"The Diploids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)
He turned to the next page. It was an exaggerated drawing of a small nervous man sitting in an electroencephalograph that was built like an electric chair, with a huge metal headpiece over his head and wires streaming from it in all directions: —EVEN IF IT’S TO A HOSPITAL TO HAVE YOUR HEAD EXAMINED.
THE outside door opened and a timid woman came in, looked around hesitantly and then, taking courage from his example, took a pamphlet, sat down and began to read. There was nothing visibly unusual about her. Breden began to wonder if he had merely let himself in for a total psychological check, and a diagnosis of what his abilities best fitted him to do. The six fingered hand could be merely a coincidence, a copywriter’s inspiration.
He turned to the next page. On it a man stood triumphantly with his arms flexed, bulging startlingly with muscle, grinning with enthusiasm and radiating health, vigor and vitality in big orange rays: Our technique WORKS.
The nonsensical cheer of it was infectious. Someone came in and said, “Doctor Sheers will see you now.” Breden looked up with a grin reflecting the grin in the cartoon. The receptionist had apparently spoken to him rather than to the mousy woman, so he rose. “Could I keep this pamphlet?”
“Yes indeed,” she smiled professionally as a nurse smiles, warm but distant. “The office is right down the hall.”
He followed, still grinning. The receptionist reminded him of Nadine in the incongruity of her pretty face and figure, and her efficient businesslike air. If nothing happened now he’d take his counseling like a man, and have a good laugh with Nadine when he came out.
They turned the blind bend in the corridor and it widened with doors on either hand for thirty feet before making another turn. The receptionist stopped before an open door to let him pass, and then closed it after him as he went in.
He found himself in a mellow, wood-paneled room with the relaxing half-dusk of indirect lighting focused on the shelves of books. Good books with thoughtful titles, and reference books he recognized as old friends, books he had for his own reference in microfilm.
The man who greeted him was spare, with a slight scholarly round-shoulderedness. He came forward and took Breden’s hand with confident hospitality. “How do you do. I’m Doctor Sheers, and you’re—”
“Paul Breden.”
“I’m glad to meet you, Mister Breden,” he said, seating himself behind his desk. “Have a chair.”
Breden sat down, trying to judge Sheers’s face. The diffuse desk light lay in a pool of orange-brown on the mahogany and lit up the counselor’s face from below with a ruddy light that should have made him look satanical, but instead merely made his face look round and childish. He looked at Breden, waiting for him to speak.
“I saw your advertisement,” Breden said, “and I was interested. Could you tell me more about it?” He moved his hands, slightly shifting their position. The reading light that was clipped to the arm of the chair was focusing diffusely in his lap, spotlighting his hands.
The room’s atmosphere of safety and concealment was the result of having one’s face in shadow. It was probably very relaxing to the shy, self-conscious misfits, and the hostile types that came in, needing counseling. But the concealment was an illusion, for the counselor could read expressions and reactions in the small unconscious motions and tensions of the spotlighted hands.
He should also be able to notice a deliberate conscious motion made to call his attention, such as Breden had made. Breden waited, wondering if it would mean anything to him.
The counselor’s own hands under the desk light were white and large knuckled, with blue lines of veins showing through. They lay there quietly, white and inexpressive, schooled to perfect relaxation.
“What is your profession, Mister Breden?”
“I’m an attorney—my specialty’s patent law.”
“And what complaint against life attracted you here?” There was a slight smile in his voice, and he interrupted before Breden could reply. “You needn’t answer that one. I’m not completely unobservant.” He stood up, smiling, and said regretfully. “I would have liked to have given you a few tests and made at least a surface diagnosis. You’re an interesting case, and rather well integrated considering the stress. Interesting… but you didn’t come for that, and I can’t take up your time of course.”
He held out his hand.
With excitement building in him, Breden rose and shook hands. “What you want is right down the hall,” the counselor said regretfully. He escorted him to the door and opened it, then reached into a recess of a bookcase shelf and pulled out a box of fig bars. “Here, have a couple of fig bars. You need to fortify your blood sugar. You’re probably going to get something of a shock…”
Breden accepted them with an inward smile. Some diagnosis! He was hungry all right. That sandwich for lunch hadn’t been enough, and he was growing shaky, with so much excitement.
The counselor leaned out from his office and pointed. “Just turn right and keep straight ahead until it stops at a door.”
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