"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 5 - Flinx in Flux" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

He halted abruptly, the crawler coming to a stop as he released the accelerator.
Pip's head rose sharply from the seat where she lay curled about herself, and
Scrap's miniature wings fluttered nervously as Flinx clasped both hands to his
head. The headaches were growing worse. He had always had them, but this past
year they had become a constant companion, averaging several or more a month.
One more reason for abjuring permanent relationships. It was entirely possible,
he had considered in the darker moments, that he was one more eventual dead‑end
experiment, and he had no desire to drag anyone else down with him. He had
simply managed to last a little longer than the rest of their spectacular
failures. What was truly frightening was that in the medical texts the
difference between headache and stroke was little more than a matter of degree.
The painful lights began to fade from the inside of his retinas. He took a long,
shuddering breath, then sat up straight. Something was happening to him.
Something was changing inside his head, and he had no more control over it than
a spaceport control tower had over a runaway shuttle. More changes. Piss on his
progenitors, the sons of bitches who had arrogated unto themselves the right to
toy with the unborn.
There was nothing to be done about it. He could hardly walk into a major medical
facility and calmly request a full‑scale examination on the strength of being
the bastard product of an illegal and universally abhorred society of renegade
eugenicists. On the other hand, he told himself, feeling better as the pain in
his head went away, it might simply be that he was prone to headaches. He
managed a grin. It would be amusing if all his fears and worries were
groundless, and the only thing he was suffering from was the normal trauma of


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moving from adolescence into adulthood. It would also be wonderful.
It would also be unlikely.
The headaches were usually accompanied by a severe emotional twitch from another
person, but there was no one else in the vicinity. Maybe a real headache, then.
He would not mind the pain if that was the case. Sometimes even pain could be
reassuring.
The fact that he could still suffer wrenching emotional dislocation here in the
middle of the jungle was further proof of the erratic nature of his abilities,
not that he needed additional confirmation. The fact that he had come to grips
with his peculiarities intellectually did nothing to assuage their effects on
him. They were a constant reminder of his abnormality, of the fact that whatever
else he did, he would never be able to lead anything resembling a normal life.
If only he could learn to channel, to control his talents, to turn them on and
off like water from a faucet. "If only," he mumbled angrily to himself, "I were
normal. But I'm neither normal nor in control of what I am."
A light weight landed on his right shoulder. A glance revealed the scaly yet
somehow understanding face of Scrap. He smiled.
"What am I going to do with you? You aren't going to find any bonders out there,
anyone to share with. You'll be living in an emotional void, existing on
overflow from Pip and me, all receive and no amplify."
What did minidrags do in the wild? he wondered. Could they feed empathically off