"Gordon R. Dickson - Analog - The Far Call Part" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

have been swaying.
"Are you all right?" Varisov was asking, in a remarkably gentle voice. "You aren't ill?"
"Ill? No!" Jen pulled himself upright, laughing a little. "Tired ... that's all."
 "Oh, yes. Yes," said Varisov, letting go of his arm. "It is always tiring, this sort of thing."
Bill Ward finished speaking and sat down again in the chair from which he had risen earlier. Varisov
turned almost eagerly to him.
"Your brother, you were saying," Varisov said, "is on the faculty of the School of Veterinary
Medicine, at this university?"
"JoelтАФoh yes," said Bill. "Yes, the last six years."
"I wonder," Varisov said. "Do you know if he's been involved in any work or research on nerve
degeneration in animals? I have a dog at home, a small dogтАФ"
"Afraid I don't know anything about that," said Bill. "He doesn't usually tell me much about what he's
doing."
"It's not important, of course," said Varisov. "I hardly see the dog, these days. But to my wifeтАФwe
only had two children, adult some time since, of course. The older, the boy, was a test pilot. In fact Piotr
and Feodor Asturnov, our cosmonaut on this flight, were test pilots together. Not that they were close,
you understand, but they knew each other. Unfortunately Piotr'sтАФa plane my son was testing came apart
in the air and he was not able to get out in time."
"Oh. Sorry," said Bill, restlessly and uncomfortably, sitting stiffly upright in his seat.
"And his sister, our daughter, is married and lives in New Stalingrad, one of the new towns of
Siberia. My wife, so, and this dogтАФwe call him ZechiтАФare alone most of the time, together; I have to be
away so much. Zechi means a great deal to her."
"Ah . . . yes," said Bill, glancing past the Russian's head at the road still separating them from the
landing space where the VTOLтАФVertical Takeoff and LandingтАФaircraft waited to take the Deputy
Ministers back to their hotel on Merritt Island.
"Zechi's hind legs, lately, have been failing himтАФhe's not a young dog. Ten, twelve years old, I think.
Yes," said Varisov, "twelve years old. When he was young, he was hit by a truck; but he seemed to
recover very well. It's only this last year it's become harder and harder for him to walk."
"That's too bad," said Bill Ward. "That's a shame. You've had a veterinarian look at him before
this?"
"Oh, of course," said Varisov. "ButтАФso little seems to be known about dogs, in this way. They tell us
Zechi is just getting old; and we're not veterinarians ourselves. We can't argue. But Zechi got along so
well with those back legs all those years . . . I thought, perhaps, if someone over here was looking into
nerve troubles, or whatever causes paralysis like this, in dogs ... your brother might have heard of
something . . . ?"
The fingers of Bill Ward's left hand drummed momentarily on the arm of his chair.
"I can drop him a line. Be glad to," he said.
"Would you?" said Varisov. "I would appreciate it greatly."
The bus pulled up-at last at the landing area; and the VTOL plane waiting there took them into its
interior, which was hardly less spacious than that of the bus. A moment later, the plane lifted smoothly,
elevator-fashion, to about five hundred feet and flew them in to the landing area on top of the Merritt
Island hotel that had been taken over by the government for VIP quarters.
Jen Wylie went gratefully to his suite to lie down. But Varisov, as he was heading for his own suite on
the floor just below the landing area on the roof, was checked by the Indian Deputy Minister, Ambedkar,
and Guenther, their Pan-European opposite number, as he passed through the central lounge area leading
to their suites.

II

"Sergei, have you a minute? Stop and have a drink with us," Walther Guenther called in Russian as