"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 09 - Flinx's Folly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

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Foster, Alan Dean - Flinx 09 - Flinx's Folly (v1.0) (html).html



She was not prepared to go beyond initial observation to render a formal
interpretation of what she was seeing. She was no specialist, and these readings
cried out for one capable of properly analyzing them. That, or a technician to
repair and recalibrate the scanners. She opted to seek the latter's advice first. Bad
scans made more sense than neurobiological impossibilities. Take those
distinctive tumors, for example. By rights, intrusive growths of such size and in
such locations should have resulted in a serious degeneration of cognitive
faculties or even death. Yet all correlating scans indicated normal ongoing
physiological activity. Of course, she couldn't be sure the patient was not an idiot
until he woke up and started to respond. All she knew was that for a dumb dead
man, he appeared to be in excellent shape.

The young man's situation clearly demanded expert scrutiny. But if she went
running for help without first having the hospital apparatus checked out, she
would be the one considered the idiot. Certainly a respected neurologist like
Sherevoeu would think so.

Making sure to lock in and back up the absurd readings on her pad, she
forwarded an application for equipment inspection to Engineering and
Maintenance. They would notify her when they had concluded the requested
check. Then she headed for the next patient-occupied room on her list. If this
man's vitals, currently stable and steady, showed any indication of changing for
the worse, the machines in the chamber would promptly alert the relevant staff.

In the darkened healing chamber behind her, the figures and readouts on the
main monitor grew ever more implausible. Measurement of dream activity
increased beyond all established limits. But then, the subject was not exactly
dreaming. It was understandable that the instrumentation was confused, because

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Foster, Alan Dean - Flinx 09 - Flinx's Folly (v1.0) (html).html


no instruments existed that were capable of measuring what was going on in the
mind of the tall young man on the gurney. It was not ROM sleep, REM sleep, or
anything else a sleep specialist would have recognized.

Under his shirt a unique, warm-blooded, snakelike creature writhed and twitched
with the intensity of the shared empathetic contact.

Flinx had company in the quasi-dream. His perception had been impelled
outward before, by the ever enigmatic, ever playful Ulru-Ujurrians. They were
not in evidence this time, nor could he recognize what was accompanying him. It
was a single mind, but one of a vastness beyond anything he could identify. In
some ways it was very childlike. In that respect, it was not unlike the mind of an