Alan Dean Foster Interlopers

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

beat. "Sometimes when I think I
cannot stand the suffering, when my brain will tear itself to
pieces from the sheer unrelenting anguish of serving as a host, I
Page 45
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
console myself with the knowledge that I will live longer than all but a very
few of my fellow humans. It is not immortality, not by any means, but
it is something. A crumb of a gift, but a gift nonetheless."
"So these Interlopers, they can extend a life?" Cody prompted him.
A slow nod provided an answer. "Once comfortably settled within a cooperative
venue, they have that ability, yes.
"That's no gift." Cody was at once fascinated and horrified by the
parasitized man sitting across the table from him. "No parasite wants
its host to die. If that happens, it has to go through the
trouble of finding another." He frowned in remembrance. "I've passed my
hands through a number of them without suffering more than a quick
chill. Yet you say that once inside, they cause pain and torment."
90
Alan Dean foster
91
Uthu nodded somberly. "That is what they want. They do not, cannot, induce
cerebral discomfort directly. It
fol-lows as a consequence of mental anguish."
"Yet in spite of that you serve as a venue," the ar-chaeologist murmured.
"Yes, we serve. What choice do we have? Once in-fected, it is not possible to
be made clean again. For that to happen, an Interloper must leave of its own
accord." "Do they ever do that? Abandon a host, I mean?"
"No." The Asian's face was drawn but resigned. "Never. Not until the host
dies."
"Or turns psychotic." Cody speculated pensively. "Not at all." Uthu was
quick to correct him. "Inter-lopers prosper amidst insanity. They thrive
on the milk of madness."
"I've seen people become infected. None of them showed any awareness of
what was happening to them.
Why are you different?"
"Some of us, a very few, have within our minds the ability to sense that
we have been contaminated. This makes us valuable to the Interlopers.
They exist on a plane adjacent to our own. The many points of
congruence are subtler than you think. While they can move freely within rock
and solid wood, physically the
Interlopers cannot af-fect our world. But they can affect those few like
myself, and we in turn can affect our plane of existence. Like so.
Cody flinched, but the man's hand was not reaching for him. Instead, it swept
aside the water glass that had been set before him. Cold water and ice went
flying, just missing the couple seated at the table nearest to them. The girl
rose sharply, wiping at where her thigh lay bare beneath the short skirt. Her
male companion looked irri-tated.
"Sorry-we're sorry. It was an accident," Cody apol-ogized hastily.
Sufficiently mollified, the young couple returned to their meal. Sitting
back down, the archaeolo-gist glared across the table. "There was no call for
that."
"On the contrary, there is always call for that," Uthu assured him quietly.
"And for-other things."
Cody's eyes widened. "You killed Harry Keeler!" The Asian smiled ever so
thinly. Was he by nature this calm and cavalier, the archaeologist wondered,
or was he being wholly controlled by outside influences? Or in his case,
inside ones. How much of what he was saying, how many of his words, were his
own, and how much and how many the province of something else? Was he an
in-dependent human being working in concert with the hor-rors that now
possessed him, body and soul, or was he nothing more than a slave,
a puppet, responding to the pestilent strings that now penetrated his brain
as well as his body? His was clearly a case of extreme parasitism. Had his
Interlopers left him any individuality at all, or was he little more than a
Page 46
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
shell of the human being he had once been? The answers, Cody decided, were a
mat-ter for biologists to determine.
Or a psychic, or possibly an exorcist, though there was nothing Catholic about
the suave Uthu's possession.
"No. It was not L"
"I've seen enough of these creatures to know that they can't physically strike
out at a person. You have to make contact with their habitation for them
to be able to affect you. Or they can make contact by having an infected in-
91
dividual impact on another, just like they're making you talk to me, right
now."
Uthu nodded. "A good scientist is a trained observer. You perceive, note, and
draw inferences. They would like you to be like me." Seeing that Cody was
watching his hands closely, the visitor smiled "Don't worry, I'm not going to
grab you. They can only pass from a natural habitation to a human,
not from one human to another. Otherwise it would not have been
necessary to annul the man you call Harry Keeler. He could simply
have been co-opted."
"Are you going to try and kill me?" Cody was amazed at his own degree of calm,
sitting outside in the shade, surrounded by laughing, conversing, debating
people, dis-cussing his own demise with a stranger whose actions were
being directed by invisible, hitherto unknown para-sites inimical in
nature and composition. It beggared be-lief in ways that would have given [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

pobieranie @ do ÂściÂągnięcia @ ebook @ download @ pdf