"Monica Hughes - Devil On My Back" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Monica)

A sudden wave from the left buffeted his log and he almost slipped off. In sudden panic he
clutched at it, his nails digging into the rotting bark. The buffeting did not last long. The river smoothed out
again. It was curving way over to the right around a big bulge of low meadowland. Could he paddle out
of the current to the right bank and get ashore?
He remembered his Dreamland experience and lay forward, stroking down into the water with
his left hand, trying to push the nose of the log over to the right, out of the current. But the river held the
log as firmly in its grip as a magnet holds iron filings. After he had paddled like this for a long time, until
his shoulder ached and his hand was numb, he was still caught in the current.
A sudden riffle of white water nearly tipped him off again. He gave up trying to steer and
concentrated on hanging on.
Time passed. The wide curve to the right stopped and he could see over to the left that the land
fell away into a low green slope almost level with the river itself. The comforting sun disappeared behind
the tree-covered hills to his right. Dark shadows lay across the river, turning the water from greyish green
to a flat slate grey that grew darker even as he watched it. His body began to shiver in small spasmodic
shakes that turned into deep uncontrollable shudders. His teeth chattered and he clenched them. He shut
his eyes again and concentrated on hanging on, his whole being contracted into the small warm kernel in
the middle of him.
***
The log bucked violently and his eyes flew open. There was land close at hand on his left. Reeds bent
under the log. Dead branches poked out of the water. Tomi drew up his cold cramped legs and got
ready. The next time the log caught and hesitated against a dead branch he rolled off into the water.
He gasped, staggered and clutched at the dead wood. It broke off in his hand. He fell forward
into the water and on hands and knees crawled across slippery stones and crushed reeds to the shore.
He lay there with his eyes shut, his face in a pool of slime, a branch sticking into his side. Safe!
He was safe!
After a while he crawled another meter or two onto a dry grassy area. There he collapsed again.
***
His eyes opened to blackness. He sat up quickly, wondering where under the Dome he was, and
yelled with pain. Every square centimeter of skin felt cut or bruised. Then he remembered and groaned.
He was sick with cold and the front of his stomach felt as if it were glued to the back. How long since he
had eaten?
He crawled painfully down to the water and washed the dried mud from his face and drank a
little to fill the emptiness of his stomach. Not much. The water was so cold that it made his teeth ache. He
began to shiver again.
A fire! If he were to survive until the sun came up he must have a fire. What had Denn said in the
dream? "It's easy; all you have to do is to rub two sticks together." Something like that. It seemed an
unlikely way of making fire. He accessed his historypak, but all he got was something called 'matches'
and something else called a 'tinderbox'.
He shivered and felt around for dry wood. At least there was plenty of it here, wherever here
was. Once he got a spark there would be no problem feeding it. He gathered a rough pile together and
then found two straight sticks, by feel more than sight. Obviously he needed to generate enough heat
through friction for combustion to take place. A drill would be the most efficient way. He accessed 'drill'
in his pak and set to work.
He sharpened an end of one of his sticks against a stone until it had a decent point. Then he
pushed the point into a natural dent in his second piece of wood. He held the second piece of wood
steady against his foot while moving his hands as fast as he could to and fro against the drill piece. He did
this for a long time. The only heat seemed to be generated in the palms of his hands, rather than in the
wood. In the end he threw the sticks away, rolled himself into a tight ball with his arms hugging his chest,
and tried to go to sleep.
After a while he turned over. Maybe he would be more comfortable on his right side. A stone