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

Lustrous eyes, look at me, let me see you now alive! Great queen, my sweet
body, my girl, have I saved you? . . . O terrible to know, and noble, Chaos's
child green-robed in blue and golden light. . . the thrown and spinning ball
of life alone in space. . . . Have I saved you?"
On the last leg, he was obviously feverish. "She may have tricked me,
you know," he said confidentially to the government man. "You have to be
prepared for that, of course. I know her!" He chuckled confidentially.
"She's no small thing. But wring your heart out—"
Coming over San Francisco he was merry. "Don't you know the otters
will go back in there? I'm certain of it. That fill won't last; there'll be a bay
there again."
They got him on a stretcher at Hamilton Air Base, and he went
unconscious shortly after takeoff. Before he collapsed, he'd insisted on
throwing the last of his birdseed on the field.
"Birds are, you know, warm-blooded," he confided to the agent who was
handcuffing him to the stretcher. Then Ain smiled gently and lapsed into
inertness. He stayed that way almost all the remaining ten days of his life.
By then, of course, no one really cared. Both the government men had died
quite early, after they finished analyzing the birdseed and throat spray.
The woman at Kennedy had just started feeling sick.
The tape recorder they put by his bed functioned right on through, but
if anybody had been around to replay it they would have found little but
babbling. "Gaea Gloriatrix," he crooned, "Gaea girl, queen ..." At times he
was grandiose and tormented. "Our life, your death!" he yelled. "Our death
would have been your death too, no need for that, no need."
At other times he was accusing. "What did you do about the
dinosaurs?" he demanded. "Did they annoy you? How did you fix them?
Cold. Queen, you're too cold! You came close to it this time, my girl," he
raved. And then he wept and caressed the bedclothes and was maudlin.
 Only at the end, lying in his filth and thirst, still chained where they had
forgotten him, he was suddenly coherent. In the light clear voice of a lover
planning a summer picnic he asked the recorder happily:
"Have you ever thought about bears? They have so much . . . funny they
never came along further. By any chance were you saving them, girl?" And
he chuckled in his ruined throat, and later, died.



The End