"Vonda N. McIntyre-The Genius Freaks" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

years too late, given time by a faulty biologic clock to develop into something the Institute could no longer
control, let alone understand. Their days would be terror and their sleep nightmare over that possibility.
And her people, the other Fellows, would hardly notice she was gone: that brought a pang of guilt.
People she had known had left abruptly, and she had become so used to the excuses that she had ceased
to ask about them. Had she ever asked? There were so many worlds, such great distances, so many
possibilities: mobility seemed limitless. Lais had never spent as much as a year in a single outpost, and
seldom saw acquaintances after transient project collaborations or casual sexual encounters. She had no
emotional ties, no one to go to for help and trust, no one who knew her well enough to judge her sane
against contrary evidence. Fellows were solitary specialists in fields too esoteric to discuss without the
inducement of certain intellectual interaction. The lack of communication had never bothered Lais then,
but now it seemed barbarous, and almost inconceivable.
Clear soup took the chill away and let minor discomforts intrude. The thick coat was too warm, but
she wore it like a shield. Her hair and clothes were damp, and the heavy material of her pants began to
itch as it grew warmer. Her face felt oily.
Trivialities disappeared. She had continued the research she had started before she was forced to run.
She was crippled and slowed by having to do the scut-work in her mind. She needed a computer, but
she could not afford to line one. It was frustrating, of course, exhausting, certainly, but necessary. It was
what Lais did.
A hesitant touch on her shoulder awakened her. She did not remember falling asleep-- perhaps she
had not slept: the data she had been considering lay organized in her mind, a new synthesis-- but she was
lying on her side on the padded bench with her head pillowed on her arms.
"I'm really sorry. Mr. Kiviat says you have to leave."
"Tell him to tell me himself," she said.
"Please, miz."
She opened her eyes. She had never seen an old person before; she could not help but stare, she
could not speak for a moment. His face was deeply lined and what little hair he had was stringy,
yellow-white, shading at his cheeks into two days' growth of gray stubble. He was terrified, put in the
middle with no directions, afraid to try anything he might think of by himself. His pale, sunken eyes shifted
back and forth, seeking guidance. The thin chain around his throat carried a child's identity tag. Pity
touched her and she smiled, without humor but with understanding.
"Never mind," she said. "It's all right. I'll go." His relief was a physical thing.
Groggy with sleep she stood up and started out. She stumbled, and the malignant pain crawled up her
spine where eroded edges of bone ground together. She froze, knowing that was useless. The black
windows and the shiny beads of icy snow turned scarlet. She heard herself fall, but she did not feel the
impact.
She was unconscious for perhaps a second; she came to calmly recording that this was the first time
the pain had actually made her faint.
"You okay, miz?"
The old man knelt at her side, hands half extended as if to help her, but trembling, afraid. Two months
ago Lais would not have been able to imagine what it would be like to exist in perpetual fear.
"I just-- " Even speaking hurt, and her voice shocked her with its weakness. She finished in a whisper.
"-- have to rest for a little while." She felt stupid lying on the floor, observed by the machines, but the
humiliation was less than that of the few endless days at the hospital being poked and biopsied and
sampled like an experiment in the culture of a recalcitrant tissue. By then she had known that the
treatments were a charade, and that only the tests were important. She pushed herself up on her elbows,
and the old man helped her sit.
"I have... I mean... my room... I'm not supposed to ..." His seamed face was scarlet. It showed
emotion much more readily than the dead faces of sustained folk, perhaps because he aged and they did
not, perhaps because they were no longer capable of deep feeling.
"Thank you," she said.