"Lewis Padgett - When the Bough Breaks 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Padgett Lewis)

"He might have connected it."
"I want that," Alexander said. "Give it to me."
"Not yet, Alexander," Bordent refused. "You must learn the correct way of connecting it first. Otherwise it might harm you."
"I could do it."
"You are not logical enough to balance your capabilities and lacks as yet. Later it will be safe. I think now, perhaps, a little philosophy, Dobish-eh?"
Dobish squatted and went en rapport with Alexander. Myra came out of the kitchen, took a quick look at the tableau, and retreated. Calderon followed her out.
"I will never get used to it if I live a thousand years," she said with slow emphasis, hacking at the doughy rim of a pie. "He's my baby only when he's asleep."
"We won't live a thousand years," Calderon told her. "Alexander will, though. I wish we could get a maid."
"I tried again today," Myra said wearily. "No use. They're, all in war plants. I mention a baby-"
"You can't do all this alone."
"You help," she said, "when you can. But you're working hard too, fella. It won't be forever."
"I wonder if we had another baby... if-"
Her sober gaze met his. "I've wondered that, too. But I should think mutations aren't as cheap as that. Once in a lifetime. Still, we don't know."
"Well, it doesn't matter now, anyway. One infant's enough for the moment."
Myra glanced toward the door. "Everything all right in there? Take a look. I worry."
"It's all right."
"I know, but that blue egg-Bordent said it was dangerous, you know. I heard him."
Calderon peeped through the door-crack. The four dwarfs were sitting facing Alexander, whose eyes were closed. Now they opened. The infant scowled at Calderon.
"Stay out," he requested. "You're breaking the rapport."
"I'm so sorry," Calderon said, retreating. "He's O.K., Myra. His own dictatorial little self."
"Well, he is a superman," she said doubtfully.
"No. He's a super-baby. There's all the difference."
"His latest trick," Myra said, busy with the oven, "is riddles. Or something like riddles. I feel so small when he catches me up. But he says it's good for his ego. It compensates for his physical frailness."
"Riddles, eh? I know a few too."
"They won't work on Alexander," Myra said, with grim assurance.


Nor did they. "What goes up a chimney up?" was treated with the contempt it deserved; Alexander examined his father's riddles, turned them over in his logical mind, analyzed them for flaws in semantics and logic, and rejected them. Or else he answered them, with such fine accuracy that Calderon was too embarrassed to give the correct answers. He was reduced to asking why a raven was like a writing desk, and since not even the Mad Hatter had been able to answer his own riddle, was slightly terrified to find himself listening to a dissertation on comparative ornithology. After that, he let Alexander needle him with infantile gags about the relations of gamma rays to photons, and tried to be philosophical. There are few things as irritating as a child's riddles. His mocking triumph pulverizes itself into the dust in which you grovel.
"Oh, leave your father alone," Myra said, coming in with her hair disarranged. "He's trying to read the paper."
"That news is unimportant."
"I'm reading the comics," Calderon said. "I want to see if the Katzenjammers get even with the Captain for hanging them under a waterfall."
"The formula for the humor of an incongruity predicament," Alexander began learnedly, but Calderon disgustedly went into the bedroom, where Myra joined him.
"He's asking me riddles again," she said. "Let's see what the Katzenjammers did."
"You look rather miserable. Got a cold?"
"I'm not wearing make-up. Alexander says the smell makes him ill."
"So what? He's no petunia."
"Well," Myra said, "he does get ill. But of course he does it on purpose."
"Listen. There he goes again. What now?"
But Alexander merely wanted an audience. He had found a new way of making imbecilic noises with his fingers and lips. At times the child's normal phases were more trying than his super periods. After a month had passed, however, Calderon felt that the worst was yet to come. Alexander had progressed into fields of knowledge hitherto untouched by homo sap, and he had developed a leechlike habit of sucking his father's brains dry of every scrap of knowledge the wretched man possessed.
It was the same with Myra. The world was indeed Alexander's oyster. He had an insatiable curiosity about everything, and there was no longer any privacy in the apartment. Calderon took to locking the bedroom door against his son at night-Alexander's crib was now in another room-but furious squalls might waken him at any hour.
In the midst of preparing dinner, Myra would be forced to stop and explain the caloric mysteries of the oven to Alexander. He learned all she knew, took a jump into more abstruse aspects of the matter, and sneered at her ignorance. He found out Calderon was a physicist, a fact which the man had hitherto kept carefully concealed, and thereafter pumped his father dry. He asked questions about geodetics and geopolitics. He inquired about monotremes and monorails. He was curious about biremes and biology. And he was skeptical, doubting the depth of his father's knowledge. "But," he said, "you and Myra Calderon are my closest contacts with homo sap as yet, and it's a beginning. Put out that cigarette. It isn't good for my lungs."
"All right," Calderon said. He rose wearily, with his usual feeling these days of being driven from room to room of the apartment, and went in search of Myra. "Bordent's about due. We can go out somewhere. O. K.?"
"Swell." She was at the mirror, fixing her hair, in a trice. "I need a permanent. If I only had the time-!"
"I'll take off tomorrow and stay here. You need a rest."
"Darling, no. The exams are coming up. You simply can't do it."
Alexander yelled. It developed that he wanted his mother to sing for him. He was curious about the tonal range of homo sap and the probable emotional and soporific effect of lullabies. Calderon mixed himself a drink, sat in the kitchen and smoked, and thought about the glorious destiny of his son. When Myra stopped singing, he listened for Alexander's wails, but there was no sound till a slightly hysterical Myra burst in on him, dithering and wide-eyed.
"Joe!" She fell into Calderon's arms. "Quick, give me a drink or... or hold me tight or something."
"What is it?" He thrust the bottle into her hands, went to the door, and looked out. "Alexander? He's quiet. Eating candy."
Myra didn't bother with a glass. The bottle's neck clicked against her teeth. "Look at me. Just look at me. I'm a mess."
"What happened?"