"Mary Rosenblum - Jumpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

It had been spoken in the mongrel Spanish/Portuguese/Native language that he had acquired through
suppression and hypno-implantation. He looked up, wincing in pain, searching the leaf shadows for the
speaker. Child? he thought. Up here?

She clung to the trunk a meter above him, head downward, hands and feet splayed on the smooth bark,
wearing nothing but shorts. Joaquin found himself staring at her small breasts with their dark aureoles and
blushed. Her skin was as dark as his, but she lacked his broad faceтАФa genetic echo of his distant Mayan
ancestors. Her face was elfin and pointed and she was smaller than an eight-year-old. Then he saw her
hands and feet. Her fingers were longer than his, with thick spatulate pads and long, shiny nails. Her toes
were as long as her fingers, and she clung to the slippery bark of the tree with those clawed fingers and
toes, her dark eyes reflecting glints of green light.

Oh, God.

"I'm Zlia." She pushed lightly off the trunk to drop to the limb inches in front of him.

Joaquin recoiled, repulsed by her skinny child's body and her weird digits. A genen. Like the huge
productive trees that had replaced the original wild rainforest. But it was illegal to alter the human
phenotype. Death penalty illegal. "Hello, Zlia." His implanted numb brain supplied the right words. "How
тАж did I get here?"

"I used a cargo sling and a hover." The man's voice came from behind Joaquin, tinted with amusement.
"It's designed to lift harvest tanks after the trees are tapped. In fact, I stole it from a harvest crew. I
brought your stuff, too. Your buddies with the guns seemed to think it was valuable."

Joaquin blinked as he realized that the speaker was right behind him on the limb, as if he had teleported
there. A head shorter than Joaquin, he was fairer, a euro mix, with curly auburn hair and muscles like a
competition bodybuilder. "I hope for your sake it was worth the fucking effort," the man said and grinned.
"Zlia? You get today's quota of frogs yet?"

She winked, bared small teeth in a feral grin, and skittered up the trunk of the tree, her movements quick
and inhuman.

"You've met Zlia." The man noticed his reaction, and his grin mocked Joaquin, ugly with bad teeth. "Ah,
we're such hypocrites! It's okay to change any of God's creatures to suit тАж as long as we don't alter that
human face and form. Although it's perfectly fine to fix us if we're broken inside тАж long as we don't look
different outside. I think Zlia likes your shirt."

Joaquin stared down at the bright T-shirt he'd bought at the shuttle terminal. Brilliant frogs climbed across
the frontтАФneon blue and black, screaming orange, and lime green. Retro, and out-of-style retro at that.
He had ducked into a souvenir shop because he thought one of Father's watch dogs was following him.
The shop had had an actual living clerk, and he had been too embarrassed to leave without purchasing
something.

"Arrow poison frogs." The man nodded at the pictures, winked. "She probably figures that you're a
long-lost cousin. You look a little like her."

"She just startled me, that's all." Joaquin flushed. "Who were the men who attacked me?" They wanted
money. Another kidnap, another payoff by his father. He wondered how soon this man would get around
to money. "And who are you, and how did you manage to take me and my stuff away from them?"