"Cordwainer Smith - The Best of Cordwainer Smith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

if cranching was real, and being a haberman was a bad dream. But he was a haberman, and a scanner.
"You know what I meant, Luci. The smells, which you have. Which one did you like, on the record?"
"Well-l-l," said she, judiciously, "there were some lamb chops that were the strangest thingsтАФ"
He interrupted: "What are lambtchots?"
"Wait till you smell them. Then guess. I'll tell you this much. It's a smell hundreds and hundreds of
years old. They found out about it in the old books."
"Is a lambtchot a beast?"
"I won't tell you. You've got to wait," she laughed, as she helped him sit down and spread his tasting
dishes before him. He wanted to go back over the dinner first, sampling all the pretty things he had eaten,
and savoring them this time with his nowтАФliving lips and tongue.
When Luci had found the music wire and had thrown its sphere up into the force-field, he reminded
her of the new smells. She took out the long glass records and set the first one into a transmitter.
"Now sniff!"
A queer, frightening, exciting smell came over the room. It seemed like nothing in this world, nor like
anything from the up-and-out. Yet it was familiar. His mouth watered. His pulse beat a little faster; he
scanned his heartbox. (Faster, sure enough.) But that smell, what was it? In mock perplexity, he grabbed
her hands, looked into her eyes, and growled:
"Tell me, darling! Tell me, or I'll eat you up!"
"That's just right!"
"What?"
"You're right. It should make you want to eat me. It's meat."
"Meat. Who?"
"Not a person," said she, knowledgeably, "a Beast. A Beast which people used to eat. A lamb was
a small sheepтАФyou've seen sheep out in the Wild, haven't you?тАФand a chop is part of its
middleтАФhere!" She pointed at her chest.
Martel did not hear her. All his boxes had swung over toward Alarm, some to Danger. He fought
against the roar of his own mind, forcing his body into excess excitement. How easy it was to be a
scanner when you really stood outside your own body, haberman-fashion, and looked back into it with
your eyes alone. Then you could manage the body, rule it coldly even in the enduring agony of space. But
to realize that you were a body, that this thing was ruling you, that the mind could kick the flesh and send
it roaring off into panic! That was bad.
He tried to remember the days before he had gone into the haberman device, before he had been
cut apart for the up-and-out. Had he always been subject to the rush of his emotions from his mind to his
body, from his body back to his mind, confounding him so that he couldn't scan? But he hadn't been a
scanner then.
He knew what had hit him. Amid the roar of his own pulse, he knew. In the nightmare of the
up-and-out, that smell had forced its way through to him, while their ship burned off Venus and the
habermans fought the collapsing metal with their bare hands. He had scanned then: all were in Danger.
Chestboxes went up to Overload and dropped to Dead all around him as he had moved from man to
man, shoving the drifting corpses out of his way as he fought to scan each man in turn, to clamp vises on
unnoticed broken legs, to snap the sleeping valve on men whose instruments showed they were
hopelessly near Overload. With men trying to work and cursing him for a scanner while he, professional
zeal aroused, fought to do his job and keep them alive in the great pain of space, he had smelled that
smell. It had fought its way along his rebuilt nerves, past the haberman cuts, past all the safeguards of
physical and mental discipline. In the wildest hour of tragedy, he had smelled aloud. He remembered it
was like a bad cranching, connected with the fury and nightmare all around him. He had even stopped his
work to scan himself, fearful that the first effect might come, breaking past all haberman cuts and ruining
him with the pain of space. But he had come through. His own instruments stayed and stayed at Danger,
without nearing Overload. He had done his job, and won a commendation for it. He had even forgotten
the burning ship.