"Nancy Kress - Borovsky's Hollow Woman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

more could a man want?"
Borovsky's face tightened.
"I think that ought to be your last beer, Johnny," Weinblatt said pleasantly.
Coyne ignored him. "What more, huh? Tits maybe?" He turned and made pinching motions across
Laura's ventral plates. "Kind of hard to get hold of, huh? Well, Mik's got lots of imagination."
"You're making an ass of yourself, Johnny," Weinblatt said. The grin was gone.
"No tits. Well, how about a twat? Jesus, guys, she all twat! Lookithat!" Coyne grabbed Laura by the
rim of her helmet gasket and tipped it forward, pointing with an index finger to the hollowness inside.
"A guy could crawl in there and get lost, which is about as close as Mik's ever gonna get to being inside
a woman!" Coyne released Laura and faced the crowd again. Borovsky spat on the floor. Too much
tension, Laura thought; she could picture Borovsky bashing Coyne's head flat against the floor. As soon
as Coyne turned away she brought her right hand up and thumbed her non-existent nose at him.
The room exploded with laughter. Coyne whirled around in time to see Laura's arm snap back to her
side.
"Well, so she wants to be one of the boys. Hey, babe, you can't have fun at the Beer Tube without
putting away some yourself. Here, I keyed for this one, but it's all yours." He lifted his stein over Laura's
helmet gasket as though to empty the liquid into her hollowness.
Borovsky slammed the palms of his hands down hard on the tabletop. Across the table, Andre Wolf
Lair set his stein aside and stood. At once, without hurrying, Weinblatt was on his feet, his face hard.
"Coyne, shut your goddamned mouth."
Coyne bent over as though kicked in the stomach, his stein groping for the nearest table. His face
paled. Laura saw that he had realized what he had done: provoked a shift boss to his feet.
Except for the continuous drone of the juke, the Beer Tube was silent. Simon Weinblatt was still
standing. "Go home, Johnny," he said, and took his seat.
Coyne nodded, turned, and began pulling on his rubber suit.
Laura saw little of Coyne next shift. Wherever she and Borovsky happened to be, the yellow ELM

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happened to be elsewhere. Nor did Coyne appear at the Beer Tube after shift. But Simon Weinblatt was
there, and he pointed to the bench opposite his as Borovsky walked in. Laura, left again with the other
suits, edged close enough to listen.
"Mik, I'm worried about Coyne." Weinblatt's face was smiling, unreadable. "One of these days he's
going to jump you, and you're going to beat his brains out."
"Would serve him right," Borovsky said, eyes on the bench. "The guy is some kind of psycho."
"Could be; how did this thing between you two start?"
"I didn't start it."
"I didn't say you did," Weinblatt said pleasantly. "Do you know why he has it in for you?".
"No. One day he just starts in."
Weinblatt waited; Borovsky, scowling, said nothing more. Finally Weinblatt said, "Some guys are up
only when they're making noise. They need it, like air. But Coyne is also mighty damned good with an
ELM. His replacement index is forty points tougher than yours." The shift boss sipped from his mug. "If
one of you had to go, it wouldn't be him."
"That's not fair."
"Money isn't fair. Bear down, make some Q-points, and we'll see. Right now you have to bend a
little. I've been doing some watching and some asking around. You pretty much stick to yourself, and
that's cool. But up here it never hurts to melt in a little. You've got no wife to talk about, no kids to brag
about. Nobody ever hears of you going off to see a woman somewhere. You make it easy for an asshole
like Coyne to single you out. Humans are pack animals. If you don't show that you're in, the others will