"Kuttner, Henry - The Children's Hour UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

“fli have to go,” Leasing told him. “Don’t you see that? We’ll never prove anything until we at least rule- out the most obvious possibility. After all, I might be telling the simple truth!”
Dyke laughed and then shrugged faintly.

Leasing stood before the familiar door, his finger hesitating on the bell. So far, his memory had served him with perfect faith. Here was the corridor he knew well. Here was the door. Inside, he was quite sure, lay the arrangement of walls and rooms, where once Clarissa moved. She might not be there any more, ol course. He must not be disappointed if a strange face answered the bell. It would disprove nothing.
After all, two years had passed.
And Clarissa had been changing rather alanningly when he saw her last. The fever had seemed to speed things up.
Well, suppose it were all true. Suppose she belonged to the superrace. Suppose she impinged upon Leasing’s world with only one facet of her four-dimensional self. With that one facet she had loved him—they had that much of a meeting ground. Let her have a deeper self, then, than he could ever comprehend; still she could not yet be fully developed into her world of solid geometry, and while one facet remained restricted into the planar world which was all he knew, she might, he thought, still love him. He hoped she could. lie-
remembered her tears. He heard again the sweet, shy, ardent voice saying, - “I’ll always Jo~ve you—”
- Firmly he pressed the bell. -
The room was changed. Mirrors still lined it, - but not—.
not as he remembered. They were more than mirrors now.
He had no time to analyze the change, for a -motion stirred before him.
“Clarissa—” he said. And then, in the one brief instant of awareness -that remained to him, he knew at last how wrong hehadbeen. -- -
He had forgotten that four dimensions are not the outermost limits of conceivable scope. Cabell bad unwittingly led him astray~ there are dimensions in - which a cube may have many more than six sides. Clarissa’s dimension— Extensions are possible in dimensions not entirely connected with space—or rather, space is merely a medium through which these extensions may be made. And because humans live upon a three-dimensional planet, and because all planets in this continuum are three-dimensional, no psychic tesseract is possible—except by extensions. -
That is, a collection of chromosomes and genes, arranged on earth and here conceived, cannot in themselves form the matrix for a superman. Nor can a battery give more than its destined voltage. But if there are three,. six, a dozen batteries of similar size, and if they are connected in series— -
Until they are connected, until the linkage is complete, each is an individual. Each has its limitations. There are gropings, guided fumblings through the dark, while those in charge seek to help the scattered organism in fulfIlling itself. And therefore the human mind can comprehend the existence of a superbeing up to the point that the connection is made and the batteries become one unit, of enormous potential power. - -
On earth there was Clarissa and her nominal aunt—who could not be comprehended at all. - --
On a -remote planet in Cygnae Taurus, there was a Clarissa too, but her name there was something like Ezandora, and her mentor was a remote and cryptic being who was accepted by the populace as a ~odling. --
On Seven Million - Folk Twenty Eight of Center Galaxy there was Jбndav, who car~ed with her a small crystal through which her guidance came. -
In atmospheres of oaygen and halogen, in lands ringed with the shaking blaze of. crusted stars - beyond the power of
our telescopes—beneath water, and in places of cold and darkness and void, the matrix repeated itself, and by the psychic and utterly unimaginable power and science of homo superior, the biological cycle of a race more than human ran and completed itself and began again. Not entirely spontaneously, at the same thne, in many worlds, the pattern that
was Clarissa was conceivз~l and grew. The batteries strengthened.
Or to use Cabell’s allegory, the Clarissa Pattern impinged
one facet upon earth, but it was not one facet out of a possible six—but one out of a possible infinity of facets. Upon
each face of that unimaginable geometric shape, a form of
Clarissa moved and had independent being, and gradually developed. Learned and was taught. Reached out toward
the center of the geometric shape that was—or one day would be—the complete Clarissa. One day, when the last mirrorfacet sent inward to the center its matured reflection of the whole, when the many Clarissas, so to speak, clasped hands with themselves and fused into perfection.
Thus far we can follow. But not after the separate units become the complete and tremendous being toward which the immaturity of Clarissa on so many worlds was growing. After that, the destiny of homo superior has no common tbuchIng point with the understanding of hoino sapiens. We knew them as children. And they passed. They put away childish things.

“Clarissa—” he said.
Then he paused~ - standing motionless in silence, looking across that dark threshold into that mirrory dimness, seeing— what he saw. It was dark on the landing. The staircases went up and down, shadowy and still. There was stasis here, and no movement anywhere in the quiet air. This was power beyond the need for expression of power. -
He turned and went slowly down the stairs. The fear and pain and gnawing uneasiness that had troubled him for so long were gone now. Outside, on the curb, he lit a cigarette, hailed a taxi, and considered his next movements.
A cab swuxtg in. Further along the street, the liquid, shining blackness of the East River glissaded smoothly down to the Sound. The rumble of an El train came from the other direction.
“Where to, sergeant?” the driver asked.
“Downtown,” Lessing said. “Where’s a good floorshow?”
He relaxed pleasantly on the cushions, his mind quite - free from strain or worry now. -
- This time the memory block was complete. He would go on living out his cycle, complacent and happy as any human ever is, enjoying life to his capacity for enjoyment, using the toys- of earth with profound satisfaction.
“Nightclub?” the driver said. “The new Cabana’s good—” Lessing nodded. “0. K. The Cabana.” He leaned back, luxuriously inhaling smoke. It was the children’s hour.