"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 03 - Woodsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Freddy's voice was not the mellow bass it once had been. It croaked. It
squeaked. It wobbled and skittered and scratched upon the eardrum.

Calla Laffiter left the sofa and touched his shoulder. He fell quiet,
tears glistening in his own eyes. Into the silence, she said, "He has been
profoundly changed. You understand that. It's no wonder that his voice is
different, or that he is not yet used enough to it to control it well. Give
him time."

The Times reporter raised his hand. "Mr. Suida. I'm sorry."

The woman from the Enquirer smirked again. "And what will you do now,
Freddy?"

He could only shrug. He did not know.
 CHAPTER 2



Beside the long, low building's front door was a small brass plaque that
said, "Agricultural Testing Service, Inc." Frederick Suida snorted. The man he
had come to see knew as much about farming as he did about mining the moon.

Beside Frederick, a German shepherd with an over-large head growled as if
in agreement with the snort. The man cut him off with a gentle thump and a
scratch behind one ear. "Enough, Renny." Then he shifted the dog's collar,
repositioning the small lump of the court-ordered radio tracker beneath his
throat. The dog had supposedly been named for a star of ancient veedo tales of
an even more ancient time when the cavalry had always been ready to ride to
the rescue. The cavalry no longer existed. Nor was this an age of heroes.

When the man opened the building's door, the dog pushed past him, tail
high and oscillating easily from side to side, sniffing, into a room that held
a dust-filmed reception counter, a small couch, three molded chairs, and an
arching tangle of bioluminescent vines rooted in a large pot. There was no
receptionist, nor any sign of human occupancy. A single door, ajar, confirmed
that there was more to the establishment.

Frederick stared at the wall behind the reception counter and called,
"Jeremy Duncan?" He winced at the sound of his voice. Ever since his
conversion, his voice had been prone to squealing when he shouted.

A sudden thudding bang suggested that someone had heard and dropped his
feet from a desktop or windowsill to a carpeted floor. A moment later, a man
stood in the room's doorway, one hand holding a bottle of moisturizing lotion.
He was short, chubby, and balding, and his chest was bare beneath an open
white labcoat. The slits that marked his gills were red lines on the sides of
his chest. The skin around them looked inflamed. It also glistened with
lotion.