"Rajnar Vajra - Afterburn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

Dana leaned forward and her eyes sparkled with interest. "Physically
different?"
"Partly. He's so ... on display. And even if the new techniques -- and
isn't it incredible that _he's_ part of the team who developed them? -- even
if they work as well as we all hope, he'll never really look quite right."
"He won't?" Suddenly the emotional problems of this rich and beautiful
woman sitting in front of Dana seemed trivial. "Why not?"
"We can only speed up the replacement growth so much."
"Oh. Oh my! I suppose I knew that, but I hadn't looked at the
implications. So, at best, for the next few years he'll be a middle-aged man
with -- "
"The fingers, toes, ears, and nose of a six-year-old. Among other
disparities."
Dana took off her glasses, folded them, and laid them carefully on her
desk. "But the new parts will keep aging at an accelerated rate and eventually
catch up?"
"If only! Once he leaves the tank, all his ... parts will age
normally."
"Can't he simply stay in the tank longer, then?"
"I'm afraid not. Electro-stimulation provides the only exercise he's
been getting for almost two months. He's got to have weight-bearing exercise
soon or his bones will decalcify, perhaps irreversibly. And once he leaves the
tank, that's that. It won't do any good to return. His cells will have
stabilized and our targeting medicines won't be able to distinguish between
old growth and new growth."
"Goodness."
"The system wasn't intended primarily for adult patients. But maybe I'm
making his situation sound worse than it is. In ten years or so, he'll be
proportionate again. But he'll always look like something Frankenstein put
together in his spare time."
"How unfortunate!"
"I agree, but it beats the alternative."
****
Paul
Without my command, my rocket-launcher vanishes as I approach the
titanic female figure. Just as well. I've encountered giants in this world on
occasion; each time my best weapons were pitifully ineffective and I only
survived by fleeing. This being is at least sixty feet tall, which makes the
previous giants seem comparatively small and frail. I will run like hell if
she attacks although I see no place to run to. But I am not afraid, no more
than usual. My heart tells me that she will not prove hostile.
How did she get into this part of the cathedral? I see no door other
than the small one I passed through. Perhaps she squeezed in through the
broken roof. The sound I thought was a harmonium is apparently air whistling
through gaps in her teeth. The bass choir is just her, singing. Not Gregorian
chanting after all, but childish rhymes. The wheels on the bus go round and
round.... The fundamental frequency of her voice must be so fantastically deep
that what I'm hearing are a series of harmonics, still mostly in the low-bass
range.
But the strangest part is that this titan among giants is somehow