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

"How about a smile, Chrysalis? Or should I say DebraJo? Perhaps you'd care to
tell my readers why a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, speaks with a British accent."
Chrysalis smiled a brittle smile, keeping the shock and anger she felt off her
face. He knew who she was! The man had pried into her past, had discovered her
deepest, if not most vital, secret. How did he do it? she wondered, and what
else did he know? She glanced around, but it seemed that no one else was paying
them any attention. Billy Ray and Asta Lenser, the ballerina-ace called Fantasy,
were closest to them, but they seemed absorbed in their own little
confrontation. Billy had a hand on her skinny flank and was pulling her close.
She was smiling a slow, enigmatic smile at him. Chrysalis turned back to Digger,
somehow managing to keep the anger she felt out of her voice.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Digger smiled. He was a rumpled, sallow-looking man. Chrysalis had had dealings
with him in the past, and she knew that he was an inveterate snooper who
wouldn't let go of a story, especially if it had a juicy, sensational angle.
"Come, come, Miss Jory. It's all down in black and white on your passport
application."
She could have sighed with relief, but kept her expression stonily hostile. The
application had had her real name on it, but if that was as far as Digger had
probed, she'd be safe.
Thoughts of her family raced poisonously through her mind. When she was a little
girl, shed been their darling with long blond hair and a naive young smile.
Nothing had been too good for her. Ponies and dolls and baton twirling and piano
and dancing lessons, her father had bought them all for her with his Oklahoma
oil money. Her mother had taken her everywhere, to recitals and to church
meetings and to society teas. But when the virus had struck her at puberty and
turned her skin and flesh invisible, making her a walking abomination, they shut
her up in a wing of the ranch house, for her own good of course, and took away
her ponies and her playmates and all contact with the outside world. For seven
years she was shut up, seven years. . . . '
Chrysalis shut off the hateful memories rushing through her mind. She was still,
she realized, walking on tricky ground with Digger. She had to concentrate fully
on him and forget the family that she'd robbed and fled from.
"That information is confidential," she told Digger coldly. He laughed aloud.
"That's very funny, coming from you," he said, then suddenly sobered at her look


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of uncontainable fury. "Of course, perhaps the true story of your real past
wouldn't be of much interest to my readers." He put a conciliatory expression on
his pale face. "I know that you know everything that goes on in Jokertown. Maybe
you know something interesting about him."
Digger gestured with his chin and let his eyes flicker in the direction of
Senator Hartmann.
"What about him?" Hartmann was a powerful and influential politician who felt
strongly about jokers' rights. He was one of the few politicians that Chrysalis
supported financially because she liked his policies and not because she needed
to keep the wheels greased.