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The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! ) :: Bester Alfred
Страница: 79 из 164His clothes were melting away, revealing lurid scarlet underwear. «Kleinmann!» he bellowed furiously. «Kleinmann! 'What's happened to your goddamned hypno-training?»
A hairy head thrust out of a tent. «You studied for this speech last night, Fourmyle?»
«Damn right. For two hours I stoodied. Never took my head out of the hypno-oven. Kleinmann on Prestidigitation.»
«No, no, no!» the hairy man bawled. «How many times must I tell you? Prestidigitation is not speechmaking. Is magic. Dumbkopf! You had the wrong hypnosis taken!»
The scarlet underwear began melting. Fourmyle toppled from the shoulders of his shaking valets and disappeared within his tent. There was a roar of laughter and cheering and the Four Mile Circus ripped into high gear. The kitchens sizzled and smoked. There was a perpetuity of eating and drinking. The music never stopped. The vaudeville never ,ceased.
Inside his tent, Fourmyle changed his clothes, changed his mind, changed again, undressed again, kicked his valets, and called for his tailor in a bastard tongue of French, Mayfair, and affectation. Halfway into a new suit, he recollected he had neglected to bathe. He slapped his tailor, ordered ten gallons of scent to be decanted into the pool, and was stricken with poetic inspiration. He summoned his resident poet.
«Take this down,» Fourmyle commanded. «La TOz est mort, les…Wait. What rhymes to moon?»
«June,» his poet suggested. «Croon, soon, dune, loon, noon, rune, tune, boon. . .»
«I forgot my experiment!» Fourmyle exclaimed. «Dr. Bohun! Dr. Bohun!» Half-naked, he rushed pell-mell into the laboratory where he blew himself and Dr. Bohun, his resident chemist, halfway across the tent. As the chemist attempted to raise himself from the floor he found himself seized in a most painful and embarrassing strangle hold.
«Nogouchi!» Fourmyle shouted. «Hi! Nogouchi! I just invented a new judo hold.»
Fourmyle stood up, lifted the suffocating chemist and jaunted to the judo mat where the little Japanese inspected the hold and shook his head.
«No, please.» He hissed politely. «Hfffff. Pressure on windpipe are not perpetually lethal. Hfffff. I show you, please.» He seized the dazed chemist, whirled him and deposited him on the mat in a position of perpetual selfstrangulation. «You observe, please, Fourmyle?»
But Fourmyle was in the library bludgeoning his librarian over the head with Bloch's «Des Sexual Leben» (eight pounds, nine ounces) because that unhappy man could produce no text on the manufacture of perpetual motion machines.
A hairy head thrust out of a tent. «You studied for this speech last night, Fourmyle?»
«Damn right. For two hours I stoodied. Never took my head out of the hypno-oven. Kleinmann on Prestidigitation.»
«No, no, no!» the hairy man bawled. «How many times must I tell you? Prestidigitation is not speechmaking. Is magic. Dumbkopf! You had the wrong hypnosis taken!»
The scarlet underwear began melting. Fourmyle toppled from the shoulders of his shaking valets and disappeared within his tent. There was a roar of laughter and cheering and the Four Mile Circus ripped into high gear. The kitchens sizzled and smoked. There was a perpetuity of eating and drinking. The music never stopped. The vaudeville never ,ceased.
Inside his tent, Fourmyle changed his clothes, changed his mind, changed again, undressed again, kicked his valets, and called for his tailor in a bastard tongue of French, Mayfair, and affectation. Halfway into a new suit, he recollected he had neglected to bathe. He slapped his tailor, ordered ten gallons of scent to be decanted into the pool, and was stricken with poetic inspiration. He summoned his resident poet.
«Take this down,» Fourmyle commanded. «La TOz est mort, les…Wait. What rhymes to moon?»
«June,» his poet suggested. «Croon, soon, dune, loon, noon, rune, tune, boon. . .»
«I forgot my experiment!» Fourmyle exclaimed. «Dr. Bohun! Dr. Bohun!» Half-naked, he rushed pell-mell into the laboratory where he blew himself and Dr. Bohun, his resident chemist, halfway across the tent. As the chemist attempted to raise himself from the floor he found himself seized in a most painful and embarrassing strangle hold.
«Nogouchi!» Fourmyle shouted. «Hi! Nogouchi! I just invented a new judo hold.»
Fourmyle stood up, lifted the suffocating chemist and jaunted to the judo mat where the little Japanese inspected the hold and shook his head.
«No, please.» He hissed politely. «Hfffff. Pressure on windpipe are not perpetually lethal. Hfffff. I show you, please.» He seized the dazed chemist, whirled him and deposited him on the mat in a position of perpetual selfstrangulation. «You observe, please, Fourmyle?»
But Fourmyle was in the library bludgeoning his librarian over the head with Bloch's «Des Sexual Leben» (eight pounds, nine ounces) because that unhappy man could produce no text on the manufacture of perpetual motion machines.