"Sturgeon, Theodore - That Low 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

"Then I don't want to live a long life."
"But you shall."
"Not if I don't want to," he said grimly. "I tell you, I'm tired. t?
She shook her head. "It's gone too far," she said, not unkindly. "You can't change it."
He got up. "I can. Anytime, I can. Then you'll be wrong, won't you?"
"I'm not wrong," said Mrs. Hallowell.
"I'll kill myself," said Maxwell, and that was when she told him he couldn't. He was very angry, but she did not give him back his check. By the time he thought of stopping payment on it, it had cleared the bank. He went on living his life.
The amount of money he had paid Mrs. Hallowell dug
quite a bole, but for a surprisingly long time be was able
to walk around it. However, be did nothing to fill it up, and
inevitably he had the choice of facing his creditors or killing
himself. So be got a piece of rope and made a noose and
put it around his neck. He tied the other end to the leg of
the radiator and jumped out of the window. He was a big
man, but the rope held all right. However, the leg broke off
the radiator, and he fell six stories. He hit a canvas marquee,
tore through it, and fell heavily to the sidewalk. There was
quite a crowd there, after a I while, to listen to the noises he
made because of what was broken.
Fowler took a while to mend, and spent it in careful thought. He took no comfort from his thoughts, for they were honest ones, and be did not care at all for his conclusions, which drafted a portrait no one would admire and an insight no one would want as a bedfellow. He got through it though, and put a list of his obligations down on paper and drew up a plan for taking care of things. It was a plan that was within his capabilities and meant chip, chip, chip for a long, long, time before he could ever call himself honestly broke again. The first person he tried it out on was the business manager of the hospital, and to his immense surprise it worked: that is, he wouldn't get sued for the bill, and the hospital would go along with him until it was all straightened out. Nobody had ever given him that much of a break before; but then, he had never tackled a problem this way before.
He got out of the hospital and began chipping.
Mrs. Hallowell had a bad moment over Fowler. She started up out of her sleep one night, thinking about him.
"Oh, how awful," she said. "I made a mistake!"
She phoned in the morning. Fowler was not there. Mrs. Hallowell phoned and phoned around until she got someone who could tell her about Fowler. The tenant in the apartment next to Fowler's had made a mistake about a gas heater, and had a bad cold, and lit a match, and blew the end of the building out. Fowler had been picked up from the wreckage, bleeding. The someone said, "Is there any message I could send to him?"
"No," said Mrs. Hallowell. "No. Not . . . now."
They saved Fowler that time, too. It was a lot of trouble. They had to take this and that off, and the other out. He was put, finally, in a very short bed with a mass of equipment beside him, humming and clicking. It circulated fluids, and another part of it dripped into a tube, and there was a thing that got emptied a couple of times a day without Fowler's worrying about it.
That was the trouble with Mrs. Hallowell's talent. It lay in such broad lines. A mistake could cover a lot of territory.
Fowler gradually became aware of her mistake. It took him about two months.
People came by and clucked their tongues when they saw him. There was a bright-eyed, dry-faced old lady who put flowers near him every week or so. He didn't have to go on with that chip, chip, pay, pay any more. Everybody was sorry for him, and everybody always would be, as long as be lived, which would be very nearly as long as the equipment could be kept running. A long time. A long life. Mrs. Hallowell had been right, dead right, about the long life.
Where she made her mistake was in thinking that he would be unhappy.

~~~ The End ~~~