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

in a very thorough, pointed way, as if he were looking for something he knew was hidden inside.
"Now, you understand that when the military makes something like this, they always intend it as a weapon," he
said, holding Danny's hand a little closer to his face as he felt his palm. He suddenly bent Danny's fingers into an
imitation gun shape and aimed it at an antique paper shredder in the far corner of the room. "Try shooting that, see
what happens."
"Try shooting it how?" Danny said.
"It's your military grey-market arm. Think it, or say 'bang-bang,' or something. Didn't you look at that part of the
manual?"
"There was a whole bunch of stuff on how to hurt, torture, or kill someone with one bare hand so I kinda skipped
it."
Jeremy glanced at him. "Pacifist?"
"Actually, it was just grossing me out," Danny confessed, feeling slightly embarrassed.
"In the future, you should try not to turn down free knowledge, no matter what kind it is," Jeremy said, aiming his
hand at the shredder again and experimentally pressing his knuckles. "Most stuff you want to find out ends up being
pretty expensive. Whatever you can get for free could come in handy later, you know?"
Danny disengaged his hand and flexed the fingers. "Don't you think fooling with a possibly loaded weapon you
have no idea about could be a real expensive free shooting lesson?"
Jeremy's smile was unexpectedly sunny. "You're learning." The smile vanished just as suddenly, leaving his bony,
wizened face so deadpan that Danny wondered if he had just hallucinated. "Be careful out there tonight. Tell Vic I said
be careful."
"I will," Danny said. "Anything else?"
Jeremy seemed mildly surprised by the question. "No," he said and sat down to pick up where he'd left off with the
Chinese food.
 j

The street outside Vic's had gotten busier, more populated with the usual mix of urban survivors, suburban pretenders,
and a few tourists who thought they could handle some adventure. Maybe they could. In any case, they could afford
it, and there was no shortage of people to sell it to them. The suburban geeks, though, they were all looking a little
nervous. It was past time for them to head for the old all-day indoor parking garage, fire up that sport utility vehicle,
and hurry back to the 'burbs before something actually happened, Danny thought, amused. One of them, a tall, plump
young guy who looked like a college student, seemed to be trying to get up the nerve to approach the tattoo artist
having a smoke in the doorway of Skin Music. Same woman as before. Her gaze met Danny's and he saw her mouth
twitch in a brief, secret display of amusement. She knew Joe College was there and what he was up to and she was
having a great time making him even more nervous by being so completely oblivious to him. And now she had Danny
to share the joke with her. He pressed his lips together so hard they hurt. What would she think, he wondered, if he
told her no one had ever shared the joke with him before, at least, not like this? That instead of meeting his gaze,
women always looked away casually but very quickly, so that he might be fooled into thinking they hadn't looked at
him in the first place and so weren't looking away from his deformity. What would she think if, instead of just smiling
secretly back at her, he told her that?
He suddenly heard Jeremy's voice in his head, so distinctly he nearly turned around to see if the man was
somehow actually there. She'd probably think you took the world way too personally, Dan-man.
The ink in her face moved smoothly through its changes.
She managed to contrive to track him as he went into Vic's. He thought of pausing at the door to give her a wink
and then decided not to press his luck. Besides, now that he thought of it, winking was a pretty corny thing to do. The
woman had animated facial tattoos, for god's sake; get a grip, he told himself.
j

"You look like a man with a code," Vic said, smiling around the monitor at him.
"I am," Danny said and put the disc on the counter.
Vic picked it up and held it between thumb and forefinger.