"Paul Levinson - Loose Ends (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

to the Beatles in musical importance. Now how could he know
that on the basis of `Surfin Safari' and a couple of other
uncreative songs in 1964?"
"Tall blond, sun-tanned boy, Mark?" Laura asked.
"Yeah, I think so."
"Well, he looks like one of the Beachboys, so maybe he's
just self-impressed," Laura laughed, and spilled her wine.
"Oops."
"You've got no luck with wine, have you?" Jeff was
laughing too now. He had to admit he was having a good time.
"Here, take mine, I just poured it, I'll go get another."
"I think I've had _fantastic_ luck with wine at least one
time," Laura said.
Jeff went to fetch another bottle in an adjacent room. The
music there was louder than anywhere else. Jeff cringed a bit
under the sound assault, then realized he was hearing something
else mixed in with the music ... a piercing wail coming from the
next room. He dropped the bottle and ran in and found Laura
shrieking on the floor.
"Laura, what's the matter?" He lifted her face and looked
intently into her eyes. They were grossly dilated. Her shrieks
suddenly turned into hysterical laughter.
"Professor Harris, is she sick or something?" Sandy, who
Jeff realized had been standing over them, was nearly in tears
herself.
"I don't know, Sandy. Look, could you please call me a
cab?"
Jeff helped Laura to her feet. She was screaming and
yelling at the top of her lungs but Jeff couldn't make out what
she was saying. She passed out in his arms in the elevator. He
carried her into the back seat of the cab that arrived a few
minutes later. "Get me to the closest hospital emergency room,"
he told the driver, who looked like he'd seen it all.
He carefully put her head on his lap and wiped big beads of
sweat from the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were tightly shut
and she drooled slightly from the corner of her mouth. He
gently wiped that also. She was moaning and half-singing some
Beatles song.
He had read of the effects of sixties psychedelic drugs on
people -- assuming that's what this was, though it seemed a
little early in the 1960s for that -- and could see this was a
very bad reaction, likely from something more nasty than LSD.
Who the hell had given it to her?
In his day and age, treating it by simple suffusion would
be child's play. But here more than a century earlier, with no
nano-syndics at all -- jeez, he hoped these "doctors" were up to
this. What would they use to cleanse her chemistry? He sighed,
stroked her face. There was no point in torturing himself.
That wouldn't stop her from dying. He had no choice but to put
Laura in whatever primitive doctor's hands this cabbie placed