"02 - Exiles at the Well of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

"No, Dr. Zinder, I don't. Why? Is something about me different?" she responded hesitantly.

"Do you know you have a tail?" Zinder prompted.

She looked puzzled. "Of course I have a tail," she replied in a so-what's-wrong-with-that tone.

"You don't find that, ah, odd or unusual?" Ben Yulin put in.

The woman was genuinely confused. "Why, no, of course not. Why should I?"

Zinder looked over at his young assistant, almost fifteen meters across the open stage.

"An interesting development," he commented.

Yulin nodded. "Creating bean pots, then the lab-animal stuff, that told us what we could do, but I don't think I was ready for this."

"You remember the theory?" Zinder prompted.

Yulin nodded. "We're changing probability within the field. What we do to something or someone in the field is normal to them, because we've changed their basic stabilizing equation. Fascinating. If we could do this on a large scale . . ." He let the thought trail off.

Zinder looked thoughtful. "Yes, indeed. A whole population would be changed and it would never know it." He turned and looked down again at the woman with the horse's tail.

"Zetta?" he called. "Do you know that we do not have tails? That no one else we know of has a tail?"

She nodded. "Yes, I know it's unusual to you. But what's the big deal? I haven't exactly tried to hide it from view."

"Did your parents have tails, Zetta?" Yulin asked.

"Of course not!" she responded. "Now what's all this about?"

The younger scientist looked across at the old one. "Want to go any further?" he asked.

Zinder shrugged lightly. "Why not? Yes, I'd love to do a psych probe and see how deep it goes, but if we can do it once we can do it anytime. Let's check out one thing at a time."

"Okay," Yulin agreed. "So now what?"

Zinder looked thoughtful for a moment. Then, suddenly, he reached over and touched a panel next to a recessed combination microphone and speaker.

"Obie?" he called into it.

"Yes, Dr. Zinder?" the voice of the computer that was in the walls around them replied; a pleasant, professional, and personable tenor.

"You have noted that the subject does not know we have in any way altered her?"

"Noted," Obie admitted. "Do you wish her to? The equations are not quite as stable in that situation but they'll hold up."

"No, no, that's all right," Zinder responded quickly. "How about attitude without physical change? Is that possible?"

"A much more minor alteration," the computer told him. "But, also, because of that, more easily and quickly reversible."