"Chalker, Jack L - A Jungle Of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

The doctor had not taken his eyes off Savage since he'd entered the room. Savage almost managed to focus on the doctor; he still felt lousy, which, if memory served, wasn't supposed to be in the script.
"Sheeit," he managed, more to himself than to the doctor, who smiled brightly at the comment. Savage noted that the two of him were merging more and more into one distinct figure.
"Can you hear me?" the doctor repeated softly.
Savage felt as if his mouth was full of cotton. he exercised his jaws and tongue, trying to get some moisture going.
"Yeah, I hear you, Doc," he croaked at last.
"Do you remember your name?" the doctor prodded. "Can you recall things about yourself?"
"Yeah . . . sure. Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, et cetera, et cetera. What the hell happened, Doc?" The other man shook his head.
"I wish we knew. You are a medical impossibility, shot in the back and hand. The hand isn't serious, but the back -- Jesus, man, you got scars a million miles long back there! I wasn't here when they brought you in last week, but I know all the reports said 'dead and gone.'"
"Well, I -- Did you say last week?"
The doctor nodded. "Oh, you were only in the meat locker for a few hours, fortunately, or the cold would've finished you. But you've been in a coma for over eight days. I wasn't sure if you were ever going to come out of it."
Something in the back of Savage's mind nagged at him. Only a few hours to bargain for a man's soul and accomplish a complete resurrection, yet eight days out cold afterward. Why? Instant healing, but eight days out and feeling lousy?
What might Hunter have done to him that took eight days?
"Savage? You O.K.?" the doctor asked, concerned about his patient's sudden lapse into silence and inattention.
Savage shook himself free of such thinking -- at least for the time being.
"Oh, yeah, sure. . . Doc. Just thinking. It's not every day you come back from the dead. . ."
"That's an understatement. While you were out, I took every X-ray and did every test imagined -- and a few I thought up. The bullet seems to have missed just about everything -- except for one of only two or three spots in the whole torso where an AK-47 can hit and do so little internal damage. One chance in a billion. Almost no serious internal disruption, and the few that were there we cleared up in a three-hour operation. No complications. And that nice scar, of course."
Nice touch, that, Savage reflected. Just enough crumbs for them to make up their own explanation of how be survived. Plant a few clues and let the ignorant write their own script.
"One thing bothers me, though," the doctor continued. "I couldn't find that damned bullet! It's as if it dissolved in the body!"
Savage managed a shrug. "Well, I can't explain things if you can't, Doc. I'm just glad to be alive. Any other problems?"
"Nothing much -- except the hand, of course. And some lingering effects of the cold you took for those hours. I'll keep you for a few weeks for tests and observations. Then we'll get you out of here and back home with an artificial hand."
He turned to go.
"Hey, Doc!" Savage called after him. "Where's 'here'?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right. You're in Markland Hospital in the Philippines."
The sergeant came back in and sat back down in his chair.
"You my watchdog?" Savage asked him.
The medic shrugged and looked sheepish. "Just part of the job," he replied.
"What's your name?" Savage asked conversationally.
"Cohen, sir."
"Well, Sergeant Cohen, relax and don't worry about me. Do you play gin?"
"I think I've played it once or twice," the sergeant replied playfully. "Maybe I can dig up some cards in a day or so."
"You do that, Sergeant, and I'll see if I can beat you left-handed."
He realized with a start that he felt really good. All of the dismal miseries were gone. He had never felt better in his life. Somehow he suspected that the reappearance of a doctor would bring back just enough of them.
Who or whatever was looking over him was making certain that this medical marvel was convincing.


It had been almost four weeks since Paul Savage was murdered and the deed man was feeling fine. The tests had gone predictably; he'd had little trouble walking after the first time or two; and he was getting used to doing things with his left hand, although writing still caine hard.
In fact, his progress had been so good that they had sent a man around during the second week to measure his stump and check his muscle placement and development. A day or two after that, they'd fitted him with a mechanical claw-like appendage and given him various exercises to increase his proficiency in its use and build up the necessary muscle coordination to use it. As he'd already read seven novels and now owed Cohen $1,428.63 from playing gin, he was ripe for something else and spent almost every waking moment practicing. The therapists were amazed at his progress. By the start of the fourth week, he was using the metal claw almost as if he had been born with it.
His progress amazed him, too. Never in his life had he been able to concentrate so well, think so clearly, be so much in command of his entire body. He had always been far above most other people in intelligence, but now he found that he was able to put his potential to its fullest use.
Slowly, he began to think of himself as no longer quite human. Oh, same form, same memories. But subtly altered, a fine machine that was of the man but not the man himself.
Hunter had said something about being able to play games with his molecular structure. It was becoming apparent that there was more to it than that. He had been taken apart and redesigned -- engineered.
For whom?
For what?
He began to wonder when he would be drafted. They seemed in no hurry.
On his thirty-fourth day after the resurrection, they pronounced him fit enough to go home. It was only when he went down to the out-processing section at the airport that it occurred to him that McNally and the rest of the squad were short-timers. A couple of bottles of booze and a session with a couple of personnel men he knew got him access to the files, and a little "officious" act scared the private in Records into punching the two names he'd pulled into the computer.
The clerk was a nervous little man who obviously hadn't been out of his air-conditioned office since reaching the Far East. Savage presented an imposing figure looming over the little private at his big console, the lieutenant's reflection in the CRT glass an intimidating reminder of himself. Savage was over six feet, and powerfully built. His face was of almost the idealized gangster of the 1920s: rough, pock-marked from a severe adolescent bout with acne, and a long scar down his right cheek. His lips formed an almost permanent sneer due to a corrective hairlip operation when he was a baby, and his crooked boxer's nose added a further sinister touch. His bushy eyebrows were gray in color, like his hair, although he was barely thirty; and they met at the bridge of his nose. He looked more like a Neanderthal than anything else, and the extreme hairiness of his body had always made him the object of derision by his peers as a youth.
"Yaa! Yaa! Ape man!"
His cold, steely-blue eyes glared as the clerk punched in the names:


MC NALLY, JON OR JOHN F X