"Herbert, Frank - Green Brain, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The bag was slipped off, breather mask pulled away. Hands propelled him down the corridor toward the sunlight.

"Lively now! Don't hold up the line."

The stink of the poison gas lay all around him. It was a new one -- a dissembler. They hadn't prepared him for this poison. He'd been ready for the radiations and the sonics and the old chemicals . . . but not for this.

Sunlight beat down on him as he emerged from the corridor into a street. He veered left through a passage lined by fruit stalls, merchants bartering with customers or standing fat and watchful behind their displays. In his extremity, the fruit beckoned with the promise of sanctuary for a few parts of him, but the integrating totality of him knew the emptiness of that thought. He fought off the lure, shuffled fast as he dared, dodging past customers, through the knots of idlers.

"You like to buy fresh oranges?"

An oily dark hand thrust two oranges into his face.

"Fresh oranges from the green country. Never been a bug near these."

He avoided the hand, but the odor of the oranges came near to overpowering him.

Now he was clear of the stalls, around a corner down a narrow side street. Another corner and he saw far away to his left the lure of greenery in open country, the free area beyond the town.

He turned toward the green, increased his speed, measuring out the time still available to him. He knew it would be a near thing. Poison clung to his clothing, but clean air filtered through the fabric -- and the thought of possible victory was like an antidote.

We can make it yet!

The green drew closer and closer -- trees and ferns beside a river bank. He heard running water, smelled wet soil. There was a bridge thronging with foot traffic from converging streets.

No help for it -- he joined the throng, avoided contact where possible. His leg and back linkages were beginning to slip, and he knew the wrong kind of blow, a chance collision, could dislodge whole segments.

The bridge ordeal ended and he saw a dirt track leading off the path to the right and down toward the river. He turned toward it, stumbled against one of two men carrying a pig in a net slung between them. Part of the skin simulation on his right upper leg gave way. He could feel it begin to slip down inside his trousers.

The man he'd hit took two backward steps, almost dropped the pig.

"Careful!" the man shouted.

The man's companion said, "Damn drunks."

The pig set up a squirming, squealing distraction.

In this moment, he slipped past the men onto the dirt track, shuffled toward the river. He could see water down there now boiling with aeration from the barrier filters, the foam of sonic disruption on its surface.

Behind him, one of the pig carriers said, "I don't think he was drunk, Carlos. His skin felt dry and hot. Maybe he was sick."

He heard and understood, tried to increase his speed. The lost segment of skin simulation had slipped halfway down his leg. A disruptive loosening of shoulder and back muscles threatened his balance.

The track turned around an embankment of raw dirt dark brown with dampness and dipped into a tunnel through ferns and bushes. The men with the pig no longer could see him, he knew. He grabbed at his trousers where the leg surface was slipping, scurried through the green tunnel.

Where the tunnel ended he caught sight of his first mutated bee. It was dead, having entered this barrier vibration area without any protection against that deadliness. The bee was one of the butterfly type with irridescent yellow and orange wings. It lay in the cup of a green leaf at the center of a shaft of sunlight.

He shuffled past, having recorded the bee's shape and color. His kind had considered the bees as a possible way, but there were serious drawbacks. A bee could not reason with humans. And humans had to listen to reason soon, else all life would end.

There came the sound of someone hurrying down the path behind him. Heavy footsteps pounded the earth.