"Repent Harliquin! said Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Now he had form and substance.
He had become a personality, something they had filtered
out of the system many decades ago. But there it was, and there
he was, a very definitely imposing personality. In certain
circlesmiddle-class circlesit was thought disgusting. Vulgar
ostentation. Anarchistic. Shameful. In others, there was only
sniggering, 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 topwhere, like socially-attuned Shipwreck
Kellys, even tremor and vibration threatens to dislodge the
wealthy, powerful, and titled from their flagpoleshe 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 Ticktock-
man.
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. This 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! air-
boat, indeed! swizzleskid is what it was, with a tow-rack jerry-
rigged) and stared down at the neat Mondrian arrangement of