"Robert F. Young - Tents of Kedar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

will administer at two and one-half hour intervals. A spinal tap will then be made, but it will be routine. By
tomorrow morning, you will be cured."
"That's preposterous! Meiskin's disease can't be cured overnight!"
"According to your colonial doctors, it cannot be cured at all. Besides, I did not say it could be cured
overnight. Be patient. In the morning, the administrator will explain everything to you. Now, I must go."
In the doorway, she paused and looked back at him. Looked, for the first time since entering the
room, into his eyes. Looking back into hers, he knew once again, during the brief interval before she
turned and vanished down the corridor, the depth and breadth of them; the Weltschmerz and the
boundless compassion тАФ and, yes, the love she bore him. And knew something else as well. They were
the eyes of a saint.

The blue-cowled man sat alone in the ground-floor room to which Eastcliff had been directed. Only a
desk, patterned with a parellelogram of morning sunlight, indicated that the room was an office. The
blue-cowled man sat behind the desk. He motioned Eastcliff into a chair opposite him.
"How do you feel?"
"Reborn," Eastcliff said.
The blue-cowled man handed him a small sealed envelope. "It is from Sefira. There is no need for
you to read it now. It will be better if you wait till you are on the river."
"Where is she?"
"She has returned to her home in the bush. The chirurgeons' code is a rigid one. It does not
countenance a chirurgeon's falling in love with a patient. When this occurs, she must confess her
transgression to her superiors and disqualify herself. Yours was Sefira's last case."
Eastcliff said coldly, "What manner of a woman would fall in love with a man the moment she set
eyes on him?"
"It did not happen quite that way. This will become clear to you presently.
"Our name for the malady that afflicted you is 'Blinding Light.' Back here in the bush we have been
coping with it successfully for generations, although the identity of its carrier continues to remain unknown
to us. Were the results not so tragic, we would find it amusing indeed that a silly scientist from Earth
should have presumed to give it his name and have pronounced it uncurable.
"Beginning at the age of five and continuing to the age of twenty, all Ebononese are periodically given
an oral vaccine. There are a few, of course, who out of superstitious fear hide from our bush-doctors and
contract the disease in later life, but even in these cases it isn't fatal because we are blessed with our
chirurgeons. A chirurgeon preincarnates herself in the body of the victim, if sex permits, or in the body of
someone close to the victim, if sex does not, and administers the equivalent of the vaccine series before
the victim contracted the disease. The victim will still contract it, not only because a paradox would be
involved if he didn't but because a vaccine series administered over the space of a few months isn't as
effective as one administered over the usual fifteen-year period. Thus, the series must be supplemented
later on by a series of injections тАУ 'booster shots,' you would call them. Meanwhile, although the
symptoms continue to be present, the damage done will be negligible.
"This ability of the chirurgeons to project themselves mentally тАФ spiritually, if you prefer тАФ back in
time is an inborn gift. Ebononese men are never born with it, and only a few Ebononese women. It is
limited in that the chirurgeon can take over only the mind and body of a member of her own sex and in
that her maximum pre-incarnation range is considerably less than an a Andromedae VI year. But this still
enables her to treat or pretreat all diseases retroactively, including Blinding Light. In your case, as often
happens, one of our bush-doctors made the diagnosis; thus Sefira, the moment she was assigned to you,
had merely to preincarnate herself in the body of someone closely enough associated with you to enable
her to incorporate the vaccine series in your food and drinks. The vaccine itself she obtained by courier
from the clinic. In effect, you were cured before you came here, even though your symptoms still
persisted. Yesterday and last night, you received the booster shots."
"In whose body?" Eastcliff said hoarsely.