"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 04 - Hunted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

martial-arts training.) I ended up hunched over like a bear, while the woman was practically on tiptoe; but
she told me we fitted together perfectly, my shoulders touching hers, our arms all twined around each
other, holding hands, our faces very close.

The woman murmured I could move my feet any way I wantedтАФthe dance was the position, not the
steps. She started an inch-by-inch shuffle and I followed along, doing my best to match her every motion;
I was terrified if I went the wrong direction, I might accidentally snap her thin little wrists. After a few
seconds, she gave a twittery laugh and whispered, "Relax, angel, relax. You look like you're at a funeral."

She gave me a quick kiss on the nose. I could smell wine on her breath: really strong. She must have
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been partying a fair while before she fetched me from my cabin.

In fact, everyone on the dance floor seemed tipsy. We kept getting bumped by a wobbly slobbery man
wearing the holo of an alien species I didn't recognizeтАФsomething brown and cockroachy with six of
everything, legs, arms, eyes. The man was too drunk to care about staying inside his hologram
"costume"... so I could see bare human legs kicking out from the edges of the cockroach image, and
once, a hairy human rump.

Yes, it wasthat kind of party: where people went naked under their holos. Here and there, I could see
couples squashed together against the wall. Right in front of me, a larger-than-life holo of a Roman
soldier had his breastplate buried in the face of a holo-alien who looked like a walking thistle bush. The
two holograms broke into jagged interference patterns where they overlapped each other, so now and
then I could see through to the people underneath. It was a nude woman and a nude man; she had her
legs scissored around his waist.

In the middle of the day. On a navy ship. And they all had to be crew members, because I was the only
passenger.

"Is something wrong here?" I whispered to the woman Coy-Gripping my arms.

"Nothing's wrong, angel. You're fucking gorgeous. Relax." She pressed herself harder against me. It had
to be hurting her wrists, but she didn't seem to care.

Maybe she'd been taking more than just wine.

The music stopped. I got ready to untangle myself, but the woman held on tight. "Wait," she whispered.
"Wait. It's time."

"Time for what?"

Before she could answer, a gong sounded over the ship's speaker system: like a clock bell tolling the
hour in some fairy tale. The woman whispered, "It'll strike thirteen... melodramatic bastards. We cross
the line on the last stroke. Hold me till then, angel, would you? Please?"

All around the room, lots of other people were pairing off tooтАФthe drunk in the cockroach hologram