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

But how good, really, was this mimicry? he asked himself. And how deadly to the predators? How far had this gone?
'There,' said the creature behind him. The multi-part hand carne forward to point toward a black scarp visible ahead of them in the gray light of morning. Heavy mist against the scarp told of a river nearby hidden by the jungle.
This is all I need, Joao thought I can find this place again easily.
His foot kicked the trigger on the floor, releasing a great cloud of orange dye-fog beneath the truck to mark the ground and forest for more than a kilometer around. As he kicked the trigger, Joao began counting down silently the five-second delay to the automatic firing of the separation charge.
It came in a roaring blast that Joao knew would smear the creature behind against the rear bulkhead. He sent the stub wings out, fed power to the rocket motors and banked hard left. Now he could see the detached rear compartment settling slowly earthward above the dye cloud, its fall cushioned as the pumps of the hydrostatic drive automatically compensated.
I will come back, Father, Joao thought. You will be buried among family and friends.
He locked his pod controls, turned to deal with his guard.
A gasp escaped Joao's lips.
The rear bulkhead crawled with insects clustered around something yellow-white and pulsing. The mud-gray shirt and trousers were torn, but insects already were repairing it, spinning out fibers that meshed and sealed on contact. There was a dark yellow sac-like object extruding near the pulsing surface and glimpses through the insects of a brown skeleton with familiar articulation.
It looked like a human skeleton - but dark and chitinous.
Before his eyes, the thing was reassembling itself - long furry antennae burrowing inward and interlocking, one insect to another, claw fringes weaving together.
The flute weapon wasn't visible, and the thing's leather pouch had been hurled into a rear corner by the blast, but its eyes were in place in their brown sockets, staring at him. The mouth was reforming.
The dark yellow sac contracted, and a voice issued from the half-formed mouth.
'You must listen,' it rasped.
Joao gulped, whirled back to the controls, unlocked them and sent the pod into a wild, spinning turn.
A high-pitched rattling buzz sounded behind him. The noise seemed to pick up every bone in his body and shake it. Something crawled on his neck. He slapped it, felt it squash.
All Joao could think of then was escape. He stared out frantically at the earth beneath, glimpsing a blotch of white in a Savannah off to his right and in the same instant recognising another airtruck banking beside him, the insignia of his own Irmandades bright on its side.
The white blotch of the savannah resolved itself into a cluster of tents with an I.E.O. orange and green banner flying beside them. Beyond the flat grass could be seen the curve of a river. Joao drove for the tents.
Something stung his cheek. Crawling things were in his hair - biting, stinging. He kicked on the braking rockets, aimed for open ground beside the tents. Insects were all over the inside of the pod's glass now, blocking his vision, Joao said a silent prayer, hauled back on the control arm, felt the pod mush out, touch ground, skidding and slewing. He kicked the canopy release before the motion stopped, broke the seal on his safety harness and launched himself up and out to land sprawling on hard ground.
He rolled over and over, eyes tightly closed, feeling the insect bites like fire needles over every exposed part of his body. Hands grabbed him and he felt a jelly hood splash across his face to protect it. Hard spray slammed against him from all sides.
Somewhere in a hood-blurred distance he heard a voice that sounded like Vierho's shout, 'Run! This way - run!' He heard a spraygun fire: Whoosh! And again. And again.
Hands rolled him over. Spray hit his back. A wash that smelled like neutraliser splashed over him.
An odd thudding sound shook the ground and a voice said, 'Mother of God! Would you look at that!'



Chapter V

JOAO SAT UP, clawed the jelly hood from his face, stared across, the savannah. The grass there seethed and boiled with insects around an Irmandades airtruck.
A voice said, 'Did you kill everything inside the pod?'
'Everything that moved.' The reply was husky, halting, as though overcoming pain.
'Is there anything in it we can use?'
'The radio's destroyed.'
'Of course. That's the first thing they go for.'
Joao looked around him, counted seven of his Irmandades - Vierho, Thome, Ramon, Pietr, Lon ...
His eye was caught by the group clustered beyond his men - Rhin Kelly among them. Her red hair was awry. Dirt streaked her face. There was a wild, glazed look in her green eyes. She was glaring at him.
He saw his pod then, to the right, on its side and just within what appeared to be a perimeter ditch. Foam and spray residue were all over it His eye traversed the line of the ditch, saw that it ringed a hard-packed dirt area with the tents in the center and savannah beyond. Two men in green I.E.O. uniforms stood beside him holding sprayer handtanks.
Joao returned his attention to Rhin, remembering her as he'd seen her in Bahia's A'Chigua. Now she wore a plain I.E.O. field uniform, its green blotched by red-brown dirt. Her eyes held no invitation at all.
'I see poetic justice in this - traitors,' she said.
Her hysterical tone of voice caught Joao's ear and it took a second for her words to filter through. Traitors?
He grew aware of the bedraggled, worn look of the I.E.O. people.
Vierho approached, helped Joao to his feet, proffered a cloth to wipe off the jelly.
'Jefe, what is happening?' Vierho asked. 'We picked up your signal, but you didn't answer.'
'Later,' Joao rasped as he recognised the anger in Rhin and her companions. Rhin appeared feverish and ill.
Hands brushed Joao, clearing dead insects off him. The pain from the stings and bites receded under the medicant neutraliser.
'Whose skeleton is that in your pod?' one of the I.E.O. people asked.
Before Joao could answer, Rhin said, 'Death and skeletons should be nothing new for Joao Martinho, traitor of the Piratininga!'
'They are crazy, that is the only thing, I think,' Vierho said.
'Your pets turned on you, didn't they?' Rhin demanded. 'The skeleton, that's all that's left of one of you, eh?'
'What is this talk of skeletons?' Vierho asked.