"Broderick, Damien - The Dreaming (The Dreaming Dragons)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broderick Damien)

The time has dragged to five o'clock. I feel worse and worse, in some way which has little to do with my body's health. Whatever I mean by that. Well, I mean at least this: I have never _looked_ better since my childhood. The tired old gentleman has been taking quite some notice of himself in the mirror today, trimming his raggedy beard, combing his hair. I even tried the nifty sunlamp I found in the bathroom, and my skin prickles with a slight burn. Does the crisp crinkle of Anna Kuenzli's smart uniform, the curve of her lips, the luminous blue of her eyes, explain all? No doubt, no doubt.
So. The fact is, Sister Anna visits me only too rarely. Certainly she has other duties, though she's taken time to tell me something of her pre-Project life in a vast Life & Death factory in Moscow. Like all of us, Anna must know tedium and loneliness here in our self-protective Security blockade, but her obvious love of life (the French phrase which better expresses that escapes me, damn it) seems to carry her through. She is not, it seems, married.
My real point is that I feel like hell. And I'm scared as hell. I took a further wander this afternoon, clad in pyjamas of a wild and purple hue supplied by the base and smelling faintly of antiseptic, my feet in ludicrous fluffy slippers, and found beyond the angle of the corridor a single blank metal wall. I put my knuckles against it, a sharp rap or two, and had in return a flat metal clunk. It must be another door, there's no alternative way out, but it's thick as a vault.
I'm trapped, in short, in a luxurious prison designed to keep in not only viruses but people as well. What would happen if I smashed the first glass door in the airlock? Another metal wall smashing into place at the other end? I would not be surprised.
The map Sipyagin left me shows nothing of this; it is the barest outline of Ekratkoye Complex, labelled cryptically with numbers. These are useless without the key, which the doctor carefully tore away, although the L-shaped section I inhabit is hand-annotated. The map's sole function so far has been to guide me to an artfully concealed liquor cabinet in the lounge. I've brought the vodka back to my bedroom, but self-restraint prevents me from getting thoroughly sloshed. This is the _weirdest_ hospital.
It is 13 minutes after 9 in the night.
My head is funny. Anna bent over me and her tits were pushing out behind her white dress and I wanted to give them a grab and a squeeze but I didn't dare. She's real sexy. I groaned a bit so I could move and look up her dress but I didn't see much she was too quick. Get up now Ilya Davidovich she said and lifted me into bed.
I wonder if she saw my hard-on? Lets face it why should she get a charge out of me showing how randy I am God please believe me I'm truly sorry. It just stuck out and I didn't really mean it to and I got down quick as I could and hid but anyway why should she care when she can screw all them big tough mafia thugs and cops and generals and little smiling bastards like Dr Sipyagin for that matter. Let's face it.
O my god I feel reel strange why am I writing all this stuff anyway, I must be crazy, someone will see it and then I'll be in the shit up to my ears man oh man. Well I gotta coz I've always written it down every night for ten goddam years theres a funny ringing buzz in my ears I can see words jumping up and down in front of me leaking real fast out of the pen scrawly over the page, skid the page across the desk, what the hell, grab another one, its liking raping the page the virgin white page my god how corny Sister Kuenzli's no virgin for sure with tits like that rape rape sez the pen jesus jesus forgive me oh jesus its like all my brains were flaking off away out of my head an pouring down my ears like dandruff

