"Barbara Hambly - Windrose 2 - The Silicon Mage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)
THE SILICON MAGE
Barbara Hambly
[22 oct 2001 тАУ scanned for #bookz, proofread and released тАУ v1]
CHAPTER I
The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him
every day at work.
"So whatcha doing after we get outta here tonight, babe?"
Joanna Sheraton tried not to stiffen, tried to recapture the half tolerant, half evasive tone
characteristic of her conversations with him before... before. "I don't know, Gary. Ruth and I had
talked about going to the movies." It sounded tinnily unconvincing even to her own ears.
Gary's face, as he leaned around the avocado burlap padded partition into her cluttered
programming cubicle, fell into its familiar pout. But there was a rehearsed quality to it, as
there was to the slouching stance of that compactly muscled body in its assortment of Sears' best
polyesters. It was something he knew Gary used to do, but now and then he forgot and stood
straight and poised. There was an amber glint far back in the brown eyes, worlds distant from
Gary's doglike eagerness.
Joanna felt her heart pounding fast and turned back to comparing the green lines of
information on her terminal with the bug riddled runout of the Tiger missile test analysis
program, so he wouldn't see the nervous tremor of her mouth.
"Babe, what's the matter? You mad at me?" He had the whine down perfect that time.
She swung around a tad too quickly. "No. That is..." It was astonishingly difficult to
them consciously, particularly with those brown eyes, watchful now, studying her face. She
swallowed hard and pushed back the feathery tangle of untidy blond curls from her face.
"Babe, listen." He came around the partition, removed a stack of printouts from the cubicle's
other chair, and sat down with that new, lithe grace, reaching out to take her hands. The nails
were growing backтАФGary had habitually bitten them to the quick. It was the closest that she'd let
him get to her since she'd guessed what had happened to GaryтАФto the real Gary.
She made herself calm, made her eyes meet his.
He went on, "I don't know where you went when you disappeared at the end of August, or what
happened to you..." That was a lie. He knew, all right; the only thing he didn't know was how much
she had realized on the night of her return. "But I know something's been bothering you ever since
you came back. You've been avoiding me."
"No!" Again it was too quick. The management of San Serano habitually turned off the air
conditioning in Building Six around three in the afternoon; the close swelter of the October heat
was, she hoped, enough to account for the crawl of sweat down her face and neck. Stammering, she
tried to recoup. "I've been sort of avoiding everybody, Gary. Really, I just I just don't want to
see anyone now."
He smiled a little. "That's why you're going to the movies with Ruth?" His fingers tightened
over hers. She hoped to hell they didn't feel as cold to him as they did to her. His eyes warmed
with all Gary's old shallow charm. "You've got to deal with it sometime, babe. Get it out in the
open." Past the cubicle door, voices sounded, and the scuff of feet echoed oddly in the high
ceilings of the plant's testing bays just beyond the computer section where they sat. It was five
o'clock. People were going home.
Hastily she pulled her hands away from him. Over her shoulder, as she began to stumble through
backup procedures, he went on. "Why don't you come out to dinner with me, we go back to my place,
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |