"Tricia Sullivan - The Question Eaters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sullivan Tricia)

The hovercraft crew spotted John at dawn, having scoured the plains all
night for some sign. They found him lying on the sand surrounded by
cryptic markings, clutching a concave piece of shell. He was in shock, and
a medical team came to retrieve him.
After a time he woke up, thinking he recognized the cool, composed woman
who bent over him, saying, "Good work, John," and smoothed his brow.
"Are they coming for us yet?" he said to her urgently.
She gave a gentle little half-smile, said, "Let's not talk right now,
okay? They say you should drink as much as you can--you're still
dehydrated. Here."
A smoky-colored tube filled with pale-pink liquid. A straw.
She thought he looked at it strangely, almost fearfully.
She turned away and made a note of this. Possible hydrophobia following
exposure. Symptoms revealed in computer analysis of personal field notes:
paranoia, physical disorientation, hallucinations, aural hallucinations,
loss of identity recognition, obsession with death. After early exposure
prior to final episode, subject displayed signs of obsessive thinking and
reduced professional standards evidenced by a willingness to invent
arbitrary stories to explain subject's personal hypothesis.
Early results of study indicate that atmospheric conditions are solely
responsible for the breakdown of this subject. If extrapolated to affect
other victims, it is seen that the colony will be best served by the
isolation of the chemical factor in the environment that has attacked our
colonists. However, there is nothing to indicate research on this planet
should be abandoned.
Elaine could hardly wait to write up this study for publication. It would
make her career. She realized that John probably thought it would make his
career; unfortunately, it had done just the opposite. Even if he
recovered, he would never be taken seriously again. Just another popular
scientist, giving in to some antediluvian sense of guilt that human
industry was taking over this dead planet, raping it somehow.
Some people, she told herself, have a deep need to create meaning, even
where there is none. And that's how we get into these situations.
She looked down on John again.
He had drifted into a doze, in which he was racing over the desert, his
whole self unfurled like a banner. She watched his eyes moving beneath
their lids. He murmured something in his dream, and she leaned down to
hear it.
"You will be assimilated," he whispered.
Elaine paused and glanced around the room. No one else was there.
Casually, she took off her lab coat and dropped it over the odd-shaped
lizard skull John had been clutching when they found him, curled up half
dead. She tucked the bundle under her arm. It wasn't really evidence of
anything, she told herself. Skeletons had been. found in the dust before.
She slid the file under her arm, too: the one labeled Subject 14M. Then
she straightened and turned away, smiling.
Outside, the sand continued to move, arranging itself in inexplicable
patterns.

© Tricia Sullivan 1995, 2001