"Harlan Ellison - Pa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

amusement, roast cockroaches and listen to them scream?”
“Don’t blame me, Mr. Pareti,” the doctor said evenly. “You chose your line of work, not I. You were advised
of the risks--”
“They said hardly anybody caught the goo disease, it was all in the small type on the contract,” Pareti burst
in.
“--but you were advised of the risks,” Ball pressed on, “and you received hazard-bonus accordingly. You never
complained during the three years that money was being poured into your account, you shouldn’t bellyache now. It’s
rather unseemly. After all, you make approximately eight times my salary. That should buy you a lot of balm.”
“Yeah, I made the bonuses,” Pareti snarled, “and now I’m really earning it! The Company--”
‘The Company,” Ball said, with great care, “is absolutely free of responsibility. You should indeed have read
all that tiny type. But you’re correct: you are earning the bonuses now. In effect you were paid to expose yourself to a
rare disease. You were gambling with the Company’s money that you wouldn’t contract Ashton’s. You gambled, and
unfortunately, seem to have lost.”
“Not that I’m getting any,” Pareti said archly, “but I’m not asking for your sympathy. I’m only asking for your
professional advice, which you are paid--overpaid, in my estimation--to give. I want to know what I should do... and
what I ought to expect.”
Ball shrugged. “Expect the unexpected, of course. You’re only the sixth, you know. There’s been no clear-cut
pattern established. The disease is as unstable as its progenitor...the goo. The only pattern--and I would hesitate even
to suggest that it was a pattern--”
“Stop waltzing with me, damn it! Spit it out!” Ball pursed his lips. He might have pressed Pareti as far as he
cared to press him. “The pattern, then, would appear to be this: a radical change of relationship occurs between the
victim and the external world. These can be animate transformations, like the growth of external organs and
functional gills; or inanimate transformations, like the victim who levitated.”
“What about the fourth case, the one who’s still alive and normal?”
“He isn’t exactly normal,” the doctor said, frowning. “His relationship with his mushrooms is a kind of
perverted love; reciprocated, I might add. Some researchers suspect that he has himself become a kind of intelligent
mushroom.”
Pareti bit his thumbnail. There was a wildness in his eyes. “Isn’t there any cure, anything?”
Ball seemed to be looking at Pareti with thinly veiled disgust. “Whimpering won’t do you any good. Perhaps
nothing will. I understand Case Five tried to hold off the effects as long as he could, with will power, or
concentration...something ludicrous like that.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while, perhaps. No one could be sure. In any case, it was strictly conjecture after a point; the Disease
finally took him over.”
“But it’s possible?”
Ball snorted. “Yes, Mr. Pareti, it’s possible.” He shook his head as if he could not believe the way Pareti was
taking this. “Remember, none of the cases was like any other. I don’t know what joys you can look forward to, but
whatever they are...they’re bound to be unusual.”
Pareti stood up. “I’ll fight it off. It isn’t going to take me over like the others.”
Ball’s expression was of disgust. “I doubt it, Pareti. I never met any of the others, but from what I’ve read of
them, they were far stronger men than you seem to be.”
“Why? Just because this has me shaken?”
“No, because you’re a sniveler.”
“You’re the most compassionless mother I’ve ever met!”
“I cannot pretend grief that you’ve contracted Ashton’s. You gambled, and you lost. Stop whimpering.”
 “You said that before, Dr. Ball.”
“I say it again now!”
“Is that all from you?”
“That’s all from me, to be sure,” Dr. Ball said, snidely. “But it’s not all for you, I’m equally sure.”
“But you’re sure that’s all you have to tell me?”