"Dick - We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

the two men alone, still facing each other across the surface
of the massive walnut desk.
"Let me give you a word of advice," McClane said as he
signed the check and passed it over, "Don't discuss your,
ahem, recent trip to Mars with anyone."
"What trip?"
"Well, that's the thing." Doggedly, McClane said, "The trip
you partially remember. Act as if you don't remember;
pretend it never took place. Don't ask me why; just take my
advice: it'll be better for all of us." He had begun to perspire.
Freely. "Now, Mr. Quail, I have other business, other clients
to see." He rose, showed Quail to the door.
Quail said, as he opened the door, "A firm that turns out
such bad work shouldn't have any clients at all." He shut the
door behind him.
On the way home in the cab Quail pondered the wording of
his letter of complaint to the Better Business Bureau, Terra
Division. As soon as he could get to his typewriter he'd get
started; it was clearly his duty to warn other people away
from Rekal, Incorporated.
When he got back to his conapt he seated himself before
his Hermes Rocket portable, opened the drawers and rum-
maged for carbon paperand noticed a small, familiar box.
A box which he had carefully filled on Mars with Martian
fauna and later smuggled through customs.
Opening the box he saw, to his disbelief, six dead maw-
worms and several varieties of the unicellular life on which
the Martian worms fed. The protozoa were dried-up, dusty,
but he recognized them; it had taken him an entire day
picking among the vast dark alien boulders to find them. A
wonderful, illuminated journey of discovery.
But I didn't go to Mars, he realized.
Yet on the other hand
Kirsten appeared at the doorway to the room, an armload
of pale brown groceries gripped. "Why are you home in the
middle of the day?" Her voice, in an eternity of sameness,
was accusing.
"Did I go to Mars?" he asked her. "You would" know."
"No, of course you didn't go to Mars; you would know
that, I would think. Aren't you always bieating about going?"
He said, "By God, I think I went." After a pause he added,
"And simultaneously I think I didn't go."
"Make up your mind."
"How can I?" He gestured. "I have both memory-tracks
grafted inside my head; one is real and one isn't but I can't
tell which is which. Why can't I rely on you? They haven't
tinkered with you." She could do this much for him at least
even if she never did anything else.
Kirsten said in a level, controlled voice, "Doug, if you don't
pull yourself together, we're through. I'm going to leave you."