"Julian May - Rampart Worlds 3 - Sagittarius Whorl" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

Naughty, naughty! His struggles are disrupting the genetic engineering procedure. The
apparatus programs deeper anesthesia. He plummets back into slumber mode and the
umpteenth dream replay begins.
He's always with his wife, whose name he can't recall any more than he can remember
his own. There is background musicтАФScott Hamilton playing " 'Round Midnight" on a
tenor saxophone. The bedroom is very large and of a rustic southwestern ranch style, with
a high-beamed ceiling and walls of whitewashed adobe, adorned with antique Native
American weavings and artwork featuring elegantly lewd pastel flower shapes. Double-
glazed sliding doors with parted curtains reveal that it's night and snowing hard outside.
The sound of the blizzard wind occasionally breaks through cascades of gentle jazz.
White drifts are piling up outside on the patio.
He and his wife, young newlyweds, sit side by side on a shearling rug before a blazing
fire. They're naked, propped happily against each other, sipping Roederer Cristal while
they watch the dancing flames. Her hair is ash-blond, rippling after being released from
its braided chignon, and reaches halfway down her back. Her eyes are the color of deep
ocean waters beyond the reef. She is striking rather than pretty, and her features in repose
are solemn until he caresses her and makes her smile.
Time to make love again.
And again and again, as the psychotronic machine endlessly loops his most exquisite
memory to facilitate the dystasis procedure.
The poor happy schmuck in the tank is me.
Drifting and dreaming.
тАФтАФ
Tap tap tap.
Someone spoke, an alien voice filtered through a translator device. "How interesting.
It looks as though he is waking up."
Someone else: "This is the template individual, Servant of Servants. The original. The
transformed human subject is recovering in another room, attended by one's technicians.
We will interview him shortly, just as soon as he is lucid."
"Let's see if this creature recognizes one."
Tap tap tap.
I slowly opened my eyes. The room outside was dimly lit, as always, with most of the
illumination coming from a bank of alien equipment some distance away. The dark floor
was intricately veined with a glowing red web that converged on my tank and the one
beside mine, which was now empty.
Three Haluk stood looking at me, two males and a female, all wearing translator
pendants. The tallest of the aliens knocked on the glass wall to get my attention as though
I were a sulky specimen in an aquarium.
Tap tap tap. "Wah! Can you hear one, Earth life-form?"
Of course I could. My ears worked just fine while submerged in the oxygenated glop,
and he must have known it.
He pursed his lips in the racial smile-equivalent and twiddled his four-fingered hand in
mock playfulness. "Do you recall this one's identity?"
With difficulty, I focused my eyes and concentrated.
Well, sure. The last time I'd seen him, he was wearing a conservative human-style
business suit of dark green with faint white pinstripes, tailored to set off his wasp waist
and accessorized by a scarlet foulard scarf and a diamond stickpin. He was now attired in
exotic haberdashery appropriate to his high station: bronze-purple robes with glittering
jeweled trim, an elaborate spiked diadem of platinum, and a matching necklace inset with
large fossil cabochons. But that ugly blue face was unmistakable, and so were the oddly