"Asimov Isaac - Gold, The Final Science Fiction Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

The smell diminished with time, however, as it saturated Sam’s nostrils. He found an exposed bit of rocky ledge he could sit on and considered the prospect. The sky was filled with lines of clouds, and the Sun was periodically obscured, but the temperature was pleasant and there was only a light wind. The air felt a bit damp, as though it might rain in a few hours.
Sam had brought a small hamper with him and he placed it in his lap and opened it. He had brought along two sandwiches and a canned drink so that he could make rather a picnic of it.
He chewed away and thought: Why should there be hallucinations?
Surely those accepted for a job as important as that of taming a neutron star would have been selected for mental stability. It would be surprising to have even one person hallucinating, let alone a number of them. Was it a matter of chemical influences on the brain?
They would surely have checked that out.
Sam plucked a leaf, tore it in two and squeezed. He then put the torn edge to his nose cautiously, and took it away again. A very acrid, unpleasant smell. He tried a blade of grass. Much the same.
Was the smell enough? It hadn’t made him feel dizzy or in any way peculiar.
He used a bit of his water to rinse off the fingers that had held the plants and then rubbed them on his trouser leg. He finished his sandwiches slowly, and tried to see if anything else might be considered unnatural about the planet.
All that greenery. There ought to be animals eating it, rabbits, cows, whatever. Not just insects, innumerable insects, or whatever those little things might be, with the gentle sighing of their tiny feathery wings and the very soft crackle of their munch, murich, munchings of leaves and stalks.
What if there were a cow--a big, fat cow--doing the munching? And with the last mouthful of his second sandwich between his teeth, his own munching stopped.
There was a kind of smoke in the air between himself and a line of hedges. It waved, billowed, and altered: a very thin smoke. He blinked his eyes, then shook his head, but it was still there.
He swallowed hastily, closed his lunch box, and slung it over his shoulder by its strap. He stood up.
He felt no fear. He was only excited--and curious.
The smoke was growing thicker, and taking on a shape. Vaguely, it looked like a cow, a smoky, insubstantial shape that he could see through. Was it a hallucination? A creation of his mind? He had just been thinking of a cow.
Hallucination or not, he was going to investigate.
With determination, he stepped toward the shape.

part two

Sam Chase stepped toward the cow outlined in smoke on the strange, far planet on which his education and career were to be advanced.
He was convinced there was nothing wrong with his mind. It was the „hallucination „ that Dr. Gentry had mentioned, but it was no hallucination. Even as he pushed his way through the tall rank grasslike greenery, he noted the silence, and knew not only that it was no hallucination, but what it really was.
The smoke seemed to condense and grow darker, outlining the cow more sharply. It was as though the cow were being painted in the air.
Sam laughed, and shouted, „Stop! Stop! Don’t use me. I don’t know a cow well enough. I’ve only seen pictures. You’re getting it all wrong.“
It looked more like a caricature than a real animal and, as he cried out, the outline wavered and thinned. The smoke remained but it was as though an unseen hand had passed across the air to erase what had been written.
Then a new shape began to take form. At first, Sam couldn’t quite make out what it was intended to represent, but it changed and sharpened quickly. He stared in surprise, his mouth hanging open and his hamper bumping emptily against his shoulder blade.
The smoke was forming a human being. There was no mistake about it. It was forming accurately, as though it had a model it could imitate, and of course it did have one, for Sam was standing there.
It was becoming Sam, clothes and all, even the outline of the hamper and the strap over his shoulder. It was another Sam Chase.
It was still a little vague, wavering a bit, insubstantial, but it firmed as though it were correcting itself, and then, finally, it was steady.
It never became entirely solid. Sam could see the vegetation dimly through it, and when a gust of wind caught it, it moved a bit as if it were a tethered balloon.
But it was real. It was no creation of his mind. Sam was sure of that.
But he couldn’t just stand there, simply facing it. Diffidently, he said, „Hello, there.“
Somehow, he expected the Other Sam to speak, too, and, indeed, its mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. It might just have been imitating the motion of Sam’s mouth.
Sam said, again, „Hello, can you speak?“
There was no sound but his own voice, and yet there was a tickling in his mind, a conviction that they could communicate.
Sam frowned. What made him so sure of that? The thought seemed to pop into his mind.
He said, „Is this what has appeared to other people, human people--my kind--on this world?“
No answering sound, but he was quite sure what the answer to his question was. This had appeared to other people, not necessarily in their own shape, but something. And it hadn’t worked.
What made him so sure of that? Where did these convictions come from in answer to his questions?
Yes, of course, they were the answers to his questions. The Other Sam was putting thoughts into his mind. It was adjusting the tiny electric currents in his brain cells so that the proper thoughts would arise.
He nodded thoughtfully at that thought, and the Other Sam must have caught the significance of the gesture, for it nodded, too.
It had to be so. First a cow had formed, when Sam had thought of a cow, and then it had shifted when Sam had said the cow was imperfect. The Other Sam could grasp his thoughts somehow, and if it could grasp them, then it could modify them, too, perhaps.
Was this what telepathy was like, then? It was not like talking. It was having thoughts, except that the thoughts originated elsewhere and were not created entirely of one's own mental operations. But how could you tell your own thoughts from thoughts imposed from outside?
Sam knew the answer to that at once. Right now, he was unused to the process. He had never had practice. With time, as he grew more skilled at it, he would be able to tell one kind of thought from another without trouble.
In fact, he could do it now, if he thought about it. Wasn't he carrying on a conversation in a way? He was wondering, and then knowing. The wondering was his own question, the knowing was the Other Sam's answer. Of course it was.
There! The „of course it was,“ just now, was an answer.
„Not so fast, Other Sam,“ said Sam, aloud. „Don't go too quickly. Give me a chance to sort things out, or I'll just get confused.“
He sat down suddenly on the grass, which bent away from him in all directions.
The Other Sam slowly tried to sit down as well.
Sam laughed. „Your legs are bending in the wrong place.“
That was corrected at once. The Other Sam sat down, but remained very stiff from the waist up.