"Zelazny,.Roger.-.Doorways.In.The.Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

"I suppose that's the best word. Bide-A-Wee had over five hundred customers on their books, but they actually only had around fifty on ice. Made a tremendous profit that way."
"I don't understand. What became of the others?"
"Their better components wound up in gray-market organ banks. That was another area where Bide-A-Wee turned a handsome profit."
"I do seem to remember hearing about it now. But what did they do with the. . . remains?"
"One of the partners also owned a funeral establishment. He just disposed of things in the course of that employment."
"Oh. Well . . . Wait a minute. What did they do if someone came around and wanted to view a frozen friend or relative?"
"They switched nameplates. One frozen body seen through a frosted panel looks pretty much like any other-sort of like a popsicle in cellophane. Anyway, Uncle Albert was one of the ones they kept for show. He always was lucky."
"How did they finally get tripped up?"
"Tax evasion. They got greedy."
"I see. Then your uncle actually could show up for an accounting one day?"
"There is always that possibility. Of course, there have been very few successful revivals."
"The possibility doesn't trouble you?"
"I deal with things as they arise. So far. Uncle Albert hasn't."
"Along with the university and your uncle's wishes, I feel obliged to point out that you are doing violence in another place as well."
I looked all around the room. Under my chair, even.
"I give up," I said.
"Yourself."
"Myself?"
"Yourself. By accepting the easy economic security of the situation, you are yielding to inertia. You are ruining your chances of ever really amounting to anything. You are growing in your dronehood."
"Dronehood?"
"Dronehood. Hanging around and not doing anything."
"So you are really acting in my best interests if you succeed in kicking me out, huh?"
"Precisely."
"I hate to tell you, but history is full of people like you. We tend to judge them harshly."
"History?"
"Not the department. The phenomenon."
He sighed and shook his head. He accepted my card, leaned back, puffed on his pipe, began to study what I had written.
I wondered whether he really believed he was doing me a favor by trying to destroy my way of life. Probably.
"Wait a minute," he said. "There's a mistake here."
"No mistake."
"The hours are wrong."
"No. I need twelve and there are twelve."
"I'm not disputing that, but-"
"Six hours, personal project, interdisciplinary, for art history credit, on site, Australia in my case."
"You know it should really be anthropology. But that would complete a major. But that's not what I'm-"
"Then three hours of comparative lit with that course on the troubadours. I'm still safe with that, and I can catch it on video-the same as with that one-hour currentevents thing for social-science credit. Safe there, and that's ten hours. Then two hours' credit for advanced basket weaving, and that's twelve. Home free."
"No, sir! You are not! That last one is a three-hour course, and that gives you a major in it!"
"Haven't seen Circular fifty-seven yet, have you?"
"What?"
"It's been changed."
"I don't believe you."
I glanced at his IN basket.
"Read your mail."
He snatched at the basket; he rifled it. Somewhere near the middle of things he found the paper. Clocking his expressions, I noted disbelief, rage and puzzlement within the first five seconds. I was hoping for despair, but you can't have everything all at once.
Frustration and bewilderment were what remained when he turned to me once again and said, "How did you do it?"
"Why must you look for the worst?"
"Because I've read your file. You got to the instructor some way, didn't you?"
"That's most ignoble of you. And I'd be a fool to admit it, wouldn't I?"
He sighed. "I suppose so."
He withdrew a pen, clicked it with unnecessary force and scrawled his name on the "Approved by" line at the bottom of the card.