"Gwyneth Jones - Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

Their eyes met. "Sonja's" barbarian simplicity combined surprisingly well with the man's more
elaborate furnishing. The consensual perceptual plenum was a flawless reality: the sound of the river,
the clear silence of the mountain twilight . . . their two perfect bodies. She turned from him to gaze into
the sweet-scented flames. The warrior-woman's glorious vitality throbbed in her veins. The fire held
worlds of its own, liquid furnaces: the sunward surface of Mercury.
"Have you ever been to a place like this in the real?"
He grimaced. "You're kidding. In the real, I'm not a magic-wielding millionaire."
Something howled. The bloodstopping cry was repeated. A taint of sickening foulness swept by
them. They both shuddered, and drew closer together. "Sonja" knew the scientific explanation for the
legendary virtuality-paranoia, the price you paid for the virtual world's superreal, dreamlike richness. It
was all down to heightened neurotransmitter levels, a positive feedback effect, psychic overheating. But
the horrors were still horrors.
"The doctor says if we can talk like this, it means we're getting well."
He shook his head. "I'm not sick. It's like you said. Virtuality's addictive and I'm an addict. I'm
getting my drug of choice safely, on prescription. That's how I see it."
All this time "Sonja" was in her apartment, lying in a foam couch with a visor over her head. The
visor delivered compressed bursts of stimuli to her visual cortex: the other sense perceptions riding
piggyback on the visual, triggering a whole complex of neuronal groups; tricking her mind/brain into
believing the world of the dream was out there. The brain works like a computer. You cannot "see" a
hippopotamus, until your system has retrieved the "hippopotamus" template from memory, and checked it
against the incoming. Where does the "real" exist? In a sense this world was as real as the other ... But
the thought of "Lessingham's" unknown body disturbed her. If he was too poor to lease good equipment,
he might be lying in the clinic now in a grungy public cubicle . . . cathetered, and so forth: the sordid
details.
She had never tried virtual sex. The solitary version had seemed a depressing idea. People said the
partnered kind was the perfect zipless fuck. He sounded experienced; she was afraid he would be able
to tell she was not. But it didn't matter. The virtual-therapy group wasn't like a dating agency. She would
never meet him in the real, that was the whole idea. She didn't have to think about that stranger's body.
She didn't have to worry about the real "Lessingham's" opinion of her. She drew herself up in the firelight.
It was right, she decided, that Sonja should be a virgin. When the moment came, her surrender would be
the more absolute.
In their daytime he stayed in character. It was a tacit trade-off. She would acknowledge the other
world at nightfall by the campfire, as long as he didn't mention it the rest of the time. So they traveled on
together, Lessingham and Red Sonja, the courtly scholar-knight and the taciturn warrior-maiden, through
an exquisite Maytime: exchanging lingering glances, "accidental" touches . . . And still nothing happened.
"Sonja" was aware that "Lessingham," as much as herself, was holding back from the brink. She felt
piqued at this. But they were both, she guessed, waiting for the fantasy they had generated to throw up
the perfect moment of itself. It ought to. There was no other reason for ks existence.
Turning a shoulder of the hillside, they found a sheltered hollow. Two rowan trees in flower grew
above the river. In the shadow of their blossom tumbled a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to
behold. The water fell clear from the upper edge of a slab of stone twice a man's height, into a rocky
basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, a-churn with bubbles from the jet plunging from above.
The riverbanks were lawns of velvet, over the rocks grew emerald mosses and tiny water flowers.
"I would live here," said Lessingham softly, his hand dropping from his riding bird's bridle. "I would
build me a house in this fairy place, and rest my heart here forever."
Sonja loosed the black stallion's rein. The two beasts moved off, feeding each in its own way on the
sweet grasses and springtime foliage.
"I would like to bathe in that pool," said the warrior-maiden.
"Why not?" He smiled. "I will stand guard."
She pulled off her leather harness and slowly unbound her hair. It fell in a trembling mass of copper