"Dick,_Philip_K._The Man Who Japed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"A supplicant, then. But why you? Not a man going to the top, a man who spent this afternoon with Sue Frost and Ida Pease Hoyt. It wouldn't make sense."
"No," he admitted. "It doesn't." Truthfully he added: "Even to me."
Janet walked over to the table. "I wondered about that. You're not sure why you did it, are you?"
"I haven't an idea in the world."
"What was in your mind?"
"A very clear desire," he said. "A fixed, overwhelming, and
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totally clear desire to get that statue once and for all. It took half a gallon of red paint, and some skillful use of a power-driven saw. The saw's back in the Agency shop, minus a blade. I busted the blade. I haven't sawed in years."
"Do you remember precisely what you did?"
"No," he answered.
"It isn't in the paper. They're vague about it. So whatever it was-" She smiled listlessly down at him. "You did a good job."

Later, when the baked "Alaskan salmon" was nothing but a few bones on an empty dinner platter, Allen leaned back and lit a cigarette. At the stove Janet carefully washed pots and pans in the sink attachment. The apartment was peaceful.
"You'd think," Allen said, "this was like any other evening."
"We might as well go on with what we were doing," Janet said.
On the table by the couch was a pile of metal wheels and gears. Janet had been assembling an electric clock. Diagrams and instructions from an Edufacture kit were heaped with the parts. Instructional pastimes: Edufacture for the individual, Juggle for social gatherings. To keep idle hands occupied.
"How's the clock coming?" he asked.
"Almost done. After that comes a shaving wand for you. Mrs. Duffy across the hall made one for her husband. I watched her. It isn't hard."
Pointing to the stove Allen said: "My family built that. Back in 2096, when I was eleven. I remember how silly it seemed; stoves were on sale, built by autofac at a third of the cost. Then my father and brother explained the Morec. I never forgot it."
Janet said: "I enjoy building things; it's fun."
He went on smoking his cigarette, thinking how bizarre it was that he could be here when, less than twenty-four
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hours ago, he had japed the statue. "I japed it," he said aloud. "You-"
"A term we use in packet assembly. When a theme is harped on too much you get parody. When we make fun of a stale theme we say we've japed it."
"Yes," she agreed. "I know. I've heard you parody some of Blake-Moffet's stuff."
"The part that bothers me," Allen said, "is this. On Sunday night I japed the statue of Major Streiter. And on Monday morning Mrs. Sue Frost came to the Agency. By six o'clock I was listening to Ida Pease Hoyt offer me the directorship of Telemedia."
"How could there be a relationship?" "It would have to be complex." He finished his cigarette. "So roundabout that everybody and everything in the universe would have to be brought in. But I feel it's there. Some deep, underlying causal connection, not chance. Not coincidence."
"Tell me how you-japed it."
"Can't. Don't remember." He got to his feet. "Don't you wait up. I'm going downtown and look at it; they probably haven't had time to start repairs."
Janet said instantly: "Please don't go out." "Very necessary," he said, looking around for his coat. The closet had absorbed it, and he pulled the closet back into the room. "There's a dim picture in my mind, nothing firm. All things considered, I really should have it clear. Maybe then I can decide about T-M."
Without a word Janet passed by him and out into the hall. She was on her way to the bathroom, and he knew why. With her went a collection of bottles: she was going to swallow enough sedatives to last her the balance of the night. "Take it easy," he warned.
There was no answer from the closed bathroom door. Allen hung around a moment, and then left.
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5

THE PARK was in shadows, and icy-dark. Here and there small groups of people had collected like pools of nocturnal rain water. Nobody spoke. They seemed to be waiting, hoping in some vague way for something to happen.
The statue had been erected immediately before the spire, on its own platform, in the center of a gravel ring. Benches surrounded the statue so that persons could feed the pigeons and doze and talk while contemplating its grandeur. The rest of the Park was sloping fields of wet grass, a few opaque humps of shrubs and trees, and, at one end, a gardener's shed.
Allen reached the center of the Park and halted. At first he was confused; nothing familiar was visible. Then he realized what had happened. The police had boarded the statue up. Here was a square wooden frame, a gigantic box. So he wasn't going to see it after all. He wasn't going to find out what he had done.
Presently, as he stood dully staring, he became aware that somebody was beside him. A seedy, spindly-armed citizen in a long, soiled overcoat, was also staring at the box.
For a time neither man spoke. Finally the citizen hawked and spat into the grass. "Sure can't see worth a d--n [sic]."
Allen nodded.
"They put that up on purpose," the thin citizen said. "So you can't see. You know why?"
"Why," Allen said.
The thin citizen leaned at him. "Anarchists got to it.
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Multilated [sic] it terribly. The police caught some of them; some they didn't catch. The ringleader, they didn't catch him. But they will. And you know what they'll find?"
"What," Allen said.
"They'll find he's paid by the Resort. And this is just the first."
"Of what?"