"C M Kornbluth - The Marching Morons Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

rusthng wind in the boughs was obscuring the creak and mutter of the shrinking refractory brick. Hawkins
wondered about the number two kiln-a reduction fire on a load of lusterware mugs. Had the clay
chinking excluded the air? Had it been a properly smoky blaze? Would it do any harm if he just took one
close-?

Common sense took Hawkins by the scruff of the neck and yanked him over to the tool shed. He got
out his pick and resolutely set off on a prospecting jaunt to a hummocky field that might yield some
oxides. He was especially low on coppers.

The long walk left him sweating hard, with his lust for a peek into the kiln quiet in his breast. He swung
his pick almost at random into one of the hummocks; it clanged on a stone which he excavated. A largely
obliterated inscription said:



ERSITY OF CHIC

OGICAL LABO

ELOVED MEMORY OF

KILLED IN ACT



The potter swore mildly. He had hoped the field would turn out to be a cemetery, preferably a
once-fashionable cemetery full of once-massive bronze caskets moldered into oxides of tin and copper.
Well, hell, maybe there was some around anyway.

He headed lackadaisically for the second largest hillock and sliced into it with his pick. There was a
stone to undercut and topple into a trench, and then the potter was very glad he'd stuck at it. His nostrils
were filled with the bitter smell and the dirt was tinged with the exciting blue of copper salts. The pick
went clang!

Hawkins, puffing, pried up a stainless steel plate that was quite badly stained and was also marked with
incised letters. It seemed to have pulled loose from rotting bronze; there were rivets on the back that
brought up flakes of green patina. The potter wiped off the surface dirt with his sleeve, turned it to catch
the sunlight obliquely and read:




HONEST JOHN BARLOW

Honest John, famed in university annals, represents a challenge which medical science has not yet
answered: revival of a human being accidentally thrown into a state of suspended animation.

In 1988 Mr. Barlow, a leading Evanston real estate dealer, visited his dentist for treatment of an
impacted wisdom tooth. His dentist requested and received permission to use the experimental anesthetic
Cycloparadimethanol-B-7, developed at the University.