"John D. MacDonald - Susceptibility" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

“That toy. See the sun pattern on the floor? From that I could have told you the time within a half
hour.”
“Not much of a degree of accuracy.”


“AGAIN you’ve missed the point, Malloy. It’s accurate enough.”
“I can’t argue with unreason. Come on. That flier I projected is beyond the clearing where I found
you. I’ll leave it with you when I go.”
“Thank you. I’d have no use for it. And we should eat before we go.”
“We’ll eat at the Center.”
“Thank you, no. I’ll get us something here. First, though, I must bathe.”
 He looked around the room. “No cleansing unit here.”
“There’s a perfectly good one in the stream, Malloy.” She went to the shelves near the fireplace,
selected a tunic of softer fabric than her work clothes, and a heavy towel. “You can make yourself useful,
Malloy. Build a small fire in the fireplace. But first come here a moment. That’s my garden. See those
spiky green things? Pull up about a dozen of them and wash them in the stream.”
Before he could decide whether or not to refuse the request, she had gone, walking toward the
stream with that long stride of hers, supple and somehow wild. He selected small sticks and tried with
infuriating lack of success to start them burning by using a short hot focus of his pocket heat unit. Angry
at failing in so simple a task, he walked out and yanked up a dozen of the growths she had indicated.
Black moist soil clung to the bulbular white ends that came out of the ground.
He took them to the stream, below the wider part that formed a pool. Remembering the extreme
variations in attitudes of modesty on the colonial planets, he did not wish to look directly at her.
Precursors were trained to adapt themselves readily to many odd folkways. But in spite of his intentions
he found himself gawking at her as she stood by the pool, tall and tanned and lithe. She smiled down the
slope at him as she toweled her shining hair and he made a comparison oddly damaging to the soft pallid
women of home.
She belted the short aqua tunic around her slim waist and he followed her back to the house. As he
watched her she put some dried moss under the sticks in the fireplace, scratched an object which he
recognized as being one of the crude firemaking devices of earliest times. It was called, he remembered,
a “match.” The small fire blazed. She brought ovoid white objects from the cellar, cracked them into an
earthenware dish, chopped the bulbous white growths with a crude knife and stirred them into the
mixture. The dish was then suspended over the flame while she sawed off heavy slabs of coarse bread,
spread them with a yellow substance.


MALLOY watched closely. This primitive substitute for the extremely simple procedure of operating
the synthesizer would form an interesting portion of his report. The odor that filled the room, however,
made his salivary glands surprisingly active. The mixture firmed and she took the dish from over the fire,
divided the contents into two parts, placed one part between two heavy slabs of bread and put it on
another dish, set it in front of him.
Malloy took a cautious bite and then a much larger one. The taste was harsher and more
concentrated, the texture far coarser than any food he had ever tasted before.
Before he knew it, his share was gone. She washed the dishes in the stream and replaced them on the
shelf.
“That was very interesting,” he said.
“But nothing you’d care for day in and day out?”
“N-no,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m ready, Malloy. Shall we go?”
They walked to the small flier. Malloy watched her closely. She had no awe of it, accepted it as