Robert A Heinlein - Lost Legacy (1)

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Lost Legacy
Robert A. Heinlein
Chapter 1 Ye Have Eyes to See With!”
Chapter 2 Three Blind Mice
Chapter 3Every Man His Own Genius”
Chapter 4 Holiday
Chapter 5 “—Through a Glass, Darkly”
Chapter 6 Ichabod!
Chapter 7 “The Fathers Have Eaten Sour Grapes,
Chapter 8 “Precept Upon Precept . . .”
Chapter 9 Fledglings Fly
Chapter 10 Lions Mouth
Chapter 11 “A Little Child Shall Lead Them”
Chapter 12 “Ye Shall Know the Truth-“
Chapter 13 “—and the Truth Shall Make You Free!”
Lost Legacy
Robert A. Heinlein
CHAPTER ONE
“Ye Have Eyes to See With!”
“HI-YAH, BUTCHER!” Doctor Philip Huxley put down the dice cup
he had been fiddling with as he spoke, and shoved out a chair with
his foot. “Sit down.”
The man addressed ostentatiously ignored the salutation while
handing a yellow slicker and soggy felt hat to the Faculty Clubroom
attendant, but accepted the chair. His first words were to the negro
attendant.
“Did you hear that, Pete? A witch doctor, passing himself off as a
psychologist, has the effrontery to refer to me—to me, a licensed
physician and surgeon, as a butcher.” His voice was filled with
gentle reproach.
“Don’t let him kid you, Pete. If Doctor Coburn ever got you into an
operating theatre, he’d open up your head just to see what makes
you tick. He’d use your skull to make an ashtray.”
The man grinned as he wiped the table, but said nothing.
Cobum clucked and shook his head. “That from a witch doctor. Still
looking for the Little Man Who Wasn’t There, Phil?”
“If you mean parapsychology, yes.”
“How’s the racket coming?”
“Pretty good. I’ve got one less lecture this semester, which is just
as well—I get awfully tired of explaining to the wide-eyed innocents
how little we really know about what goes on inside their think-
tanks. I’d rather do research.”
“Who wouldn’t? Struck any pay dirt lately?”
“Some. I’m having a lot of fan with a law student just now, chap
named Valdez.”
Coburn lifted his brows. „So? E.S.P.?“
“Kinda. He’s sort of a clairvoyant; if he can see one side of an
object, he can see the other side, too.”
“Nuts!”
“ ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ I’ve tried him out under
carefully controlled conditions, and he can do it—see around
comers.”
“Hmmmm—well, as my Grandfather Stonebender used to say,
‘God has more aces up his sleeve than were ever dealt in the
game.’ He would be a menace at stud poker.”
2
“Matter of fact, he made his stake for law school as a professional
gambler.”
“Found out how he does it?”
“No, damn it.” Huxley drummed on the table top, a worried look on
his face. “If I just had a little money for research I might get enough
data to make this sort of thing significant. Look at what Rhine
accomplished at Duke.”
“Well, why don’t you holler? Go before the Board and bite ‘em in
the ear for it. Tell ‘em how you’re going to make Western
University famous.”
Huxley looked still more morose. “Fat chance. I talked with my
dean and he wouldn’t even let me take it up with the President.
Scared that the old fathead will clamp down on the department
even more than he has. You see, officially, we are supposed to be
behaviorists. Any suggestion that there might be something to
consciousness that can’t be explained in terms of physiology and
mechanics is about as welcome as a Saint Bernard in a telephone
booth.”
The telephone signal glowed red back of the attendant’s counter.
He switched off the newscast and answered the call. “Hello . . .
Yes, ma’am, he is. I’ll call him. Telephone for you, Doctuh Coburn.”
“Switch it over here.” Cobum turned the telephone panel at the
table around so that it faced him; as he did so it lighted up with the
face of a young woman. He picked up the handset. “What is it? ...
What’s that? How long ago did it happen? . . . Who made the
diagnosis? . . . Read that over again . . . Let me see the chart.” He
inspected its image reflected in the panel, then added, “Very well.
I’ll be right over. Prepare the patient for operating.” He switched off
the instrument and turned to Huxley. “Got to go, Phil—emergency.”
“What sort?”
“It’ll interest you. Trephining. Maybe some cerebral excision. Car
accident. Come along and watch it, if you have time.” He was
putting on his slicker as he spoke. He turned and swung out the
west door with a long, loose-limbed stride. Huxley grabbed his own
raincoat and hurried to catch up with him.
3
“How come,” he asked as he came abreast, “they had to search for
you?”
