Переводчик Миронова Анна Евгеньевна

DR. OPPENHEIM I’m sorry, but unless you have a subpoena, I can’t discuss patient information.

SCULLY Does that mean that Jason Wright was your patient?

DR. OPPENHEIM It means I have nothing more to say about this.

MULDER What about to his wife and child, Doctor? Would you have anything to say to them? Because whoever got to you also got to her. They must have made some pretty big threats. What’d they hold over your head? Your medical license? The IRS?

DR. OPPENHEIM I hate fascists.

MULDER Excuse me?

DR. OPPENHEIM The men who came in here… the way they pushed us all around.

MULDER Mr. Oppenheim, tell us about the Deputy. You saw him that night, didn’t you?

DR. OPPENHEIM Yes. And three others from a fire crew. They were all DOA with fifth and sixth degree burns on over ninety percent of their bodies. But they weren’t like any burns I’ve ever seen. And they took the bodies away before we could perform any pathology.

SCULLY Did you note any cadaveric heat rigor or heat stiffening?

DR. OPPENHEIM Yes, actually there was quite a bit of flexion in the limbs. How do you know so much about it?

SCULLY I did my residency in forensic medicine.

MULDER Dr. Oppenheim, in your opinion, could those burns have been caused by ionizing radiation?

DR. OPPENHEIM I hadn’t thought… I suppose it’s possible. If the exposure was sufficiently intense.

P.A. (woman’s voice) Code 5, all available teams and non-essential personnel please report to the E.R. stat…

SCULLY Let’s say those men died from radiation exposure. Couldn’t it have been from the cracked core of a nuclear warhead?

MULDER I’ve read about these kinds of burns, Scully.

SCULLY Yeah, so have I… in Hiroshima, at ground zero.

MULDER I’m talking about close encounter mortalities. I have a stack of X-files reporting the same clinical results.

SCULLY Mulder, I don’t claim to know all the answers. But if we don’t make the OPR inquest by tomorrow morning, there may not be anymore X-files.

During our first few days at die Hütte, every sunny afternoon
blended into each warm evening. I spent my time
playing outside with Phyllis, washing all the small things we
had found – metal plates, a few pieces of cutlery, wooden
bowls – in buckets of water my father hauled up from the
river. Although he had made me a shoe from a hessian bag
with a carved shingle for the sole, I mostly ran around barefoot,
and naked apart from my pants. In the evenings we
rolled plants into rope and told stories around the campfire.
At odd times I would remember with a jolt that Ute was
dead, and Phyllis and I would crawl inside the tent to cuddle,
until she stopped crying.

On the third day of camping outside die Hütte, my father
climbed on to the roof with the mended hammer and the
nails, and worked on repairing the shingles. At first he made
me stand inside and direct him to where I could see sunlight
sneaking through, but after a while he didn’t seem to need
my help and I wandered outside into the sunshine.
‘Make yourself useful,’ my father called, his words mangled
by the nails he held between his lips. ‘Take the traps
and catch us some dinner.’

I still hadn’t been into the forest on my own; the thought
made me nervous and excited as I hurried to put on my
clothes and my odd shoes, and to collect the nooses. I hesitated
on the edge of the clearing, then took a few steps forward into the trees. Gnarled and mossy roots spread like
giant’s fingers amongst ferns that came up to my chest.

There were as many trunks fallen and rotting as there were
upright trees, fighting for the patches of green daylight that
filtered down through the leaves. The forest smelled earthy;
moist, like the cemetery. I pushed my way through the
plants until I came to a massive trunk which must have come
down years before, its decaying wood spongy and dark. I
stepped up on to it, and the rotten bark gave way, tipping me
off so that I stumbled, only just catching myself before I fell.
A shiver ran through the trees as though they were laughing,
and I had to fight the urge to turn and bolt. At my feet
was a thick branch, newly fallen, and I picked it up to whack
the trunk with it and beat a path through the ferns and damp
plants until the way became clearer and the ground peaty.
Looking back at where I had come from, the ferns closed
around something quick and low and grey that ran through
the undergrowth.