The Reign of Brainwash: Dystopia Box Set. Эдгар Аллан По

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      He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start that he was singing--singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember--poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And here was he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing....

      He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water to boil on the fire.

      Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus land-workers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elstead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young man standing outside the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood. The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the road and, with his two companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two, three--they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve...

      'Ford!' whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.

      'Fordey!' they said.

      Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the reporters came.

      Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.

      'Good-morning, Mr. Savage,' he said. 'I am the representative of The Hourly Radio.'

      Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.

      'I beg your pardon,' said the reporter, with genuine compunction. 'I had no intention...' He touched his hat--the aluminium stove-pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. 'Excuse my not taking it off,' he said. 'It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly...'

      'What do you want?' asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most ingratiating smile.

      'Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested...' He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. 'Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage.' And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled round his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminium hat; touched a spring on the crown--and antennæ shot up into the air; touched another spring on the peak of the brim--and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat--and from within came a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right--and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and crackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. 'Hullo,' he said to the microphone, 'hullo, hullo...' A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. 'Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?' He looked up at the Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. 'Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And, of course, that whip.' (The Savage started. How did they know about the whip?) 'We're all crazy to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. "What I think of the Civilized Girl." Just a few words, a very few...'

      The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more--five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. 'Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!' And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young man revealed himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.

      Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets of London. 'HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED BYMYSTERY SAVAGE,' ran the headlines on the front page. 'SENSATION IN SURREY.'

      'Sensation even in London,' thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.

      Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx, four other reporters, representing the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon at the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing violence.

      From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, 'Benighted fool!' shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, 'why don't you take soma?'

      'Get away!' The Savage shook his fist.

      The other retreated a few steps, then turned round again. 'Evil's an unreality if you take a couple of grammes.'

      'Kohakwa iyathtokyai!' The tone was menacingly derisive.

      'Pain's a delusion.'

      'Oh, is it?' said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.

      The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.

      After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It pierced the aluminium floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of Mátsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin), the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but for the larks, silent.

      The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying 'Sweet!' and 'Put your arms round me!'--in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina... No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he СКАЧАТЬ