"Frank Herbert - The Green Brain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The farm folk had shrugged and retired.
His trudging progress, the difficult and carefully mastered articulation of legs, had
brought him now into an area of many humans. He could see red-brown rooftops ahead and
the white crystal shimmering of a bandeirante tower with its aircars alighting and departing.
The scene held an odd hive-look.
Momentarily, he found himself overcome by the touch of instincts that he knew he must
master. These instincts could make him fail the ordeal to come. He stepped off the dirt
track, out of the path of passing humans, and went through the regimen that united his
mental identity. The resultant thought penetrated to the smallest and most remote units of
his person: We are greenslaves subservient to the greater whole.
He resumed his way toward the bandeirante checkpoint. The unifying thought lent him an
air of servility that was like a shield against the stares of humans trudging past all around.
His kind knew many human mannerisms. They had learned early that servility was a form of
concealment.
Presently, the dirt track gave way to a two-lane paved market road with footpaths in the
ditches on both sides. This, in turn, curved alongside a four-deck commercial transport
highway where even the footpaths were paved. Now there were ground-cars and aircars in
greater numbers, and the flow of foot traffic increased.
Thus far he'd attracted no dangerous attention. The occasional snickering side-glance
from natives of the area could be safely ignored. He watched for probing stares. These could
hold peril, but he detected none.
Servility shielded him.
The sun stood well along toward mid-morning and the day's heat had begun to press
down on the earth, raising a moist hothouse stink from the dirt beside the pathway,
mingling it with the perspiration odors of humanity around him. There was a sourness to the
smell that made every part of him long for the sweetly familiar odors of the hinterland. And
the lowland smells carried another harmonic that filled him with an inaudible humming of
unease. Here were greater and greater concentrations of insect poisons.
Humans were all around him now, close and pressing, moving slower and slower as they
approached the checkpoint bottleneck.
The forward motion stopped.
Progress resolved itself into shuffle and stop, shuffle and stop ...
Here was the critical test and no avoiding it. He waited with something akin to an Indian's
stoic patience. His breathing had grown deeper to compensate for the heat. He adjusted it to
match that of the humans around him, suffering the temperature rise for the sake of
blending into his surroundings. Andes Indians didn't breathe deeply here in the lowlands.
Shuffle and stop.
Shuffle and stop.
Now he could see the checkpoint.
Fastidious bandeirantes in sealed white cloaks with plastic helmets, gloves and boots
stood in a double row within a shaded brick corridor leading into the town. He could see
sunlight hot on the street beyond the corridor, people hurrying away there after passing this
gantlet.
The sight of that free area beyond the corridor sent an ache of longing through all the
parts of him. The suppression warning flashed out instantly on the heels of that instinctive
reaching-emotion.
No distraction could be permitted here. Every element of him had to be alert to withstand
the pain.
Shuffle and ... he was into the hands of the first bandeirante, a hulking blond fellow with
pink skin and blue eyes.