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

"BioWeb is gone."
"The facilities here are gone," she corrected. "Kurt said there are redundant network facilities in New York."
"Hmmm. Inconvenient, seeing as most people leave their hearts in San Francisco." It was the growing migraine; I was finding it increasingly difficult to think clearly. "This is assuming that it is a 'people' heart. Could be an animal's."
She shook her head and her red hair caressed my shoulder. "Human."
"You sound very sure."
"I am."
"That's rather disturbing." I held it up to gain the advantage of the porch light. "Could be a fakeЧsome kind of latex model with a motor and battery to make it move like that." The heart stirred the semiclear liquid around it like the rinse cycle of a Maytag washer.
"Nope. It's real."
I gave her the eye. "I don't know which bothers me more . . . that you can tell the difference between a human and an animal heart? Or that you can tell that it's real with just a glance in the dark?"
She smiled. "I think you are more disturbed by the fact that I'm not squealing like a seven-year-old girl, doing the jitterbug, and hyperventilating to the edge of unconsciousness."
"Maybe. Maybe I'm more disturbed by the fact that I'm not. I certainly would have a year or so ago."
"You've changed."
"Yeah. Getting killed has that effect, I'm told." I was trying for wry but it came out sounding a little pissy.
"You're not dead," she said with a slight edge to her voice, "you're alive."
"Am I?"
"You're not undead."
"Yet."
She sighed. "You know, some people are 'the glass is half full' kind of folk and others tend toward 'the glass is half empty' sort . . ." She waited.
I obliged reluctantly: "And which am I?"
"You're more along the lines of the glass is chipped and dirty and the water is probably laced with toxic waste."
I held up the jar. "Looks to me like the glass is half-filled with a still-beating human heart." I turned back and stared out into the darkness beyond the porch light. "Jesus, I'm tired. It's been a hell of a yearЧand I mean that in the most literal, theological context." I raised my voice. "You know, I'm really getting tired of all this monster mafia crap! Somebody wants to send me a message? Write a letter, pick up the phone, send an email!" Well, maybe not an email. "Or be mensch enough to stay on the porch after you ring the damn bell and deliver your message in person!" I ended up bellowing into the faceless night.
The crickets were suitably cowed: they stopped their nocturnal screaming for a full twenty seconds.
Deirdre cleared her throat. "Well . . . that was nice . . ."
"Oh, shut up."
"No, I mean it. You've been like a zombie, yourself, these past few weeks. It's nice to see a little emotion for a change."
"Little" emotion was right. It seemed like the only emotion I could muster this past year was anger. And even that was on the wane, of late. Ever since my wife and daughter died, I had felt my humanity trickling out of me like the fine spill of sand in a dusty hourglass. Each month I grew emptier and more benumbed as the virus took its toll. As it rolled through my body, reprogramming my RNA and mutating my cells, it felt as if a myriad of tiny switches were being thrown, one by one, in a shutdown sequence for my soul.
Looking at the still-beating heart in the jar I knew I was supposed to feel . . . something. Fear? Horror? Wonder? I could barely work up a serious case of annoyance.
Not the best of emotional states for what I had planned tonight.
Deirdre swore at my back and clamped her hand on my arm. "What the hell am I thinking?!" She yanked me back inside the house so fast I nearly dropped the jar.
Spinning me around, she kicked the door shut and shook a finger in my face. "That was stupid! People are trying to kill you!"
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call them 'people.'"
"Well, as your Chief of Security, I'm declaring a state of Orange Alert! From this point on you let me answer the door!"
I touched her shoulder. "And do what? Take a bullet that was meant for me?" She wore shorts and a white tank tee, damp with sweat from the weight room in the basement. My fingers tingled where they touched the faint scars over her trapezius muscle where I had bitten her nine months and a lifetime ago. "You are no longer a vampire."
"Better me than you," she argued. "I may no longer be wampyr but I'm still less human than you!"
That was contestable but I let it slide. "I have a call to make," I said, turning and walking away.
* * *
"Hello?"
Even though he was more than half a continent away and filtered by countless telephone relays and switchers, there was a palpable presence in the room even before he spokeЧMaster vampires were like that.
"Stefan?" My asking was a polite formality. There was no question that Stefan Pagelovitch, the Doman for the Seattle enclave of the undead was on the other end of the line. "It's Chris."
"What can I do for you, my friend?"
How about modulating the subharmonics in your voice so that my head doesn't explode? Pipt hadn't been kidding about the headache. I cleared my throat. "Are you missing something?"
"Missing something?" I could feel his frown through the receiver.
"Yeah. A head."
"A . . . 'head'?"
Mine was throbbing painfully and, rather than play Twenty Questions, I cut to the chase. "Theresa Kellerman's head. Remember? I gave it to you for safekeeping. I've been expecting a report from Doctors Mooncloud and Burton."
"If you wanted a report, you should have given them a little more time."
"A little more time?"
"Look, Christopher; I am no doctor, no scientist. But even I can see that a severed headЧone that continues to live without a heart, without lungs, without mechanical life supportЧthat takes time to study."
"Were they working on keeping any other organs alive and functional independent of the body?"
I felt his frown deepen. "What do you mean?"