"M John Harrison - Isobel Avens Returns To Stepney In The Spring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison John M)

"It's just a virus," she said. "Just a side-effect."
"Is anything worth this?"
She put her arms around me and sobbed.
"Oh China, China."
It isn't that she wants me; only that she has no-one else. Yet every time
I smell her body my heart lurches. The years I lived with her I slept so
soundly. Then Alexander did this irreversible thing to her, the thing she
had always wanted, and now everything is fucked up and eerie and it will
be that way forever.
I said: "I'll take you home."
"Will you stay?"
"What else?"

My name is Mick Rose, which is why people have always called me "China".
From the moment we met, Isobel Avens was fascinated by that. Later, she
would hold my face between her hands in the night and whisper dreamily
over and over -- "Oh, China, China, China. China." But it was something
else that attracted her to me. The year we met, she lived in Stratford on
Avon. I walked into the cafe at the little toy aerodrome they have there
and it was her who served me. She was twenty five years old: slow,
heavy-bodied, easily delighted by the world. Her hair was red. She wore a
rusty pink blouse, a black ankle-length skirt with lace at the hem. Her
feet were like boats in great brown Dr Marten's shoes. When she saw me
looking down at them in amusement, she said: "Oh, these aren't my real
Docs, these are my cheap-imitation ones." She showed me how the left one
was coming apart at the seams. "Brilliant, eh?" She smelled of vanilla and
sex. She radiated heat. I could always feel the heat of her a yard away.
"I'd love to be able to fly," she told me.
She laughed and hugged herself.
"You must feel so free."
She thought I was the pilot of the little private Cessna she could see out
of the cafe window. In fact I had only come to deliver its cargo--an
unadmitted load for an unadmitted destination--some commercial research
centre in Zurich or Budapest. At the time I called myself Rose Medical
Services, Plc. My fleet comprised a single Vauxhall Astra van into which I
had dropped the engine, brakes and suspension of a two litre GTE insurance
write-off. I specialised. If it was small I guaranteed to move it anywhere
in Britain within twelve hours; occasionally, if the price was right, to
selected points in Europe. Recombinant DNA: viruses at controlled
temperatures, sometimes in live hosts: cell cultures in heavily armoured
flasks. What they were used for I had no idea. I didn't really want an
idea until much later; and that turned out to be much too late.
I said: "It can't be so hard to learn."
"Flying?"
"It can't be so hard."
Before a week was out we were inventing one another hand over fist. It was
an extraordinary summer. You have to imagine this--
Saturday afternoon. Stratford Waterside. The river has a lively look
despite the breathless air and heated sky above it. Waterside is full of
jugglers and fire-eaters, entertaining thick crowds of Americans and