"Gregg Keizer - I am the Burning Bush" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keizer Gregg)

I turned from her and concentrated on my body's putting itself together again. The scenes of violence in the room swept before me. I could still feel the sparkle of my resurrection, although not as strongly.
They call us deaders, DeadMan, undead, vampires, regenerative, regens, and other names I like even less. My body cannot die. It displays the symptoms, but its cells regenerate almost as quickly as they are destroyed. I am, in effect, immortal. I can die and resurrect within minutes. I have died three hundred seventy-three times for them, including the hanging tonight. I have died thousands of times more for myself, but I do not tally those deaths.
The parasitic disease that I and my five shipmates brought back from that hell world mutated somehow when we came home and made us DeadMan. The parasite keeps its host alive, not letting us truly die. Only when it is
` busy regenerating cells does it release its grip on our senses. We found that out on the return trip, the first time
one of us tried to kill himself. We can infect others, but only rarely and only immediately after death-our own temporary deaths and the lifers' usually permanent ones. The meds have no cure. Lifers swarm around us, touching us, hoping to catch the disease and live forever. They know little of what they desire. They do not realize what they must relinquish if they do succeed in catching the disease and becoming immortal. Their sensations will wither, as mine did. They are so eager to discard them in exchange for immortality. Perhaps that is why they are so distasteful to me.
Barely one out of a hundred becomes immortal. And the immortals we create cannot infect others. The infection mutates again in its second generation: Only the crew of the Acheron, the six DeadMan, can bestow immortality.
And only through death can we feel and taste and smell. And only in front of lifers can we feel more than a semblance of the sensations we once had.
"Your death was exquisite," a voice whispered beside me. "How do you do it?" I looked down. It was a girl, perhaps seventeen or so, with a bowl of fingertouch powder in her hands. Her eyes reflected every light in the room.
"How do you come to life again?" she asked, a bit more loudly now. "My name is Lynx. What is yours?"
"DeadMan," I answered,. smiling at her. I shook my head when she lifted the bowl a little. I stay away from fingertouch. It's a lifer drug. It's not for DeadMan.
"No, no, no, I mean your real name, the one that your friends call you, the one-"
"I don't give my name to lifers," I said.
"How do you do it?" she asked again.
"It just works," I said. I thought she would be satisfied
with that.
"You don't know how you -"
"You ask too many questions, lifer."
She seemed confused and weaved slowly in place. I
`~ thought she was going to fall, but she steadied herself by putting a hand on my arm. Carefully I lifted it off and let it drop to her side. She hadn't paid for me, and so I didn't have to let her touch me.
"Are you going to kill yourself, too?" I asked.
She giggled, looking up at me with reflecting eyes. "I don't think I can. I've got the papers and everything, but I don't know whether I can go through with it." She paused for a moment, dipped a finger into the powder, and pressed it against her forehead. I watched her rub the fingertouch deep into her pores. She reached out and stroked my arm and my wrist. I glanced at her hand, and she pulled it away. My skin was cold where she had touched it. "I mean, it's pretty permanent, isn't it?"
"For you it most probably is," I said.
I picked up another drink, stepping over the bodies that patterned the floor. There was only a handful of lifers still alive in the room, but most were trying to kill themselves. The more zoned ones were having trouble holding the knives and blasters or finding the windows. I leaned against a wall, wondering whether any here would become infected and live forever.
A man stumbled and fell on an upturned blade held by a corpse. I smiled at myself. Stupid, one-death-is-all you've-got lifers.
I was playing with my newest pinner in the game room when the call buzzed for me. I ignored it and finished the round before shutting off the machine. Its silvered surface darkened as the call buzzed again. Perhaps it was a client. I let it buzz anyway.
The pinner's power cord was badly frayed, but I pulled hard on it, jerking it out of the socket. I plugged another game into it, switched it on, and ran up a good score. The buzzing didn't stop.
I couldn't concentrate on the game. So I went to my window and looked out over the city. I'd broken the railing long ago and had never replaced it. I grasped the window frame. Crandel's eyes gleamed in my memory. I wanted to feel the dim sparkle of a private death, but I'd promised myself I'd have only one each day. The residue of the death I'd had two hours before lingered, but it was fading. I could hear, but I could not feel my fingers.
I must have been standing there for a long time before I heard the door open behind me. I had never had a lifer in my house before. I found out that they are not in the habit of knocking before entering.
"Bin?" she asked. It was the girl from the party-Lynx was her name.
I nodded, wondering who had told her my name. It couldn't have been the hostess from the night before. She had drowned herself in the bath.
"Can I come in?" The open door was already a bright square of light behind her.
I stepped back as she closed the door, wondering whether she would leap for me and try to clasp her body around mine in order to increase her chance of contamination. Twice lifers have tried that, but I sidestepped them both. Her eyes weren't shiny with fingertouch, yet I didn't think she was perfectly straight, either.
"I've got a license to kill myself," she declared, grinning.
"So?"
"I'd like you to help me. I can't do it myself." She touched the top button of her tunic, playing with it for a moment.
She stood still while I laughed. I turned my back on her and walked to the bar. I fixed a drink, not bothering to offer her one.
"Get out of here, lifer," I hissed. "You haven't got enough to pay me."
"Yes, I do; yes, I do. Here. See?" She held a fistful of crumpled bills toward me. They were all hundred-credit notes.
"Not enough, lifer. I kill only myself. Get one of your friends to do it for you." I began laughing at her again.
"Don't do that," she begged. I couldn't stop. "I said, don't do that," she repeated, pulling a needle gun out of another pocket.
I glanced at the gun. "What are you going to do? Kill me? Even the quickest poison won't work, lifer."
She let the gun drop to her side. The credit notes fluttered to the floor, but she made no move to pick them up.
"Please help me, Mr. Bin. You're the only one I know who can help me." She licked her lips, and I thought I saw a tear in the corner of one eye, but, then, it could've been the start of a fingertouch zone.
I shook my head slowly, waiting for the one question that lifers always ask. Perhaps she truly could not kill herself, but I doubted it. She was only more brazen in her desire to increase the possibility of contamination, believing that the touch of my hands as I killed her would give her a greater chance of immortality. Idly I wondered whether killing a lifer would increase the chance of the disease's leaping from me, but I let the thought fade. The image of putting my hands on lifer skin sickened me.
It has always amazed me how eager lifers are to die. "Get out, Lynx."
She turned and went to the door, her arms limp and her walk almost a shuffle. She had one hand on the door handle when she looked back at me.
"I have always admired you, DeadMan. Ever since I can remember, I've worshiped you. How you come back after each death. How you die with such grace, such calm."
"It won't work, lifer," I said. "You'll have to do it yourself. You can't pay me enough to make me help you die."
The door slammed as she left. I spent the next half-hour picking up the credit notes, counting and shuffling them into neat piles. In my opinion, whatever a man finds in his own house is his.
This party was even more opulent than the one the night before. It had to be, because it was Hansa's party.