"Harlan Ellison - Paingod & Other Delusions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

That is the heart of it. Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.
But because it was the very world it was, the very world they had allowed it to become, for months his
activities did not come to the alarmed attention of The Ones Who Kept The Machine Functioning Smoothly, the ones
who poured the very best butter over the cams and mainsprings of the culture. Not until it had become obvious that
somehow, someway, he had become a notoriety, a celebrity, perhaps even a hero for (what Officialdom inescapably
tagged) “an emotionally disturbed segment of the populace,” did they turn it over to the Ticktockman and his legal
machinery. But by then, because it was the very world it was, and they had no way to predict he would
happen-possibly a strain of disease long-defunct, now, suddenly, reborn in a system where immunity had been
forgotten, had lapsed-he had been allowed to become too real. Now he had form and substance.
He had become a personality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades before. But there
it was, and there he was, a very definitely imposing personality. In certain circles-middle-class circles-it was thought
disgusting. Vulgar ostentation. Anarchistic. Shameful. In others, there was only snickering, those strata where thought
is subjugated to form and ritual, niceties, proprieties. But down below, ah, down below, where the people always
needed their saints and sinners, their bread and circuses, their heroes and villains, he was considered a Bolivar; a
Napoleon; a Robin Hood; a Dick Bong (Ace of Aces) ; a Jesus; a Jomo Kenyatta.
And at the top-where, like socially attuned Shipwreck Kellys, every tremor and vibration threatening to
dislodge the wealthy, powerful and titled from their flagpoles-he was considered a menace; a heretic; a rebel; a
disgrace; a peril. He was known down the line, to the very heartmeat core, but the important reactions were high above
and far below. At the very top, at the very bottom.
So his file was turned over, along with his time card and his cardioplate, to the office of the Ticktockman.
The Ticktockman: very much over six feet tall, often silent, a soft purring man when things went timewise. The
Ticktockman.
Even in the cubicles of the hierarchy, where fear was generated, seldom suffered, he was called the
Ticktockman. But no one called him that to his mask.
You don’t call a man a hated name, not when that man, behind his mask, is capable of revoking the minutes,
the hours, the days and nights, the years of your life. He was called the Master Timekeeper to his mask. It was safer
that way.
 “This is what he is,” said the Ticktockman with genuine softness, “but not who he is. This time-card I’m
holding in my left hand has a name on it, but it is the name of what he is, not who he is. The cardioplate here in my
right hand is also named, but not whom named, merely what named. Before I can exercise proper revocation, I have to
know who this what is.”
To his staff, all the ferrets, all the loggers, all the finks, all the commex, even the mineez, he said, “Who is this
Harlequin?”
He was not purring smoothly. Timewise, it was jangle.
However, it was the longest single speech they had ever heard him utter at one time, the staff, the ferrets, the
loggers, the finks, the commex, but not the mineez, who usually weren’t around to know, in any case. But even they
scurried to find out
Who is the Harlequin?

High above the third level of the city, he crouched on the humming aluminum-frame platform of the air-boat
(foof! airboat, indeed, swizzleskid is what it was, with a tow-rack jerry-rigged) and stared down at the neat Mondrian
arrangement of the buildings.
Somewhere nearby, he could hear the metronomic left-right-left of the 2:47 P.M. shift, entering the Timkin
rollerbearing plant, in their sneakers. A minute later, precisely, he heard the softer right-left-right of the 5:00 A.M.
formation, going home.
An elfin grin spread across his tanned features, and his dimples appeared for a moment. Then, scratching at
his thatch of auburn hair, he shrugged within his motley, as though girding himself for what came next, and threw the
joystick forward, and bent into the wind as the air-boat dropped. He skimmed over a slidewalk, purposely dropping a