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

He had to support her. His room was in the same building, reached by a web of dirty corridors. The
room was white plastic and scrupulously clean, almost bare. The bluish shimmering cube of a trid moved
and muttered in the corner.
The old man took her to a broken sandbed and stood uncertainly by her. "Is there anything... do you
need... ?" Rusty words learned by rote long before, never used. Lais shook her head. She took off her
coat, and he hurried to help her. She lay down. The bed was hard: air was meant to flow through
granules and give the illusion of floating, but the jets had stopped and the tiny beads were packed down
at the bottom, mobile and slippery only beneath the cover. It was softer than the street. The light was
bright, but not intolerable. She threw her arm across her eyes.
***


Something awakened her: she lay taut, disoriented. The illumination was like late twilight. She heard
her name again and turned. Over her shoulder she saw the old man crouched on a stool in front of the
trid, peering into the bluish space of it, staring at a silent miniature of Lais. She did not have to listen to
know what the voice was saying: they had traced her to Highport; they were telling the residents that she
was here and that she was mad, a poor pitiful unstable genius, paranoid and frightened, needing
compassion and aid. But not dangerous. Certainly not dangerous. Soothing words assured people that
aggression had been eliminated from the chromosomes of the freaks (that was a lie, and impossible, but
as good as truth). The voice said that there were only a few Fellows, who all confined themselves to
research. Lais stopped listening. She allowed early memories to seep out and affect her. The old man
crouched before his trid and stared at the picture. She pushed the twisted blanket away. The old man did
not move. At the foot of the bed, Lais reached out until her fingers almost brushed his collar. Beneath it
lay the strong thin links of his identity necklace. She could reach out, twist it into his throat, and remove
him as a threat. No one would notice he was gone. No one would care. A primitive anthropoid, poised
between civilization and savagery, urged her on.
When he recognized her, he would straighten. His throat would be exposed. Lais could feel tendons
beneath her hands. She glanced down, to those hands outstretched like claws, taut, trembling, alien. She
drew them back, still staring. She hesitated, then lay down on the bed again. Her hands lay passive, hers
once more, pale and blue-veined, with torn, dirty fingernails.
The old man did not turn around.
They showed pictures of how she might look if she were trying to disguise herself, in dark or medium
skin tones, no hair, long hair, curly hair, hair with color. The brown almost had it: anonymous. And she
had changed in ways more subtle than disguise. The arrogance was attenuated, and the invincible
assurance gone; the self-confidence remained-- it was all she had-- but it was tempered, and more
mature. She had learned to doubt, rather than simply to question.
The estranged face in the trid, despite its arrogance, was not cruel but gentle, and that quality she had
not been able to change.
It had taken them two months to trace her. They could not have followed her credit number, for she
had stopped using it before they could cancel it. They would have known only how far she could get
before her cash ran out. She had gotten farther, of course, but they had probably expected that.
Since they knew where she was, now was almost identical to later, and now it was still light outside.
As she allowed herself to sleep again, she tried to imagine not recognizing a picture of someone she had
met. She failed.
***


Lais woke up struggling from a nightmare in which the blue images of the trid attacked and
overwhelmed her, and her computers would not come to her aid. The old man pulled his hands from her
shoulders abruptly and guiltily when he realized she was awake. The windowless room was stuffy. Lais