"Baxter, Stephen - Manifold 03 - Origin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

With the awkward little scissors she cut back Sally's sleeve, exposing the
wound. It didn't look so bad: just a gash, fairly clean-edged, a few inches
long. She wiped away the blood with a gauze pad. She could see no foreign
objects in there, and the bleeding seemed mostly to have stopped. She used
antiseptic salve to clean up, then pressed a fresh gauze pad over the wound. She
wrapped the lower arm in a bandage, and taped, it together.

... Was that right? How was she supposed to know? Think, damn it. She summoned
up her scratchy medical knowledge, derived from what she had picked up at
second-hand from Malenfant's training - not that he'd ever told her much - and
books and TV shows and movies... She pressed Sally's fingernail hard enough to
turn it white. When she released it, the nail quickly regained its colour. Good;
that must mean the bandage wasn't too tight.

Now she propped the injured arm up in the air. With her free hand she packed up
what was left of her first aid kit. She had already used one of only two
bandages, half-emptied her only bottle of salve... If they were going to survive
here, she would have to ration this stuff.

Or else, she thought grimly, learn to live like those nude hominids out there.

She turned to the kid. She wished she had some way to make this experience
easier on him. But she couldn't think of a damn thing. 'Maxie. I'm going to find
something to keep the rain off. I need you to stay right here, with your mom.
You understand? And if she wakes up you tell her I'll be right back.'

He nodded, eyes fixed on her face.

She ruffled his hair, shaking out some of the water. Then she set off back
towards the plain.

She paused at the fringe of the forest.

Most of the hominids were hunched over on themselves, as if catatonic with
misery in the rain. One, apparently an old woman, lay flat out on the floor, her
mouth open to the rain.

The rest seemed to be working together, loosely. They were upending branches and
stacking them against each other, making a rough conical shape. Perhaps they
were trying to build a shelter, like a tepee. But the whole project was chaotic,
with branches sliding off the pile this way and that, and every so often one of
them seemed to forget what she was doing and would simply wander off, letting
whatever she was supporting collapse.

At last, to a great hoot of dismay from the workers, the whole erection just
fell apart and the branches came clattering down.

The people scratched their flat scalps over the debris. Some of them made half
hearted attempts to lift the branches again, one or two drifted away, others
came to see what was going on. At last they started to work together again,