Hawke, książki, po angielsku, h
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CHAPTER
ONE
"It's alive! It's alive!"
"Darling... come to bed."
"Just a minute," replied Marvin Brewster, staring raptly
at the television set where Colin Clive, in the role of Dr.
Victor Frankenstein, was gripped in a paroxysm of unholy
glee as his creation twitched to life on the laboratory table.
"Darling..." Her voice was low and throaty with a
British accent. "I'm waiting..."
"Ummm." Brewster didn't turn around. If he had, he
would have seen a sight that would have reduced most men
to drooling idiots. His fiancee. Dr. Pamela Fairbum, was
standing in the bedroom doorway, dressed in nothing but a
slinky negligee that was so sheer, it looked like a soft mist
enveloping her lush, voluptuous curves. She stood in a pose
of calculated seduction, one long and lovely leg bent at the
knee, one arm stretched out above her, pressed against the
door frame, her long auburn hair worn loose and cascading
down to her ample, perfumed cleavage....
Whoa, wait a minute. Let me catch my breath.
Sorry about that. Narrators are only human too, you
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know. Okay, now where were we? Oh, right. This gor-
geous, incredibly desirable woman is exuding premarital
lust all over the place and that fool, Brewster, is simply
sitting there and watching a monster movie on TV. Any
other red-blooded male would know exactly what to do,
right? You betcha. Hit that remote control and make a
beeline for the bedroom. Any normal, sensible man hearing
that incredibly sultry and seductive voice would turn around,
take one look, and experience the hormonal equivalent of a
nuclear meltdown. (And considering how beautiful Dr. Pamela
Fairbum was, a lot of women would, as well.) However,
Dr. Marvin Brewster was not exactly normal. Or sensible.
That is to say, he was incredibly intelligent—a genius, in
fact—but he didn't have a lot of street smarts.
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Nor was this just any movie. To Marvin Brewster, it was
the movie, the one that had the single most significant
impact on his formative years. The one that had made him
realize exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. He
first saw it at the age of nine and from that moment on, he
knew. He was going to be a mad scientist.
It wasn't Boris KarlofiFs portrayal of the monster that had
so affected him, nor the idea of creating life from sewn-
together pieces of dead bodies, it was that laboratory. All
that marvelous equipment. The bubbling vials and beakers,
the intricate plumbing and wiring, the spinning dials, the
Jacob's ladder arcing electrical current.... He took one
look at that wonderful laboratory and he fell in love, a love
far deeper and more abiding than he would ever feel for any
woman, even a woman as undeniably womanly as Pamela
Fairbum.
She knew and understood this. Earlier that evening, when
she had spotted the listing for the film, she'd realized what
was liable to happen and she had hidden the TV Guide, but
Brewster had just happened to turn on the tube after their
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 3
late-night dinner, and scanning through the channels, he'd
stumbled on the film. Now Pamela knew there'd be no
prying him away till it was over.
'She sighed with resignation and walked over to the couch
where he was sitting, settled down onto the floor beside
him, and leaned her head against his knee. Without turning
from the television, he offered her the bowl of popcorn. She
took a handful and popped it in her mouth. Even in her
sexiest lingerie, she knew she couldn't compete. She didn't
really mind, however. She understood about obsession. She
had one of her own, and that was her career as a cybernetics
engineer, which was how she had met Brewster.
It had been during a symposium at Cambridge. She'd
spotted him at once. He was the only American present, but
that wasn't what had made him stand out. There was just
something about him, about his rumpled, tweedy, and horn-
rimmed appearance, his curly and unkempt blond hair, his
rather shambling and distracted manner, and his total unself-
consciousness that had struck her as incredibly endearing.
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He was part little boy, part unmade t-?d. He had gotten to
her where she lived, where most women live, in fact. Right
smack in her maternal instinct. She wanted to pull him to
her breast and hug him to pieces.
She was later to discover that Brewster often had that
effect on women and part of his charm was that he was
totally oblivious to it. He was simply clueless. He was the
kind of man women wanted to mother into bed, only he was
so preoccupied and absentminded that if they succeeded, he
would probably forget why he was there. Pamela Fairbum
could have had any man she wanted. She could walk into a
crowded room and every man present would immediately go
on point. All she'd need to do to insure most men's undying
and slavish devotion would be to flutter her eyelashes and
act stupid. But with Marvin Brewster, she could be herself.
