The Scheme of Things. Lester Del Rey

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ sixty-five years in fussing with such absolutes. As a young man he’d acquired his first financial success by superintending a small revolution in Central America.

      He then went on to larger ones on the South American continent proper, and then retired from righting political wrongs because he found it to be a fruitless business. Nothing was ever really solved by violently heaving out the ins.

      Besides, he had made a good deal of money at it and he wanted to be a musician. It took him four years to become really accomplished at the piano and the cello. To prove his grasp of the instruments, he wrote music for both—irritating, mocking compositions that went into most professional portfolios but were seldom played.

      Then he went to India to find out exactly why those people felt singularly honored when cows wandered into their homes and evacuated on their floors. This led him down many happy bypaths and his years kited by.

      Paul Bender would have been welcomed to the faculty of any college or university in the world. Why he chose insignificant little Kane was a question he refused to answer at press gatherings but it was certainly indicative of his complete contempt for public honor.

      When he arrived at Kane, he selected his friends by rebuffing those petitioners for the honor who didn’t qualify. The ones he did select were supposed to be friends in every respect. He hated being looked up to above all other dislikes. And it followed of course, that Mike Strong saw his acceptance by Bender as a precious thing.

      Bender smoked the strongest tobacco known to man and as Mike peered through the cloud around Benders chair to see if he were still there, Mike said, “I imagine you can prove, in a few incisive words, that it was all a momentary daydream.”

      “Is that what you’re hoping for?”

      “Not necessarily. But I would like some assurance that I haven’t gone off a weird deep end.”

      “It seems to me it must have been quite an experience. Tell me more about it.”

      “That’s one of the problems. I know so little.”

      “About this other life you’re living on a different plane—”

      “I haven’t got the foggiest idea of any such life. Except for the incident itself, I know nothing about it. At the time, from what was said, I assume I had money. I was married to Vera Spain, whoever she was, and I must have been seven lands of an idiot because she was obviously carrying on an affair with that Russian character right under my nose.”

      “Have you talked to your psychiatrist?”

      “No, and I see no point in doing so. He’s busy right now trying to convince me that I hated my father. He’d be certain to call this thing an hallucination and start digging into my id.”

      “Did you hate your father?”

      “I didn’t hate him. But I didn’t think much of him, either.”

      “Do you think it was an hallucination?”

      “No. It was too real. There was none of the haziness of a dream. Maybe that’s not quite the word, but you know what I mean, Paul. When you awaken from a dream, you automatically know that you’ve been dreaming and that you’ve returned to reality. What I went through was just as real as sitting here talking to you.”

      “Maybe you aren’t sitting here. Maybe this is the dream.”

      Paul Bender had a deeply lined, heavily tanned face. His thick white hair looked like a halo, one he certainly did not merit, and his eyes were so clear blue and so young that they contradicted all the other indications of age. Also, you could never be sure that what he said was necessarily a statement of what he believed.

      Mike Strong pulled a hand across his eyes. “Please! Don’t push me onto a merry-go-round. Right now I’ve got to stick to basics.”

      “Have you got any to stick to?”

      “That’s why I came running like a whipped pup to you. I need some.”

      “I can only give you one: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—”

      “Great!” Mike muttered. “So I just sit around and come apart.”

      “They could put you in an asylum,” Paul Bender mused.

      “Would you sign the papers?”

      “No. Documents of that sort should be signed by people with something to gain—relatives who can get their hands on the nut’s money. Would you like to sign your fortune over to me?”

      “I haven’t any.”

      “Hmmm. Improvident and wasteful. A black mark “

      “Paul! Will you please take this thing seriously?”

      “I am, but let’s not tense up over it.”

      Mike’s brow was wrinkled in heavy thought. “What I can’t reconcile is the time element.”

      “What about it?”

      “On that other plane, I got home from wherever I worked about six o’clock. I confronted Solonoff around seven-thirty. But when I came back to this plane it was only five—or fifteen minutes after I’d dismissed my class.”

      “That shouldn’t bother you. Why should time on that plane obey the laws of this one?”

      Mike sighed. “We seem to be taking it for granted that I was on another plane.”

      “We’ve got to have terms of reference and that’s as good a one as any. But tell me this—what do you have against leading two lives? They’re both active, interesting existences. Why not just consider yourself lucky and wait to see what happens?”

      “Good God! Do you want me to crack up?”

      “The two lives don’t seem to interfere with each other.”

      “But it’s contrary to all sanity!”

      “Mike! Stop talking like a child. The word sanity is nothing more than another term of reference. The world’s most brilliant people may be locked in asylums for all we know. Right now, your problem is the fear of something that exists only in human judgments. I repeat—you may be the most fortunate of men.”

      “I’ll sign all my good fortune over to you when the gates close on me,” Mike said.

      Paul relit his nauseous pipe and allowed a little sympathy to show through. “Let’s dig a little deeper,” he said. “You aren’t reacting to a single, phenomenal incident. There’s more to this. You were running scared when this one happened.”

      “There have been a few others,” Mike said guardedly.

      “Well, don’t go coy on me all of a sudden. Tell me about them.”

      “One happened years ago—when I was a high school student. I found myself in a very cold place among primitive people. I was one of them. It could have been Outer Mongolia or even Siberia. I lived in a village with my parents and I had a shaggy little СКАЧАТЬ