"Callahan 04 - Lady Sally's House 01 - Callahan's Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

But I woke in another place.
Or so it seemed when consciousness first returned. I was lying on my back on a very comfortable bed, under soft warm covers. I had only the vaguest recollection of the fight, something unimportant that had happened a long time ago. Nothing hurt, not even my side. I did not try moving to see if that would make it hurt. I was too weak to- move.
Wherever I was, it was quiet and peaceful here. The room was not dark; a soft feeble light source of some kind lay to my right. The air was full of pleasant girl-scents. This was not a hospital room or an emergency ward or a police -station infirmary. And it certainly didn't seem to be Hell.
With great effort I rolled my head to the right, toward the light, and became much less certain.
My vision was watery at- first. But even in the first glance there was no mistaking what I saw. A small naked man.
No, not naked, wearing some sort of odd leather harness, and slippers, and a short apron-like affair tied around his waist that left his buttocks bare. His back was to me.
He seemed to be making an effort to move quietly. He was standing before a large beautiful old dresser, and from its second drawer he was just removing a red satin corset, taking care not to let it rustle.
Jesus God, I thought, while I was hallucinating killer aunties Big Travis killed me and now he's rented me to a necrophiliac. A necrophiliac fetishist. Doesn't anybody just want to get naked with a nice cool corpse and make love normally any more?
No, I decided, this will not do. I picked my johns while I was alive and I'll pick them now, and this guy is entirely too scary! Even for a corpse. Oh God, I think I'm naked under this blanket- I summoned up all the energy I had for a roof-raising shriek of terror and rage and outrage. What came out was a squeak, such as you might hear from a sleeping baby mouse having a bad dream, and almost at once I stopped being afraid. Because the squeak caused him to leap a few inches in the air like a startled burglar, and when he spun around and gasped at me his face held such a comic mixture of dismay and confusion and fear and anger with himself that if I'd had the strength, I might have giggled. He looked so silly in that apron and straps. Jimmy Cricket in bondage. Balding slightly, with the beginnings of a pot belly. He gestured vaguely with the red corset and began speaking in a high rapid voice. "Oh God, I was sure I could do it without waking you I'm so terribly sorry I'm such
a fool oh I beg you please don't tell- Mistress Cynthia please don't or she won't punish me tonight!" He waited expectantly. Garters dangled agitatedly from the corset.
"Nng," I whispered.
He slapped himself in the face. "Oh, I'm such a fool please forgive me of course I'll go at once pretend I was never here just go back to sleep I promise everything is all right you're in good hands the best hands the very best hands and there's nothing to be afraid of Doctor Kate fixed everything someone will be here soon to look after you if you want anything I'm really sorry please don't tell Mistress Cynthia thank you!"
He sprang for a door I had not yet seen and was gone before I could say "Nng" again.
Then he sprang back into the room, scurried to the dresser, snatched up some nylons to go with the corset and was gone again.
It never occurred to me to doubt that he was real. I know the limitations of my imagination. But those same limits left me unable to guess how I ought to react.
I decided I did not need to. I went to sleep. My first intelligent decision for a long time.
I should have stuck with it. When I woke again I felt just awful, stiff and sore and queasy and sour and sweaty. My mouth was dry and tasted foul. My cheek hurt. My knees ached. My head throbbed. There was more light than last time, and it hurt my eyes even through the lids. But the worst was my side. It felt as if someone had had carnal knowledge of the knife wound. That much pain was scary.
I whimpered, and tried to curl up around my left side. Gentle firm hands touched my shoulders, pressed me back. Woman hands. One of them brushed my hair back, stroked my forehead. The hand was cool, its skin soft. The fingers wandered at first, then seemed to sense little currents of pain beneath the skin and targeted them. I gave up the struggle to remain tense, let myself go as limp as the pain in my side would let me.. I kept my eyes closed, because as long as I didn't open them, nobody could scare me or make me think or ask me questions. Not even me. Blindness wasn't a lot of comfort, but it was all I had.
When people rub your head for you they never quite get the right spots. She never missed. Her fingers traced veins of suffering, soothed knots of muscle, stimulated circulation, adjusted their pressure and direction with uncanny precision. As my headache washed away, the pain in my side began to diminish slightly. Which made the fear begin to ease, which caused the faint nausea to wane, which helped the headache.
"That's better," she said. "Everything's going to be all right.'
Her voice was as gentle and firm as her hands. I remembered it very well. Those compassionate fingers trolling for pain across my forehead were the ones that had wiped up the alley with Big Travis.
I opened one eye part way. The duchess, all right, resplendent now in evening dress. The sad-faced man with the big ears, the one who turned into a beagle when the moon came out, stood silently behind her. No sign of the little man in the apron. Her eyes were kind. She smiled faintly.
"Sleep some more," she suggested,
Splendid idea.

The third time I awoke I did not feel as good as the first time or as bad as the second time. My side hurt as much, and there were aches at my knees and the right side of my face, but I felt stronger. I was alert, and terribly thirsty.
"Water," I croaked.
The light was dim again. Someone got up from a chair in response to my plea, but from the sound and silhouette I. could tell it was not the duchess, nor the sad-faced man, nor the cricket in the apron. Someone bigger, heavier than any of them. Another woman, in a robe. She crossed the room, then came back again, stood just outside my peripheral vision.
My head was lifted from a pillow. Wetness occurred at my lips. I drank eagerly.
"Easy now," she said. "Not too fast." Her voice was deep and slightly husky
Finally I lay back and sighed. "Where am I?"
"That'll have to wait," she said. "I've got more important questions.'
"What could be more important than 'where am I?'?"
'~Your answers will tell me how much painkiller I can give you.'
"Go!'
"I need to know what drugs you've taken in the last forty-eight hours-scrip, street or even booze. Also, what do you take regularly, and when did you last eat?"
"I don't do drugs." -
She said nothing at all. -
"Oh, coffee and cigarettes, and some juice with the johns when I'm working, half a pint of tequila, maybe that much vodka. But not, you know, drugs. Are you some kind of cop or what?"
She sighed. "In the absence of reliable data, I must reduce your dosage to zero, to be safe." She made as if to get up.
"All right! Forty-eight hours? Five or six joints She waited. "... and three or four lines. No, all right, let me count them up ... eight total, no more, really. Terrible shit; they couldn't get Third World mothers to feed it to their babies any more so they sold it to Big Travis. So hardly any actual coke, but a lot of that other kind of 'caine that makes your nose numb. Oh, and one of the johns, I think his pot was dusted, but I didn't have much of it." She still waited. "And half a 'lude with a little wine to get to sleep last night."
"But no drugs."
"I don't have anything to do with needles!" I snapped, and regretted it. Just talking hurt my side plenty. Emphasis was too costly.
"I know; I looked for tracks. Even the sneaky places. Speed?"
"Not for months. I stopped doing it. I never did really like it."
She put her face in front of mine, close. I saw only the eyes. "Snort smack?"
"Never."
"Your pimp made you stop. Her eyes were huge. "What have you, been reading my mail? I just let him think that! I'd already decided it was dumb."
"And when did you eat?"