"Timothy Zahn - A Coming of Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

the pod nearly spun out of his hand.


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A Coming of Age

The amplitude decreased until it was a barely detectable quiver. Colin was being a little silly, Jarvis
knew, but he could live with that. "All right. Now I want you to look at the pod very carefully so that
you know exactly where it is," he instructed the boy. "Then close your eyes and try to teek it without
looking. Okay? Okay, close your eyes."

Colin did so, and the pod's vibration abruptly ceased. "Keep trying," he said soothingly as Colin's
features twisted up with concentration. Someday, Jarvis told himself, he would get around to
studying exactly why direct visual, tactile, or kinesthetic feedback was required for teekay to
function. Someday when Ramsden runs out of projects for me to do, he thought sardonically.

Thoughts of Ramsden and the university made him frown. Somerset, for all his perpetual
cheerfulness, really wasn't as insensitive to others as he often appeared. If he'd felt it necessary to
break into Jarvis's officially ordered vacation, it was either because the hibernation experiment was
sinking itself into a hole deep enough to strike magma or else because he was getting pressure from
either Ramsden or someone higher up. Either way they could very easily be asking him to come
back in for a few days long before his vacation was over.

What would he say if that happened? He couldn't very well take Colin back with him; chances were
the Ridge Harbor police had papered every police station on the continent with the boy's picture by
now, But neither could he leave the child alone in the cabin. He was too young to handle things like
meals for himself, and there was always the possibility that he would hurt himself, perhaps badly.
The post-hypnotic sleep code word was there, of course, but Jarvis knew hypnotic commands tended
to break down when the subject got hungry or thirsty. He still had a supply of the sleep drug he'd
used in the kidnapping, but Colin had already had two doses of the experimental drug and Jarvis had
no intention of mixing chemicals like that. Aside from clouding test results, it could be downright
dangerous.

The pod twitched, and Jarvis's adrenal flow jumped with it. Jerking his attention back to Colin's face,
he was just in time to see the slitted eyelids snap closed. "I saw that," he said sternly, letting his
sudden thrill of excitement drain away. "Try it again, and this time don't cheat."

"Do I have to?" the boy asked plaintively, looking up at Jarvis and shifting restlessly on the grass.

"YesтАФbut only once more," Jarvis told him. "Then you can go play again."

Colin sighed theatrically, "Okay," he said and closed his eyes again.

It was a good thing the Brimmers had instilled such a healthy measure of obedience in the boy,
Jarvis reflected as Colin again frowned blindly in the direction of the pod. The boy's teekay strength
would be growing rapidly over the next few weeks, which would correspondingly decrease Jarvis's
power to physically enforce commands. He could only hope that the boy didn't realize that before he
could be returned to civilization. For the first time in his life, Jarvis began to truly understand how
the parents of the Lost Generation must have felt.