Read Online Kleinzeit by Russell Hoban - Free Book Online Page A

Pink. ‘If you were, say, twenty years older … How old are you?’
    ‘Forty-five.’ The tomcat came into his mind again. Dead for twenty years.
    ‘Right,’ said Dr Pink. ‘If you were twenty years older I’d say live with it, you know. Diet and all that. Why get rough with your insides at that age. But as it is I don’t mind coming to grips with the thing sooner if it means we’re in a better position to avoid infinite regress later.’
    Sooner, later, thought Kleinzeit. I can feel myself infinitely regressing right now. ‘What thing?’ he said.
    ‘That’s what I’m coming to,’ said Dr Pink. ‘I’m for makinga clean sweep: hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto out before they do any more acting up. They want to play rough, very well, we’ll
play
rough.’ Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna showed by the light in their eyes that Dr Pink had the kind of boldness that commanded their respect.
    ‘Out,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What do they do? I mean, weren’t they put there for something?’ They’ve been with the organization for forty-five years, he thought. Now all of a sudden it’s Thank you very much and all the best. On the other hand there’s very little doubt they’re out to get me.
    ‘We don’t know an awful lot about hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto,’ said Dr Pink. The three younger doctors expressed with one collective look that Dr Pink was a deep one. ‘The hypotenuse of course is the
AB
connection that keeps your angle right. Subtention. Well and good I say, for as long as you can keep it up. With hypotenuse going twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, you oughtn’t to be surprised if there’s some strain as time goes on. You may experience flashes from
A
to
B
as hypotenuse, while maintaining right angle, begins to skew. That’s when I say, you know, Time, gentlemen. Time for hypotenuse to go. Some of my colleagues have pointed out that obtuseness or acuteness invariably follows its removal. My answer is So what. You can jolly well keep your angle right while everything else collapses around it and then where are you.’
    Nowhere, said the faces of Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna.
    ‘Asymptotes,’ said Dr Pink, ‘seem purely vestigial, having no function other than not meeting the curve they continually approach. I don’t hold with that sort of thing. What I say is If you’re not going to meet the curve why bother to approach it. Naturally there’s going to be tension, and some of us tolerate it better than others. If we try to lean away from the tension there’ll be changes in axis and pitch until eventually there’s a double divergence and there youare with asymptotic intersection. That’s when people come to me and say, “My goodness, Doctor, that doesn’t feel good at all, I can’t get any sleep at night.” You can guess what my answer is: no asymptotes, no intersection.’
    That certainly follows, said the smiles of the three young resident doctors.
    Dr Pink lowered his eyes tactfully, picked up his stethoscope as if he might sing into it, put it down again. ‘The stretto, old man, you know, well, there it is. Perhaps we’re no longer quite in the first flush of youth and we’re under pressure of one sort or another, and one morning we wake up and suddenly we’re aware of stretto. As we get on, you see, the fugal system has a little more trouble spacing out subject and answer, and if entries come too fast it’s rather like Sunday traffic on the M4. And there you jolly well are with a blocked stretto. Now, the only known function of the stretto being to channel entries, it’s of no use whatever if it’s blocked. You’ll feel a little breathless and as if everything is piling up inside you from behind while at the same time you’re quite unable to move forward to get away from it. Naturally that’s distressing, not to mention the possibility of worse trouble later on. What I say is Do it to stretto before stretto, you know, does it to