"Spider Robinson - C6 - The Callahan Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

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The Callahan Touch Version 1.0

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1 - The Immediate Family


Opposites make good companions sometimes. The reason Irish coffee is the perfect beverage is that
the stimulant and the depressant play tug of war with your consciousness, thereby stretching and
exercising it. Isometric intoxication, opposed tensions producing calm at the center, in the eye
of the metabolic hurricane. You end up an alert drunk. I suppose speedballs-the cocaine-heroin
combination that killed John Belushi-must be a similar phenomenon, on a more vivid and lethal
level. Fear and lust is another good, heady mixture of opposites...as many have learned in war
zones or hostage situations.
But if you can get hope and pride and serious fear all going at the same time, balanced in
roughly equal portions, let me tell you, then you've really got something powerful.
You can turn your head around with a mixture like that, end up spinning like a top and
paralyzed, exhausted and insomniac, starving and nauseous, running a fine cold sweat. Like a car
in neutral, with the accelerator to the floor. It's exhilarating, in a queasy kind of way.
I'm embarrassed to admit I hinged on it for days before I realized that was what I was
doing, and then another day before I made up my mind to kick. Finally I admitted to myself that I
was being selfish, that other people's hopes- and cash-were involved in this too. They'd been
waiting a long time already. Besides, in a three-way tug of war, the chances of one side suddenly
letting go with a loud snap are doubled.
Hell, I'd already jumped. It was time to open my eyes and see where I was going to land...
So one fine day in May of 1988, I picked up the phone and made the call.
"Hello there, son," he said when they finally tracked him down. "I was just thinking about
you. Been too long. What's the good word?" His voice was strong and clear despite the lousy
connection. As always.
"I think I'm ready," I said.
Short pause. "Say that again. Like you believe it, this time."
I cleared my throat. "Well, I don't know if 1' 11 ever be ready. But I think it's ready. I
truly do, Sam. As ready as it's ever gonna be."
"Why, that's fine! Uh. . . want me to come over and take a look? Before you-"
"Thanks. But no. I'll take it all in one dose. Put the word out for me, okay? I open
Friday at nine. Just the immediate family."
"Friday, huh? Appropriate date. We'll all be there. I'm looking forward to it. It's been
awful too damn long. Good luck-wups, Code Blue, got to go!" The line was dead.
Friday was two days away. Time for one last binge of conflicting emotions before the
balloon went up. .
The thing is, I had accomplished a miracle-and I knew in my heart it wasn't good enough.
After two years of careful planning and hard work, I had produced something excellent. I
believed that, and I guess I should have been proud. Oh hell, I guess I was proud. But I was
trying to match something long-gone that, in its own backassward way, had been perfect. And it
seemed to me, in those last couple of days, that the distance on the scale between lousy and
excellent is nothing compared to the distance between excellent and perfect.