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

"Pete, please! What's come over you?" She held back.
Pete stopped, put his face close to hers. "Do you like this business?"
She nodded mutely, eyes wide.
"Then let's get to work!"
She looked back at Eric, shrugged her shoulders. "I'm sorry."
Pete pulled her into the dome.
Eric stared after them. He thought, "He's a decided compulsive type ... very unstable. May
not be as immune to the Syndrome as she apparently is." He frowned, looked at his
wristwatch, remembered his ten o'clock appointment. "Damn!" He turned, almost collided with
a young man in busboy's coveralls.
The young man puffed nervously at a cigarette, jerked it out of his mouth, leered. "Better
find yourself another gal, Doc. That one's taken."
Eric looked into the young-old eyes, stared them down. "You work in there?"
The young man replaced the cigarette between thin lips, spoke around a puff of blue
smoke. "Yeah."
"When does it open?"
The young man pulled the cigarette from his mouth, flipped it over Eric's shoulder into the
bay. "We're open now for breakfast. Floor show doesn't start until seven tonight."
"Is Miss Lanai in the floor show?"
The busboy looked up at the script-ring over the dome, smiled knowingly. "Doc, she is the
floor show!"
Again Eric looked at his wrist watch, thought, I'm coming back here tonight. He turned
toward the nearest unitube. "Thanks," he said.
"You better get reservations if you're coming back tonight," said the busboy.
Eric stopped, looked back. He reached into his pocket, found a twenty-buck piece flipped it
to the busboy. The thin young man caught the coin out of the air, looked at it, said, "Thank
you. What name, Doc?"
"Dr. Eric Ladde."
The busboy pocketed the coin. "Righto, Doc. Floorside. I come on again at six. I'll attend to
you personally."
Eric turned back to the unitube entrance again and left immediately.




Under the smog-filtered Los Angeles sun, a brown-dry city.
Mobile Laboratory 31 ground to a stop before Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, churning up a
swirl of dried palm fronds in the gutter. The overworked turbo-motor sighed to a stop, grating.
The Japanese psychologist emerged on one side, the Swedish doctor on the other. Their
shoulders sagged.
The psychologist asked, "Ole, how long since you've had a good night's sleep?"
The doctor shook his head. "I can't remember, Yoshi; not since I left Frisco, I guess."
From the caged rear of the truck, wild, high-pitched laughter, a sigh, laughter.
The doctor stumbled on the steps to the hospital sidewalk. He stopped, turned. "Yoshi -- "
"Sure, Ole. I'll get some fresh orderlies to take care of this one." To himself he added, "If
there are any fresh orderlies."
Inside the hospital, cool air pressed down the hallway. The Swedish doctor stopped a man
with a clipboard. "What's the latest count?"
The man scratched his forehead with a corner of the clipboard. "Two and a half million last
I heard, doctor. They haven't found a sane one yet."