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

special affectations. They seem to me more real than the faeless gray hordes of sidewalk sliders who go from there to
here without so much as a hop, skip or a jump.
One morning in New York last year, I was having a drug store breakfast with Nancy Weber, who wrote THE
LIFE SWAP. We were sitting up at the counter, on revolving stools, chewing down greasy eggs and salty bacon,
talking about how many dryads can live in a banyan tree, when the front door of the drug store (the now-razed,
much-lamented, lovely Henry Halper’s on the corner of 56 th and Madison, torn down to build, I suppose, an
esthetically-enchanting parking structure or candidate for a towering inferno) opened, and in stormed a little old
man in an overcoat much to heavy for the weather. He boiled in like a monsoon, stood in the middle of the room and
began to pillory Nixon and his resident offensive line of thugs for double-teaming Democracy. He was brilliant.
Never repeated himself once. And this was long before the crash of Nixon off his pedestal. Top of his lungs.
Flamboyant rhetoric. Utter honesty, no mickeymouse, corruption and evil aflower in the land of the free! On and on
he went, as everyone stared dumbfounded. And then, without even a bow to the box seats, out he went, a breath of
fresh air in a muggy world. I sat there with a grin on my face only a tape measure could have recorded. I applauded.
Superduper! Nancy dug it, I dug it, and a bespectacled gentleman three down from us-burnt toast ignored-dug it.
The rest of the people vacillated between outrage and confusion, finally settling on attitudes best described by a
circling finger toward the right ear. They thought he was bananas. Well, maybe, but what a swell madness!
Or take my bed, for instance.
When you come into my bedroom, you see the bed up on a square box platform covered with deep pile
carpeting. It’s in bright colors, because I like bright colors. Now, there’s a very good, solid, rational reason why the
bed is up there like that. Some day I’ll tell you why; it’s a personal reason; in the nature of killing evil shadows. But
that isn’t important, right here. What is important is the attitude of people who see that bed for the first time. Some
snicker and call it an altar. Others frown in disapproval and call it a pedestal, or a Playboy bed. It’s none of those.
It’s very functional, and serves an emotional purpose that is none of their business, but lord how quick they are to
label it the way they see it, and lay their value-judgment on it, and me. Most of the time I don’t bother explaining. It
isn’t worth it.
But it happens all the time, and every time it happens I think about this story. Madness is in the eye of the
beholder. What seems cuckoo to you may be rigorously logical to someone else. Remember that as you read.

The Crackpots
HE WAS STANDING ON A STREET CORNER, wearing a long orange nightgown and a red slumber-cap with a tassel.
He was studiously picking his nose.
“Watch him!” cried Furth. “Watch what he does! Get the technique accurately!”
For this I studied four years to become an expert? thought Themus.
Furth looked at the younger man for the first time in several minutes. “ Are you watching him?” The elder
Watcher nudged his companion, causing Themus’ dictobox to bump unceremoniously against his chest.
“Yes, yes, I’m watching,” answered Themus, “but what possible reason could there be to watch a lunatic
picking his nose on a public street comer?” Annoyance rang in his voice.
Furth swung on him, his eyes cold-steel. “You watch them, that’s your job. And don’t ever forget that! And
dictate it into that box strapped to your stupid shoulders. If I ever catch you failing to notice and dictate what they’re
doing, I’ll have you shipped back to Central and then into the Mines. You understand what I’m saying?”
Themus nodded dumbly, the attack having shocked and surprised him, so sudden and intensive was it.
He watched the Crackpot.
His stomach felt uneasy. His voice quavered as he described in minute detail, as he had been taught, the
procedure. It made his nose itch. He ignored it. Soon the Crackpot gave a little laugh, did a small dance step, and
skipped out of sight across the street and around the corner.
Themus spoke into the Communicator-Attachment on his box: “Watcher, sector seventy, here. Male, orange
nightgown, red slumber-cap, coming your way. Pick him up, sixty-nine. He’s all yours. Over.”
An acknowledging buzz came from the Attachment, Themus said, “Out here,” and turned the Attachment off.
Furth, who had been dictating the detailed tying of a can on the tail of a four-legged Kyben dog by a tall, bald
Crackpot, concluded his report as the dog ran off barking wildly, muttered, “Off, “ into the dicto-box and turned once