"Bernard Wolfe - Limbo '90" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Bernard)

He looked around the chamber. All his assistants were at their posts, watching their measuring dials and
recording at each stage Moaga's variations in temperature, muscle tonus, skin moisture, blood pressure,
pulse rate, intestinal peristalsis, pupil dilation and eyelid blinking, lacrimation, vaginal contractions.

Rambo wheeled away the machine and brought up a table, on it was a row of hypodermic needles filled
with liquid. Strychnine. The next step was neuronography, strychninization, the firing of certain key areas
of the cerebrum with this potent excitant in order to trace the pathways from the brain's jellied rind to the
hidden cerebellum, the thalamus, the hypothalamus. He made the injections expertly - but tensely: he was
always tense with hypodermic needles - while his assistants jotted their scrupulous notations about the
pursing of the lips, the fluttering in the cloaca, the squirmings of the pelvis.
While the strychnine bulleted through the brain's maze and the indicators jumped, he looked down at
Moaga's face, down into the wide-open eyes which saw little and said much. Babbling eyes, ranting eyes.
As always, the rotabunga drugs had induced a completely comatose state in which the eyes remained
open; for almost nineteen years he had been performing Mandunga here in the cave and never once had
he been able to turn his attention entirely from those open soapboxing eyes. What was it he always
thought he saw in them? Icy accusation, glaciers of accusation.

Once the routine experiments were out of the way it did not take long for the actual surgery. First he put
in place the fine surgical threads which marked the upstart areas on the patient's frontal lobes, then he
speedily made incisions along them and added several deft undercuts with the scalpel to free the spongy
masses at the desired depth, then he removed these masses with a suction cup and quickly tied off the
blood vessels. He reached down into Moaga's throat and made her cough: no leakage from the sliced
veins, everything in order.

Rambo returned with the Monel cabinet. The ten electric needles were applied to the same spots as
before: the woman's pelvic area remained inert, the vaginal indicators did not move. While Martine
doused the exposed area with penicillin Rambo brought the skull and very soon it was back in place, the
flaps of skin knitted together with stitches and silver clips.

Martine nodded and stepped back, beginning to strip off his rubber gloves. 'Done it again,' he said to
himself. 'Goddamned Siamese twins. I've cut out the aggression. I've also cut out the orgasm, can't seem
to separate the two. Sorry, Moaga. The pigsticker did his best.'

Martine looked up at the door and saw Ubu's face through the window. His eyes widened with pleasure,
then hardened. He yanked his mask off and came out looking angry.

'Peace to -' Ubu began, in English.

'What the hell are you doing here?'

'I bring news.'

'Couldn't it have waited?'

'No. We must have talk together.'

'Well... What's it all about?'

'Another fishing boat. The men went as far as Cargados Island, they were following a big school of
swordfish. They bring a bad report.'