"Jack Dann - Blind Shemmy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

seamless. He really does not need me, she thought, and she felt as if she were flying above the
surface of his closed mind, a winged thing looking for any discontinuity, any fault in his
defenses.
So you see, Pfeiffer said, exulting in imagined victory, I don't need you. The words dame wreathed
in an image of a storrri rolling angrily over the planet. ,
She flew, in sudden panic, around his thoughts, like an insect circling a source of light. She was
looking for any blister or crack, any anomaly in the smooth surface. He would gamble his body away
without her, that she knew, unless she could break through his defenses, prove to him how
vulnerable he really was.
So you couldn't resist the furry boy, could you? Joan asked, her thoughts like smooth sharks
swimming through icy water. Does he, then, remind you of yourself, or do 1 remind you of your
mother?
His anger and exposed misery were like flares on the
surface of the sun. In their place remained an eruption of Pfeiffer's smooth protective surface. A
crack in the cerebral egg.
Joan dove toward the fissure, and then she was inside Pfeiffer -not the outside of his senses
where he could verbalize a thought, see a face, but in the dark, prehistoric places where he
dreamed, conceptualized, where he floated in and out of memory, where the eyeless creatures of his
soul dwelled.
It was a sliding, a slipping in, as if one had turned over inside oneself; and Joan was sliding,
slipping on ice. She found herself in a dark world of grotesque and geometric shapes, an arctic
world of huge icebergs floating on a fathomless sea.
And for an instant, Joan sensed 'Pfeiffer's terrible fear of the world.
Mindjucker! Pfeiffer screamed, projecting the word in a hundred filthy, sickening images; and then
he smashed through Joan's defenses and rushed into the deep recesses of her mind. He found her
soft places and took what he could.
All that before the pysconnection was broken. Before the real game began. As if nothing had


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happened.
A man and woman, wearing identical cowled masks, sat across from Joan and Pfeiffer. The partition
wall had been slid back, revealing the oval shape of the gaming table and doubling the size of the
wood-paneled room. The dealer and the gamesmaster sat on each side of the long table between the
opponents. The dealer was a young man with an intense, roundish face and straight black hair cut
at the shoulders; he was most likely in training to become a gamesmaster.
The gamesmaster's face was hidden by a black cowl; he would be hooked in to the game. He explained
the rules, activated the psyconductors, and the game began. Joan and Pfeiffer were once again
hooked in, but there was no contact, as yet, with the man and woman across the table.
Pfeiffer cleared his mind, just as if he were before lasers or giving an interview. He had learned
to cover his thoughts, for, somehow, he had always felt they could be seen, especially by those
who wanted to hurt him politically and on the job.
White thought, he called it, because it was similar to white noise.
Pfeiffer could feel Joan circling around him like the wind. Although he couldn't conceal
everything, he could hide from her. He could use her, just as she could use him . . . had used
him. They had reached an accord via mutual blackmail. Somehow, during their practice hook-in, Joan
had forced herself into Pfeiffer's mind; shocked, he attacked her.
So now they knew each other better.