"Ellen Datlow - SciFiction Originals vol.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Datlow Ellen)

"Save it for the blowfish, Rakishi, you know I'm not here for the dancing. Jeremy's expecting me. Otherwise I
wouldn't get within a mile of this place."
Rakishi laughed. "You're telling me."
He winced at having inadvertently handed the man a straight line at his own expense and started to push past.
Rakishi blocked his way with the stun-stick, resting the point against his new arm, against the shoulder, where the
stump and the tiny fingers were now hidden away. The big man started to say something. Danny reached up, closed
his new fingers around the chubby wrist, and began slowly applying pressure, letting Rakishi feel it.
The look on the fat man's face went from surprise to unease and then to outright fear. Danny backed him up several
steps toward the entry foyer, still squeezing. He removed the stun-stick from the man's numbed fingers, and then, just
as slowly, released him.
"Don't worry, nobody saw," he said in a low voice, giving the stick back to him. "It'll be our little secret, that a gimp
with a spare part took your toy away from you. I mean, we wouldn't want the blowfish rushing the door and getting
you fired, would we?"
Rakishi stared at him, saying nothing. The expression on his face was supposed to be murderous, but Danny could
see a hint of the fear underneath.
"But no more, Rakishi, okay? No more gimp, no more spare parts, no more big-man-on-the-door crap. Not to me.
Got that?"
Still silent, Rakishi stepped back to let him pass.
"Thanks." Danny started to go in, then stuck his hand out.
"Shake on it?"
Rakishi drew back and jerked his head at the entry foyer.
"Oh, yeah," Danny said, "we already did that, didn't we?"
The big man turned away from him and Danny suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He hurried through the dimly-lit
foyer, pushing through the double doors marked STAFF ONLY to the left of the ticket-booth and going up the stairs
two at a time. Good show, Danny-boy, he thought, you just proved you can be as big a bully as anybody else.
He went halfway down the narrow corridor at the top of the stairs and stopped at a grimy-looking door, plain
except for a small card at eye level that said SERVICE MANAGER. Danny knocked and heard the answering come-in
grunt.
Jeremy was dressed in his usual multi-pocketed work pants, white T-shirt, and blue fisherman's jacket with even
more pockets. He was as thin as Rakishi was fat, which was some trick considering that Danny had never seen him
when he wasn't eating. Tonight he was having Chinese food, busy chopsticks clicking among an array of classic white
takeout cartons on his desk. They competed for space with the old, oversized but very sharp surveillance monitor. On
the screen, Rakishi was doing his sorry-not-cool-enough routine with three tourists who were trying to argue with him.

"Saw you throwing the fear of God into my big guy," Jeremy said, gesturing at the screen with a noodle caught in
the chopsticks. "New arm, eh?"
"Works pretty good," Danny said.
Jeremy made a prawn disappear. "I could see that."
"Hey, I wasn't really trying to start anything," Danny said. "He's just always pulling that crap on me when he
knows the only reason I come here is because Vic sends me to pick something up from you."
"She told me you were on the way over, and she told me you had a nice new part." Jeremy put down his
chopsticks. "Mind if I have a look?"
Danny extended his arm, pulling his sleeve up. Jeremy ran his hands along the musculature with an expert touch,
nodding at the way it connected to his shoulder. He found the software load in Danny's armpit and palpated it the
same way Dr. Sibelius had after she'd put it in.
"Not tickling you, am I?" Jeremy asked.
"I was never ticklish on that side," Danny told him coolly.
Jeremy stood up to take a closer look at the crook of Danny's arm. "If I'm not mistaken," he said after a bit, "this is
from the lot that didn't exist out at the old Roswell Base."
"Jeez," Danny said, "does everybody know about this except me?"