"A. E. Van Vogt - Recruiting Station" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

A. E. v~ V0GT


RECRUITING STATION

Si~ DIDN’T DARE! Suddenly, the night was a cold, enveloping thing. The edge of
the broad, black river gurgled evilly at her feet as if, now that she had changed
her mind—it hungered for her.
Her foot slipped on the wet, sloping ground; and her mind grew blurred
with the terrible senseless fear that things were reaching out of the night,
trying to drown her now against her will.
She fought up the bank—and slumped breathless onto the nearest park
bench, coldly furious with her fear. Dully, she watched the gaunt man come
along the pathway past the light standard. So sluggish was her brain that she
was not aware of surprise when she realized he was coming straight toward
her.
The purulent yellowish light made a crazy patch of his shadow across her
where she sat. His voice, when he spoke, was vaguely foreign in tone, yet
modulated, cultured. He said:
“Are you interested in the Calonian cause?”
Norma stared. There was no quickening in her brain, but suddenly she
began to laugh. It was funny, horribly, hysterically funny funny. To be
sitting here, trying to get up the nerve for another attempt at those deadly
waters, and then to have some crackbrain come along and— “You’re
deluding yourself, Miss Matheson,” the man went on coolly.
“You’re not the suicide type.”
“Nor the pickup type!” she answered automatically. “Beat it before—”
Abruptly, it penetrated that the man had called her by name. She
looked up sharply at the dark blank that was his face. His head against the
background of distant light nodded as if in reply to the question that quivered
in her thought.
“Yes, I know your name. I also know your history and your feari”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a young scientist named Garson arrived in the city tonight to
deliver a series of lectures. Ten years ago, when you and he graduated from
the same university, he asked you to marry him, but it was a career you
wanted—and now you’ve been terrified that, in your extremity, you would go
to him for assistance and—”
 “Stop!”
The man seemed to watch her as she sat there breathing heavily. He said at
last, quietly:
“I think I have proved that I am not simply a casual philanderer.”
“What other kind of philanderer is there?” Norma asked, sluggish again.
But she made no objection as he sank down on the far end of the bench. His
back was still to the light, his features night-developed.
“Ah,” he said, “you joke; you are bitter. But that is an improvement. You
feel now, perhaps, that if somebody has taken an interest in you, all is not
lost.”
Norma said dully: ‘People who are acquainted with the basic laws of
psychology are cursed with the memory of them even when disaster strikes