"Kate Wilhelm - Day Of The Sharks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

The Day of the Sharks

by Kate Wilhelm

Copyright 1992

Her tranquilizer is wearing off, Gary thinks, when Veronica begins to tell him
about it again. He stops listening almost immediately, and watches the road.

"...that thin voice coming in my ears, hour after hour. You know, he doesn't
dictate it like that. He pauses and goes out, has coffee, sees other patients,
but day after day, having that box talk to me..."

The road is a glare, the sun straight ahead, centered in the dazzling
whiteness of the concrete; the bay they are skirting is without a ripple, an
endless mirror of eye-hurting brilliance. It will be beautiful when the sun is
actually setting, he thinks, but now his eyes burn, and the damn
air-conditioning in the rented car is malfunctioning, alternately shocking
them with random cold blasts, or leaving them sweltering in the airless
machine that smells of deodorizers and cleaning fluids.

"...and they weren't people. Not after a while. They were gall bladders and
thyroids and kidney stones. I began to wonder if there were any people even
connected to them. You know? Free-floating kidney stones."

A flight of birds catches his attention; they just clear the water, almost
touching the surface with their broad wings that look tattered, old, as if
they have been at war, are flak-torn.

"...system's supposed to help with the filing, for the computers, or
something. Everything by number, not even parts of the anatomy any longer.
Just numbers and prices. Case histories of numbers."

Her voice is getting high, tight, the way it does these days. Her posture has
become rigid, her gaze fixed on a point straight ahead; she can stay this way
for hours, unmoving, seeing what? He can't imagine what she sees. He grasps
the steering wheel harder, wishes she would take another damn tranquilizer and
be done with it. She will eventually. But she is afraid of them throughout the
day until after dinner when it doesn't matter if she falls asleep. She took
two at breakfast and dozed on the flight from Chicago to Tampa; it was a
peaceful flight.

Ahead, a squat, ugly complex comes into view, black against the glaring sky,
his next landmark. He slows to make the turn off the highway over a bridge
onto a narrower road. Now, with the sun to his right, he can drive faster. The
islands have nothing on them, a few palm trees, some dunes, scrub that looks
like felled palm trees, more birds. Sea gulls, he thinks, with near triumph.
At least he knows sea gulls. Six miles farther.

His thoughts turn to Bill Hendrix and his wife Shar. And then he is thinking