"A. E. Van Vogt - Enchanted Village (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

His fury faded because he lacked the strength to sustain any emotion. Numbly he went down the ramp.
His vague plan to help the village ended as swiftly and finally as that.
The days drifted by, but as to how many he had no idea. Each time he went to eat, a smaller amount of water was doled out to him. Jenner kept telling himself that each meal would have to be his last. It was unreasonable for him to expect the village to destroy itself when his fate was certain now.
What was worse, it became increasingly clear that the food was not good for him. He had misled the village as to his needs by giving it stale, perhaps even tainted, samples, and prolonged the agony for himself. At times after he had eaten, Jenner felt dizzy for hours. All too frequently his head ached and his body shivered with fever.
The village was doing what it could. The rest was up to him, and he couldn't even adjust to an approximation of Earth food.
For two days he was too sick to drag himself to one of the troughs. Hour after hour he lay on the floor. Some time during the second night the pain in his body grew so terrible that he finally made up his mind.
"If I can get to a dais," he told himself, "the heat alone will kill me; and in absorbing my body, the village will get back some of its lost water."
He spent at least an hour crawling laboriously up the ramp of the nearest dais, and when he finally made it, he lay as one already dead. His last waking thought was: "Beloved friends, I'm coming."
The hallucination was so complete that momentarily he seemed to be back in the control room of the rocketship, and all around him were his former companions.
With a sigh of relief Jenner sank into a dreamless sleep.
He woke to the sound of a violin. It was a sad-sweet music that told of the rise and fall of a race long dead.
J enner listened for a while and then, with abrupt excitement, realized the truth. This was a substitute for the whistling -- the village had adjusted its music to him!
Other sensory phenomena stole in upon him. The dais felt comfortably warm, not hot at all. He had a feeling of wonderful physical well-being.
Eagerly he scrambled down the ramp to the nearest food stall. As he crawled forward, his nose close to the floor, the trough filled with a steamy mixture. The odor was so rich and pleasant that he plunged his face into it and slopped it up greedily. It had the flavor of thick, meaty soup and was warm and soothing to his lips and mouth. When he had eaten it all, for the first time he did not need a drink of water.


"I've won!" thought Jenner. "The village has found a way!"
After a while he remembered something and crawled to the bathroom. Cautiously, watching the ceiling, he eased himself backward into the shower stall. The yellowish spray came down, cool and delightful.
Ecstatically Jenner wriggled his four-foot-tail and lifted his long snout to let the thin streams of liquid wash away the food impurities that clung to his sharp teeth.
Then he waddled out to bask in the sun and listen to the timeless music.