"Eric Brown - The Phoenix Experiment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

physical deformities. He had thought that, beside them, perhaps his own
problems would come to appear slight, but such was not the case. Through
their experiences they had come to know themselves with a thoroughness
that emphasized his own uncertainty and lack of self-knowledge. All he had
that they did not was a fully-functioning body.
He could not talk of himself without appearing superficial, so although he
drank and laughed and partied with them, he remained aloof. He knew that
to save himself and accept intimacies would mean that they must accept
him, and he was not prepared to open himself to the pain and humiliation
he knew that that would entail.
One warm evening, at a party which had spilled from a chalet and across
the greensward, Fuller sat on the grass with a bottle in his grip while he
listened to the Captain recount the meltdown of his starship.
They were alone, and Fuller had ceased to be revolted by the Captain's
extensive injuries. They were rebuilding him piece by piece; he would
disappear for days on end, and reappear at last a little more human.
Fuller sat well beyond the crimson glow that encapsulated the Captain and
his overdose of radiation. A geiger counter on the spacer's belt churred
like a cricket.
He came to the end of his story, and they regarded the star where it had
happened. A silence came down between them, like the end of an act, and on
the periphery of his vision Fuller was aware of a familiar movement. He
turned to acknowledge her presence.
She crouched on the grass twenty metres away, hugging her bare shins and
staring at them. Her epidermal network glowed in the gathering darkness
like spun gold. She had the aspect of an angel.
In a bid to overcome his unease at her constant regard, he turned to the
starship captain. "Who's the woman?" he asked.
The carriage swung so that the gobbet of flesh and gristle that was the
extent of the Captain's physical being now faced the perfect woman. "She's
the Phoenix Line experiment," he said.
Her tragic isolation touched something deep within Fuller. "Why doesn't
she join us?"
It was a while before the Captain replied. "She's not one of us," he said,
and his carriage rose and hovered off towards the chalet.
Fuller walked over to the woman. He passed across her line of sight, and
it was seconds before she compensated and moved her head to regard him.
He crouched beside her. "What happened to you?" he asked gently.
She just smiled, shook her head. Her distant eyes relived the trauma of
her accident.
"Why don't you join them?"
Her lips remained fixed in a smile and she shrugged artlessly.
Fuller shook his head to indicate that she mystified him. He wanted to
find a question that she might answer, as if to establish her
psychological reality within his frame of reference.
She rose and smiled uncertainly at him. The sound of her static-choked
voice was sudden."I really must be going," she said, and still smiling she
moved off like a narcoleptic ballerina.
Over the next few weeks he saw less and less of the patients. He made
excuses when they called with invitations to their gatherings: he was