"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)
She nodded.
"Well, did you ever get that from this chair? Or that piece of fruit you ate? Or the door over there?''
" 'Course not."
"Well, that's what you'll get from him, too."
"Like man we got papers from in office. Or police in clubs."
He nodded. "Yes, they're cymols."
"Only brain get switched?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Was wonderin' about other parts of body."
He chuckled. "They're still mere, but they're not important to the fellow anymore except as decoration, looking right. You might say that the flesh is willing but the spirit's not there at all."
That went by her, but she got the idea. "So nobody on this ship for me?"
"That's about it. Could you stand it?"
She shrugged. "Is no big deal. Is just a job, you know."
He had to chuckle at that. Every time he thought he had her figured out she threw him a curve. Maybe it would be interesting to see what others would make of her -- even a cymol.
He sighed. "Yes, Mother."
< Besides, you only got to work with the guy. Imagine that poor woman having to work there, too. This ship'II smell so much like an ancient tragedy, you might even figure you haven't got troubles. >
"That," he responded dryly, "is exactly the kind of viewpoint I would expect from you."
JUST OFF THE HOT PLANT
Tris Lankur looked and sounded so much the same that it was easy to fool oneself most of the time that nothing really had changed, that the hospital stay had been for some other sort of injury, that he was now back, hale, hearty, and healthy.
Oh, there were little things, things that you noticed only because you'd been so close to the man for so many years, but those you might force yourself to overlook. He no longer smoked or drank to excess, or vanished into the District now and again; he was a bit neater, a bit more fastidious, that kind of thing -- little things, easily dismissed or suppressed -- if only she hadn't been an empath.
Every living thing large enough to have a central nervous system gave off some sort of emotive radiation, even if it was just the fear and biochemical surge that a bug felt when chased by a boot trying to squash it. Emotional readings of aliens were often confusing or bizarre, and some couldn't be properly interpreted, but, unlike the telepath for whom there were races outside the common telepathic band, there was just about nothing living that was without some empathic radiation. To somebody born with that sense, it was simply a part of things, a part of life, a part of everyone's identity, as much as color and shape and voice and smell. To the empath, a person without this radiation was analogous to someone missing arms or legs or cruelly disfigured; it might not make a lot of real difference, but you could hardly avoid noticing it no matter how many times you saw them.
That had hit her as soon as they met him on discharge from the hospital. Her first hesitant words to him were ones she probably had never before needed to speak.
"How -- how do you feel?"
He smiled his old smile and shrugged. "Fine. Pretty good for a dead man, anyway. Is there anything wrong? Did they put my head on backwards or something?"
"No, nothing like that," she responded, not smiling at his typically flip humor as she would have in the past. "I'm an empath, remember?"
The reminder actually seemed to surprise him. "Huh. You know, I never thought of that. Until this point, I hadn't ever understood why Talents got the fits around cymols. I'll be damned. Hey -- I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do. I can't broadcast cheer or sadness or whatever. I guess it's just one of those things you're gonna have to learn to live with."
That's not the only thing, she thought sourly. Damn it! It was worse than she thought, because he wasn't really different. BF he moved differently or talked differently or had a major personality shift, it might actually have made it easier, but this was Tris here -- Tris, with something very important and very dear very obviously missing.
"Do you know what happened to you?" the Durquist asked him.
Tris sobered up and nodded. "Yeah, I know. I don't really remember -- I have a few gaps here and there all over the place and nothing since we left that canopy world at all -- but I know. I think it's best we don't dwell on it much. I never really figured on the empathic business, though. Telepaths are easy to understand, but it just didn't translate over to empaths as well. Think she can handle it?"
"I don't know. We have a job that has been waiting on your discharge, and that will tell the tale."
"Has she been seeing a psych?"
"Yes, but I gather that they want her to go on this one just to convince herself that it's over for her. I think they want her to quit and this is the cold shower, and I think she will. You are, after all, a walking knife directly in her guilt center."
Tris Lankur gave a soft, wry smile to himself and said, softly, "Well, maybe there is a bit of justice in all that."
The Durquist's eyestalks quivered in its equivalent of raised eyebrows, and it wondered for a moment if there was more Tris and less illusion here than they had indicated. Who, after all, but a cymol, and its Guardian programmers, knew just what it was like to be one? Indeed, the nature of the beast made it probable that not even any two cymols were exactly alike.
"You've found a telepath that will work with me?" Tris asked the Durquist.
"Yes, but I have grave reservations about the package I had to buy with him. It wasn't easy, Tris. We are talking the bottom here, not of the proverbial barrel, but the bottom of a black hole. I'll fill you in on the way. Tomorrow the two of you will meet in the briefing and then you can see what I mean, and we will see just how much this fellow wants out."
That night, Tris Lankur did not go to his small apartment. Instead, he remained in the shipyard. Because a cymol still had a human body and part of a human brain, some rest was required, but very little compared to the normal person, and never quite true sleep. If need be, he could rest parts of his body in stages, and go for a very long time without really resting at all.
He had left the hospital with a small suitcase; now, with everyone else gone, he opened it and carefully removed two gray, oblong boxes. One had a handle and was his portable unit; the other he spent several hours installing in his cabin on the Widowmaker so that when he was done, it was well-disguised but linked into all ship's systems, including communications and the master computer.
Then he went back to the office, rooted around, found some beer in the small refrigerator and a box of stale cereal, and did what he could. The body was still the body and it required what all bodies required, something he had to be constantly mindful of. This wasn't what his body needed for peak efficiency, and he would have to insure that a proper and exacting balance of such things was aboard or programmed into the food synthesizer on the ship, but it would do for now.
Finishing the "supper," he went to the box with the handle and placed both thumbs in spots only he could sense and which were attuned to him and him alone. A small crack appeared about fifteen centimeters from the top, and he slid it back with his thumbs. Then he disconnected the master cable from the rear of the master terminal on his desk and plugged it into a socket inside the box. Next, he pulled out a long, thin cable with a small, membranous end, then pulled over his big reclining desk chair and sat down. Holding the box cable in his left hand, he reached up with his other hand and removed a thick segment of hair, putting the very real-looking hair patch on the desk. Where the patch had been there was now visible in his skull a small plate composed of myriad silver contacts against a flat copper-colored backing. He fixed the cable to the plate, smoothed out the membrane, settled back, and appeared to fall fast asleep.
Jimmy McCray felt the oddest mixture of emotions of his life sitting there in the common briefing room, and he knew that the redhead, Modra, the empath, was probably getting it double, feeling like he felt and also getting his own drift. He wished he could damp it down, but there was no way even Grysta could help very much here.
Cymol. . . That's a dead man there. . . .
Trannon Kose, the somewhat introverted creature who was the team controller, came out of his shell when it was all business, and began the meeting.
"This is a job like no other," he began. "Three other Exchange teams have had a crack at it and come back empty, and we're pretty sure the Mycohl have snuck in and had more than one go at it themselves. In all other cases, we have had a planet at least well-mapped and checked out by automated equipment under the command of an experienced scout -- for all the good that does."
That produced some wry smiles, among those who could smile.
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