"Wyman Guin - Beyond Bedlam" - читать интересную книгу автора (Guin Wyman)

BEYOND BEDLAM
THE OPENING afternoon class for Mary Walden's ego-shift was almost over, and Mary was
practically certain the teacher would not call on her to recite her assignment, when Carl Blair got it into
his mind to try to pass her a dirty note.
Mary knew it would be a screamingly funny Ego-Shifting Room limerick and was about to reach for
the note when Mrs. Harris's voice crackled through the room.
"Carl Blair! I believe you have an important message. Surely you will want the whole class to hear it.
Come forward, please."
As he made his way before the class, the boy's blush-covered freckles reappeared against his
growing pallor. Haltingly and in an agonized monotone, he recited from the note:

"There was a young hyper named Phil,
Who kept a third head for a thrill.
Said he. It's all right,
I enjoy my plight.
I shift my third out when it's chill."'

The class didn't dare laugh. Their eyes burned down at their laps in shame. Mary managed to throw
Carl Blair a compassionate glance as he returned to his seat, but she instantly regretted ever having been
kind to him.
"Mary Walden, you seemed uncommonly interested in reading something just now. Perhaps you
wouldn't mind reading your assignment to the class"
There it was, and just when the class was almost over.
Mary could have scratched Carl Blair. She clutched her paper grimly and strode to the front.
"Today's assignment in Pharmacy History is, 'Schizophrenia since the Ancient Pre-pharmacy days.' "
Mary took enough breath to get into the first paragraph.
"Schizophrenia is where two or more personalities live in the same brain. The ancients of the 20th
Century actually looked upon schizophrenia as a disease! Everyone felt it was very shameful to have a
schizophrenic person in the family, and, since children lived right with the same parents who had borne
them, it was very bad. If you were a schizophrenic child in the 20th Century, you would be locked up
behind bars and people would call you—"
Mary blushed and stumbled over the daring word "—crazy".
"The ancients locked up strong ego groups right along with weak ones. Today we would lock up
those ancient people."
The class agreed silently.
"But there were more and more schizophrenics to lock up. By 1950 the prisons and hospitals were
so full of schizophrenic people that the ancients did not have room left to lock up any more. They were
beginning to see that soon everyone would be schizophrenic.
"Of course, in the 20th Century, the schizophrenic people were almost as helpless and 'crazy' as the
ancient Modern men. Naturally they did not fight wars and lead the silly life of the Moderns, but without
proper drugs they couldn't control their Ego-shiftability. The personalities in a brain would always be
fighting each other. One personality would cut the body or hurt it or make it filthy, so that when the other
personality took over the body, it would have to suffer. No, the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century
were almost as 'crazy' as the ancient Moderns.
"But then the drugs were invented one by one and the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were
freed of their troubles. With the drugs the personalities of each body were able to live side by side in
harmony at last. It turned out that many schizophrenic people, called overendowed personalities, simply
had so many talents and viewpoints that it took two or more personalities to handle everything.
 "The drugs worked so well that the ancients had to let millions of schizophrenic people out from
behind the bars of 'crazy' houses. That was the Great Emancipation of the 1990s. From then on,