"Paul Preuss - Re-Entry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

shoulders to relaxтАФit looked as if Phil were going to pull it off after all.
'*... the truth nowтАФit's the lure of the primitive that brings you all to
Darwin, isn't it? Even I still feel it, and I was born and raised here. Even
though I know better than you that ifs a tailor-made brand of primitivism."
Holder laughed.
He fiddled with the room controls as he talked. Slowly an unage began to fade in
all around him, filling one whole end of the darkened room: tree ferns and fat
cycads growing out of dark rich humus, and farther away, the mist-shrouded
shapes of giant redwoods. The plants were merely life-sized, but nevertheless so
big they seemed out of scale. Nothing moved in the dim ruddy light, not even the
tendrils of mist; Holder had not yet activated the scene.
He kept talking all the while. "Once upon a time, hi the good old daysтАФyou know
what I mean; I call it the Garden of Eden syndromeтАФone way or another we all
keep trying to go back. Now, a few years ago I spent some time with the yogis on
Ichtiaque. I learned some things from them, I learned some things about them, I
was lucky enough to solve a problem that had eluded other investigators...." A
few members of the audience murmured politely to indicate they were aware of the
research that had won Holder the Freund Prize. "... whereupon a collection of
armchair experimentalists decided to give me a prize for it," Holder said
blandly, cutting the sycophants dead.
Bruneau was surprised at the acid sharpness of Holder's tone; Holder was a man
who usually lapped up praise. But Bruneau thought that, all in all, Holder was
doing remarkably well.
Bruneau looked at the holofilm with interest. The scene was new to him; Holder's
talks usually began with panoramic views of Upper Cretacia from Mount Owen, one
of Darwin's more inspiring vistas. Holder had brought the forest scene to full
illumination, and had tapped the button that allowed partial animation. Fog
drifted through the trees; water dripped in fat splashes from the spiny fronds
of the cycads; insects flitted through the shadows. The motion cycled on an
imperceptible dissolve, every few secondsтАФwhatever happened later in the scene,
Holder was saving it
It wasn't a professional sensie with smelly-feely tracks, yet it filled the
visual field, and even standing at the back of the room Bruneau felt he was
inside the tableau.
"The yogis, attempting to get back to a presumed state of harmony with Nature
that never could possibly have existed, are the strictest imaginable
vegetarians," Holder was saying. *No animal products of any kind: no milk, no
eggs, they Won't even kill ticks. Yet they were afflicted by a very specific
disease that, so far as we knew, could only be transmitted by eating the meat of
infected loquemels, funny little goat-like creatures indigenous to the planet.
As it turned out, the thing that was making the yogis sick was probably also
keeping them alive."
Holder fingered the controls and the scene stopped cycling. He looked
incongruously at home, standing amid the fronds of the prehistoric forest in his
dark conservative suit and cape, but of course the primeval jungle was illusory.
His head was cocked back and his eyes were fixed on a spot a few dozen meters
back among the dark tree trunks. Unconsciously, every eye in the audience
followed his gaze.
"Seems the disease was carried by a parasite that infested wild loquemel. In the
larval stage, this tiny bug lives in besan pods. Besan provides the yogis with a