"Alan Dean Foster - Impossible Places" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

in her thoughts. Angrily he wrenched the sheets from the bed, wadded them into a white ball, and tossed
them across the room. Hairs spilled to the floor.
“Get fresh sheets. I’ll wash these myself. No.” Carlos smiled. “I’ll burn them. We should have done
that days ago.”
She nodded, and her own smile returned. With the bed freshly remade they made love on the new
sheets, but there was a curious reluctance about her he had not noticed before. He finished satisfied, saw
she had not. Well, it would not be a problem tomorrow.
He burned the old sheets in the incinerator in the maintenance shed, the damp stink of the cremation
hanging pall-like over the grounds for hours. By nightfall the rain had cleansed the air.
That night he made a point of carrying her to the bed. Though it was woman’s work he had cooked
supper. His concern touched her. She relaxed enough to talk of all they were going to do as soon as it
was decorous enough to sell the lodge and leave. By bedtime her languid self-assurance had returned.
He tossed her naked form onto the sheets, watched her bounce slightly, and was about to join her
when she screamed and scrambled to the floor.
He lay on the bed, gazing at her in confusion. “My love, what’s wrong?”
She was staring, her black hair framing her face, and pointing at her side of the bed. Her face was
curiously cold.
“L-look.”
He turned, puzzled, and saw the hair. Not just one or two that might have floated in from a corner of
the room left undusted, but as much as ever, brown ringlets and curlicues of keratin lying stark against the
white sheets.
“Damn!” Rising, he swept sheets and blanket off the bed, went to the cupboard and removed new
ones, made the bed afresh. But it was no good. She could not relax, could not make love, and they spent
an uneasy night. Once she woke him, moaning, and he listened in the dark until she finally quieted enough
to sleep.
The next morning she was curiously listless, her gaze vacant, and his anger turned to alarm. Her
forehead seemed hot to the touch. She tried to tell him not to call the doctor, saying that it would cost too
much money, money better spent in Rio or Caracas, but he was truly worried now and refused to listen.
He paid the village chief an exorbitant sum to send two men downstream in the lodge’s best remaining
boat, to go even at night and return with the doctor from Maldonado. He was in an agony waiting for
their return.
Meanwhile Nina grew steadily worse, unable to walk, lying in bed and sweating profusely from more
than the heat. She threw up what little food he tried to feed her. When he spoke to her she hardly reacted
at all.
 Not knowing what else to do, he applied cold wet compresses to her forehead and did his best to
make her comfortable. By the fourth day he was feeling feverish himself, and by the sixth he was having
difficulty keeping his balance. But he was damned if having won everything he would give up now. He
had fought too hard, had committed what remained of his soul. Where was the goddamn doctor? He
tried to cross the river but was unable to start the remaining outboard.
That afternoon a couple of Indians approached the bank on which the lodge was built, but when they
saw him they turned and paddled furiously back the way they’d come. He yelled at them, screamed and
threatened, but they paid both threats and imprecations no heed.
Her fever grew steadily worse (there was no longer any doubt it was a fever). He tried to feed her
medicine from the lodge’s tiny pharmacy, but by this time she could keep nothing down. Her once
supple, voluptuous form had grown emaciated with shocking speed, until he had to force himself to look
at the skeletal frame beneath the sheet when he cleaned her from where she had dirtied herself.
Nor did he prove immune to whatever calamity it was that had struck so suddenly. He found himself
losing his way within the lodge, having to fumble for the sink and for dishes and clean towels. By the
eighth day he alternated between crawling and stumbling, stunned at his own weight loss and weakness.
He staggered toward the back building, spilling half the pitcher of cold water he was carrying to her.