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

he, for the period of these attacks, finds himself inhabiting your body.
Very disconcerting for both of you, I don't doubt..."
I gestured feebly. "But there is a cure? You can do something for me?"
Dr Lassiter glanced at his buttressed fingers. "I'm sorry..."
"You mean - you can't prevent this? At any time of day I'm likely to find
myself in the body of this prehistoric ancestor, without warning, and
there's nothing you can do to...?"
I stopped, there.
Dr Lassiter was regarding me with sad eyes.
"I'm afraid it's somewhat more serious than that, Mr Carnegie. Soon, on
the occasion of your fifth attack - if you go the way of the other cases
we have observed - you will remain forever in the body of your proto-human
ancestor." He lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry, Mr Carnegie..."
He murmured that he would refer me to a therapist, and that she would be
in touch soon. He expressed his sympathies with such professionalism that
I knew they had been offered many, many times before. I took the
down-chute to the street and wandered home like a zombie.
Ancestral Persona Exchange...
"Oh, my God..." I cried.
I was going APE.

That night, the inevitable happened. The backbrain tickle began as I lay
in my bunk, pondering my fate. Too afraid to move, I closed my eyes and
tried not to scream. The cerebellum itch became unbearable. Next, I
thought, the grunts - then I find myself in the dark, neutral medium of
non-being an instant before the transfer. But I was wrong. In place of the
grunts I sensed the apeman attempt to articulate - he shaped his grunts
into the semblance of latter-day English. Where am? he thought-asked. Who
you? I sensed his confusion and felt pity for him.
But before I could question him as to how it was that he had managed to
communicate with me in my own tongue, I slipped into utter blackness and
struck out blindly for the safety of physical reality - even if it was in
this case the reality of a million years ago.
I sensed myself settle into the apeman's body - and then I knew how he had
managed to question me, for I was doing the same thing now. I had a
limited understanding of the grunt-language used by these people. I was
aware that the apeman's name was Gna, and that among this band of
proto-humans he was regarded as something special - exactly why, though, I
did not know. To some vestige of Gna still lingering in his own head I
asked: Who are you people? Where are we? But before he could frame a reply
he passed into my own body uptime and I came to my senses in his.
I opened my eyes and found myself seated in the shade of a tree some way
from the main body of the tribe. Many of them were stretched out asleep
and snoring; others attended to their partner's nit population. A few
youngsters chased around in play, for all the world like baby chimpanzees.
A huge red sun hung above the treetops, and something that I had
experienced only once before moved in from the west - a wind. This one was
hot and discomforting, like a blast of heat from a furnace. Evidently we
had eaten; my hands were bloody and my belly full. My gaze fell to my body
and I had to admit that I was a hideous specimen - even by prehistoric