"Spider Robinson - Telempath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

was thoroughly disgusted with my pulse rate. But I never looked over my shoulder. Collaci says thereтАЩs no sense
being scared when it canтАЩt help youтАФand the fiasco with the cat proved him right.
It was early afternoon, and the same sunshine that was warming the forests and dorms and work-zones of Fresh
Start, my home, seemed to chill the air here, accentuating the barren emptiness of the ruined city. Silence and
desolation were all around me as I walked, bleached bones and crumbling brick. Carlson had been efficient, all right;
nearly as efficient as the atomic bomb folks used to be so scared of once. It seemed as though I were in some
immense devilтАЩs autoclave, that ignored filth and grime but grimly scrubbed out life of any kind.
Wishful thinking, I decided, and shook my head to banish the fantasy. If the city had been truly lifeless, IтАЩd be
approaching Carlson from uptownтАФI would never have had to detour as far south as the Lincoln Tunnel, and my left
arm would not have ached so terribly. Grey Brother is extremely touchy about his territorial rights.
I decided to replace the makeshift dressing over the torn biceps. I didnтАЩt like the drumming insistence of the pain:
it kept me awake but interfered with my concentration. I ducked into the nearest store that looked defensible, and
found myself sprawled on the floor behind an overturned table, wishing mightily that it werenтАЩt so flimsy.
Something had moved.
Then I rose sheepishly to my feet, holstering my heater and rapping my subconscious sentries sharply across the
knuckles for the second time in half an hour. My own face looked back at me from the grimy mirror that ran along
one whole wall, curly black hair in tangles, wide lips stretched back in what looked just like a grin. It wasnтАЩt a grin. I
hadnтАЩt realized how bad I looked.
Dad had told me a lot about Civilization, before the Exodus, but I donтАЩt suppose IтАЩll ever understand it. A glance
around this room raised more questions than it answered. On my left, opposite the long mirror, were a series of
smaller mirrors that paralleled it for three-quarters of its length, with odd-looking chairs before them. Something like
armchairs made of metal, padded where necessary, with levers to raise and lower them. On my right, below the
longer mirror, were a lot of smaller, much plainer wooden chairs, in a tight row broken occasionally by strange
frameworks from which lengths of rotting fabric dangled. I could only surmise that this was some sort of arcane
narcissistтАЩs paradise, where men of large ego would come, remove their clothing, recline in luxuriously upholstered
seats, and contemplate their own magnificence. The smaller, shabbier seats, too low to afford a decent view, no
doubt represented the cut-rate or second-class accommodations.
But what was the significance of the cabinets between the larger chairs and the wall, laden with bottles and plastic
containers and heathen appliances? And why were all the skeletons in the room huddled together in the middle of the
floor, as though their last seconds of life had been spent frantically fighting over something?
Something gleamed in the bone-heap, and I saw what the poor bastards had died fighting for, and knew what kind
of place this had been. The contested prize was a straight razor.
My father had spent eighteen of my twenty years telling me why I ought to hate Wendell Carlson, and in the past
few days IтАЩd acquired nearly as many reasons of my own. I intended to put them in CarlsonтАЩs obituary.
A wave of weariness passed over me. I moved to one of the big chairs, pressed gingerly down on the seat to make
sure no cunning mechanism awaited my mass to trigger it (CollaciтАЩs training againтАФif TeachтАЩ ever gets to Heaven,
heтАЩll check it for booby traps), took off my rucksack and sat down. As I unrolled the bandage around my arm I
glanced at myself in the mirror and froze, struck with wonder. An infinite series of mes stretched out into eternity,
endless thousands of Isham Stones caught in that frozen second of time that holds endless thousands of possible
futures, on the point of some unimaginable cusp. I knew it was simply the opposed mirrors, the one before me
slightly askew, and could have predicted the phenomenon had I thought about itтАФbut I was not expecting it and had
never seen anything like it in my life. All at once I was enormously tempted to sit back, light a joint from the first-aid
kit in my rucksack, and meditate awhile. I wondered what Alia was doing right now, right at this moment. Hell, I
could kill Carlson at twilight, and sleep in his bedтАФor hole up here and get him tomorrow, or the next day. When I
was feeling better.
Then I saw the first image in line. Me. A black man just doesnтАЩt bruise spectacularly, as a rule, but there was
something colorful over my right eye that would do until a bruise came along. I was filthy, I needed a shave, and the
long slash running from my left eye to my upper lip looked angry. My black turtleneck was torn in three places that I
could see, dirty where it wasnтАЩt torn, and bloodstained where it wasnтАЩt dirty. It might be a long time before I felt any
better than I did right now.