"Madeleine E Robins - Abelard's Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robins Madeleine E)

startle the creature.

It was flattened, submerged in a shallow plastic glass tank that brimmed with
viscous pink fluid. It looked like photographs Susannah had seen of human hearts
prepared for transplant; there was something lonely and pathetic about it. Ugh,
she thought. How could anyone -- but Susannah thought she knew how. She stood
very still, just inside the room, listening to her own pulse and breathing
watching the faint pulse of the lover in its tank. She was only aware that
Potter had entered the room behind her when he cleared his throat.

"I was only looking --" she began.

Potter regarded her steadily and said nothing.

"I mean, it's horrible, just putting the poor thing back in some sort of vat, as
if it were clay or something. I mean --" she faltered. "When does he -- it --
go?"

Potter smiled thinly. "When Madame remembers to instruct me."

Susannah nodded, still staring at Abelard in the tank. "I just mean, well, it
was made deliberately. It seems so awful to just destroy it. It must feel
something. . . . "

"You want it," Potter stated baldly.

"It should be saved," Susannah corrected. She kept her gaze fixed on the lover.
"We can't just let Beatrice throw it out. lt's alive. It just seems. . . . " She
faded off. The only sound in the room was a faint hiss and bubble from the tank.

Then, We might arrange something," Potter said. He closed the door behind them,
shutting, them into the humid, medicinal-smelling room with the creature
"Something could be arranged," he repeated. Sussanah looked at him as he told
her what.

They negotiated, As Potter made his offer and Susannah her counter offer, she
thought of the warm sucking at her finger, the firm plastic surface of the
lover. Her breath came faster as she calculated her slender resources, the money
she had saved for years, hoping to buy an apartment larger than her cramped
two-room. She thought of little economies she could make, freelance work,extra
income.

When she left the white suite Susannah and Potter had come to an agreement.

All the way back to Manhattan, tiding with Beatrice in the copter, Susannah was
aware of a new sensation, a smugness Beatrice herself would have recognized. She
had taken something from Beatrice, sad Beatie would never know it. It would be
her own.

Sussanah spent her lunch hour st the bank the next day, transferring money to