"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Adaptive Ultimate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

possessed; her dark, cropped, oily hair was unkempt and stringy, her features flat and unattractive. She
breathed with an almost inaudible rasp, and her eyes were dosed.

"Do you," asked Scott, "consider this a test? She's all but dead now."

Dr. Bach nodded. "Tuberculosis," he said, "final stage. Her lungs are hemorrhagingтАФa matter of hours."
The girl coughed; flecks of blood appeared on her pallid lips. She opened dull, watery blue eyes.

"So!" said Bach, "conscious, eh? This is Dr. Scott. Dan, this isтАФuh"тАФhe peered at the card at the foot
of the bedтАФ"MissтАФuhтАФKyra Zelas. Dr. Scott has an injection, Miss Zelas. As I warned you, it
probably won't help, but I can't see how it can hurt. Are you willing?"

She spoke in faint, gurgling tones. "Sure, I'm through anyway. What's the odds?"

"All right. Got the hypo, Dan?" Bach took the tube of water-clear serum. "Any particular point of
injection? No? Give me the cubital, then."

He thrust the needle into the girl's arm. Dan noted that she did not even wince at the bite of the steel
point, but lay stoical and passive as thirty cc. of liquid flowed into her veins. She coughed again, then
closed her eyes.

"Come out of here," ordered Bach gruffly, as they moved into the hall, "I'm damned if I like this. I feel like
a dirty dog."


He seemed to feel less canine, however, the following day. "That Zelas case is still alive," he reported to
Scott. "If I dared trust my eyes, I'd say she's improved a little. A very little. I'd still call it hopeless."

But the following day Scott found himself seated in his office with a puzzled expression in his old gray
eyes. "Zelas is better," he muttered. "No question of it. But you keep your head, Dan. Such miracles have
happened before, and without serums. You wait until we've had her under long observation."

By the end of the week it became evident that the observation was not to be long. Kyra Zelas flourished
under their gaze like some swift-blooming tropical weed. Queerly, she lost none of her pallor, but flesh
softened the angular features, and a trace of light grew in her eyes.

"The spots on her lungs are going," muttered Bach. "She's stopped coughing, and there's no sign of bugs
in her culture. But the queerest thing, DanтАФand I can't figure it out, eitherтАФis the way she reacts to
abrasions and skin punctures. Yesterday I took a blood specimen for a Wasserman, andтАФthis sounds
utterly madтАФthe puncture closed almost before I had a c.c.! Closed and healed!"

And in another week, "Dan, I can't see any reason for keeping Kyra here. She's well. Yet I want her
where we can keep her under observation. There's a queer mystery about this serum of yours. And
besides, I hate to turn her out to the sort of life that brought her here."

"What did she do?"

"Sewed. Piece work in some sweatshop, when she could work at all. Drab, ugly, uneducated girl, but
there's something appealing about her. She adapts quickly."