"The Diploids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

He hesitated a moment, his hands flat on the desk top, looking for easier ways of saying what he was going to say. Stray fugitive thoughts scurried around the fringes of consciousness like a dusty frightened nest of mice looking for knotholes of escape from a suddenly opened closet—mice that could have grown to full scale monsters if he had waited longer before telling someone of this. And the tightening feeling in his chest warned of coming fear, the ghost that always comes out of mental closets that have been locked too long and are opened reluctantly.



IT WOULD be better, he decided, to speak rapidly and bluntly, or he might not get it out at all. There was no real trouble, it was just that this was the first time he had explained to anyone. What are you afraid of? This just needs airing out.

“Let’s take it item by item,” he said slowly, still holding his hands palm down, flat against the desk top, feeling their slight tremor. “I’ve got six fingers, right?”

“Sure,” she said with a touch of defiance. “Six good fingers.”

“Ever notice something odd about my walk?”

“Yes.” She smiled reflectively. “Individual… a slightly crouched springy look. I’d recognize you by it.”

“My feet are different.”

“Oh?” She exhaled a translucent puff of smoke, looking at it, then met his eye. “In what way?”

He swung in his chair so that she could see his legs and shoes. “They’re long in the arch, and abnormally narrow. I can’t keep my heel on the ground, it doesn’t feel right there. Go on my toes instead.” He considered his deep rubber soles, checking their normal appearance. “My shoes are built up inside—up in the back—down in the front, so inside I’m standing on my toes the way I like it. The angle brings my shoe down to normal length.” He looked up at her, challenging her to answer. “Remind you of something?”

“Hocks,” she said reluctantly. “Do they hurt?” It was a key question.

“No.” He knew what she meant. An abnormality should be imperfect. Feet hurt vehemently at the slightest trace of imperfection. His feet felt fine.

“What else?” she asked grimly. He could see the conclusions forming in her mind.

“What race would you say I am, Nadine?”

The long grey-green eyes wandered over his face. “I don’t know. A nice, handsome blend—definitely worth staring at. If you’re sensitive about stares —try being ugly and peculiar both. People will look away in droves… Probably some Japanese for those good, broad cheekbones and the set of those ears. Mongoloid skull, Caucasian nose, extra wide chiseled mouth, Hindu almost. I’d guess American Indian, or high cast Brahmin. That orangy olive skin doesn’t tell me anything.” She smiled. “I give up.”

“My parents were straight Caucasian—white midwestern Americans from Omaha.”

“Anyone in the family look like you?”

“No.”

“What else?” She was forgetting to smoke.

He bent his right arm, clenching his fist near his shoulder. “My arms. The proportion of forearm to upper arm is wrong. They should be about equal. My fist should come level with my shoulder.” His fist was five inches above his shoulder. “My upper arm is shorter and thicker than my forearm.”

“Handicap?” The question was automatic now. She knew what the answer would be.

“Advantage, I think. My arms are unusually strong.” Abnormalities should be crippling defects, but these weren’t. People had told him that he was one of the strongest and most vital persons they had ever met. He wondered how much of this Nadine had noticed herself, and how much she had shrugged off. She wasn’t shrugging now.

“What else?”

He hesitated. There was something else—a fact that came into his mind reluctantly as if it were something that was half untrue, a private fairy tale that had no meaning except for him. He had hidden it too long. It was a repression now. His fingers whitened against the desk top. He could feel them trembling. “I’ve got a soft spot in the back of my head.” That’s what he had told the other kids when they had bumped it accidentally and he had cried. His hair covered it, and he hadn’t let them look at it. He had fought instead.

“On the left side,” he said. “The doctor said it looks like it was starting out to be an eye.” He watched her face and saw it go hard and expressionless in defense against whatever was coming, reflecting his own sudden tight control. He continued levelly without change of tone. “I’m lying to you, Nadine. It is an eye!”