"Ian Watson - Lambert, Lambert" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

overcrowding in prisons! The gaoler becomes his own private gaol.

Ah, but magistrates back in those days were finicky. They kept count. Had
ledgers and lists. Families enquired after prisoners. Creditors bore them in mind.
Prisoners didnтАЩt merely disappear, as nowadays. Once youтАЩre behind the wire now,
itтАЩs do-as-you-please.

Let me tell you, it pleased me very much when I absorbed my first prisoner.
(Pleased me for his sake too! I was saving him.)

Dan Lambert inspired me. But it was me myself, Bert Brown, who cottoned
on to the trick. The cottoning-on was a leap such as bloody Ein-stein made. Fourth
dimension and all that. ThatтАЩs where you all are: stacked behind each other in
another dimension inside of me. Soon as I cot-toned on, I could do it.

Quite a partyтАЩs going on in here. YouтАЩre busy debating, arguing, telling your
life stories. Making friends and quarrelling. Comforting and entertaining one another.
Drawing up manifes-tos, playing games, composing poems.

And not worrying at all about starving or thumpings. All courtesy of big Bert
Brown. Lam-bert Brown.

Naw, not you yet. IтАЩve told you, you need to wait till I absorb someone new;
thatтАЩs how it works. I grab one of you spindly types, one that I fancy, take him
somewhere quiet. I wrap myself around him, I engulf, I crush. And into me goes the
per-sonality тАФ after the ritual. Eating some liver, heart, and brain; right. FairтАЩs fair;
gives me a spot of extra nourishment to fuel the procedure, very like what I gather
savages in the South Seas used to get up to. Only, I do it properly seeing as how I
understand about the fourth dimension IтАЩm put-ting you into.




IтАЩm sure Dan Lambert didnтАЩt do my trick, but I think there must have been
something a bit four-dimensional about him, donтАЩt you? Four dimen-sions squashed
into three. If everything possesses four dimensions the way Einstein said, then that
includes food and drink. Your ordinary run of geezer only uses three dimensions;
thatтАЩs all he can take. A Dan Lambert could digest the fourth dimension of food too
тАФ thatтАЩs how he got so big on so little. ThereтАЩs the explanation.

Me, IтАЩm a step beyond our Dan, arenтАЩt I? Good thing for you I am! Welcome
to the family. IтАЩm really expanding wonderfully within. ItтАЩs an edu-cation, all these
new persons inside me. Henry and Crispin and Alec and Mohammed and Rasta and
Lucian and Tony, ooh a good thirty lodgers by now with plenty of room for
expansion. More cus-tomers pouring into the camp every day.

I wouldnтАЩt have thought I had it in me! But I do. I can contain multitudes;
could be my very own prison camp.

Actually, so as not to keep you on tenterhooks, I think IтАЩll take another stroll