"Destroyer 023 - Child's Play.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Dr. Averill N. Charlese
President
Mind Potential Institute Houston, Texas
He had come down to Mexico City, where the America Games were now being held, to prove his theory. Not that it really needed proving, because it was a fact. Fact. People producing Theta waves could perform what appeared to be incredible feats.
Remo suddenly saw a small chart cover his breakfast of white rice and water. There, in blue and red and green and yellow, was an ascending "rainbow!" Yellow, at the top, was the conscious level of the mind, and darkest blue was the deep Theta state.
Remo looked around for a waiter at the El Conquistador, a large modern hotel built like a simulated Aztec temple, with waiters in Aztec-type print smocks, surrounded by very un-Aztec Muzak.
"If I'm bothering you, let me know," said Dr. Charlese, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties, with a crown of brownish gold hair gleaming like a helmet fashioned by hot comb and lacquer.
"You're bothering me," said Remo, who folded the chart and put it in Charlese's gold plaid jacket.
"Good. Honesty is the basis for a good relationship."
Remo chewed a few kernels of rice until they were liquid, then he drank it into his stomach. He eyed a roast beef, sliced thick and fatty and red, being served at a neighboring table. It had been a long time since he had had a piece of meat, and
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his memory hungered for it. Not his body, which now dictated what he would eat. He remembered that the roast beef used to be good. But that was a long time ago.
"I knew yesterday you were something special," said Dr. Charlese.
Remo tried to remember an incident the day before that might have inflicted this lacquer-headed sparkler of positive thought on him. He could not. There was nothing special the day before, just resting, getting sun and, of course, the training. But Charlese couldn't have been able to tell the training from a nap. Which was what it appeared to be, because at Remo's level of competence, his body had long ago achieved its maximum. He was now working in the limitless frontiers of his mind. Anything more he would learn to do, he would learn in his mind, not in his body.
Charlese opened the chart again, and moved the rice away, explaining that this was his only chart and he didn't want to get food on it.
Remo smiled politely, took the offered chart and, starting at the top left corner, tore it diagonally across. Then he tore the two remaining pieces into four, then the four into eight. He put them in Dr. Charlese's open mouth.
"Fantastic," said Dr. Charlese, spitting the confetti of his chart. A corner with a blue Theta on it landed in the center of Remo's rice. Enough. He rose from the table. He was a thin man, about six feet tall, give or take an inch, depending on how he used his body that day, with high cheekbones and eyes that had a central darkness of limitless, weightless space. He wore gray slacks and a dark turtleneck shirt. His shoes were loafers. As he left
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the table, the eyes of several women followed him. One sent back a green and yellow Montezuma parfait when she looked at her husband after looking at Remo.
Dr. Charlese followed him.
"You probably don't even remember what you did yesterday," said Dr. Charlese. "You were by the pool."
"Leave," said Remo.
Dr. Charlese followed him to the elevator. Remo waited until the door was just closing before he entered. The elevator was a local, making several stops before the fourteenth floor. When it reached the floor, Dr. Charlese was there smiling.
"Positive thinking. Positive thinking," he said. "I projected my elevator not to make stops."
"Did you do your projecting while standing in front of the buttons?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, yes," said Dr. Charlese. "But it never hurts to help the projection of a positive image. A human being can do whatever he imagines he can do. If you can imagine it, you can do it."
"I'm imagining that you're leaving me alone," said Remo.
"But my imagination is stronger, and I'm imagining that you're going to answer my questions."
"And I'm imagining that you're lying on the carpeting of this hallway with your mouth a mess of broken teeth so you cannot ask questions."
Dr. Charlese thought this quite humorous, because he was imagining Remo telling him the secrets of his power. Remo smiled slightly and was about to show Dr. Charlese how a snapping right hand could overcome any thought, when Dr.
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Charlese said something that made Remo stop, made him want to know about this man's theories.
"Breathing is the key," said Dr. Charlese. "I know that. Breathing is the whole key to control of those vast reaches of your mind. Did you know that the chart I gave you was nylon mesh? No one could tear it with his hands."
"Would you explain what you're talking about?"
"I had only one copy of that chart. I carried it with me. I didn't want it destroyed so I had it hand-painted on strong nylon mesh, reinforced with steel strands. Something like a steel-belted tire. And you tore it up like it was paper."
"I'm trying to piece this thing together. What do you know about breathing?" Remo asked.
"Yesterday, I saw you by the pool. With the Japanese man."
"Korean. Never call him Japanese," said Remo.
"And I saw you do it. I timed it."
"What? Nobody can tell when I'm exercising."
"Your diaphragm gave you away."
"How?"
"It didn't move. I watched your breathing slow down and then your diaphragm didn't move. Not for twenty-two minutes and fifteen seconds. I have a stopwatch. I time everything."
"Can we talk somewhere privately?"
"I've been sort of evicted from my room. But I'm projecting that someone else will pay the bill."
"No, no. I'm not interested in your projecting. I want to know about breathing," said Remo.
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"I knew you could tear that chart when I saw your breathing control."
"Wait," said Remo. "Not out here in the hall." He led Dr. Charlese to his suite. He opened the door quietly and put a finger over his lips. A frail Oriental, with a wisp of a white beard and strands of white hair surrounding his otherwise bald head, sat in a chartreuse kimono, mumbling something. He was watching a television program in which the actors spoke in English. Remo guided Dr. Charlese to another room.
"I didn't know there were American soap operas down here," said Dr. Charlese.