"Wilhelm, Kate - Planet Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

I tell them quickly, leaving out nothing. "I recorded all of it," I say. "Until I started to scream. I turned that off."
"You knew you were going to scream?" Wes asks with some surprise, or possibly disbelief.
"I had to. The adrenalin prepares one to fight, or to run. If he can do neither and sometimes even if he can, the excess adrenalin can change the chemistry of the brain and the person may go mad. Like Ito. Or lose consciousness. I chose to do neither. Screaming is another outlet, and I had to do something with my hands, or they would have clawed at the buttons of my controls. So I dug and screamed."
"And what have you proved?" Haarlem asks. He sounds angry now.
I continue to look at Wes. "It gets overwhelming if the person is alone, beyond the reach of others, or the ship. And there is no living thing present to account for it. Unlike other fear situations where the fear peaks and then subsides, this doesn't diminish, but continues to grow."
"You were still feeling it when we found you?"
"I was. It was getting worse by the second." I glance quickly at Haarlem and then away again. "Screaming helped keep me sane, but it didn't do a thing for the terror."
Wes stands up decisively. "I'll cancel the overflights," he says, but he gives me a bitter look, and I know he is resentful because I have denied him this pleasure: flying over a land where no man has walked, seeing what no man has seen, knowing that no man will ever see it this way in the future, for virginity cannot be restored.
"I think the other party at the shore should be recalled," I say, but now I have gone too far. He shakes his head and presently leaves me with Haarlem.
"You did a crazy thing for someone not crazy," Haarlem says, but he is undressing as he speaks, and contentedly I move over and watch him.
* * * *
The sun is out, and the perfection of this planet, this day, is such that I feel I could expand to the sky, fill the spaces between the ground and the heavens with my being, and my being is joyful. The air is pristine. The desire to pull off our impermeable suits is voiced by nearly everyone. To run naked in the fields, to love and be loved under the golden sun, to gather flowers and strew them about for our beds, to follow the meandering stream to the river and plunge into the cool, invisible water, where the rocks and plants on the bottom are as sharp and clear as those on the bank, these are our thoughts on this most glorious day.
An urgent message from the shore party shatters our euphoria. Tony has gone mad and has broken Francine's neck in his frenzy. He eluded the others and ran into the woods, leaving a trail of instruments behind him.
Wes has ordered the shore party to return to the ship. He has ordered me to the infirmary to wait for Francine, who is dying.
* * * *
No one suggested we bury Francine. We have her body ready for space burial, and now we orbit the planet and monitor our instruments from a distance. The spy satellites will be finished in three days, and then we shall leave. We voted unanimously that the planet is uninhabitable, and that too will be a note in the paragraph in the catalogue of worlds. No one will come here again. There is no need for further exploration; no future seedling colonists will christen this world. The planet will forever remain a number.
* * * *
Wes and I are awake, taking the first watch. Although we trust our instruments, our machines completely, we choose to have two humans awake at all times. Always before when I stood watch, it was with Haarlem, but this time I volunteered when Wes said he would be first. Haarlem didn't even look at me when I made the choice.
The Deep Sleep will erase the immediacy of the planet, melt it into the body of other planets, so that only by concentration will any of us be able to feel our experience here again. And there is something I must decide before I permit this to happen. Haarlem said, mockingly, "No one believes in heaven, or the Garden, but there is a system of responses to archetypes built into each of us, and this planet has triggered those responses."
I refuse to believe him. Our instruments failed to detect a presence, a menace, a being that made what appeared to be perfection in fact a death trap. I think of the other worlds to which we have condemned our colonists, worlds too hot, or too cold, with hostile animal life, or turbulent weather, and mutely I cry out that this planet that will remain forever a number in the catalogue of worlds is worse than any of them. None of the other worlds claimed a life, and this planet has taken four. But my dreams are troubled, and I think of the joy and serenity that we all felt, only to be overcome again by terror.
We all shared the fear. The thought races through my mind over and over. We all shared the fear. The best of us and the worst. Even I.
Even I.

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