"Simmons,.Wm.Mark.-.3.-.Habeas.Corpses.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

"But longevity is not the same as immortality," he continued with a gesture that took in his blanketed lower extremities. "I have made my most significant breakthroughs too late to keep me in this vessel much longer. I shall continue . . . but my next transition is not one I would choose if I could find an alternative . . ."
"And heeeeere's the pitch . . ." I murmured.
"You, Mr. Csщjthe, are that alternative."
Bingo.
"You have something to offer that would cost you very little and would benefit me very much." His deeply set brown eyes widened and seemed unusually alive in his less than lively body. "And, through me, the human race!"
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling: the alarm bells always go off when folk with vague and mysterious agendas invoke the human race. Call me paranoid but my experience with telemarketers was bad and my track record with paranormal power mongers even worse. Put 'em together . . .
And, speaking of bells, somewhere off in the distance, I heard my front doorbell chime.
"In return, I believe I can offer you two very precious gifts," Pipt continued, ignoring the sound of the chimes in my hallway. "I would like to meet with you to discuss these matters." He shrugged. "Alas, I do not believe you would make the journey on hearsay so I propose to send an emissary to meet with you and discuss our mutual interests."
He gestured and a dwarf dressed in lederhosen came into view, carrying a wooden box.
"I'll get it!" Deirdre called from the other room. The front door, I supposed, not the box.
The box was nearly square and about sixteen inches to a side in all three dimensions. Brass hinges gleamed brightly against the dark, lacquered wood and Pipt took possession of it as if delicate glassware were stored inside.
"I have just a few moments left. This messaging technology is still in its infancy and is somewhat limited. Plus, I must apologize in advance for the aftereffects. I do hope you are not susceptible to migrainesЧthe headaches usually last only a few hours." He turned the box in his hands and braced it against his chest. "But I could not simply tell youЧI had to show you." He fumbled at a catch and swung the side of the box out and open so that its contents and interior were visible. "Here is how you shall know my emissary and that the gifts I promise will be true!"
It was a head.
A human head.
Theresa Kellerman's long, dark tresses had been trimmed to shoulder lengthЧa slightly miscast phrase as she no longer had any shoulders.
Her eyes blinked.
Her mouth opened as if to speak.
But she had no lungs and her voice box had been damaged if not lost when the machete had taken her head off in the voodoo hounfort last year.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" I said as Pipt, the dwarf, and the still-living head of Theresa Kellerman flickered and disappeared.
A full-blown migraine on steroids rushed in to fill the void in my own head.
Deirdre appeared in the study's doorway. "Somebody sent you a valentine," she said.
"What?" I blinked. Ow. Blinking hurt.
"I got to the door too late to catch the messenger. But they left something for you, special delivery."
I tried to focus. Ow! Focusing hurt!
Deirdre was walking toward me. Closing the distance helped. But not the motion. I tried focusing again when she stopped right in front of me.
She was holding something. A jar.
A three-quart glass jar.
Filled with a clear liquid substance.
And a heart.
The heart was still beating!
And this time I wasn't dreaming.

Chapter Two
"Valentine's Day is still a couple of weeks away," Deirdre was saying, "but I guess someone wanted to express their sentiments early."
I knelt down and studied the immediate area of the front porch. No footprints, no fibers, not even a ring of moisture or disturbed dust to show where the jar had been set before the doorbell was rung. We lived too far out in the boonies for any hope of a CSI: West Monroe so I got back up and looked out into the darknessЧsomething I could do better than anyone with a starlight scope.
Whoever the messenger was, he had to cross the river or the cemetery to leave it here.
And depart again by either of those two routes.
I still didn't believe in ghosts but either of those alternatives seemed even more unlikely.
"So, what do you think?" Deirdre asked.
I was thinking about my little daymare of just an hour ago but I wasn't about to tell Deirdre that she was showing up in my dreamsЧeven if they had a nightmarish bent. "I'm thinking," I said, "of how, back in a more romantic era, the poets and troubadours articulated their passion with phrases like 'I offer you my heart' or 'I lay my heart at your feet.'"
"You think a wandering minstrel did this?"
"No." I thought about giving her The Look but I didn't want her to think I was so easily baited. "And while I've never reconciled myself to today's music distilling those sentiments into something along the lines of 'Yo, bitch' . . ." I contemplated the gory gift in the glass container, " . . . I think I'd prefer a little gangsta' rap over Victorian prose turned to bloody-minded literalness."
"Still, whoever left it was at least considerate enough to put it in a glass jar with a nice, tight lid. Otherwise it would have been very messy."
I gave her The Look after all.
She gave it right back. "I'm not being prissy, it means something! Anyone can cut out a heart and dump the mess on your porch if that's all there is to the message. This is something more sophisticated. The fact that it's in a jar and still pumping away is part of the message."
Oh.
"So," I asked as the fist-sized organ churned and turned in the clear suspension medium, "you didn't get any kind of a look at the messenger service?"
Deirdre shook her head. "Rang the bell and ran away."
"We shouldn't be handling this. The glass should be dusted for fingerprints."
She snorted. "Like whoever is capable of this would be dumb enough to leave latents. You'd do better to run DNA from the tissue through the BioWeb database."