"Frank Herbert - Operation Syndrome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Piquetberg, Karachi, Reykjavik, Portland, Hollandia, Lawton -- finally, Los Angeles. Then you
came here."
"So you looked up our itinerary."
He shook his head. "No." He hesitated. "Pete's kept you pretty busy rehearsing, hasn't he?"
"This isn't easy work."
"I'm not saying it is." He turned back to the rail, nipped his cigarette into the darkness,
heard it hiss in the water. "How long have you known Pete?"
"A couple of months more or less. Why?"
He turned away. "What kind of a fellow is he?"
She shrugged. "He's a nice guy. He's asked me to marry him."
Eric swallowed. "Are you going to?"
She looked out to the dark bay. "That's why I want your advice. I don't know ... I just
don't know. He put me where I am, right on top of the entertainment heap." She turned back
to Eric. "And he really is an awfully nice guy ... when you get under that bitterness."
Eric breathed deeply, pressed against the concrete railing. "May I tell you a story?"
"What about?"
"This morning you mentioned Dr. Carlos Amanti, the inventor of the teleprobe. Did you know
him?"
"No."
"I was one of his students. When he had the breakdown it hit all of us pretty hard, but I
was the only one who took up the teleprobe project. I've been working at it eight years."
She stirred beside him. "What is this teleprobe?"
"The science writers have poked fun at it; they call it the 'mind reader.' It's not. It's just a
means of interpreting some of the unconscious impulses of the human brain. I suppose some
day it may approach mind reading. Right now it's a rather primitive instrument, sometimes
unpredictable. Amanti's intention was to communicate with the unconscious mind, using
interpretation of encephalographic waves. The idea was to amplify them, maintain a discrete
separation between types, and translate the type variations according to thought images."
She chewed her lower lip. "And you think the musikron would help make a better teleprobe,
that it would help fight the Syndrome?"
"I think more than that." He looked down at the paving.
"You're trying to tell me something without saying it," she said. "Is it about Pete?"
"Not exactly."
"Why'd you give that long recitation of where we'd been? That wasn't just idle talk. What
are you driving at?"
He looked at her speculatively, weighing her mood. "Hasn't Pete told you about those
places?"
 She put a hand to her mouth, eyes wide, staring. She moaned. "Not the Syndrome ... not
all of those places, too?"
"Yes." It was a flat, final sound.
She shook her head. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"That it could be the musikron causing all of this."
"Oh, no!"
"I could be wrong. But look at how it appears. Amanti was a genius working near the fringe
of insanity. He had a psychotic break. Then he helped Pete build a machine. It's possible that
machine picks up the operator's brain wave patterns, transmits them as a scrambling impulse.
The musikron does convert thought into a discernible energy -- sound. Why isn't it just as
possible that it funnels a disturbing impulse directly into the unconscious." He wet his lips with
his tongue. "Did you know that I hear those sounds even with my hands over my ears, see
you with my eyes covered. Remember my nightmare? My nervous system is responding to a