"Gordon R. Dickson - Danger-Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the doctor's
woolly face, looking down at him-he had learned to recognize that
countenance in the same way a sheep-herder eventually comes to
recognize individual sheep in his flock. Eldridge felt very weak, but calm.
"You tried hard--" said the doctor. "But you see, you didn't make it.
There's no way out that way for you."
Eldridge smiled.
"Stop that!" said the doctor sharply. "You aren't fooling us. We know
you're perfectly rational."
Eldridge continued to smile.
"What do you think you're doing?" demanded the doctor. Eldridge
looked happily up at him.
"I'm going home," he said.
"I'm sorry," said the doctor. "You don't convince me." He turned and
left. Eldridge turned over on his side and dropped off into the first good
sleep he'd had in months.


In spite of himself, however, the doctor was worried. He had the guards
doubled, but nothing happened. The days slipped into weeks again and
nothing happened. Eldridge was apparently fully recovered. He still spent
a great deal of time walking up and down his cage and grasping the bars
as if to pull them out of the way before him-but the frenzy of his earlier
pacing was gone. He had also moved his cot over next to the small,
two-foot square hatch that opened to admit the mechanical arm bearing
his meals, and would lie there, with his face pressed against it, waiting for
the food to be delivered. The doctor felt uneasy, and spoke to the
commander privately about it.
"Well," said the commander, "just what is it you suspect?"
"I don't know," confessed the doctor. "It's just that I see him more
frequently than any of us. Perhaps I've become sensitized-but he bothers
me."
"Bothers you?"
 "Frightens me, perhaps. I wonder if we've taken the right way with
him."
"We took the only way." The commander made the little gesture and
sound that was his race's equivalent of a sigh. "We must have data. What
do you do when you run across a possibly dangerous virus, doctor? You
isolate it-for study, until you know. It is not possible, and too risky to try
to study his race at close hand, so we study him. That's all we're doing.
You lose Objectivity, doctor. Would you like to take a short vacation?"
"No," said the doctor, slowly. "No. But he frightens me."


Still, time went on and nothing happened. Eldridge paced his cage and
lay on his cot, face pressed to the bars of the hatch, and staring at the
outside world. Another year passed; and another. The double guards were
withdrawn. The doctor came reluctantly to the conclusion that the human
had at last accepted the fact of his confinement and felt growing within
him that normal sort of sympathy that feeds on familiarity. He tried to