"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

developed in different places than here, or with maybe different ancestors. Some
of 'em was ugly as sin and looked like folks from a bad horror movie, but they
was still basically human anyway. They just went to show how different we could
have turned out with just one little thing goin' another way. Those they called
Type One, and no matter how weird they looked, they was all close enough to us
that we could probably have sex and produce somethin' neither of us would really
like to claim. Sorta like you can breed a lion and a tiger, or a cow and a
buffalo; like that.
Type Twos came from different ancestors and weren't close enough to breed with
us. At best they'd produce sterile offspring-like mules-and mostly nothin' at
all. Type Threes and beyond were so far off us that they might as well be from
Jupiter or somewheres for all we had in common. We couldn't even catch their
colds.
Trouble was, there was millions of worlds side by side that was only different
in smaller things, then millions of Type Ones on both sides of them, and so on.
A lot more than the Company could count, let alone know everything about.
"So we can catch it but we can't give it," I said. "That's somethin'."
"Yeah. It means real addiction. We think it's a Type One organism, but we
haven't been able to locate where it came from and considering the number and
range it might take years, even decades, if all resources were put on doing just
that. It's a needle-in-a-haystack proposition. On our own, we'll find this one
only by the kind of luck you have hitting the lottery. Now it does a nice, neat
job inside of us, but we're not what it evolved in and it runs into problems.
Something in our air, or our body chemistry, or whatever gets to it after a
while. It begins to slow down, then break down. The only thing that can restore
it is a fresh module of itself. What it does inside the body is very
complicated; suddenly it can't handle the task. It starts cutting back. It
starts to die and it tells you about it by hitting the pain centers. It also
becomes a massive infection in the brain, fighting off all comers and struggling
to survive one more minute. The withdrawal becomes the ultimate agony-and the
host dies before the parasite does."
Sam was kinda disturbingly clinical, but, then, he'd been a vice squad man. "How
long before this breakdown?"
"About thirty hours, give or take with the individual. Never less than
twenty-four and never more than forty as near as we can tell. Our samples have
been very limited, our information mostly second-hand or eavesdrop or
observations by people not trained in this sort of thing. Withdrawal takes
another six to eight hours of increasing agony before you pass out and the heart
stops. Brain tissue disruption or destruction begins shortly after the pain
button is pressed, though, and accelerates from there. We think that's what
kills, eventually. The autonomic nervous system-heart, breathing, whatever-is
disrupted. Let it go too long and a fresh infusion will get the body going again
but it won't repair whatever brain damage you get. The effects are wide ranging
and inconsistent from individual to individual. There could be memory loss, or
some sensory loss-vision, hearing, taste, smell-or some motor function problems
or intelligence, talents, abilities-you name it. But pain's the last to go."
I listened, not understandin' all the biology shit but understandin' the effects
on the people good enough. "Bill -how do you know this?" I asked him. "The only
way you could know this is if it was done on people."
"It was," he said softly. "But not by us. This isn't something we'd ever fool