"Metzger-PlanetOfDolphins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Metzger Robert)

think you're a pompous, anal-retentive control freak who would suffer a complete
mental meltdown if a spontaneous, original thought managed to penetrate your
thick I-attended-Harvard-Medical-School ego."

Dr. Cutler jerked back as if he'd been slapped.

That was exactly what Herman had intended. He was exhausted, beat, and was in no
mood to be analyzed for the umpty-umpth time by Dr. Cutler. He wanted to spend
his mandatory seventy-two hours in peace and quiet.

Dr. Cutler ran his hands across his perfect hair and then leaned forward again.
"I only want to help you. It is all I ever want." He thumped his right index
finger against the thick stack of papers in front of him. "We have quite a
history together."

Herman nodded. He'd been in and out of Presley for almost twelve years. "If you
really want to help me, then reach into the future and get these goddamned
whales and dolphins off my butt."

Dr. Cutler opened his mouth, getting ready to say something that Herman was
certain would be thoughtful and soothing, but Herman didn't give him the chance.

"That's all the help I need!" he screamed. "It's all the help I've ever needed!"

"Why are the whales and dolphins after you?" Dr. Cutler asked gently.

Herman stood and kicked back his chair so that it flew across the room and
ricocheted off a far wall before coming to a rest. The both of them were doing
the same headcase-shrink dance they'd had so many times before. Herman knew
that, knew that he should just sit down, shut up, do his seventy-two hours and
that would be that. But he was tired, on edge, had just been chest-deep in the
mouth of a killer whale and couldn't stand one more second of psychocompassion.

"Because I'm the one that can stop them, you son of a bitch! Reality is fluid,
the number of possible futures infinite. They come from a tomorrow in which man
is gone, in which the planet is theirs. But I'm the key to destroying that
future, to seeing that it never comes about!"

Dr. Cutler nodded and smiled.

"I'll say it you smug son of a bitch," screamed Herman, knowing that he
shouldn't say it, knowing how textbook, how classically insane it would sound.
"I've saved the human race dozens of times. Every time one of them doesn't get
me, can't kill me, their reality drifts away, slips back into the infinite
possibility of maybe futures. But they keep coming back. If I die, if they can
kill me, then I won't be there at the key bifurcation point to stop whatever it
is that will be responsible for creating their world."

"Then you're the Messiah?" asked Dr. Cutler. "You will save all future
generations of the human race from the whales and dolphins who are intent on our