"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 7 - Red Orc' s Rage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

Porsena said, smiling, "It was only a glimmering of an idea,
a zygote of thought, a brief candlelight that might have been
blown out by the hurly-burly winds of the mundane world
or by common sense and logic rejecting divine inspiration.
But I clung to it, nourished it, cherished it, and at last
brought it to full bloom."

This guy is really something, Jim thought. No wonder
they call him The Shaman.

However, Jim had been misled and deceived by adults so
many times that he did not entirely trust the psychiatrist.
Wait. See if his words matched his deeds.

On the other hand, Porsena was this side of thirty. Old
but not real old. Young-old.

It was a good thing that he was in biology class, Jim
thought. Otherwise, he would not have known what the
doctor was talking about when he had spoken of "zygote of
thought." A zygote was any cell formed by the union of two
gametes. And a gamete was a reproductive cell that could
unite with another similar one to form the cell that develops
into a new individual.

He had started out as a zygote. So had Porsena. So had
most living creatures.

As he listened to the doctor explain the therapy, Jim
understood that, in a psychotherapeutic sense, he was a
gamete. And the object of the therapy was to become a zygote.
That is, a new individual composed of the old personality and
another one which was, at this moment, imaginary.

9

RED ORC'S RAGE

CHAPTER 3

"T

I HE TIERSIAN THERAPY patients form a small and elite

volunteer group," Doctor Porsena said. "Usually, they start
out with volume one, The Maker of Universes, and read
the rest in proper sequence. They choose a character in the
books and try to BE that character. They adopt all the
mental and emotional characteristics of the role model
whether they're good or bad. As therapy progresses, they