"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

"We've had enough of being here," she stated. "We're going home."
So they went back across the millions of miles. They cleaned up the
house, on which obscene insults had been scribbled in chalk. On two successive
days Eddie was jumped by gangs. He fought free and escaped. But on the third
evening he was cornered. This time Ash Parker was the ringleader. Ed battled
like a bobcat, but eight opponents were too many. He was flat on his back, and
they were kicking him. His own blood was in his mouth. What might happen when
he blacked out was anybody's guess. Once, before medical knowledge had
advanced to where it was, it would have been murder for sure.
Somebody intervened -- a big guy in a gray business suit who had come
striding along the block with an eager attention.
He didn't say anything at first. He just collared the toughs, two at a
time in swift succession, and thrust them away.
Eddie staggered up and faced his benefactor, intent on giving him
sincere thanks. "Mister ... I..."
"Hello, Eddie!" the man said, chuckling. "I see you turned out hardy.
Seventeen you'd be now."
Young Ed Dukas heard the voice and looked at the face. He stiffened.
Then he made a statement in a flat tone that sounded very formal and
unemotional, which it was not: "Sir, you're my father."
The man nodded. "Just off the assembly line, pal. The same guy --
because you and your mother, and some other people, remembered what I was
like. There was no record of me or of my mind. So, okay, they made one, fella.
From the memories of me left in other minds. Thanks, Eddie."
"Thanks?" Ed Dukas said in a choked voice.
Bloody and dirty, he stepped forward. Father and son clung to each
other. It was a moment of great triumph.
Ed's mind pictured filaments, as fragile at first as pink spiderweb but
already outlining a human shape, held suspended in a kind of jelly -- growing
there, forming according to a record. Now even the record could be
synthesized. It seemed like real freedom from death at last.
Ash Parker had not fled. Now he spoke, sounding awed, "Jeez, Mr. Dukas.
I didn't believe it. Maybe my folks can come back, too."
"Your parents will come back," Jack Dukas affirmed. "I am the first
'memory man' to be resurrected. Among those killed who had had their bodies




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and minds recorded as was recommended, about a hundred thousand are alive
again, as I think you know. Millions more are in process. One way or another,
by record or by the memories of others, in flesh of the old kind or the new,
almost everyone will return."
Ed felt his father's hand. As far as he could tell, it was of flesh.
Yet it could be something else; Ed nearly trembled with excitement as his
eager wonder and primitive dread of the strange battled inside him. He thought
again of Mitchell Prell's first samples of vitaplasm.
"Of which flesh are you, Dad?" Ed asked anxiously.
His father studied him there in the twilight of the day, while the