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

you that I am going to have to listen to that speech again.
Well, I won't."
Startled, she asked, "What speech?"
"The 'one about my duty to humanity. It comes in two
phases and many textures. Phase one has to do with my
duty to humanity and really means we could make a
classic buck with it. Phase two deals solely with my duty


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to humanity and I don't hear that one very often. Phase
two utterly overlooks the reluctance humanity has to ac-
cept good things unless they arrive from accepted and
respectable sources. Phase one is fully aware of this but
gets rat shrewd in figuring ways around it."
She said, "I don't" but could get no farther.
"The textures," he overrode her, "are accompanied by
the light of revelation, with or without religion and/or
mysticism. Or they are cast sternly in the ethical-philoso-
phy mold and aim to force me to surrender through
guilt mixed--to some degree all the way up to total--with
compassion."
"But I only"
"You," he said, aiming a long index finger at her,
"have robbed yourself of the choicest example of every-
thing I have just said. If my assumptions had been right
and you had gone to your friendly local sawbones--and
he had diagnosed cancer and referred you to a specialist
and he had done likewise and sent you to a colleague
for consultation and, in random panic, you had fallen
into my hands and been cured--and had gone back to
your various doctors to report a miracle, do you know
what you'd have gotten from them? 'Spontaneous remis-
sion,' that's what you'd have gotten. And it wouldn't be
only doctors," he went on with a sudden renewal of
passion, under which she quailed in her bed. "Everybody
has his own commercial. Your nutritionist would have
nodded over his wheat germ or his macrobiotic rice cakes,
your priest would have dropped to his knees and looked
at the sky, your geneticist would have a pet theory about
generation-skipping and would assure you that your
grandparents probably had spontaneous remissions, too,
and never knew it."
"Please!" she cried but he shouted at her..
"Do you know what I am? I am an engineer twice
over, mechanical and electrical--and I have a law degree.
If you were foolish enough to tell anyone about what has
happened here (which I hope you aren't--but if you are