"Mack Reynolds - Ability Quotient" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

"Kay, let's go."

At six o'clock he called it quits and stumbled from his chair and to the
bar in the corner. He looked up at the selection of potables. It looked as
though it had been chosen by a multi-millionaire Some of the Scotch was
forty years old. If they wanted to woo him with forty-year-old whisky, he'd
be glad to cooperate. He reached up for bottle and glass and poured
himself a healthy slug, a very healthy one. The military had taught him to
take his drink where he could find it and to get it down quickly before
somebody, or something, changed the situation under which you could
imbibe.

He held the glass up in a sarcastic toast and said, "Here's to education,"
and belted it down.

It was ultra-smooth, ultra-strong and had an absolutely wonderful
bouquet. He had never tasted a more delicate spirit in his life. He hadn't
known that strong liquor could go down so wonderfully.

He looked into his now empty glass and then at the bottle from which
he had poured it and said, admiringly, "Now that's what I call whiskey."

And then he fell unconscious.

Chapter Four
He had awakened how many hours later, he didn't know. He had failed
to check the time between finishing his last lesson and taking the drink.
He felt nauseated, but, surprisingly, at the same time desperately hungry.
He was starved. He looked out the fabulous picture window. It was pitch
dark outside. He looked at his wrist chronometer. The second hand was
creeping.

"Oh, oh," he said. He pushed himself to his feet, groaning, and made his
way over to the table where—how many centuries ago?—Professor Ralph
Marsh, the fink, had left the two pill bottles. What was it? Brown turned
you on, green turned off. Oh great. He felt like one of the victims of some
mad scientist type.

However, he shook out one of the green pills, knocked it back and went
over to the bar for water.

He couldn't imagine getting any food into his stomach, feeling as it did,
but on the other hand he was still desperately hungry It came to him that
when he was stimulated, turned on, or call it whatever you will, that he
burned up energy like a dynamo. Nervous energy, perhaps, but where
physical consumption of energy ended and nervous began, he didn't know.
In combat you could spend several days sitting in a foxhole, immobile for
endless hours at a time, and come out having lost as much as ten pounds,
although you had eaten reasonably well of the high energy foods the
military provided.