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

He stared into the mirror, and recoiled from the sight. If this is what sex with that damned Flinn does to a
guy, I’m going celibate.
He was totally bald.
The wispy hair he recalled brushing out of his face during the previous on-shift, was gone. His head was
smooth and pale as a fortune teller’s crystal ball.
He had no eyelashes.
He had no eyebrows.
His chest was smooth as a woman’s.
His pubis had been denuded.
His fingernails were almost translucent, as though the uppermost layers of dead horn had been removed.
He looked in the mirror again. He saw himself... more or less. Not very much less, actually: no more than a
pound of him was gone. But it was a noticeable pound.
His hair.
Assorted warts, moles, scar tissue and calluses.
The protective hairs in his nostrils.
His kneecaps, elbows and heels were scoured pink.
Joe Pareti found he was still holding the razor. He put it down. And stared at himself in horrified fascination
for several timeless moments. He had a ghastly feeling he knew what had happened to him. I’m in deep trouble, he
thought.
He went looking for the TexasTower’s doctor. He was not in the sickbay. He found him in the
pharmacology lab. The doctor took one look and preceded him back to sickbay. Where he confirmed Pareti’s
suspicions.
The doctor was a quiet, orderly man named Ball. Very tall, very thin, with an irreducible amount of
professional ghoulishness. Normally he was inclined to gloom; but looking at the hairless Pareti he cheered
perceptibly.
Pareti felt himself being dehumanized. He had followed Ball into the sickbay as a man; now he felt himself
transformed into a specimen, a diseased culture to be peered at under a macroscope.
“Hah, yes,” the doctor said. “Interesting. Would you turn your head, please? Good...good...fine, now blink.”
Pareti did as he was told. Ball jotted down notes, turned on the recording cameras, and hummed to himself
as he arranged a tray of shining instruments.
“You’ve caught it, of course,” Ball said, almost as an afterthought.
“Caught what?” Pareti demanded, hoping he’d get some other answer.
“Ashton’s Disease. Goo infection, if you like, but we call it Ashton’s, after the first case.” Then he chuckled
to himself: “I don’t suppose you thought it was dermatitis?”
Pareti thought he heard eerie music, an organ, a harpsichord.
Ball went on. “Your case is atypical, just like all the others, so, really, that makes it typical. It has a rather ugly
Latin name, as well, but Ashton’s will do.”
“Stuff all that,” Pareti said angrily. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Why do you think you get high-hazard, why do you think they keep me on board? I’m no G.P., I’m a
specialist. Of course I’m absolutely sure. You’re only the sixth recorded case. Lancet and the AMA Journal will be
interested. In fact, with the proper presentation Scientific American might care to publish an article.”
“What can you do for me?” Pareti snapped.
“I can offer you a drink of excellent pre-War Bourbon,” Dr.Ball said. “Not a specific for your ailment, but
good for the whole man, so to speak.”
“Stop screwing around with me. I don’t think it’s a haha. Isn’t there anything else? You’re a specialist!”
Ball seemed to realize for the first time that his black humor was not being received with wild enthusiasm.
“Mr. Pareti, medical science admits of no impossibility, not even the reversal of biological death. But that is a
statement of theory. There are many things we could try. We could hospitalize you, stuff you with drugs, irradiate
your skin, smear you with calamine lotion, even conduct experiments in homeopathy and acupuncture and
moxibustion. But this would have no practical effect, except to make you very uncomfortable. In the present state of