"Philip Jose Farmer - Biological Revolt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

"Barbara! If you knew how lonely I am."

Trembling, she said," Besides, how could you want me now?" She glanced at the door where the man,
Travers, had left.

He gripped the sill tighter, as if the house were whirling and he didn't want to fall off.

For the first time, she stepped toward him. She yelled, "Do you think you are the only one who's
lonely?"

"No, no--I understand. But remember, Barbara, we said, `for better or worse, till death do us part.'"

She screamed, "Get out, Bill. I wish youwere dead! Youare dead, to me! Get out before I kill you ... Or
myself!" She turned and ran through the door.



2



The man walked alone.

His passage from the house through narrow woods was marked by solitude and terror. Mosquitoes,
thirsty, swooped toward him. Closer, they suddenly angled off and flew away. They wanted none ofhis
stench. A frog, sitting apart from the path flopped away panicked through the weeds. A coon, clinging to
a branch and complacently watching the man, suddenly sniffed. It scuttled up the tree and clung to the
bending tip. This man, Bill Ogtate, was the Asp.

The terror he breathed and sweated with every second was his curse. Victim of man's revenge and
ingenuity, he was doomed for eight years to imbue with the asp all who came close. His free will had
been violated, but the horrified world could not help him. Their sympathy and aid came from a distance;
nobody could hold his hand or call him brother.

The Asp was impregnated with that giant protein molecule called the asp. It was forcibly injected into his
bloodstream where it spread to every part of his body. Utilizing the electromagnetic field of the body
cells, the asp attached itself to each cell so that the host must" share"its field with the uninvited guest.
Many of Ogtate's cells inhospitably refused, and the commensals secured a foothold only on about an
eighth of the total.

Bill Ogtate's weight increased with the swarm of semivirus. The demand for more energy aroused his
appetite. His metabolism accelerated, and his body, to control the increased energy-output, released it in
heat and sweat as in exercise. The internal body tem-perature thus remained normal and constant.

Ogtate's skin was the primary transmitter of the "bite," as this emanation came to be called. Asps
radiated continuously from him, although the rate varied according to reproduction. When asps attached
to a certain organ built up to a certain bulk, the host was unable to endure any more accretion. They
threw the switch, so to say, cut off some power, and weak-ened the link between the negative and
positive poles of host and guest. Though some asps always clung, others were kicked off and thus
emitted from the Asp. They left his body via breath, skin, and other means of voiding. They floated