"Olaf Stapledon - Sirius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

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Sirius




After tea I helped her to wash up, while Sirius hovered about, jealous, I think, of my handiness. When we had finished, she said
they must go over to the farm to complete a job of work before dark. I decided to walk back to Ffestiniog, collect my baggage
and return by the evening train to Trawsfynedd, where I could find accommodation in the local pub. I noticed Sirius's tail droop
as I said this. It drooped still further when I announced that I proposed to spend a week in the neighbourhood in the hope of
seeing more of Plaxy. She said, "I shall be busy, but there are the evenings."

Before I left she handed over a collection of documents for me to take away and read at leisure. There were scientific papers by
her father, including his journal of Sirius's growth and education. These documents, together with a diary of her own and brief
fragmentary records by Sirius himself, all of which I was given at a much later date, form the main "sources" of the following
narrative; these, and many long talks with Plaxy, and with Sirius when I had learnt to understand his speech.

I propose to use my imagination freely to fill out with detail many incidents about which my sources afford only the barest
outline. After all, though a civil servant (until the Air Force absorbed me) I am also a novelist; and I am convinced that with
imagination and self-criticism one can often penetrate into the essential spirit of events even when the data are superficial. I shall,
therefore, tell the amazing story of Sirius in my own way.

CHAPTER II

THE MAKING OF SIRIUS

PLAXY'S father, Thomas Trelone, was too great a scientist to escape all publicity, but his work on the stimulation of cortical
growth in the brains of mammals was begun while he was merely a brilliant young research worker, and it was subsequently
carried on in strict secrecy. He had an exaggerated, a morbid loathing of limelight. This obsession he justified by explaining that
he dreaded the exploitation of his technique by quacks and profit-mongers. Thus it was that for many years his experiments were
known only to a few of his most intimate professional colleagues in Cambridge, and to his wife, who had a part to play in them.

Though I have seen his records and read his papers, I can give only a layman's account of his work, for I am without scientific
training. By introducing a certain hormone into the blood-stream of the mother he could affect the growth of the brain in the
unborn young. The hormone apparently had a double effect. It increased the actual bulk of the cerebral cortices, and also it made
the nerve-fibres themselves much finer than they normally are, so that a far greater number of them, and a far greater number of
connections between them, occurred in any given volume of brain. Somewhat similar experiments, I believe, were carried out in
America by Zamenhof; but there was an important difference between the two techniques. Zamenhof simply fed the young




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Sirius