"Kelley Eskridge - Alien Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eskridge Kelly)

time."

"Rita, shut up." Susan put her hand down. |ane was shaking and squeezing her fingers open and closed
around great fistfuls of blanket. Her eyes were shut tight, so she didn't see me reach for her.

"Backoff, Rita."

Susan got me out of the room, down the hall. She left bruises on my arm.

"Don't hang on to it. I don't care, I don't even know her. Anyway, she must be hurt pretty bad."
8o . Nebula Awards 3r

"Fuck her. Everybody's hurt."

That was all it took to spoil my d"y with Susan, just ten seconds of goddamned jane. When Suze finally
left we were both strung tight, dancing around each other like beads on a wire. I glided back into my
room like running on electric current.

It came out at Jane then, all my meanness in evil words, and ]ane just closed her eyes and bit down on
her lip to keep from cDnng; and when I ftnally stopped, she opened her mouth and said something that
might have been, "f'm sor{/, f'm sorr}," but it was hard to tell around all the bright red where she had
chewed her lip right through.

The lip needed stitches. "FrankenjarтВм," Terry Louise chortled rp and down the hall, "Frankenjane, feels
no pain."

"Shut up, T"rry Louise."

"Well, excuse ffiтВм, honey, I meant to say PNncess |ane. Princess |ane, so insansтАФ"

"Shut up."

"Humph," T"try Louise said, and lit another cigarette.

"She didn't even know she'd done it."

"f know. You told me seven times alreadyтАФ"

"She practically bit her lip off, I could see her teeth right through it, and her tongue was all dark red..."

"fti12тАФ"

"Rousseau said it wasn't my fault but we all have to be careful, we have to be careful, she's always getting
hurt and not knowing because she can't feel the pain and you were right, she did that other stuff to
herself, to her own self, it's sick, how could anyone do that and not feel it, it's sick, she just chewed
her.self upтАФ" and I couldn't stop talking, faster and faster, couldn't stop even when Terry Louise ran for
Madge the Badge.

It took a long time to wake up from the needlesleep the next duy. I was still in bed when Rousseau and
Tommy Gee came in with |ane. I wanted to open my eyes, to say I'm sorry, but the drug was like a