（外文电子版资料）Alfred Bester - Hobson s Choiche.pdfVIP

file:///G|/rah/Alfred%20Bester%20-%20Hobsons%20%20Choice.txt Hobson’s Choice This is a warning to accomplices like you, me and Addyer. Can you spare price of one cup coffee, honoTable sir? I am indigent organism which are hungering. By day, Addyer was a statistician. He concerned himself with such matters as statistical tables, averages and dispersions, groups that are not homogeneous and random sampling. At night, Addyer plunged into an elaborate escape fantasy divided into two parts. Either he imagined himself moved back in time a hundred years with a double armful of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, best- sellers, hit plays and gambling records; or else he imagined himself transported forward in time a thousand years to the Golden Age of perfection. There were other fantasies which Addyer entertained on odd Thursdays, such as (by a fluke) becoming the only man left on earth with a world of passionate beauties to fecundate; such as acquiring the power of invisibility which would enable him to rob banks and right wrongs with impunity; such as possessing the mysterious power of working miracles. Up to this point you and I and Addyer are identical. Where we part company is in the fact that Addyer was a statistician. Can you spare cost of one cup coffee, honorable miss? For blessed charitability? I am beholden. On Monday, Addyer rushed into his chief’s office, waving a sheaf of papers. “Look here, Mr. Grande,” Addyer sputtered. “I’ve found something fishy. Extremely fishy . . . In the statistical sense, that is.” “Oh, hell,” Grande answered. “You’re not supposed to be finding anything. We’re in between statistics until the war’s over.” “I was leafing through the Interior Department’s reports. D’you know our popu’ation’s up?” “Not after the atom bomb it isn’t,” said Grande. “We’ve lost double what our birthrate can replace.” He pointed out the window to the twenty-fi