"Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

been completed, and he had come out of the multiple state.
Then the shock of reintegrating his consciousness, and now ...

Zug.

The word had an unpleasant sound, somehow; it made a
shudder of distaste run up his spine. Probably the girl was dis-
turbed, that was all; he would put in a query to the college
psychiatric office.

But as he left the control room, taking the rear stair to his

office, the feeling of vague apprehension and unease lingered.
Perhaps it was the strain of multiple-class work; not everyone
could bear it. But he was proud of his ability to stand up under
the load; he had never felt like this after a class.

He finished his day's record-keeping and left quickly, anxious
to be out in the air. The afternoon was sunny and warm as he
walked across the campus; he could hear the surf in the
distance, and the Inglewood-Ventura monorail went hushing
across, bright cream and tan against the blue sky.

Students were walking in little groups along the gravel paths
between the flame trees. The lawns were richly green, neat and
trim. The scene was familiar, soothing ... and not entirely real.

It depressed him to realize that after four years he still felt
essentially disoriented. Everyone said he had made a remark-
able recovery; he had passed his refresher courses with high
marks, gotten his teaching license renewed: now he was
established, competent . . and after all, these four years were
all the memory he had: so why couldn't he settle down and
feel at home?

Why should he feel there was some terrible secret buried in
his past?

Irritated, he tried to shake off the mood, but the girl and her
question kept coming back to the surface of his mind. It was
ridiculous, and yet he couldn't help wondering if perhaps she
had some connection with the lost thirty-one years of his life
... the blank, the emptiness that was his image of himself
before the bomber crash that had almost killed him. . . .

Zug...

Impulsively, he turned and took the path to the university
library. There was a vacant information machine. He punched
"General," and then spelled out "Z-U-G."