"Anderson, Poul - There Will Be Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Red: (1) Of American Indian descent; from the skin color,
which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Black, Brown, White, or Yellow, nor with "Mexican," even though most Mexicans are of American Indian stock. (2) Struggling for liberation or struggling in its aftermath.
Repression: Denial of the right of free speech, e.g., by refusal to provide a free rostrum for an activist, or the right of a free press, e.g., by refusing to print, televise, or stock in libraries every word of an activist, or the right to be heard, e.g., by mob action against an activist. Not to be confused with protection of the people from reactionary infection.
Republic: A country whose government is chosen not on a basis of heredity or riches but by the electorate, from whom political power grows. People's Republic: One in which the electorate consists of a gun barrel.

Self-determination: The right of a culturally or ethnically distinct group to govern themselves, as in Biafra, East Pakistan, Goa, Katanga, the Sinai, Tibet, the Ukraine, etc.
Storm trooper: A person who sacrifices and takes risks in a fascist cause. Cf. hero.

United Nations: An international organization which employs Swedish, Indian, Irish, Canadian, etc. troops in other parts of the world than these so as to further self-determination.

White: Of Caucasoid descent; from the skin color, which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Black, Brown, Red, or Yellow.
Winds of change: Poetic metaphor for the defeat of reactionary forces. Not applicable to any advance or restoration of these.
Women's Liberation: A movement which opposes male chauvinism.

Xenophobia: Distrust of the ability of strangers to run your life for you.

Yellow: Of Mongoloid descent; from the skin color, which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Black, Brown, Red, or White.
4
FOR A MOMENT, as I entered, my office was foreign to me. That rolltop desk, gooseneck reading lamp, worn leather-upholstered swivel chair and horsehair-stuffed seat for visitors, shelf of reference books, framed diploma, door ajar on the surgery to give a glimpse of cabinets wherein lay instruments and drugs that Koch would mostly have recognized-all was out of place, a tiny island in time which the ocean was swiftly eroding away; and I knew that inside of ten years I'd do best to retire.
The snowfall had thickened, making the windows a pale dusk. Jack had turned the lamp on so he could read a magazine. Beyond its puddle of light, shadows lay enormous. The steam radiator grumbled. It turned the air dry as well as warm.
He rose. "Sorry to give you this bother, Dr. Anderson," he said.
I waved him back into the armchair, settled myself down, reached for a fresh pipe off the rack. That much smoking was hard on the mouth, but my fingers needed something to do.
Jack nodded at the pamphlet I'd tossed on the desk. "How do you like it?" he asked tonelessly.
I peered through the upper half of my bifocals. This was not the boy who knew he would lose his father, nor the youth who tried and failed to hide his wretchedness when his mother took unto him a stepfather-only last year. A young man confronted me, whose eyes were old.
They were gray, those eyes, in a narrow straight-nosed face upon a long head. The dark-blond hair, the slim, middle-sized, slightly awkward body were Tom's; the mouth, its fullness and
mobility out of place in that ascetic countenance, was Eleanor's; the whole was entirely Jack Havig, whom I had never fathomed.
Always a careless dresser, he wore the plaid wool shirt and blue denims in which he had gone for that tramp across the hills. His attitude seemed alert rather than uneasy, and his gaze did not waver from mine.
"Well," I said, "it's original. But you must admit it's sort of confusing." I loaded the pipe.
"Yeah, I suppose. A souvenir. I probably shouldn't have brought anything back."
"From your, uh, trip away from home? Where were you, Jack?"
"Around."
I remembered a small stubborn person who gave the same reply, after an unknown had returned him to his father. It led me to recall much else.
My wooden match made a scrit and flare which seemed unnaturally strong. I got the tobacco burning, took a good taste and smell of it, before I had my speech put together.
"Listen, Jack. You're in trouble. Worse, your mother is." That jarred him. "I'm the friend of you both, I want to help, but damnation, you'll have to cooperate."
"Doc, I wish I could," he whispered.
I tapped the pamphlet. "Okay," I said, "tell me you're working on a science-fiction story or something, laid in 1970, and this is background material. Fine. I'd think you're needlessly obscure, but never mind; your business." Gesturing with the pipestem: "What is not your business is the fact it's mimeographed. Nobody mimeographs anything for strictly personal use. Organizations do. What organization is this?"
"None. A few friends." His neck stiffened. "Mighty few, among all those Gadarene swine happily squealing their slogans."
I stood. "How about a drink?"
Now he smiled. "Thanks. The exact prescription I want."
Pouring from a brandy bottle-sometimes it was needful for both a patient and myself, when I must pronounce sentence
-I wondered what had triggered my impulse. Kids don't
booze, except a little beer on the sly. Do they? It came to me afresh, here was no longer a kid.
He drank in the way of an experienced if not heavy drinker. How had he learned? He'd been gone barely a month.
I sat again and said: "I don't ask for secrets, Jack, though you know I hear a lot in my line of work, and keep them. I demand your help in constructing a story, and laying out a program of future behavior, which will get your mother off the hook."
He frowned. "You're right. The trouble is, I can't think what to tell you."
"The truth, maybe?"
"Doc, you don't want that. Believe me, you don't."
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty-' Why did Keats hand the world that particular piece of BS? He'd studied medicine; he knew better. Jack, I'll bet you ten dollars I can relate a dozen true stories which'll shock you worse than you could ever shock me."
"I won't bet," he said harshly. "It wouldn't be fair to you."
I waited.