"Herbert, Frank - DV 3 - The Lazarus Effect v5.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The cold slap of a sudden wave over the side snapped Queets Twisp full awake. He yawned, unkinked his overlong arms where they had tangled themselves in the tarp. He wiped the spray from his face with his shirtsleeve. Not yet full sunrise, he noted. The first thin feathers of dawn tickled the black belly of the horizon. No thunderheads cluttered the sky and his two squawks, their feathers preened and glistening, muttered contentedly on their tethers. He rubbed the circulation back into his long arms and felt in the bottom of the coracle for his tube of thick juice concentrates and proteins.

Blech.

He made a wry face as he sucked down the last of the tube. The concentrate was tasteless and odorless, but he balked at it just the same.

You'd think if they made it edible they could make it palatable, he thought. At least dockside we'll get some real food. The rigors of setting and hauling fishing nets always built his appetite into a monumental thing that concentrates could support, but never satisfy.

The gray ocean yawned away in all directions. Not a sign of dashers or any other threat anywhere. The occasional splatter of a sizable wave broke over the rim of the coracle but the organic pump in the bilge could handle that. He turned and watched the slaw bulge of their net foam the surface behind them. It listed slightly with its heavy load. Twisp's mouth watered at the prospect of a thousand kilos of scilla -- boiled scilla, fried scilla, baked scilla with cream sauce and hot rolls . . .

"Queets, are we there yet?" Brett's voice cracked in its adolescent way. Only the shock of his thick blonde hair stuck out from under their tarp -- a sharp contrast to Twisp's headful of ebony fur. Brett Norton was tall for sixteen, and his pile of hair made him seem even taller. This first season of fishing had already begun to fill in some of his thin, bony structure.

Twisp sucked in a slow breath, partly to calm himself after being startled, partly to draw in patience.

"Not yet," he said. "Drift is right. We should overtake the Island just after sunrise. Eat something."

The boy grimaced and rummaged in his kit for his own meal. Twisp watched as the boy wiped the spout nearly clean, unstoppered it and sucked down great gulps of the untantalizing brown liquid.

"Yum."

Brett's gray eyes were shut tight and he shuddered.

Twisp smiled. I should quit thinking of him as "the boy." Sixteen years was more than boyhood, and a season at the nets had hardened his eyes and thickened his hands.

Twisp often wondered what had made Brett choose to be a fisherman. Brett was near enough to Merman body type that he could have gone down under and made a good life there.

He's self-conscious about his eyes, Twisp thought. But that's something few people notice.

Brett's gray eyes were large, but not grotesque. Those eyes could see well in almost total darkness, which turned out to be handy for round-the-clock fishing.

That's something the Mermen wouldn't let out of their hands, Twisp thought. They're good at using people.

A sudden lurch of the net caught both of them off-balance and they reached simultaneously for the rimline. Again, the lurch.

"Brett!" Twisp shouted, "Get us some slack while I haul in."

"But we can't haul in," the boy said, "we'd have to dump the catch . . ."

"There's a Merman in the net! A Merman will drown if we don't haul in." Twisp was already dragging in the heavy netlines hand-over-hand. The muscles of his long forearms nearly burst the skin with the effort. This was one of those times he was thankful he had a mutant's extra ability.

Brett ducked out of sight behind him to man their small electric scull. The netlines telegraphed a frantic twisting and jerking from below.

Merman for sure! Twisp thought, and strained even harder. He prayed he could get him up in time.

Or her, he thought. The first Merman he'd seen netbound was a woman. Beautiful. He shook off the memory of the crisscross lines, the net-burns in her perfect, pale . . . dead skin. He hauled harder.

Thirty meters of net to go, he thought. Sweat stung his eyes and small blades of pain seared his back.