"Busby, F M - Demu 01-03 - The Demu Trilogy UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Busby F M)

he considerately rolled the nearest occupant out of splash-
ing range and faced the corner. At first he couldn't do it;

all the times he'd stood in line (at theaters during inter-
mission, at overcrowded facilities in tourist haunts), with
impatient others waiting behind him, came up to clamp
the sphincter tight. Waiting, he finally relaxed and the
flow came. The interesting thing was that at the floor it
simply disappeared: no splash or gurgle. The floor might
as well not have been there. It looked dry, felt dry (Bar-
ton felt it) and had no telltale smell at all (Barton smelled

it).

He had a sudden wild thought that perhaps the whole
room was an illusion, and gathered a few bruises trying
to launch himself through the floor, a wall, and even the
ceiling, before he decided that in this case liquids had cer-
tain advantages over solids. His guess might be wrong, he
knew, but that didn't mean it was stupid.

Other people were beginning to wake, sit up and even
move around. Barton realized that he hadn't paid enough
attention to the resident population, of which he was
perhaps 2 percent. So he stood quietly in bis corner and
looked.

The people ranged from ordinary to exotic, in Barton's
view. Some were as usual as anyone can be among some
fifty naked persons in a sealed room. Others were notable
for such things as highly stylized patterns of tattooing,
possible cosmetic surgery, and selective depilation. Still
others,. Barton thought, must have come out of a freak
show. Some of them be found hard to believe, but there
they were. The frightening thing, though, was that these
people were beginning to speak among themselves, and
while Barton spoke French and a little German, and could
recognize several other languages, he heard not one famil-
iar word from anyone near him. Well, yesЧthere was
one over therel

"Anybody here speak ENGLISH?" he bawled out sud-
denly. From the far side of the room came a "YES." Ac-
cented, but unmistakable. Barton began shouldering his
way toward the sound, shouting "ENGLISH" now and
then as a navigational aid.

"English" turned out to be a Doktor Siewen, a tall wiry
man with a great bushy shock of white hair, and some
alarming ideas. He and Barton traded names and shook