"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03 - Psychamok" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Phillip Stone was secretly glad when their trips to the asylum were curtailed by medical restrictions. Vicki
had been almost 'out of her mind' since Richard's committal; her husband did not want to see that condition
become permanent.
He had even tried to persuade her that the monthly visit was too much - protesting that it could only damage
her already ravaged nerves, or at best increase her unhap-piness - but all such arguments had gone
unheard. She loved her son, as did Phillip Stone himself, and she could see no harm in him express or
implied, neither deliberate nor incidental. Heartbroken she was; faithless she could never be. She would
always be faithful: to her son's sanity, to his memory as he had been. He was not the same now, no, but he
could recover. She ignored the fact that no one - no single victim - had yet fully recovered from The
Gibbering. Richard was different. He would recover. He was her son.
And there had been a girl. Vicki could not forgive her. Lynn had been the love of Richard's life. He had
lived for her, and she had seemed to live for him. But the plague had taken him and she had visited him only
twice before her father stepped in and forbade it. She had her own life to lead. She must forget Richard
Stone and leave him to his padded cell and his gibbering . . .
Phillip Stone's large expensive car purred up to the gates of Calm Lawns and stopped at the security
barrier. The guards were grey-uniformed, carried rifles that fired tranquillizer darts, wore helmets that
filtered out all sounds except face-to-face conversation. In addition to filters the helmets contained radios
tuned in to the hospital's security computer; through them the guards could 'talk' to the computer, and to
each other. The other function of the helmets - some would have it the main function, quite aside from
communication - was isolation. No one, not even the doctors, liked to listen to The Gibbering for too long.
For which reason Security and Staff alike worked in staggered six-hour shifts, and no one lived permanently
within the Calm Lawns perimeter except the inmates themselves.
The Stones had visitors' passes but even so their prints were checked at the security barrier. Then, with
their passes stamped, the barrier went up and they were allowed in. And while they drove through patrolled
gardens - along gravel roads between lawns and fountains and low, rocky outcrops of moss-covered stone,
where shrubs and rose bushes luxuriated and vines crept on arching trellises - Security alerted the hospital
of their coming. At the car park they were met by a helmeted receptionist, a girl who smiled and checked
that the doors of their car were locked, then gave them headphones that covered their ears and issued soft,
calming background music; following which they were led into the hospital complex itself.
Richard's cell was on the second floor. His parents were taken up by elevator and Idd along a
rubber-floored perimeter corridor where dustmotes danced in beams of sunlight through huge, reinforced
glass windows. There were many, many cells; their inhabitants did not need a great deal of room. And
while the soothing music was fed to the Stones through their headphones, they plodded on behind their guide
until they reached Richard's cell - his 'room', as Vicki termed it, but it was a cell like all the others.
Its door had a number, 253, and there the guide paused, smiling again as she tapped out the three digits on
her electronic wrist-key. The door hissed open, admitting them to a tiny antechamber no bigger 'than a
cubicle. Inside were three chairs, one of which the girl in the helmet took out into the corridor, leaving the
Stones on their own. Just before the doors hissed shut on them, she said, 'I know you've seen him in a
strait-jacket before. It's for his own good,' and she nodded sympathetically.
'Are you ready?' Phillip Stone asked, his voice a little shaky. His wife half-heard him, half-read his lips,
nodded and took off her headphones. 'Vicki,' he pleaded, 'why don't you leave them on?'
'I want to speak to him,' she answered, 'if I can. And when - if- he speaks to me, I want to hear what he
says.'
Her husband nodded, took off his own 'phones and hugged her. 'Have it your own way, but - '
She wasn't listening. As soon as he released her she turned to the inner doors, stared for a moment at a
slip-card in its metal frame, read the words she had come to dread through many previous visits:
'Richard Stone - No Positive Improvement.'
Then, hands trembling, she reached towards the doors, reached for the handles which would slide those
doors back on well-oiled rollers. An inch from grasping them she froze. The flesh of her cheek quivered.
She glanced at her husband. 'Phillip?'