"Samuel R. Delany - High Weir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

Everyone looked at Hodges.

"What are you talking about, Evelyn?"

"Rimkin." She gestured with her brandy glass to keep Mak from filling it to the brim.
"Poor, crazy Rimky."

"Oh, he isn't crazy," Jones insisted. "He may be having a nervous breakdown on us,
which is too bad. But he's a brilliant, brilliant man. He did end up beating me at go
last night. Sometimes I'm just afraid these sorts of situations are merely
occupational hazards."

"True, Jonesy." She smiled ruefully and sipped. "And that's all I meant by crazy."

"You brought this whole business up in the first place, about the broken holograms,"
Ling said. "Why, Evelyn?"

The inflamed light of the morning desert jeweled the glass in her puffy fingers. "Do
you remember the head that had fallen from the frieze? It was cracked so that one
of the eyes had broken in half. When I found him this morning, he'd been out all
night with his laser beam looking at the images in the broken eye." She put her glass
on the table.

After a while, Dr. Smith asked, "Did you take a look?"

Evelyn Hodges nodded.

"Well?" Mak asked.

"Just what you said, Ling. The images were whole. But they were slightly blurred,
out of focus. I think there was something off with the timing, too. That's all."

Mak leaned forward, made disgusted sounds, and began to batter his ashes over the
detritus of crusts and butter on his plate. "Let's go out and finish up those
measurements." He poked the stem in his pocket. The periscope dropped. "If he
was up all night, that shot should keep him asleep till this evening."

┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


V
It didn't.

Rimkin woke fighting the drug after they had been gone twenty minutes.

And he still didn't know where he was. Not where he should be, certainly. Because
his head hurt; it felt as though the side had been broken away. His whole body was
sore. He lurched from the bed and tried to focus on the objectsтАФpillow, reading
machine, boxes of microfilm on the tableтАФbut they all had haloes like the