"Mike Resnick - Hothouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Then it's on to Rex. Felicia has problems with her Rex, and I have problems
with mine.

Good morning, Rex, I say.

He mumbles something incomprehensible at me.

I look down at him. His right eye is bloodshot and tearing heavily.

Rex, what am I going to do with you? I say. You know you're not supposed to
stare at the sun.

He doesn't really know it. I doubt that he even knows his name is Rex. But
cleansing his eye and medicating it is going to put me behind schedule, and I
have to blamesomeone. Rex doesn't mind being blamed. He doesn't mind burning
out his retina. He doesn't even mind lying motionless for decades. If there is
anything hedoes mind, nobody's found it yet.

I spill some medication on him while fixing his eye, so I decide that rather
than just change his diaper I might as well go all the way and give him a
DryChem bath. I marvel, as always, at the sheer number of surgical scars that
criss-cross his torso: the first new heart, the second, the new kidneys, the
new spleen, the new left lung. There's a tiny, ancient scar on his lower belly
which I think was from the removal of a burst appendix, but I can't find any
record of it on the computer and he's been past talking about it for almost a
century.

Then I move on to Mr. Spinoza. He's laying there, mouth agape, eyes open, head
at an awkward angle. I can tell even before I reach him that he's not
breathing. My first inclination is to call Emergency, but I realize that his
life station will have reported his condition already, and sure enough, just
seconds later the Resurrection Team arrives and sets up a curtain around him
(as if any of his roommates could see or care), and within ten minutes they've
got the old gentleman going again.

This is the fifth time Mr. Spinoza has died this year. All this dying has to
be hard on his system, and I worry that one of these days it's going to be
permanent. * * * *




Page 3
So how was your Major today? asks Felicia at dinner.

Same as usual, I say. How's yours?

Her Major is theBrowallia speciosa majorus. Ditto, she says. Old, but hanging
on. She frowns. We may not get any blossoms this year, though. The roots are a