"Christopher Evans - Fidelity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Christopher)

"It's disgusting."
"Not at all. We're not proposing to make a robot out of her, you know. We
have a detailed biography and a complete psychoprofile culled from the
unconscious memory. The diagnostic computers have already identified the
recurrent areas of distress and have recommended the appropriate
chemotherapy. The drugs are quite specific in their mode of action. All we
intend to do is to eliminate the affective disorders of her personality,
not alter her entire psychic structure. Claire's ill. We're going to make
her well again."
"I have to see her."
"You can. After the operation."

He took a long walk through the tidy streets, where people sat contentedly
at outdoor cafйs and bars. Some even smiled at him as he went by. All was
harmony in the world since the advent of psychosurgery; people hurried
into operating theatres in times of stress as readily as they had once
turned to pills or drink or violence. Crime was almost extinct, and there
had not even been a minor war for the past two decades--among the
developed nations, at least. But they were paying a big price. The birth
rate was falling, and everyone was becoming complacent and mentally
stagnant. He and Claire were perhaps the only serious artists still
working in the country. The others produced pap for mass consumption, and
declared that suffering and soul-searching were obsolete in life and
therefore in art.
Neal had always rejected this utterly. He and Claire had fought a
rearguard action against it all their working lives and had gained their
notoriety as a result. But although they were both minor celebrities,
their work did not sell well and Malcolm's patronage had been invaluable.
Malcolm looked like a wrestler but had the soul of an aesthete. It was
fortunate that there were still people like him who, while not artists
themselves, nevertheless appreciated the value of the true creative
spirit.
He walked on, inert to all gestures of fellowship. He hated the bland
smiles and the engineered friendliness of these hollow people. They were
spiritually dead, and wanted everyone else to be like them. Legislation
was currently being framed to permit "correctional psychosurgery" for
children and adolescents with their parents' consent. The next generation
would come out of a mould like jigsaw pieces and would slot together to
make one vast blank whole.
He and Claire were planning to write a book together denouncing this
headlong rush to conformity. They had marshalled an impressive list of
facts to support their case. Inspiration was dying not only in the arts
but also in the sciences, where the output of original research papers had
plummeted in recent years. Claire had also discovered that--
The book might never be written. He could not believe that she would have
the operation. It would be a betrayal of everything they had stood for.
He entered St Paul's. The cathedral was silent, empty, and he took a seat
under the dome. Everything seemed polished to a glittering sheen, and the
sky-blue glass in the arched window stood out in resplendent glory, fired
by the sun. An ecclesiastical museum; the religious instinct, once the