"Isaac My Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

In the dark he stumbled and crashed downhill toward the ghostly glimmer of white rock ledge and fell by the two backpacks and the unused pile of firewood and lay waiting. After many hours he turned on an electric lamp and opened a book on growing spruce trees. It opened to a folded page.

"The long threads of mycelium mesh substitute for the shorter root threads of the tree and bring nourishment to an evergreen from a much wider expanse, often from a radius of fifty feet around an old isolated tree. In exchange for sugar and possibly aromatic terpenes in the sap sent down from the green top, the mat interfaces with the tree root and sends up minerals and dissolved nitrogen nutrients. The mat also recognizes the taste of certain diseases and virus infections that strike trees and provides appropriate antibiotics such as the mold provides for itself. It is notable that Larch, Pines, Spruce and Hemlock growing on almost pure rock but with a thick mycelium mat inhabiting the surrounding mulch are conspicuously taller and straighter, and have often lived and grown well beyond the lifespan of evergreens rooted in the normal soil of bottomland.

"We recommend that researchers look for the best mycelium samples below the fastest-growing pines in the most barren ground. It is worth noting that the samples of white mycelium threads collected must be kept in a cool damp medium in the dark and never exposed to a temperature higher than 105.5 Fahrenheit. It has been pointed out that 105.5 to 106 is the critical death or dysfunction temperature of the neurons of the human brain and this coincidence has launched speculation among the proponents of the chimera theory of evolution that cells are symbiotic associations of different organisms, that a case can be argued that nerves had originally been mycelia...."

He stopped reading. This book had misled him into this terrifying act. He put his head in his hands. Thoughts whispered: If the silver threads insert themselves into tree roots to feed and heal the tree in exchange for sugar water with terpenes and aromatics... Exchange...aromatics...alcohol...wine. Greeks...libations. The story of the student's leaking blood and bottles of spilled wine lying around him as he slept....

The father rose and carried bottles and cans up through the dark and poured all the remaining wine and all the boy's sodas around the brown earth blanket of his grave, and dissolved sugar in water and poured that too.

In the late morning he returned down the mountains, praying loudly and incoherently and not looking behind him. The boy followed, carrying both their packs and asking often, in a clear educated voice, УWhat's the matter, Dad? Tell me, what's the matter?"

But his father was afraid.