"Vonda N. McIntyre-The Genius Freaks" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

marks, bits of paper not yet picked up, sodden; placards and posters the haranguers had abandoned in
the rain, leaning against each other like dead trees. Lais let her gaze pass quickly over them, trying not to
see the words; in the dim light, she could almost pretend she could not read them.
If she left this place she could walk downtown for perhaps half an hour in the warmed, well-lit night,
before an agent saw her smoothing people and chased her out, or had her held and checked. That she
could not afford. She stayed where she was. She pulled her coat over her knees and put her head down.
Staying outside was her own choice. The dump nearby would give her one of the transients' beds, but out
here the cold numbed her, a free anesthetic that otherwise she might be driven to buy in more destructive
form.
A scuffing through slush on the flagstones roused her. Lais crawled stiffly from beneath the tree. Pain
clamped on her spine before she could straighten. She leaned against the garden's retaining wall,
breathing the thin air in shallow cut-off gasps. The man was almost opposite her when she moved into the
mall. "Hey, you got any spare change?"
Startled, a little scared, he peered down at her through the rain. His face was smooth, without
character, the set and seemingly plasticized face of a thousand betrayers, a face she would not live to
share. He had nothing to be frightened of but mercifully rapid senility and a painless death that could be
over a century away. His life span would be ten times hers.
"You're dressed well to want money."
She moved closer to him, so close that she had to conceal her own uneasiness. She needed, if
anything, more distance around her than other people, but she understood the need and controlled it. The
man succumbed to it, and moved away from her until gradually, as they talked, she backed him against
the wall. He was odorless, a complete olfactory blank, firmly scrubbed and deodorized at mouth and
armpits and feet and groin, as clean as his genes. Even his clothes had no smell. Lais hadn't bathed in
days, and her clothes were filthy; her damp coat smelled familiarly of wool, and she herself smelled like a
warm wet female animal with fur. She built up an image of herself preying on others. It amused her,
because they had been preying on her all her life.
"Some people are more generous," she said, as if someone had given her the coat. Wisps of hair clung
in damp streaks across her forehead and at her neck.
"Why don't you sign up for Aid?"
She laughed once, sharply, and didn't answer, turned her back on him and guessed two steps before
he called her. It was one. "Do you need a place to sleep?"
She made her expression one of disdain. "I don't do that, man."
Cold rain beading on his face did not prevent his flush: embarrassment mixed with indignation. "Come
now, I didn't mean-- "
She knew he didn't mean--
"Look, if you don't want to give me anything forget it." She stressed "give" just enough.
He blew out his breath and dug in his pockets. He held out a crumpled bill that she looked at with
contempt, but she took it first. "Gods, a whole guilder. Thanks a lot." The insolence of her mock gratitude
upset him more than derision. She walked away, thinking that she had the advantage, that she was leaving
him speechless and confused.
"Do you like hurting people?"
She faced him. He had no expression, only that smooth, unlived-in look. She watched his eyes for a
moment. They, at least, were still alive.
"How old are you?"
He frowned abruptly. "Fifty."
"Then you can't understand."
"And how old are you? Eighteen? It isn't that much difference."
No, she thought, the difference is the hundred years that you've got left, and the self-righteous hate
you'd give me if you knew what I was. She almost answered him honestly, but she couldn't get the words
out. "It is to me," she said, with bitterness. Only fifty. He was the right age to have had his life disrupted