying hard. "Yeah I guess . . . listen, mister, if it's so important I won't kid you. I don't know, that's all
see?"
"Okay kid. Thanks. Thanks a lot." Todd fished a coin out of his pocket, pushed it into the startled
boy's hand, and turned and walked out. Where to, he didn't know; but he had to get out of there. The girl
wasn't coming back, that much he was sure of. That is, if there was a girl. If ever there had been a girl
with a green suit and a mist of dark hair, and a face that smiled for him in memory.

It was cold and wet outside, and that suited him fine. He paced the sidewalk, out of lamplight into
shadow, and back into damp reflections of the light. Mica particles in the gray cement flashed like tiny
distant stars or signaling fireflies under his eyes. Unseen drops of moisture chilled the back of his neck,
damped the edge of his collar. He stepped off the curb, and a car screeched, braking, around the corner
avoiding him by inches.
All these things he perceived, but without meaning. Perception was suddenly a frightening thing, to be
examined and tested every time before you could trust it. What you saw was not necessarily there at all.
What you wanted, you could not see, or else you saw without reality. He felt the cold rain on his skin, but
put no faith in it, because it was all a part of the girl and the night and the illusion he had made for himself.
He turned a corner, walking faster. No sense trying to avoid obstacles, or dodge moving objects, if
you didn't know for sure that they were there. He crossed another street, and walked faster still. He
didn't know where he was going, and if he knew it wouldn't matter, because when he got to the end of
the journey, he still wouldn't know where he was.
The city flashed its distractions. Sights and sounds and odors, moisture, temperature, touch assailed
him, and could not penetrate his isolation.
A man lives all his life inside the wall of his own skull, making words into sentences, moving muscles
to form gestures, so that he can make his existence and purposes known to others; and in the same way,
absorbing his perceptions of the people and things around him, trying to interpret as best he can, so as to
understand some part of their meaning for himself. But he never gets outside the bony barriers of his own
head, or past the hardening defenses of others. For every human being, the word or the gesture has some
slightly different meaning.
No two people ever meet completely without some slight or great distortion of intent or
understanding, occurring in the jangled complexity of living cells that make up the expressive and
interpretive mechanisms of the man.
Todd Harmacher made this discovery, as most men do, when he was very small. Each contact of the
thirty-odd years since had served to confirm it. Each contact until, for a few brief minutes this evening, he
had let himself believe that he was truly, entirely, in communication with another human being, rather than
with some strangely shaped and ill-portented section of his own imagination.
Now he paced the city streets, oblivious to rain and cold, defying noise and light, aware of the