“Left my pocketphone in my other suit,” Coburn returned briefly.
“On purpose—I wanted a little peace and quiet. No luck.”
They worked north and west through the arcades and passages
that connected the Union with the Science group, ignoring the
moving walkways as being too slow. But when they came to the
conveyor subway under Third Avenue opposite the Pottenger
Medical School, they found it flooded, its machinery stalled, and
were forced to detour west to the Fairfax Avenue conveyor.
Cobum cursed impartially the engineers and the planning
commission for the fact that spring brings torrential rains to
Southern California, Chamber of Commerce or no.
They got rid of their wet clothes in the Physicians’ Room and
moved on to the gowning room for surgery. An orderly helped
Huxley into white trousers and cotton shoe covers, and they
moved to the next room to scrub. Coburn invited Huxley to scrub
also in order that he might watch the operation close up. For three
minutes by the little sand glass they scrubbed away with strong
green soap, then stepped through a door and were gowned and
gloved by silent, efficient nurses. Huxley felt rather silly to be
helped on with his clothes by a nurse who had to stand on tip-toe
to get the sleeves high enough. They were ushered through the
glass door into surgery III, rubber-covered hands held out, as if
holding a skein of yarn.
The patient was already in place on the table, head raised up and
skull clamped immobile. Someone snapped a switch and a
merciless circle of blue-white lights beat down on the only portion
of him that was exposed, the right side of his skull. Coburn glanced
quickly around the room, Huxley following his glance—light green
walls, two operating nurses, gowned, masked, and hooded into
sexlessness, a ‘dirty’ nurse, busy with something in the corner, the
anesthetist, the instruments that told Coburn the state of the
patient’s heart action and respiration.
A nurse held the chart for the surgeon to read. At a word from
Coburn, the anesthetist uncovered the patient’s face for a moment.
Lean brown face, acquiline nose, closed sunken eyes. Huxley
repressed an exclamation. Coburn raised his eyebrows at Huxley.
4
“What’s the trouble?”
“It’s Juan Valdez!”
“Who’s he?”
“The one I was telling you about—the law student with the trick
eyes.”
“Hmm —Well, his trick eyes didn’t see around enough corners this
time. He’s lucky to be alive. You’ll see better, Phil, if you stand
over there.”
Cobum changed to impersonal efficiency, ignored Huxley’s
presence and concentrated the whole of his able intellect on the
damaged flesh before him. The skull had been crushed, or
punched, apparently by coming into violent contact with some hard
object with moderately sharp edges. The wound lay above the
right ear, and was, superficially, two inches, or more, across. It
was impossible, before exploration, to tell just how much damage
had been suffered by the bony structure and the grey matter
behind.
Undoubtedly there was some damage to the brain itself. The
wound had been cleaned up on the surface and the area around it
shaved and painted. The trauma showed up as a definite hole in
the cranium. It was bleeding slightly and was partly filled with a
curiously nauseating conglomerate of clotted purple blood, white
tissue, grey tissue, pale yellow tissue.
The surgeon’s lean slender fingers, unhuman in their pale orange
coverings, moved gently, deftly in the wound, as if imbued with a
separate life and intelligence of their own. Destroyed tissue, too
freshly dead for the component cells to realize it, was cleared
away—chipped fragments of bone, lacerated mater dura, the grey
cortical tissue of the cerebrum itself.
Huxley became fascinated by the minuscule drama, lost track of
time, and of the sequence of events. He remembered terse orders
for assistance, “Clamp!” “Retractor!” “Sponge!” The sound of the
tiny saw, a muffled whine, then the toothtingling grind it made in
cutting through solid living bone. Gently a spatu-late instrument
was used to straighten out the tortured convolutions. Incredible
5
摘要:

LostLegacyRobertA.HeinleinChapter1YeHaveEyestoSeeWith!”Chapter2ThreeBlindMiceChapter3“EveryManHisOwnGenius”Chapter4HolidayChapter5“—ThroughaGlass,Darkly”Chapter6Ichabod!Chapter7“TheFathersHaveEatenSourGrapes,Chapter8“PreceptUponPrecept...”Chapter9FledglingsFlyChapter10LionsMouthChapter11“ALittleChil...

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分类:外语学习 价格:5.9玖币 属性:96 页 大小:469.26KB 格式:PDF 时间:2024-11-30

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