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

organism has a community of wild cells and if so, where
it is and how big and how wild." Deftly he shifted his
grip on .the encased hypodermic without moving the point
or varying the plunger pressure. It was beginning to be
uncomfortable an ache turning into a bruise. "And if
you're wondering why this mosquito has a housing on it
with a wire attached (although I'll bet you're not and
that you know as well as I do that I'm doing all this
talking just to keep your mind occupied) I'll tell you.
It's nothing but a coil carrying a high-frequency alter-
nating current. The alternating field sees to it that the
fluid is magnetically and electrostatically neutral right
from the start."
He withdrew the needle suddenly and smoothly, bent
an arm and trapped in the inside of her elbow a cotton
swab.
"Nobody ever told me that after a treatment," she said.
"What?"
"No charge," she said.
Again that wave of approval, this time with words: "I
like your style. How do you feel?"
She cast about for accurate phrases.
"Like .the owner of a large sleeping hysteria begging
someone not to wake it up."
He laughed.
"In a little while you are going to feel so weird you
won't have 'time for hysteria."
He got up and returned 'the needle to -the bench,
looping up the cable as he went. He turned off the AC
field and returned with a large glass bowl and a square
of plywood. He inverted the bowl on the floor near her
and placed the wood on its broad base.
"I remember something like that," she said. "When I
was in junior high school. They were generating
artificial lightning with a--let me see--well, it had a long,
endless belt running over pulleys and some little wires
scraping on it and a big copper ball on top."
"Van de Graaf generator."
"Right. And they did all sorts of things with it. But
what I specially remember is standing on a piece of wood
on a bowl like that and they charged me up with the
generator. I didn't feel much of anything except all my
hail stood out from my head. Everyone laughed. I
looked like a golliwog. They said I was carrying forty
thousand volts."
"Good. I'm glad you remember that. This'll be a little
different, though. By roughly another forty thousand."
"Oh!"
"Don't worry. As long as you're insulated and as long
as grounded or comparatively grounded objects--me, for