"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

nickname. Many people might admire Granger as much as others despised, him.
And it was hard to say what he might do, or when. Or how, for that matter. He
was clever. And wrong.
There was still another thing to remember. Ed did not altogether love
the memory of his uncle, Dr. Mitchell Prell. For this famous scientist was
marked with the stigma of responsibility for a terrific mishap. No, Prell did
not bear the burden alone. There were other scientists, it was said, who had
poked too roughly, and with too sharp a stick, into Nature's deepest lair.
Nature had snarled back. Ed had grown up with the public hate that had
resulted. He had fought against it, yet he had felt it, until sometimes he did
not know where he himself stood.
Now he waited for more writing to be traced on the paper under the
microscope. A minute passed, but there was nothing more. He did notice,
however, that the letters of that one word matched roughly the austere
handwriting of his uncle.
Once he glanced toward the window with some nervousness. Outside, the
night was glorious. Never again would nights be hideous as they once had been.
He saw lush gardens under silver light. If any devilish thing not known until
recent months slithered through the shadows, it kept hidden. Ed saw other
neighboring houses. New trees had grown to fair size in ten years, Older and
larger trees remained lopsided and gnarled. But their burn scars had healed.
Otherwise there was nothing left to monument the past -- except,
perhaps, the sullen mutter of voices in nearby streets.
But Ed Dukas's mind, triggered by the name Nipper and by awareness of
Mitchell Prell, slipped briefly away from the present. He had often explored
memory to find understanding. At school, after the catastrophe, psychiatrists
had made every kid do that. So that neuroses might be broken or lessened or
avoided. So that animal terror would not draw a curtain over a mental record
of an interlude. So that memory might not be lodged, like a red coal of
hysteria, in the subconscious.
****
Like a trained dog leaping through a flaming hoop, Ed Dukas' thoughts
plunged back to that zone where his earliest memories faded into the mists of
infancy:
A birthday cake with two candles. A fountain splashing in the patio of
this same house. A dachshund, Schnitz, which a little boy put in almost the
same category as the flat, rubber-tired robots that cleaned the rooms. Where
was the distinction between machines and animals?
Flowers, hummingbirds, and butterflies in the garden. The echoes of
footsteps on stone floors. Toy space ships and star ships at Christmas. The




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star ships were things yet to become real ... There was endless interest in
life then. But even in those days there were signs of cautious and puzzled
guidance.
There was the sensipsych, of course. It was a wonderful box of dark
wood in the living room. A soft couch folded down from it. There you lay, and