"Harlan Ellison - Pa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

our knowledge, Ashton’s is irreversible and, uh, terminal.”
Pareti swallowed hard at the last word.
Oddly, Ball smiled and added, “You might as well relax and enjoy it.”
Pareti moved a step toward him, angrily. “You’re a morbid son of a bitch!”
“Please excuse my levity,” the doctor said quickly. “I know I have a dumb sense of humor. I don’t rejoice in
your fate...really, I don’t...I’m bored on this desolate Tower...I’m happy to have some real work. But I can see you don’t
know much about Ashton’s...the disease may not be too difficult to live with. “
“I thought you said it was terminal?”
“So I did. But then, everything is terminal, even health, even life itself. The question is how long, and in what
manner.”
Pareti slumped down into a Swedish-designed relaxer chair that converted--when the stirrups were elevated
into a dilation-and-curretage brace-framework for abortions. “I have a feeling you’re going to lecture me,” he said,
with sudden exhaustion.
“Forgive me. It’s so dull for me here.”
“Go on, go on, for Christ’s sake.” Pareti wobbled his hand wearily.
“Well, the answer is ambiguous, but not unpromising,” Ball said, settling with enthusiasm into his recitation.
“I told you, I believe, that the most typical thing about the disease is it atypicality.Let us consider your illustrious
predecessors.
“Case One died within a week of contracting the disease, apparently of a pneumonic complication...”
Pareti looked sick. “Swell,” he said.
“Ah! But Case Two,” Ball caroled, “Case Two was Ashton, after whom the Disease was named. He became
voluble, almost echolalic. One day, before a considerable crowd, he levitated to a height of eighteen feet. He hung
there without visible support, haranguing the crowd in a hermetic language of his own devising. Then he vanished,
into thin air (but not too thin for him) and was never heard from again. Hence, Ashton’s Disease. Case Three…
“What happened to Ashton?” Pareti asked, a vapor of hysteria in his voice.
Ball spread his hands, without an answer. Pareti looked away..
“Case Three found that he could live underwater, though not in the air. He spent two happy years in the
coral reefs off Marathon, Florida.”
“What happened to him?” Pareti asked.
“A pack of dolphins did him in. It was the first recorded instance of a dolphin attacking a man. We have
often wondered what he said to them.”
“And the others?”
“Case Four is currently living in the Ausable Chasm community. He operates a mushroom farm. He’s
become” quite rich. We can’t detect any effect of the disease beyond loss of hair and dead skin (in that way, your
cases are similar, but it may be just coincidence).He has a unique way with mushrooms, of course.”
“That sounds good,” Pareti brightened.
“Perhaps. But Case Five is unfortunate. A really amazing degeneration of the organs, accompanied by a
simultaneous external growth of same. This left him with a definitely surrealistic look: heart hanging below his left
armpit, intestines wrapped around his waist, that sort of thing. Then he began to develop a chitinous exo-skeleton,
antennae, scales, feathers-his body couldn’t seem to decide what it was evolving into. It opted at last for earth.
wormdom--an anaerobic species, quite unusual. He was last seen burrowing into sandy loam near Point Judith. Sonar
followed him for several months, all the way to central Pennsylvania.”
Pareti shuddered. “Did he die then?” Again, Ball spread his hands, no answer. “We don’t know. He may be in
a burrow, quiescent, parthenogenetic, hatching the eggs of an inconceivable new species. Or he may have evolved into
the ultimate skeletal form...unliving, indestructible rock.”
Pareti clasped his hairless hands, and shivered like a child. “Jesus,” he murmured, “what a beautiful prospect.
Something I can really look forward to.”
“The form of your particular case might be pleasant,” Ball ventured.
Pareti looked up at him with open malice. II Aren’t you the smooth bastard, though’ Sit out here in the
water and laugh your ass off while the goo nibbles on some guy you never met before. What the hell do you do for