"Edmond Hamilton - Alien Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

тАЬWorship of what?тАЭ Farris asked. тАЬThe great ones, you said. Who are
they?тАЭ

Piang shrugged and lied readily. тАЬI do not know. In all the great forest,
there are men who can become hunati, it is said. How, I do not know.тАЭ

Farris pondered, as he tramped onward. There had been some-thing
uncanny about those tribesmen. It had been almost a suspension of
animationтАФbut not quite. Only an incredible slow-ing down.

What could have caused it? And what, possibly, could be the purpose
of it?

тАЬI should think,тАЭ he said, тАЬthat a tiger or snake would make short work
of a man in that frozen condition.тАЭ

Piang shook his head vigorously. тАЬNo. A man who is hunati is
safeтАФat least, from beasts. No beast would touch him.тАЭ

Farris wondered. Was that because the extreme motionlessness
made the beasts ignore them? He supposed that it was some kind of
fear-ridden nature-worship. Such animistic beliefs were com-mon in this
part of the world. And it was small wonder, Farris thought a little grimly.
Nature, here in the tropical forest, wasnтАЩt the smiling goddess of temperate
lands. It was something, not to be loved, but to be feared.

He ought to know! He had had two days of the Laos jungle since
leaving the upper Mekong, when he had expected that one would take him
to the French Government botanic survey station that was his goal.

****

He brushed stinging winged ants from his sweating neck, and wished that
they had stopped at sunset. But the map had showed them but a few miles
from the Station. He had not counted on Piang losing the trail. But he should
have, for it was only a wretched track that wound along the forested slope
of the plateau.

The hundred-foot ficus, dyewood and silk-cotton trees smoth-ered
the moonlight. The track twisted constantly to avoid impene-trable
bamboo-hells or to ford small streams, and the tangle of creepers and
vines had a devilish deftness at tripping one in the dark.

Farris wondered if they had lost their way again. And he wondered not
for the first time, why he had ever left America to go into teak.

тАЬThat is the Station,тАЭ said Piang suddenly, in obvious relief.

Just ahead of them on the jungled slope was a flat ledge. Light shone
there, from the windows of a rambling bamboo bungalow.