"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

“You can control the informational content of the quantum field. Although there is a certain amount of
fixed information in the atoms of food, air, and water that make up each cell, the power to transform that
information is subject to free will.”

Lyle leaned back and scratched his head as he recalled the photograph Dr. Raeder had shown him. As
scientists looked on, Roger Westlake supposedly just stood there, turned into a werewolf, and almost
doubled his body mass in the process. All of that bone and tissue had to come from somewhere. By
changing the informational content of the quantum field, would it be possible to convert that energy
directly into mass? Several primitive cultures had shape-shifter traditions: men and women who turn
themselves into snakes, eagles, bears, even wolves. Lyle leaned over the keyboard and began to tackle
the subject of lycanthropy.

The computer subject search was not sympathetic to the term “lycanthropy.” The prompt insisted that if
Lyle wanted to pursue the topic, “werewolves” was the term to use. The pickings seemed slim.
Douglas’sThe Beast Within , was filed under “Animals, mythical.” An 1865 work, Baring-Gould’sThe
Book of Werewolves , revealed its thesis in its subtitle:An account of a terrible superstition . Then
Lyle’s eye was caught by another title:A Lycanthropy Reader: werewolves in western culture .
Published in obscurity in 1986 by the Syracuse University Press, the work was described as “Medical
cases, diagnoses, descriptions; trial records, historical accounts, sightings; philosophical and theological
approaches to metamorphosis; critical essays on lycanthropy—” He looked up at the availability code
and theReader was out.

His eyes next turned to a 1937 work published in Paris by psychiatrist Jean Riendeau, English translation
by Paul Norgren:The Hidden Face of Jeorg Brandt: a case study of a lycanthropic . The work was
described as a three-year study of an unemployed Swiss laborer whose metamorphosis from man to
werewolf was witnessed no less than nine times by Riendeau, four such times under confinement in
laboratory conditions with corroborating witnesses. The volume was available.

It was a thin book, the embossed printing on its cover faded and gray, the pages inside edged with
yellow. Lyle scanned the table of contents, skipped the background material, and turned to the first of the
laboratory controlled observations of Jeorg Brandt’s changing. Riendeau wrote:

“Jeorg was caged at his own request. The metamorphosis began shortly after midnight with Jeorg coming
‘alive’ from his usual deep depression, his increased animation followed first by the change of his eye
color from blue to reddish black. His chest, normally at 120cm, showed 151cm on the tape before Jeorg
swatted Dr. Bresette away from the bars where my colleague was taking the measurement. I saw the
front of Bresette’s laboratory coat slashed to ribbons and turned back to see that Jeorg’s claws were
already half-formed, his muzzle filled with horrendous teeth….”

Here it was again: energy consuming transformation, incredible increase in body mass, with no apparent
source. Or, as Riendeau put it, “He seemed to draw upon the thin air for material,” although when the
change was complete, Jeorg Brandt wolfed down 24kg of raw beef before he exhausted himself trying to
get out of his cage and fell asleep. Later, as himself, Jeorg was horrified after reading the reports and
seeing the photographs. It was after one of these laboratory episodes that Riendeau’s subject committed
suicide, unfortunately in full human form.

In the translator’s introduction, Paul Norgren described how the publication ofThe Hidden Face had
destroyed Riendeau’s reputation as well as the reputations of the four colleagues of his who had
participated in the study. Lyle checked his watch and realized that he had just enough time to make it to
the meeting. He frowned as he realized that on some strange level he was just a little bit frightened.