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Her intelligence did not intimidate him. More often than
not, it was the other way around. She could talk about her
work with him, and he could easily follow the discussion
and make acute and often brilliant observations, but then his
eyes would suddenly go dreamy and he'd launch into a
flight of technical verbosity that would leave her absolutely
breathless as his words tumbled over one another until he
became hopelessly tongue-tied and had to resort to scrib-
bling complicated equations on whatever surface was avail-
able. Even on the rare occasions when she was able to make
out his cramped scrawl, most of the time she could make no
sense of it.
Often, it was because his mind simply worked so quickly
that it would outrace his written calculations and he'd leave
things out, jumping on ahead, with no awareness that she
couldn't follow him. His brain would simply shift into warp
speed and he would rocket off into that rarified atmosphere
where only geniuses and angels fly and he'd finish off with a
triumphant, "There, you see?" And, of course, she wouldn't
see at all, but she would simply stare at him, eyes shining,
and she would say, "I love you."
They became engaged one year after their first meeting.
She had proposed to him, primarily because she'd realized
the thought would never have occurred to him. He needed
her, but he was simply too preoccupied to notice. The
ordinary details of everyday life were not Marvin Brewster's
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strong point. He was the classic absentminded professor.
His socks hardly ever matched. He wore loafers because he
would often forget to tie his shoelaces. He was simply
hopeless about clothes. Until she came along, he was
dressed by an understanding local haberdashery. He would
come in and simply say, "I need some ties," or a sport coat
or a shirt or two, and the helpful female sales clerk would
pick out something appropriate for him.
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It was the same with groceries. There was a young
woman who managed the local market who would call from
time to time and say, "Dr. Brewster? This is Sheila. You
haven't been in for a while and I thought you might be
running out." And he would walk over to the refrigerator or
the cupboard, stare into it absently for a moment or two,
then say distractedly, "Yes, I suppose I must be." Sheila
would then take the shopping cart around during her lunch
break, pick out his groceries for him, and have them
delivered. He never had to pay for them, either. The branch
manager at the local bank, also an attractive young woman,
had seen to it that he had accounts everywhere and that the
bills were sent directly to the bank.
The multinational conglomerate that employed Brewster
for an astronomical salary (that was still a pittance com-
pared to the profits they took in from the dozen or so patents
he'd turned over to them) always deposited his checks
directly into his accounts, so that Brewster never had to deal
with the various mundane tasks of shopping and record
keeping and checkbook balancing that plague most lesser
mortals.
How does one get a deal like this? The answer is, one
doesn't. It's not the sort of thing you can manage to
arrange, unless you happen to be born with a certain
indefinable and helpless charm that women find simply
irresistible. Ask any woman in London who knows him how
she feels about Dr. Marvin Brewster, and whether she's
sixteen or sixty, she'll sigh and her eyes will get all soft and
misty and she'll say, "He's such a dear man...."
When Pamela discovered just how many women felt this
way about her intended, she became a bit alarmed. She
seized the reins and took firm control of Marvin Brewster's
life. If there was any mothering to be done here, by God,
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she was going to be the one to do it! She moved in on
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Marvin Brewster like Grant moved in on Richmond. Now
all she had to do was figure out how to get him to the altar.
He had already missed three scheduled weddings.
The first time she'd been left waiting at the altar, the
wedding had completely slipped his mind and a frantic
search that included a check of half the pubs and all the
hospitals in London eventually found him deep in the stacks
of the science library—about eight hours too late. The
second time, once again, all the guests arrived, and Pamela
once more donned her wedding gown, and once again, no
Brewster. This time, he had driven off to Liverpool, to an
electronics warehouse, to pick up some obscure part for a
piece of lab equipment that was "absolutely vital" and
somehow he got sidetracked and no one saw or heard
anything from him for two days. The last time—"Shall we
try for three?" the minister had wryly asked—they located
him in his high-security, private laboratory high atop the
corporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo International,
only no one could get in past the retinal pattern scanner and
they couldn't even take the elevator up to the right floor
because the special palm scanner pad would only respond to
Marvin Brewster's hand. They had called and called, but
Brewster had been distracted by the ringing of the phone,
and absentmindedly, he had simply turned it off. The last
time, when the wedding invitations were sent out, most of
the guests sent back their regrets and their assurances that
they would be with them in spirit—whenever they finally
got around to getting married. Pamela's father still wasn't
speaking to her. Still, she was undaunted. One of these
days, she'd get it done, only it would require proper
planning. Perhaps next time she'd hire some security guards
to baby-sit him and deliver him to church on time.
She sat there with him, munching popcorn while Boris
Karloff lumbered through the film in his built-up boots and
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 7
makeup, and during the commercials, Brewster would be-
come absorbed in double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking
some kind of circuit board and switch assembly he had put
together on the coffee table.
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