"Robert F. Young - Pilgrim's Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

because I was on the wrong side of twenty-nine and had received my marriage summons in yesterday's
mail. But I didn't say anything of the sort. It wasn't wise to question Marriage Administration procedure.
But I didn't take it lying down. Not quite. I said: "The wife I want is a pretty remote item from the one
I'll probably get."
"What we want consciously is invariably different from what we want unconsciously, Mr. Bartlett.
The Marriage Integrator's true benefit to humanity arises from the fact that it matches marriageable men
and women in accordance with their unconscious rather than with their conscious desires. However, any
information you may care to impart will be entered on your data card and might influence the final
decision."
"I don't know," I said.
And I didn't. The celibacy I had endured rather than apply for a wife before reaching the maximum
age of twenty-nine had resulted in the total sublimation of my sexual desires. Women had lost reality for
me—at least, until this morning.

I LOOKED around the huge chamber in search of inspiration. The various departments were
cramped with desks and marriage officials, enlivened here and there by gray- or black-garbed
secretaries. The department next to the one in which I stood constituted the headquarters for the
Marriage Enforcement Police and less than ten feet away from me a gaunt MEP captain brooded behind
an austere marble desk.
Apparently he had been fasting, for his charcoal gray coat hung loosely on his wide shoulders. His
cheeks were cadaverous, his thin lips pale. His thin nose jutted sharply from his narrow face, giving him a
bleak, hungry look, and his deep, somber eyes intensified the impression.
Those eyes, I realized suddenly, were gazing directly into mine.
So far as I knew, there was nothing about my appearance to pique the interest of an MEP official.
My Roger Williams suit was conventional enough; I had doffed my black, wide-brimmed hat upon
entering the building and now held it at my waist in the prescribed manner; I was above average in height,
but not noticeably so, and if my yellow hair and gray eyes failed to match the dour decorum of my
clothing, I could hardly be held responsible for the defection. Nevertheless, there was something about
me that the MEP captain found disagreeable. The disapproval in his eyes was unmistakable.
"Do you have any ideas at all, Mr. Bartlett?"
The girl's cool blue eyes were a relief after the somber brown ones. It was like returning from
Milton's Paradise Lost to the carefree L'Allegro of his youth. Abruptly, the inspiration I'd been
searching for materialized —almost at my fingertips.
"Blue eyes," I said. "I'd definitely want her to have blue eyes —and dark brown hair to go with them.
And then I'd want her to have a round, full face, and shoulders that look good even in a Mayflower
dress."
I saw the telltale pinkness come into her cheeks and I caught the tiny fluttering of a pulse in her white
temple. But all she said was: "What else, Mr. Bartlett? I presume she would have intellectual as, well as
physical qualities."
"Naturally." I knew I was being presumptuous, that I was probably violating some of the
law-enforced mores of the Age of Repentance. But for once in my life I felt reckless.
I concentrated on the piquant face before me. "I'd want her to be a little on the sophisticated side," I
said softly (the MEP captain had big ears). "Well-versed in the Five Books of course—and perhaps
acquainted with one or two of the forbidden ones. And then I'd want her to like children and maybe be
willing to have three—or even four —instead of one or none. But most of all I'd want her to be able to
freeze any wrong thoughts a man might have about her, not by recourse to the law, or by saying or doing
anything; but just by looking the way she does, by being the way she is—if you know what I mean."
The pinkness of her cheeks had darkened to deep rose. "Is that all, Mr. Bartlett?"
I sighed. My recklessness had netted me nothing. "Yes," I said.
 She withdrew the application from the talk-typer and initialed it. She raised her eyes. "I censored