"Arinn Dembo - Sisterhood Of Skin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dembo Arinn)

drop him over the side and try to cut our losses. His eyes were clear, blue,
and
utterly vacant -- a berserker.

In the end it was simply the fact that I wanted to kill him that decided me
against it. I let the barrel of my pistol twitch toward his weapon; he caught
the gesture, looked down stupidly at the bent pipe in his hand, and relaxed
his
grip for long enough to let it slip out of his fingers and fall to the rusting
deckplate with a clatter. He lowered his head and wiped at his mouth, like a
man
wakened from a nightmare.; one of the men kicked the pipe away, another
touched
his shoulder. I holstered the gun. Jones the Eider was back, for what it was
worth.

"Let's get this operation back on line before the Captain notices, shall we?
You-- Gallegos, is it ? Get the rest of your crew together and get that thing
down to the lab for me. Don't drag it, either. I don't want blood on those
stairs." I looked at Jones. What to do with him? He was moving slowly, stiff
and
numb, to pick up his gear. "Jones, good work. That's a thousand dollar bounty
on
the silkie, plus the time and a half. You better clock out and spend some time
in the hold, or we won't be able to afford the bill we're running up on you."
He
rubbed the stiff white bristles at the top of his head with his palm and then
nodded, once, in my direction. I watched him go below, his arms swinging dead
from the shoulder sockets, like a marionette with half its strings cut.

The sea rolled under the bowsprit far below, boiling away from the prow like
surf smashing against the base of a cliff. I went to the rail to smoke a naval
cigarette, furtively biting the end to light it. They're supposed to be
pinched
alight with your fingernails, but the sparking fluid they dip the paper in is
mildly hallucinogemc, much more potent than stale tobacco. A lot of the men
don't bother smoking them at all, just sit around sucking the ends, pleasantly
stoned on the spark.

On the horizon I saw a silkie leap. Perhaps it was a male; it's difficult to
say
yet whether there are such things as silkie males. I've had only two specimens
on the table so far, the one I shot today and the other that drowned in our
deep
net, which must have been a calf. There were hints in the immature physiology
which are echoed in the adult; it may be that all the silkies are basically
hermaphroditic. It's only because of their faces and mammaries that they seem
female to us. I looked out over the rain-ragged swells and saw it clear the
waves completely, a thick golden are far out over the green-black sea.