"Joe Haldeman - A Mind Of His Own" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

A MIND OF HIS OWN
by Joe Haldeman




“What we need is a technology of behavior… were it not for the
unwarranted generalization that all control is wrong, we should deal with
the social environment as simply as we deal with the nonsocial.”

—B.F. Skinner




Leonard Shays came back home to Tampa from the Lebanese conflict with a chestful of medals—which
was no distinction—a slightly fractured mind, a medical discharge and two fairly efficient prosthetics,
replacing his left foot and the right leg from the knee down.

The single-shot laser booby trap he had triggered on patrol in the slums of Beirut had been set to scan at
chest level, to kill. But Leonard, canny with experience, had tossed in a microton grenade before entering
the hovel, and the explosion jarred the mounting of the booby trap so that it scanned in a downward slant
across the doorway. It was practically no pain at first, much pain later, and now just a feeling that his
nonexistent toes were curled down in spastic paralysis. It made it hard to walk but the VA was giving him
therapy. And he couldn’t get a job, not even with his PhD in mathematics, but the VA was also giving
him a small check on the first of every month.

“Morning, Dr. Shays.” His favorite therapist, Bennet, closed the bathroom door quietly. “Ready for the
workout?”

“Am I ever? Ready to get out of this damn thing, though.” Bennet picked up Leonard gracelessly and
pulled him out of the whirlpool bath. He set him on the Formica edge of a table and gave him a starchy
towel.

He studied the stumps professionally. “How’s the wife?”
“Don’t ask,” he said, scrubbing sweat from his hair. “We had a long talk Friday. Our contract comes up
for renewal in ‘98. She; decided not to renew.”

Bennet turned off the motor and pulled the plug on the bath. “It’s her right,” he said. “Bitch.”

“It’s not the legs. Absence thereof. She explained that carefully, at some length. It’s not the legs at all.”

“Look, if you don’t wanna…”

“It’s not that I can’t get a job, and we had to move to Ybor City and she has to carry a gun to go
shopping.”

Bennet grunted and straighten a stack of towels.

Leonard fumbled through his clothes and got a cigarette, lit it.