"Eric Brown - Pithecanthropus Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

The clinic was the tallest building on the satellite. It stood at the
exact centre of the residential hemisphere like a giant spindle. Dr
Lassiter's penthouse consulting surgery was a great glass bauble that hung
metres below the apex of the dome and commanded a three-hundred-and-sixty
degree view of the surrounding city.
Lassiter himself was a tall, dignified man in his late nineties. He sat
between the wings of a large v-desk and joined his fingertips before his
long nose. He turned from the screen on his desk and regarded me.
Already I had been thoroughly examined and questioned by a Robodoc, and I
had expected to be diagnosed by the same. The fact that the Robo' had seen
fit to refer me to a human medic - and a top specialist at that -
suggested that something was very wrong indeed.
I quaked.
"I see that you have been suffering seizures as you call them, Mr
Carnegie," Lassiter said softly. The man had a honeyed larynx. "Perhaps
you would care to explain the nature of these seizures...?"
I did my best to describe the physical symptoms of my displacement, the
terrible sense of disorientation I experienced as a result.
"And you've suffered these on two previous occasions now?"
I nodded.
"Tell me, for how long did the first attack last?"
I shrugged." A matter of seconds."
"And the following attack?"
"About one hour."
Dr Lassiter nodded. "I see." He murmured into a microphone and regarded
the ceiling.
"Can you recall if, preceding these attacks, you heard noises in your
head?"
"Yes - a tickle at first, and then... grunts. Then I black out and come
round again... elsewhere, in a different body."
Dr Lassiter nodded sympathetically.
He glanced at the screen on his desk. "I see that you worked as an
Engineman. How long were you in this employment, Mr Carnegie, and when did
you leave?"
"Ten years," I answered promptly. "And I left six months ago. I was made
redundant when the all the Lines decided it was more profitable to employ
boosted-animals instead of Enginemen." I shrugged. "Does it matter?"
The Doctor chose to ignore me and murmured again into the microphone.
I waited until he finished, then cleared my throat. "Do you know what's
wrong with me, Dr Lassiter? Am I imagining all this, or-"
"I'm afraid that your imagination has nothing to do with this, Mr
Carnegie. And yes, I do know what is wrong with you..."
I waited.
"You are suffering from the rare and particularly unpleasant syndrome of
Ancestral Persona Exchange..."
I mouthed the last three words like an idiot, then echoed:
"Unpleasant...?"
"Ancestral Persona Exchange strikes one in every eight hundred million
people, Mr Carnegie. Stated simply, you find yourself in the body of a far
distant ancestor, in your case a proto-human from prehistoric Earth - and