"Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

father and a flashing rodeo buckle at the end of swinging belt. His stomach churned and he licked his
lips, some part of him expecting a beating.

Then the chains loosened and he walked forward, expecting them to stop again where the end of
the bed had been. Instead, Thugs One and Two and the woman backed up against the door. The
chains stopped when he was two yards short of them. The arc of the chains let him walk over most of
the room, excepting only the end of the room with the mirrored window and the door.

The woman said, "Get the bucket."

Again, it wasn't directed at Davy. The hook-nosed redhead stepped through the door and
returned, rolling an institutional mop bucket in yellow plastic with a mop squeezer. There was a mop
in it and he heard liquid sloshing. Davy caught the heavy smell of pine-scented disinfectant.

"You want me to mop the floor?" Davy asked. I could reach you guys with that mop.

She looked at him, eyes narrowed. "In a minute." She turned her head to the side, toward the
mirror. "When you're ready."

Davy coughed. He frowned. He didn't have a cold. He hadn't been drinking or eating. Some
saliva in the windpipe?

He coughed again, harder. And there was an odd tingling in his throat. He coughed hard enough
to double him over but when the spasm was over he had no trouble breathing, no feeling of something
in his throat.

"That's it?" said the woman, looking toward the mirror.

The computer voice came back. "Calibration. Just a tickle. This is the operational level."

Davy doubled over, vomited violently, and lost all motor control, falling to the floor. His chest
hurt, stabbing pain in the vicinity of his heart, and he was having trouble breathing. He vomited again
and again, though the first spasms were so spectacular that now he was bringing up just drops of bile.

Abruptly, it stopped.

He was lying on his side, in a puddle of his own vomit, his face and hair sticky with it. He gagged
again, but it wasn't the tectonic upheaval of seconds before. It was mild, by comparison. He tried not
to breathe through his nose.

"Oh, Christ." He became aware that he'd lost bowel control, as well, apparently as violently as
everything else. The combination of smells was nauseating, but he truly didn't have anything else to
throw up.

He climbed to his feet, aware of aching stomach muscles and sore spots on his shoulder, elbow,
and the side of his head where he'd hit the floor. The pain in his chest had lessened though the ghost of
angina seemed to linger. One of his hands was free of vomit and he gingerly touched his head. The
finger came away with blood on it.

He had trouble meeting their eyes. Even though he was aware that what had just happened was