"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 19 - The Quillian Sector" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

"You should. The feel of it does something to a man. Cold,
razor-sharp steel, catching and reflecting the light, speaking with
its edge, its point, words of threat and pain. Watch a man with a
knife and see how he moves. A good fighter becomes an
appendage of his weapon. A man with a gun gives less cause for
concern. Why? Can you tell me why?"

"A gun is dispassionate. Everyone knows what a knife can do."

"Cut and slash and maim and cripple. True, but a gun can do
that and more. But still the psychological factor remains." Then
in the same tone of voice he added, "Is that why Dumarest
carries a knife?"

"You have read the reports."

"Words on paperтАФwhat do they tell me about the man? I need
to know how he looks, how he walks, the manner in which he
snuffs the air. You think I joke? Smell is as important to a man
as to a beast, even though he may not be aware of it. And a man
hunted and knowing it seems to develop his faculties. So what is
Dumarest really like?"

"I have never seen him."

"He wears gray, he carries a knife, he travels. High when he
can afford it low when he cannot. Space is full of such wanderers.
What makes him so special?" It was a question to which he
expected no answer, and gained none. Either Caradoc didn't
know or had no intention of telling, but it was early yet and,
laterтАФwho could tell? Gesturing to his bunk, he said, "Sit and
join me in some wine."

"No," said Caradoc.

"No to the wine, to the offer of rest, or both?"

"I need neither."

A thing Bochner had known but had deliberately ignored,
Caradoc was a cyber and the nearest thing to a living machine
possible to achieve. To him, food was mere fuel to power the
body. He was a stranger to emotion and unable to feel it by
virtue of the operation performed on his cortex shortly after
reaching puberty. A creature selected and trained by the Cyclan,
converted into an organic computer, a metabolic robot who
could only know the pleasure of mental achievement.

Sitting, Bochner stared at him, wondering what it would be