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

the account Potter had named. As she wrote the figures out Susannah had a brassy
taste in her mouth, a moment of cautionary fear: What am I doing? Then sanity
was overwhelmed by the rising image, the image she had lived with for months
now, of the lover at her fingertip, nursing gently. Susannah signed the bank
chit recklessly and went back to work.

Potter was early. When the security guard at her building door called up for
clearance Susannah was still eating dinner. She looked quickly around her
apartment, a painfully neat room on which she had lavished all her energy,
choosing fabrics and art that would create s sense of space and graciousness.
Except for the dark wood folding table on which her dinner sat half-eaten, the
apartment was in order. She went to the door to wait.

"Good evening, Miss." Potter might have been opening the door at Tamerlane for
her, rather than she for him.

"Good evening," Susannah replied seriously.

It took only a few minutes to move the shrouded can across the room, slide the
tank as gently as possible onto the floor, unstack the cans of nutrient fluid
which Potter had brought along. "Part of the accouterments," he told her. Then
he looked around the apartment once, shook his head as if his worst fears had
been confirmed.

"Well, Miss," he said at the door. "I hope it gives you great. . . pleasure."

Susannah blushed. "I'm just trying--" she began. Gave that up. "Good night,
Potter."

"I certainly hope so, Miss."

When he was gone, Susannah turned back to the apartment, seeing the drying track
of fluid dribbled from the tank and the shifting sprawl of Abelard against the
plastiglass walls. The tank and cans of fluid took up a space about a meter
square, displacing an armchair she had stored away in the basement. Her heart
beat so strongly she felt the pulse under her jaw. Susannah walked toward the
tank. The pink fluid on the floor smeared greasily under her foot. But when she
reached out a hand and touched the lover its surface was not greasy, scarcely
even damp. At her touch, Abelard slowly stirred, enveloping her fingertip in
warm, firm flesh, just as she remembered.

Susannah drew away. Some ritual was demanded. The lover sank down into its tank
again while she cleared the dishes and started a bath. She soaked for a long
time in water as hot as it ever got in her building then toweled herself dry.
When she could think of no further reason to delay, she set about her seduction.

First there was the clumsy process of getting Abelard out of the tank. The lover
did not reach for her as it did to Beatrice, nor follow the sound of her
murmurs, her heat and scent. But when touched it did respond, reaching upward to
her. After a moment Susannah figured out how to use its weight to move it,