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

by the revolt, and if he did not hate her kind, he would still fear them. Deep feelings were no longer so
easily erased by the passage of time.
He seemed about to speak again, but he was too close; she had misjudged him and he had already
stepped outside her estimation of him. Her mistakes disturbed her; there was no excuse for them, not this
soon. She turned to flee and slipped to her hands and knees in the slush. She struggled to her feet and
ran.
Around a corner she had to stop. Even a month earlier she would not have noticed the minor exertion;
now it exhausted her. The Institute could at least have chosen a clean way to murder its Fellows. Except
that clean deaths would be quick, and too frequently embarrassing.
The wind at Lais' back was rising. On a radial street leading toward the central landing pad, it seemed
much colder. Sleet melted on her face and slid under her collar. Going to the terminal, she risked being
recognized, but she did not think the Institute could have traced her here yet. At the terminal she would
be able to smooth a few more people, and maybe they would give her enough for her to buy a ticket off
this mountain and off this world. If she could hide herself well enough, take herself far enough, the
Institute would never be sure she was dead.
Halfway between the mall and the landing terminal, she had to stop and rest. The cafe she entered was
physically warm but spiritually cold, utilitarian and mechanical. Its emotional sterility was familiar.
Recently she had come to recognize it, but she saw no chance of replacing the void in herself with
anything of greater meaning. She had changed a great deal during the last few months, but she had very
little time left for changes.
The faint scents of half a dozen kinds of smoke lingered among the odors of automatic, packaged
food. Lais slid into an empty booth. Across the room three people sat together, obviously taking pleasure
in each other's company. For a moment she considered going to their table and insinuating herself into the
group, acting pleasant at first but then increasingly irrational.
She was disgusted by her fantasies. Briefly, she thought she might be able to believe she was insane.
Even the possibility would be comforting. If she could believe what she had been taught, that Institute
geniuses were prone to instability, she could believe all the other lies. If she could believe the lies, the
Institute could remain a philanthropic organization. If she could believe in the Institute, if she was mad,
then she was not dying.
She wondered what they would do if she walked over and told them who and what she was. Lais had
no experience with normal humans her own age. They might not even care, they might grin and say "so
what?" and move over to make room for her. They might pull back, very subtly, of course, and turn her
away, if their people had taught them that the freaks might revolt again. That was the usual reaction.
Worst, they might stare at her for a moment, look at each other, and decide silently among themselves to
forgive her and tolerate her. She had seen that reaction among the normals who worked at the Institute,
those who needed any shaky superiority they could grasp, who made themselves the judges of deeds
punished half a century before.
A lighted menu on the wall offered substantial meals, but despite her hunger she was nauseated by the
mixed smells of meat and sweet syrup. The menu changed a guilder and offered up utensils and a
covered bowl of soup. She resented the necessity of spending even this little, because she had almost
enough to go one more hard-to-trace world-step away. The sum she had and the sum she needed: they
were such pitiful amounts, pocket money of other days.
For a moment she wished she were back at the Institute with the rest of the freaks, being catered to by
pleasant human beings. Only for a moment. She would not be at the Institute but hidden in their isolated
hospital; those pleasant human beings would be pretending to cure her while sucking up the last fruits of
her mind and all the information her body could give them. All they would really care about would be
what error in procedure had allowed such a mistake to be brought to term in their well-monitored
artificial wombs. Fellows were not supposed to begin to die until they were thirty, though that would be
denied. Nothing had warned the Institute that Lais would die fifteen years too early; nothing but the
explanation and perhaps not even that, could tell them if any of her colleagues would die fifteen or fifty