"Dean Ing - Devil You Don't Know" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

at the outset, with the obvious exception of medical conventions, where Chris read scholarly papers and
pumped for any grant money he could locate.

Now Chris was a year into a fat HEW grant to study the adequacy of private mental homes; and if he
had not actually suggested that Val volunteer for commitment in these places, he had not omitted oblique
hints at the notion. Nor turned down her offer. It was a symbiosis : Maffei had his spy, Val her
spymaster.

"Hey," she said. He looked around and briefly laid his hand over the one she offered palm up. "Thanks
for reeling me in so fast."

One corner of his mouth went up. "Had to. That short was interfering with my favorite live soap opera."

"Schmuck," she said tenderlyтАФMaffei had never entirely managed to socialize her language. "Speaking of
soap, you could introduce Nodaway to the idea."

"I'll note it when I debrief you after supper, I was in the army with a G.P. near here. If I know Farr, he'll
do an Onward Christian Soldiers when I send him my notes on the place."

"Fine. And by the way, good guru, you just passed a Frostylite. You p'omised," she added, expertly
faking a vocal retardation slur.

"First things first. We need a battery recharge to make Joplin tonight."

Startled: "Why Joplin, of all places? That's south."

"Because I have you scheduled for a scrub-up and transceiver check there tonight. And because after
that we're going into the Deep South."

She was silent but he lip-read her response: Oh, my God.

After the Joplin stop, Maffei's little sedan hummed on barrel tires toward Mississippi. Val failed to
concentrate on Durrell's Clea. The source of her unease was not the September heat, but the fact that
she had slept at the clinic in Joplin. Chris lavished care on her as he would on a rare and exorbitant
device, but she did not delude herself on the point. Val needed a secure relationship and physical human
warmth. Very well then: he shared motel rooms with her. She also needed passionate attention, as
anyone might when in constant proximity to a beloved. Chris dutifully pleased her when, on rare
occasions, she was insistent enough. The one thing Valerie Clarke could not elicit from Chris was his
desire.

Durrell's velvet prose wasn't helping Val's mood. She studied her reflection in the car window. Ms.
Universe I'm not. If I expect this sex object of mineтАФokay, twenty pounds overweight and why
shouldn't he be?тАФ to come fawning over my Dumbo ears I'm worse than microcephalic, I'm
scatocephalic. She traced a tentative forefinger along the pink smoothness of one ear. At least she had
perfect skin. "Chris, why do you put me out before making the transceiver check if you don't make an
incision?"

He yawned before answering, flexing strong hands on the wheel. "We do, Val. Those antennae are so
fine I can run 'em just inside the dermis, on the fossa of your helixтАФuh, inside your ear rim. A
microscalpel does it; almost no bleeding and it heals quick as boo. But I have to keep you