"Alan Dean Foster - Drowning World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Reaching up to wipe away sweat and grime, the guard blinked uncertainly. “Appointment?”

“Appointment,” the lanky gray-furred visitor repeated.

Eyeing the Sakuntala with slightly more interest, the guard tilted his head slightly to his left and spoke
toward the pickup suspended there. “There’s a Saki here to see Matthias. Says he has an appointment.”
Jemunu-jah waited patiently while the human listened to the voice that whispered from the tiny pickup
clipped to his left ear.

A moment later the guard bobbed his head, a gesture Jemunu-jah knew signified acceptance among
humans. Parting his lips and showing sharp teeth, he stepped past and through the momentarily
deactivated electronic barrier that was designed to keep out intruders both large and small. Another
door, Jemunu-jah reflected as he entered the building. Humans and Deyzara alike were very fond of
doors. The Sakuntala had no use for them.

Behind him, the guard had resumed his lethargic pose, leaning back against the wall, his expression
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having once more gone blank as a part of him dreamed of other worlds and of the long-forgotten state of
being dry. Rain fell steadily beyond the brown composite decking and overhang. A few streaks of olive
greenwalus were visible on part of the porch railing. It had taken only a hundred years for several of the
millions of varieties of fungus and mold that thrived on Fluva to learn how to survive on the supposedly
inedible specially treated composite.

Chief Administrator Lauren Matthias had red hair, green eyes, a short and solid (but solidly attractive)
build that was growing stouter with every passing year, a temper to match her contentious official
position, and a desk full of worries. She had been chief Commonwealth representative and administrator
on Fluva for just over a year now, ever since Charlie Sandravoe had gone nuts and been granted a hasty
medical discharge. Like everyone else, she remembered the day when the well-liked Sandravoe had
finally lost it, tearing off his electrostatically charged rain cape and the clothes underneath before flinging
himself out the window and off the deck outside the office she now occupied. He’d fallen nearly twenty
meters to the water below. Several members of the cultural staff, whose offices were in the building
below Administration, had seen him plunge past the window of their workplace, arms at his sides, legs
together. Maria Chen-ha had had the best look. To this day, she insisted that the face of the
ex-administrator had been oddly calm.

They’d found him floating below, miraculously alive, having just missed cracking his skull on a number of
intervening branches. A couple of Deyzara had fished him out of the water and brought him up. Diagnosis
had been swift: mental breakdown brought on by too much time on Fluva. Sandravoe had extended his
tour of duty several times, receiving a bonus for each extension. His offers had been reluctantly accepted
because it was hard to find qualified personnel willing to remain on Fluva for any length of time. Besides
having to adjudicate the never-ending turmoil between the Deyzara and the Sakuntala, there was also the
often hostile and unpredictable flora and fauna, the interesting new diseases, the voracious molds and
fungi, and of course the small and slightly disturbing fact that it rained 90 percent of the year. And the
absence of dry land.