"Niven, Larry - Rammer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"That's the first strange word you've used since I woke up. In fact-hasn't the language changed at all? You don't even have an accent."

"Part of the job. I learned your speech through RNA training. You'll learn your trade the same way if you get that far. You'll be amazed how fast you can learn with RNA shots to help you along. But you'd better be right about liking your privacy, Corbett. Can you take orders?"

"I was in the army."

"What does that mean?"

"Yes."

"Good. Do you like strange places and faraway people-or vice versa?"

"Both." Corbett smiled hopefully. "I've raised buildings all over the world. Can the world use another architect?"

"No. Do you feel that the State owes you something?"

There could be but one answer to that. "No."

"But you had yourself frozen. You must have felt that the future owed you something."

"Not at all. It was a good risk. I was dying."

"Ah." The checker looked him over thoughtfully. "If you had something to believe in, perhaps dying wouldn't mean so much."

Corbett said nothing.

They gave him a short word-association test in English. The test made Corbett suspect that a good many corpsicles must date from near his own death. They took a blood sample, then exercised Corbett to exhaustion on a treadmill and took another blood sample. They tested his pain threshold by direct nerve stimulation-excruciatingly unpleasant-and took another blood sample. They gave him a Chinese puzzle and told him to take it apart.

Pierce then informed him that the testing was over.

"After all, we already know the state of your health."

"Then why the blood samples?"

The checker looked at him for a moment. "You tell me."

Something about that look gave Corbett the creepy feeling that he was on trial for his life. The feeling might have been caused only by the checker's rather narrow features, his icy blue gaze and abstracted smile. Still, Pierce had stayed with him all through the testing, watching him as if Corbett's behavior were a reflection on Pierce's judgment. Corbett thought carefully before he spoke.

"You have to know how far I'll go before I quit. You can analyze the blood samples for adrenaline and fatigue poisons to find out just how much I was hurting, just how tired I really was."

"That's right," said the checker.

Corbett had survived again.

He would have given up much earlier on the pain test. But at some point Pierce had mentioned that Corbett was the fourth corpsicle personality to be tested in that empty body.

He remembered going to sleep that last time, two hundred years ago.

His family and friends had been all around him, acting like mourners. He had chosen the coffin, paid for vault space, and made out his Last Will and Testament, but he had not thought of it as death. He had been given a shot. The eternal pain had drifted away in a soft haze. He had gone to sleep.