"George R. R. Martin - WC 4 - Aces Abroad" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

about an eighteenth-century insane asylum. The wall around it was crumbling
stone, the sidewalk leading to it was rotting concrete, and the building itself
was filthy from years of accumulated bird shit and grime. Inside, it was worse.
The walls were abstract designs of peeling paint and mildew. The bare wooden
floors creaked ominously and once Mordecai Jones, the
four-hundred-and-fifty-pound ace called the Harlem Hammer, stepped on a section
that gave way. He would have fallen all the way through the floor if an alert


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Hiram Worchester hadn't quickly relieved him of nine tenths of his weight. The
smell clinging to the corridors was indescribable, but was mostly compounded of
the various odors of death.
But the very worst, thought Chrysalis, were the patients, especially the
children. They lay uncomplainingly on filthy bare mattresses that reeked of
sweat, urine, and mildew, their bodies racked by diseases banished long ago in
America and wasted by the bloat of malnutrition. They watched their visitors
troop by without curiosity or comprehension, serene hoplessness filling their
eyes.
It was better being a joker, she thought, though she loathed what the wild card
virus had done to her oncebeautiful body.
Chrysalis couldn't stand any more of the unrelievable suffering. She left the
hospital after passing through the first ward and returned to the waiting
motorcade. The driver of the jeep. she'd been assigned to looked at her
curiously, but said nothing. He hummed a happy little tune while they waited for
the others, occasionally singing a few off key phrases in Haitian Creole.
The tropical sun was hot. Chrysalis, bundled in an all-enveloping hood and cloak
to protect her delicate flesh and skin from the sun's burning rays, watched a
group of children playing across the street from the run-down hospital. Sweat
trickling in tickling rivulets down her back, she almost envied the children in
the cool freedom of their near nakedness. They seemed to be fishing for
something in the depths of the storm drain that ran under the street. It took
Chrysalis a moment to realize what they were doing, but when she did, all
thoughts of envy disappeared. They were drawing water out of the drain and
pouring it into battered, rusty pots and cans. Sometimes they stopped to drink a
mouthful.
She looked away, wondering if joining Tachyon's little traveling show had been a
mistake. It had sounded like a good idea when Tachyon had invited her. It was,
after all, an opportunity to travel around the world at government expense while
rubbing shoulders with a variety of important and influential people. There was
no telling what interesting tidbits of information she would be able to pick up.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time....
"Well, my dear, if I hadn't actually seen it with my own eyes, I'd say you
hadn't the stomach for this sort of thing." She smiled mirthlessly as Dorian
Wilde heaved himself into the backseat of the jeep next to her. She wasn't in
the mood for the poet's famous wit.
"I certainly wasn't expecting treatment like this," she said in her cultured
British accent as Dr. Tachyon, Senator Hartmann, Hiram Worchester, and other