"Finch,_Sheila_-_Communion_of_Minds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finch Sheila)

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Communion Of Minds
by Sheila Finch
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Copyright (c)1996 Sheila Finch
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1996

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction


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"Someone down there!" Jaez announced.
Greer Yancy leaned toward the forward port to see where the shuttle pilot pointed. "Where?"
Before Jaez could answer, Dedrick shoved her aside and crowded against the pilot's shoulder. He'd already taken off his seat-web, claiming the too-tight webbing dug into his flesh. The man ate shipboard food with as little discrimination as a pig, Greer thought, having sat at table with him for six weeks.
"Don't see anything!" Dedrick complained.
"Two o'clock position. Right in front of those low, bushy things," the pilot said. "Something wrong, though. He's moving peculiar."
She managed to get a glimpse beneath Dedrick's raised arm. They were now skimming the planet's surface at the level of spindly, tree-like growths, over a narrow landing-strip. On the ground in a patch of brilliant sunlight, she saw a figure waving at them. Or maybe shooing them away. The gesture was oddly spastic, open to interpretation. Then the figure broke into a halting run as if he wasn't in complete control of his limbs, darting across the clearing and disappearing into trees.
Greer scanned the surface for ents -- friendly or otherwise. Bridging the chasm between human and alien languages was a routine task for a xenolinguist assigned to a starship, even a freighter like the _City of Sao Paulo_. Too routine. This rescue mission -- in response to a fragmented distress call the _Sao Paulo_ had picked up -- was the most promising event of a two-year voyage. She braced herself against the seat-web and prepared for touch down.
The shuttle landed, then rolled to the brief line of trees that marked the margin of the sandy clearing. Thin as broomsticks, they rose naked for perhaps thirty feet, then suddenly sprouted spiky tops like fistfuls of scarlet knives, a color so vivid it hurt her eyes. Other than sparse clumps of the neon-hued trees and low, thorny growths resembling purple tangles of barbed wire, the planet was dun-colored. Beautiful in its arid way, she thought, rather like her native Mojave Desert in mid-August.
"Yuck!" Dedrick said. "Who the hell picked this dump for a colony?"
Dedrick was middle-aged, a successful engineer who rated everything on a planet in terms of its suitability for building bridges, dams, aqueducts, hydroelectric power plants. At dinner every night, he'd boasted about disasters and accidents on projects that he'd survived by a combination of skill and nerves.
"Research group," Iversen put in. The fourth member of the hastily assembled rescue team was small, soft-spoken, younger than Greer, a medtech on his first assignment who so far hadn't faced a situation more serious than the upset stomachs of the _Sao Paulo's_ crew. "Astronomers and astrophysicists, Library says."
"What'd they do?" Dedrick said sourly. "Run out of sunblock?"
Jaez opened the shuttle's hatch. A blast of hot, dry air hit them, tinged with a rusty, iron smell like blood.
The man who'd waved at them suddenly reappeared. He was over six feet tall and thin to the point of emaciation. His dark hair and beard were long and unkempt, and his clothes looked as if they'd once belonged to someone much shorter. His movements fascinated her. He seemed to be trying to come forward and move back at the same time, each limb obeying a different order and then contradicting it in mid-motion, like someone who'd lost the automatic control functions of his brain and had to move each part by conscious thought.
"Neurological damage," Iversen observed.
"Frigging lunatic!" Dedrick said. "Christ! It's hotter than hell down here."
He pushed past Jaez to stand at the top of the ramp. Jaez muttered under his breath. The veteran pilot's dislike of the engineer had been obvious from the first. Dedrick had insisted his skills would be useful to the crew on this mission. To Jaez's dismay, the captain had agreed.
"H -- H -- Hi!" the tall man said. His mouth worked crazily as he spoke. "Th -- Th -- Thank G -- G -- God that you c -- came! Didn't th -- think m -- message w -- w -- would get -- "
He seemed at war with himself. Trained to pick up the nuances of movement and gesture that reinforced or contradicted speech, meanings skewed out of the ordinary, Greer thought his body struggled to undermine what his tongue wanted to say.
"We're here to help you, pal!" Dedrick stood at the bottom of the ramp, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. "Tell me what you need."
"Where's everybody else?" the young medtech asked.
"D -- Dead," the man said. "All dead. Th -- Thirty men and w -- w -- women. I -- I -- I am the l -- last -- "
He broke off as if the effort were too great.
"Jesus!" Iversen said.
Jaez moved down the ramp and deliberately placed himself between the tall man and Dedrick. "My God, man! What happened here?"
Now the man shook his head, an alarming gesture that seemed capable of unhinging the head entirely from his neck. "Crops all d -- died. Nothing grew. C -- Can't eat the native f -- f -- "
"Native flora?" Jaez guessed.
"Native viruses a problem?" Iversen asked.
It seemed a good guess to Greer. The reaction the medtech's question provoked startled her.
"N -- N -- No! No! No d -- d -- disease! This -- This is -- Tried to -- Tried to ee -- ee -- eat -- Rats! -- Tried -- "
He stopped suddenly, arms still in mid-gesture, mouth slack. The shuttle's crew stared at him. Seconds blinked by.
Then he moved again, and it was as if they were looking at a different person.
"Sorry," he said, hands relaxed against his hips. "I have these unfortunate -- episodes, for lack of a better word. Name's Jim Sharnov."