"Andre Norton - Solar Queen 03 - Voodoo Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

“Not the same perhaps—”

But Asaki had already grasped the situation, was looking ahead.

“We shall not know,” he breathed, “what is real, what is not.”

“There is also this,” Tau warned. “The unreal can kill the believer just as quickly as the real!”

“That I know also. It has happened too many times lately. If we could only find out how! Here are no drums, no singing—none of the tricks to tangle a man’s mind that he usually uses to summon his demons. So without Lumbrilo, without his witch tools, how does he make us see what is not?”

“That we must discover and speedily, sir. Or else we shall be lost among the unreal and the real.”

“You also have the power. You can save us!” Asaki protested.

Tau drew his arm across his face. Very little of the normal color had returned to his thin, mobile features. He still leaned against Dane’s supporting arm.

“A man can do only so much, sir. To battle Lumbrilo on his own ground is exhausting and I can not fight so very often.”

“But will he not also be exhausted?”

“I wonder . . . ” Tau gazed beyond the Khatkan to the barren ground where leopard and rock ape had ceased to be. “This magic is a tricky thing, sir. It builds and feeds upon a man’s own imagination and inner fears. Lumbrilo, having triggered ours, need not strive at all, but let us ourselves raise that which will attack us.”

“Drugs?” demanded Jellico.

Tau gave a start sufficient to take him out of Dane’s loose hold. His hand went to the packet of aid supplies which was his own care, his eyes round with wonder and then shrewdly alert.

“Captain, we disinfected those thorn punctures of yours. Thorson, your foot salve . . . But, no, I didn’t use anything—”

“You forget, Craig, we all had scratches after that fight with the apes.”

Tau sat down on the ground. With feverish haste he unsealed his medical supplies, laid out some containers. Then delicately he opened each, examined its contents closely by eye, by smell, and two by taste. When he was done he shook his head.

“If these have been in any way meddled with, I would need laboratory analysis to detect it. And I don’t believe that Lumbrilo could hide traces of his work so cleverly. Or has he been off-planet? Had much to do with off-worlders?” he asked the Chief Ranger.

“By the nature of his position he is forbidden to space voyage, to have any close relationship with any off-worlder. I do not think, medic, he would choose your healing substances for his mischief. There would only be chance to aid him then in producing the effects he wants. Though there is often call for first aid in travel, he could not be certain you would use any of your drugs on this trip to the preserve.”

“And Lumbrilo was certain. He threatened something such as this,” Jellico reminded them.

“So it would be something which we would all use, which we had to depend upon . . . ”

“The water!” Dane had been holding his own canteen ready to drink. But as that possible explanation dawned in his mind, he smelled instead of tasted the liquid sloshing inside. There was no odor he could detect. But he remembered Tau commenting on the powdered purifier pills at their first camp.

“That’s it!” Tau dug further into his kit, brought out the vial of white powder with its grainy lumps. Pouring a little into the palm of his hand he smelled it, touched it with the tip of his tongue. “Purifier and something else,” he reported. “It could be one of half a dozen drugs, or some native stuff from here which we’ve never classified.”

“True. There are drugs we have found here.” Asaki scowled down at the green mat of jungle. “So our water is poisoned?”

“Do you always purify it?” Tau asked the Chief Ranger. “Surely during the centuries since your ancestors landed on Khatka you must have adapted to native water. You couldn’t have lived otherwise. We must use the purifier, but must you?”

“There is water and water.” Asaki shook his own canteen, his scowl growing fiercer as the gurgle from its depths was heard. “From springs on the other side of the mountains we drink—yes. But over here, this close to the Mygra swamps, we have not done so. We may have to chance it.”