"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Proteus Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

She scrambed up the crumbling embankment and seemed to vanish magically into the shadows. For a
moment Carver felt a surge of alarm as he clambered desperately after her; she could elude him here as
easily as if she were indeed a shadow herself. True, he had no moral right to restrain her, save the hardly
tenable one given by her attack; but he did not want to lose herтАФnot yet. Or perhaps not at all.

"Lilith!" he shouted as he topped the cliff.

She appeared almost at his elbow. Above them twined a curious vine like a creeping conifer of some
kind, bearing white-greenish fruits the size and shape of a pullet's egg. Lilith seized one, halved it with
agile fingers, and raised a portion to her nostrils. She sniffed carefully, daintily, then flung the fruit away.

"Pah bo!" she said, wrinkling her nose distastefully.

She found another sort of queerly unprepossessing fruit composed of five finger-like protuberances from
a fibrous disk, so that the whole bore the appearance of a large, malformed hand. This she sniffed as
carefully as she had the other, then smiled sidewise up at him.

"Bo!" she said, extending it.

Carver hesitated. After all, it was not much more than an hour ago that the girl had been trying to kill him.
Was it not entirely possible that she was now pursuing the same end, offering him a poisonous fruit?

She shook the unpleasantly bulbous object. "Bo!" she repeated, and then, exactly as if she understood his
hesitancy, she broke off one of the fingers and thrust it into her own mouth. She smiled at him.

"Good enough, Lilith." He grinned, taking the remainder.

It was much pleasanter to the tongue than to the eye. The pulp had a tart sweetness that was vaguely
familiar to him, but he could not quite identify the taste. Nevertheless, encouraged by Lilith's example, he
ate until his hunger was appeased.

The encounter with Lilith and her wild pack had wiped out thoughts of his mission. Striding back toward
the beach he frowned, remembering that he was here as Alan Carver, zoologist, and in no other role.
YetтАФwhere could he begin? He was here to classify and to take specimens, but what was he to do on a
mad island where every creature was of an unknown variety? There was no possibility of classification
here, because there were no classes. There was only one of everythingтАФor so it appeared.

Rather than set about a task futile on the very face of it, Carver turned his thoughts another way.
Somewhere on Austin was the secret of this riotous disorder, and it seemed better to seek the ultimate
key than to fritter away his time at the endless task of classifying. He would explore the island. Some
strange volcanic gas, he mused vaguely, or some queer radioactive depositтАФanalogous to Morgan's
experiments with X-rays on germ plasm. OrтАФor something else. There must be some answer.

"Come on, Lilith," he ordered, and set off toward the west, where the hill seemed to be higher than the
opposing eminence at the island's eastern extremity.

The girl followed with her accustomed obedience, with her honey-hued eyes fastened on Carver in that
curious mixture of fear, wonder, andтАФperhapsтАФa dawning light of worship.