"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

so much as come to the attention of Homicide, and the reason for it is that my
control is flawless, I am an unflappable killing machine, like I said, my emotions
aren't even in circuit, and well yes, I had gotten hot under the collar a couple of times
this afternoon for reasons I would certainly think about when I got a chance, but
now of course it was killing floor time and I was in total com-mand, and so I was
again surprised and shocked to find myself springing up from my chair and, not
diving behind the welding tanks, or even leaping for his right hand, but simply
running flat out full tilt in plain sight for the door. It was the most foolish imaginable
move and half of my mind screamed, Fool! Fool! At least run broken field your
back is a fucking perfect target you'll never get halfway to the door with every step
until I was halfway to the door and then it shut up until I had reached the door and
then the other half said quietly I knew he wouldn't shoot but then I had the door
open and both halves screamed. It hadn't occurred to any of us that the sound
system might be antiquated enough to use those miserable eight-track tapes.
Eight-tracks break down frequently, they provide mediocre sound quality under
the best playback, their four-program format often leaves as much as ten minutes of
dead air between programs, and you can't rewind or cue them. And they don't shut
themselves off when they're done. They repeat indefinitely.

Hunger stopped him
He lies still in his cell
Death has gagged his accusations
We are free now
We can kill now
We can hate now
Now we can end the world
We're not guilty
He was crazy
And it's been going on for
ten thousand years!

It is possible for an unrestrained man to kill himself with his hands. I moved to do
so, and Cardwell hit me from behind like a bag of cement. One wrist broke as I
landed, and he grabbed the other. He shouted things at me, but not loud enough to
be heard over the final chorus:
"Take your place on the Great Mandala
"As it moves through your brief moment of time
"Win or lose now: you must choose now
"And if you lose you've only wasted your (life is what it really was even if
they called it five years he never came out the front door again so it was life
imprisonment, right? and maybe the Cong would've killed him just as dead but
they wouldn't have raped him first and they wouldn't have starved him not literally
we could have been heroes together if only he hadn't been fucking coward coward
coward ... )
"Who was a coward?" Cardwell asked distantly, and I took it the wrong way and
screamed, "Him! Not me! HIM!" and then I realized that the song had ended and it
was very very silent out, only the distant murmuring of highway traffic and the power
hum from the speakers and the echo of my words; and I thought about what I had
just said, and seven years' worth of the best ratio-nalizations I ever built came
thundering down around my ears. The largest chunk came down on my skull and