"Theodore Sturgeon - Slow Sculpture" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

"You told me you had it."
"Oh, but I didn't know."
"That explains it, then," he said in a load-off-my-baok
tone. "There wasn't anything in what I did that could
cause a three-day withdrawal like that. It had to be some-
thing in you."
"Three days!"
He simply nodded and went on with what he was say-
ing.
"I get a little pompous once in awhile," he said en-
gagingly. "Comes from being right so much of the time.
Took a bit more for granted than I should have, didn't I?
When I assumed you'd been to a doctor, maybe even
had a biopsy? You hadn't, had you?"
"I was afraid," she admitted. She looked at him. "My
mother died of it--and my aunt--and my sister had a
radical mastectomy. I couldn't bear it. And when you"
"When I told you what you already knew and what
you never wanted to hear--you couldn't take it. You
blacked right out, you know. Fainted away. And it had
nothing to do' with the seventy-odd thousand volts of
static you were carrying. I caught you." He put out his
aims where they were, on display, until she looked at
them and saw the angry red scorch marks on his fore-
arms and heavy biceps, as much of them as she could see
from under his short-sleeved shirt. "About nine-tenths
knocked me out too," he said. "But at least you didn't
crack your head or anything."
"Thank you," she said reflexively and then began to
cry. "What am .1 going to do?"
"Do? Go back home, wherever that is--pick up your
life again, whatever that might mean."
"But you said"
"When are you going to get it into your head that what
I did was not a diagnostic?"
"Are you--did you--you mean you cured it?"
"I mean you're curing it right now. I explained it all
to you 'before. You remember that now, don't you?"
"Not altogether but--yes." Surreptitiously (but not
enough, because he saw her) she felt under it--he sheet for
the lump. "It's still there."
"If I bopped you over the head with a bat," he said
with slightly exaggerated simplicity, "there would be a
lump on it. It would be there tomorrow and the next day.
The day after that it might be smaller. In a week you'd
still be able to feel it but it would be gone. Same thing
here."
At last she let the enormity of it touch her. "A one-
shot cure for cancer"
"Oh, God," he said harshly. "I can tell by looking at