"Theodore Sturgeon - Slow Sculpture" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

pass it on to other cells and still others who could deal
with it. In other words, if I can flood your body with a
medium that can drain off and distribute a concentration
of this unbalanced charge, the ordinary bodily processes
will be free to move in and clear up the wild-cell damage.
And that's what I have here."
He held the shielded needle between his knees and
from a side pocket of his lab coat he took a plastic box,
opened it and drew out an alcohol swab. Still cheerfully
talking, he took her terror-numbed arm and scrubbed at
the inside of her elbow.
"I am not for one second implying that nuclear charges
in the atom are the same thing as static electricity. They're
in a different league altogether. But the analogy holds. I
could use another analogy. I could liken the charge in
the wild cells to accumulations of fat. And this gunk of
mine to a detergent that would break it up and spread it
so far it couldn't be detected any more. But I'm led to
the static analogy by an odd side effect organisms in-
jected with this stuff do build up one hell of a static
charge. It's a byproduct and, for reasons I can only
theorize about at the moment, it seems to be keyed to
the audio spectrum. Tuning forks and the like. That's
what I was playing with when I met you. That tree is
drenched with this stuff. It used to have a whorl of wild-
cell growth. It hasn't any more."
He gave her the quick, surprising 'smile and let it
flicker away as he held the needle point upward and
squirted it. With his other hand wrapped around her left
bicep he squeezed gently and firmly. The needle was
lowered and placed and slid into the big vein so deftly
that she gasped not because it hurt but because it did
not. Attentively he watched the bit of glass barrel pro-
truding from the black housing as he withdrew the
plunger a fraction and saw the puff of red into the color-
less fluid inside.
Then he bore steadily on the plunger again.
"Please don't move. I'm sorry, this will take a little
time. I have to get quite a lot of this into you. Which
is fine, you know," he said, resuming the tone of his
previous remarks about audio spectra, "because side
effect or no, it's consistent. Healthy bio systems develop
a strong electrostatic field, unhealthy ones a weak one or


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none at all. With an instrument as primitive and simple
as that little electroscope you can tell if any part of the