Through Alien Eyes by Amy Thomson

Author:Amy Thomson [Thomson, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Научная фантастика
Publisher: ООО «ЛитРес», www.litres.ru
Published: 1999-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Six

Ukatonen followed Juna and the doctors as they showed him through the hospital. He had expected something like the sickbay on the Homa Darabi Maru: a few beds, mostly empty, with one or two injured people on their way to recovery. Instead they were walking past room after room full of sick and injured people.

The heavy sour scent of sick humans constricted his nostrils and caught in the back of his throat. He had to work to keep from breathing through his mouth. He’d never dreamed that there could be this many sick people in the world. It was the most horrific thing he had ever seen.

The humans could build bubbles of life in the emptiness of space. Their sky rafts could sail across the unimaginable distance between their world and his. And yet, they had places like these, full of illness and pain. How could they let this happen?

The farther they walked, the more horrified Ukatonen became. Finally, they stopped at a room full of beeping, blinking machines. In the midst of these machines lay a man. There were tubes and wires going into his nose, on his chest, and out of his arms, connecting the man to the machines. His hair was very white, and his skin was thin and wrinkled in the manner of old humans.

“He is dying,” one of the doctors told the Tendu. “Can you help him?”

“We will try,” Ukatonen said. The sick man’s skin felt dry and thin as paper. He smelled sour, like rising pika dough, and his hand lay limply in Ukatonen’s. Ukatonen glanced at Moki, who had moved into position on the other side of the bed. They grasped the man’s arms, and linked with him.

The state of the man’s body was even more of a shock than the hospital had been. Ukatonen had never felt a creature so out of harmony with itself. The man’s body was a mass of out-of-control cells, his heartbeat was thready and thin, and his lungs were fillijig with fluid. There were deep internal scars where he had been cut open and organs had been removed.

Only the doctors’ machines and the medicines were keeping this human alive. The man was frightened and in pain; the sour, bitter tang of it pushed his body even further out of balance. It was appalling. Ukatonen enfolded the sick man’s presence, shutting out the pain, and easing the fear. He felt a sweet rush of gratitude and joy; then the man’s presence folded in on itself, and went away into death, leaving the shattered husk of his body behind.

Ukatonen gently eased out of the link, taking Moki with him.

“He is gone. You may shut off your machines now.”

One of the doctors examined the machines. He lifted the dead man’s eyelid and shone a light into his eye.

“His brain function has stopped. He’s dead,” the doctor reported. He reached over and shut off the machines. “Time of death, nine forty-five A.M.,” he reported somberly.

“You killed him!” one of the other doctors protested.

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