"James Tiptree Jr - The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

took him away from his line, there. No, he said nothing of this, I say it to
you, young man. We spoke in fact largely of my work. I was surprised to
find he'd kept up. He asked me what my sentiments about it were, which
surprised me again. Now, understand, I'd not seen the man for five years,
but he seemed—well, perhaps just tired, as who is not? I'm sure he was
glad to have a change; he jumped out for a legstretch wherever we came
down. At Oslo, even Bonn. Oh, yes, he did feed the birds, but that was
nothing new for Ain. His social life when I knew him? Radical causes?
Young man, I've said what I've said because of who it was that introduced
you, but I'll have you know it is an impertinence in you to think ill of
Charles Ain, or that he could do a harmful deed. Good evening."
The professor said nothing of the woman in Ain's life.
 Nor could he have, although Ain had been intimately with her in the
university time. He had let no one see how he was obsessed with her, with
the miracle, the wealth of her body, her inexhaustibility. They met at his
every spare moment; sometimes in public pretending to be casual
strangers under his friends' noses, pointing out a pleasing view to each
other with grave formality. And later in their privacies—what doubled
intensity of love! He reveled in her, possessed her, allowed her no secrets.
His dreams were of her sweet springs and shadowed places and her white
rounded glory in the moonlight, finding always more, always new
dimensions of his joy.
The danger of her frailty was far off then in the rush of bird-song and
the springing leverets of the meadow. On dark days she might cough a bit,
but so did he. ... In those years he had had no thought to the urgent study
of disease.
At the Moscow conference nearly everyone noticed Ain at some point or
another, which was to be expected in view of his professional stature. It
was a small, high-caliber meeting. Ain was late in; a day's reports were
over, and his was to be on the third and last.
Many people spoke with Ain, and several sat with him at meals. No one
was surprised that he spoke little; he was a retiring man except on a few
memorable occasions of argument. He did strike some of his friends as a
bit tired and jerky.
An Indian molecular engineer who saw him with the throat spray
kidded him about bringing over Asian flu. A Swedish colleague recalled
that Ain had been called away to the transatlantic phone at lunch; and
when he returned Ain volunteered the information that something had
turned up missing in his home lab. There was another joke, and Ain said
cheerfully, "Oh, yes, quite active."
At that point one of the Chicom biologists swung into his daily
propaganda chores about bacteriological warfare and accused Ain of
manufacturing biotic weapons. Ain took the wind out of his sails by
saying: "You're perfectly right." By tacit consent, there was very little talk
about military applications, industrial dusting, or subjects of that type.
And nobody recalled seeing Ain with any woman other than old Madame
Vialche, who could scarcely have subverted anyone from her wheelchair.
Ain's one speech was bad, even for him. He always had a poor public
voice, but his ideas were usually expressed with the lucidity so typical of
the first-rate mind. This time he seemed muddled, with little new to say.