The Seeds of Time
- Автор: Уиндем Джон Паркс Лукас Бейнон Харрис
- Язык: английский
- Год: Michael Joseph
- ISBN: 0-7181-0362-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Seeds of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
I stumbled along, explaining that I had a new theory I would like to work on. I said that her father, in spite of his lack of success, had done a lot of groundwork which should not be wasted, and which I was sure he would not want wasted….
Jean listened as though she were extremely interested in the pattern of the rug before the fire. After a while, however, she looked up and met my eyes. I lost the thread of what I had been saying, and floundered about after it. I grasped wildly at a few phrases and laboured on with a curious feeling that I was talking a language I did not know. After a long time I reached the end, not knowing whether I had been coherent at all.
She went on looking at me for a moment, but not quite so distantly as before, then she said:
‘Yes, I think so, Peter. I know you fell out with him, like all the others, but the apparatus will have to be used “toy someone sooner or later, or dismantled-and I think he’d sooner it was you than any of the rest. You’d probably like me to give a written consent?’
‘It might be as well,’ I agreed. ‘Some of the stuff there cost a lot of money.’
She nodded, and crossed to a small bureau. Presently she came back holding a piece of paper.
‘Jean ‘ I began.
She stood, holding the paper out towards me.
‘What, Peter…?’
‘Jean ‘ I began once more. But then the wretched impossibility of the whole situation came home to me again.
She was watching me. I pulled myself together.
‘It’s-it’s just that I can’t get at his notes. They’re locked up,’ I said, in a rush.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, yes,’ as if she were somewhere a long way off. Then, in a different voice, she added:
‘Would you know the key if you saw it? There’s a box of his keys upstairs.’
I was pretty sure I should. I’d seen it often enough when I had been working with old Whetstone.
We went upstairs. One of the rooms was unfurnished, a lumber-room, with a lot of old junk and half-a-dozen trunks in it. The box of keys were in the second trunk she tried. There were two of them that might fit, so I pocketed both, and we went downstairs again.
We were half-way down the stairs when the front door opened, and her husband came in….
Well, there it is Twenty or thirty people, including the Director, saw us crossing the Institute grounds arm in arm. My wife, discovered me entertaining my ex-fiancee in my own house, during her absence. Mrs Terry intruded upon us in the upstairs room of the Jubilee Cafe. Other people saw us in other places-and nearly everybody, it turns out, has had longstanding suspicions. Finally, her husband surprised his wife descending from the bedroom storey of his house with her ex-fiance….
So…
And the nature of any evidence that I could produce to the contrary would, I think, sound somewhat unconvincing in court.
Besides, and rather importantly, we have both decided that nothing could be further from our wishes than to defend …
Pillar to Post
Forcett Mental Clinic,
Delano, Conn.
28th Feb.
To
Messrs. Thompson, Handett & Thompson,
A ttorneys-at-Law,
512 Gable Street,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Gentlemen,
In response to your request we have conducted a thorough examination of our patient, Stephen Dallboy, and have taken steps which establish his identity beyond legal question. Attested documents in support of this are enclosed, and dispose entirely of his claim to the Terence Molton property.
At the same time we admit ourselves surprised. The condition of the patient has altered quite radically since our last examination when he was indubitably feebleminded.
Indeed, but for this obsession that he is Terence Molton, which he maintains with complete consistency, we should now classify him as normal. In view of the obsession and the remarkable assertions with which he supports it we feel that he should remain here under observation for a time which may give us the opportunity of dispelling the whole fantasy system-and at the same time of clearing up several points which we find puzzling.
In order that you may more clearly understand the situation we are enclosing a copy of a statement written by the patient which we beg you to study before reading our concluding remarks.
STATEMENT-by Terence Molton
I know this is difficult to believe. In fact, when the thing first happened I didn’t believe it myself. I reckoned it was just a stage, maybe, in the deteriorating process. I’ve had dope enough long enough to play hell with my nervous system-yet the funny thing was how real it seemed right away. Still, I thought, that’s likely the way of it; I reckon everything would seem real to De Quincey when he was under, and to Coleridge, too.
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw …
Vision is a poor word-all quality and no quantity. How strong was that vision? Could he put out his hand and touch that damsel? He heard her sing, but did she speak to him? And did he find himself a new man, free from pain? I guess even honeydew and the milk of Paradise are relative. There’ll be fellows who are yearning for a kind of celestial Hollywood, but, for me, just having no pain and being complete was paradise right then.
It was just over four years since that cannon shell had got me-four years, nine operations, and more to come, for, with all their carving, they’d not stopped the trouble yet. And what good was that to me? Interesting for the doctors, no doubt, but it had brought me to being just a hulk in a chair, with the only one half of one leg under the rug. And they said: ‘Go easy on the dope!’ I should laugh. If they’d given me anything else to keep the pain away, maybe I would. But if they’d stopped letting me have the dope then I’d have killed myself. They knew that.
I don’t blame Sally for calling it off. Some of them thought I felt sore about that, but I didn’t-not after the first. The sample I’d offered her was a healthy young man-what was delivered from hospital was pretty different from the sample. Poor Sally. It nearly broke her up. I reckon she’d have tried it out of mistaken loyalty if I’d pressed her. But I was thanking God I hadn’t-at least I hadn’t that on my conscience.
They tell me her husband’s a good guy, and the baby’s cute. That’s the way it should be.
All the same, when every woman you see is kind to you -in much the same way as she would be to a sick dog….
Oh, well, there was always the dope.
And then, when I wasn’t expecting anything at all except rotting slowly, there was this … this … vision.
I’d had a bad day. My right leg was hurting a lot, and my left foot. But as most of the right leg was taken off and thrown to the sharks four years ago, and the left foot had to go, too, a little later, there wasn’t a lot to be done about it.
I’d been keeping the dope down because I still sometimes got an idea that I’d be acquiring virtue by holding off when I wanted it-I wasn’t, of course; I was acquiring nothing but bad temper, and radiating it, too, but you get brought up with these ideas, and they keep on cropping up again. Ten o’clock was to be my limit, I’d decided, and I kept to it. For the last quarter hour I watched the big hand snailing, then I watched the second-hand crawling, then I reached for the bottle.
Maybe I took a little more than usual, but the moment I had taken it I was telling myself what a damn fool I had been to wait. I’d gained nothing. It was just a variation of those limit-setting games kids invent for themselves. For all the difference it made to anyone else I might as well be doped up to the eyes all the time. Wonderful, it was. Blissful. I lay back, feeling as if I’d never rested like that before. The pain faded out, and all feeling with it. I seemed to float smoothly and gently up and away. I was disembodied, boundless, and filled with a surging lightness. The day must have made me pretty tired, I guess, because I could feel myself falling asleep before I’d properly got round to enjoying it.