NOVEMBER 14

I don't know what to do.
I really don't.
Habit, let habit show the way.
All right. Eight o'clock, maybe half a minute past. Ante meridian, morning of the day, an hour after breakfast and the doctors' silent visit, mutter mutter, or is my hearing impaired? I don't think they said much to me.
Go on, then, Professor Kukushkin, put it on the paper:
I no longer think that I am dying.
I think I am going out of my mind.
'Tush, Ilya,' says beautiful crisp Sister Kuenzli, when I weep and clutch her arm most sexlessly and tell my fear, sob it at her, rant and hurl the plates sloshing messy on the carpet. 'It's just a fever, Ilya Davidovich,' says Sister Anna, crouching carefully and efficiently and cleaning up the mess, showing disapproval by turning her face away, showing fear (or is that a delusion of my madness? and if so, she has every reason to fear me) in the tightness of her muscles as she sponges up the milk. 'The doctors will look after you, Ilya,' she explains, voice stern but matter-of-fact, 'it's just a touch of that poison still in your tummy.'
Well, why no stomach-pump? Why this fantastic set-up in the first place? I might not be the most popular of men, but old Georgii Piatnitsky sits with me over chess, and Lev Kamenev enjoys a bout or two at string theory, why haven't they arranged clearance and come to console the sick? Too many questions that can't be answered, not consistently: oh, there're glib retorts to every one, I can think of plenty myself; but put them together and what picture fits the total bill?
There is, if I'm to be rigorous -- what an agony it was to find that word -- that simple bloody word -- the thought I had before: I've got some revolting disease mutated into existence by the foul-minded military geniuses I had hoped we were putting out of business, some viral filth that squats in my brain. How, how? Is it possible for a thing like that to escape their gentle care, flutter on the cold wind of the steppes from Ekratkoye to Tse Complex, crawl on my skin, suck at my cortex. Christos, it's the conceit of a madman! What are Bio Containments for, if not to prevent every chance of such a disaster? And why am I the only victim? The other rooms here are empty, four beds unmade, their ticking bare, one freshly sheeted.
Those terrifying words.
They bring it back, the howling numbness in my mind, my raped soul, my very intelligence seeping away like blood drained into sand. And still it's there, the humming roar in my head, the fingers tugging at my memories, cutting me to shreds, I can feel it chewing and gnawing, O Christ bring it to a stop if You exist, stop this dreadful suction in my head.
I must concentrate on _facts_. I'm losing the words, losing myself, I pick up books from the elegant desk and flick pages back and forth -- the words are meaningless. I look at numbers and symbols, equations jotted in my own hand in the fly-leaves, and _I don't know what they mean!_
Facts: My name is Ilya Davidovich Kukushkin, DSc, PhD.
I am one of the international team which jointly developed the theory of sub-quark parastatics.
With my colleagues and assistants, I have puzzled over ancient debris from the moon and constructed from it an anti-nuclear shield.
The shield is an oblate spherical parastatic gluon bag. With this screen, the two great industrial nations of the world will be absolutely safe from atomic attack. We have neutralised each another, and any lunatic terrorists. This fact does not entirely dismay me.
How far my illness has progressed! The attack last night was no fleeting aberration. All the details, all the equations and engineering data concerning the shield are gone beyond recall, wiped away as if by a wet sponge. My whole grasp of physics and math, and yes, those delightful subtleties in which I rejoice, the musical structure and form of Webern and Schonberg, all gone, dear Jesus. I look at Lem and the words are not even words any longer -- have I forgotten how to read Polish? Yes. And French is fading in my mind, German, English -- like a smear of ice across a windscreen, my mind is blurring over and hardening into darkness.
Phooey on those silly old books.
[Here Hugh had noted: _The following elisions and solecisms reflect the fragmentation of the Russian text_.]
I was reel bored waiting for lunch, and Sister said Try the TV. Well I did an guess what there was lots of bottles of cordial in the cubord. Sister K. give me some buns too but there wasnt much on TV except school stuff
Proly its all rite to rite on this cos i did before only i kant understan any of them big werds
Well I don't know but i feel pritty sad and glum which is the werd my frend Ana sed.
Reel sad and glum cos it wood be nise to rite how i usetoo. Most times i jest sit hear and cry becoz there is a big pain in my hed wich is like a hole.
My hans are very big and lumzee and there are blak hares on them wich i kant rember it is very skary i think sister Ana is reely my muther but wen I tolled her she just went away very quick an i think she was sad or sumthin.
Well that is all i kan rite for now.
Ilya Davidovich. Ilya Davidovich. I. D. Kukushkin.
Thatz how i rite my name.
Horrses and kows an berds an fethers an hats an heds an fasez an nozes an muths an lips an eers an loleez
ilya davidovich
_[text turns into graphic at this point]_

NOVEMBER I6

They gave me the antigen this morning.
The bastards the bastards the filthy depraved bastards.