"Simmons,.Wm.Mark.-.3.-.Habeas.Corpses.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)
"Christopher?"
As I struggled to rephrase my question, some part of my hind brain was observing that the sword should be rehung slightly to the left and the jar moved another eight inches to the right to achieve a more decorous balance of theЧerЧdщcor.
"Christopher, are you there?"
I shook my head. "Sorry, I was just channeling Martha Stewart."
"What?"
"Or maybe Attila the Hun doing Fang shui."
"What are you talking about?" The edge to his voice brought me back to the subject at hand.
"I'm talking about related experimentation," I said. "Were they attempting to grow or clone organsЧsay a heart, for exampleЧto extend theЧ"
"Clone or grow organs? In what? A Petri dish?" He snorted derisively. "Csщjthe, have you ever read Dracula by Bram Stoker?"
"Uh, yes."
"And have you read Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley?"
"As a matter of fact I have."
"And are you aware of why Frankenstein is the better of the two novels?"
"I wasn't aware of any such comparЧ"
"It is because one amounts to little more than tabloid journalism, playing fast and loose with certain details of history while the other is an ingenious work of fiction, springing from a fertile imagination, unfettered by such constraints as the laws of chemistry or physics."
"Um . . ."
"Do I need to explain which is which?"
"Not realЧ"
"Petri dish, indeed! The good doctors had just finished constructing an artificial breathing device when you took it away from them. That's artificial in the mechanical sense. As in pump and bellows. The next step was to graft a donor voice box onto the trachea. If you had waited, we might have found out if it was capable of speech."
"She's a her, not an it," I corrected. "And what do you mean 'I' took it away? Took her away."
"Your emissaries came and fetched Ms. Kellerman's head back to the East Coast. Said that you had more confidence in the facilities in New York. Nice touch, by the way, sending twins."
"Dammit, Stefan, I think I can trust Taj. And Gerald seems the decent sort. But I don't know or trust anyone besides Kurt back east. I don't care how impressive the equipment is, I didn't want Theresa treated like some kind of specimen!"
The shrug of his shoulders traveled down the wire. "Then you should have left her here."
"I didn't take her away! The people who came for her weren't my people!" Whisper, I told myself; yelling only makes the headache worse.
"Ha," I said, "ha."
"Who would want to get . . . a head?"
"Calls himself Dr. Pipt," I said, ignoring the bait. Why was yanking my chain such a popular sport these days? I proceeded to recount my evening's email experience, omitting the epilogue concerning my funny valentine.
"Perhaps you should add a human filter to your online interface," he suggested after digesting my story. "Anything so sophisticated as to encode an audio-visual experience and play it back in your brain could have other side effects."
"Like monster headaches?"
"Like post-hypnotic suggestions. False memory implants. You might have some mental time bomb ticking away until some preprogrammed event or time sets it off."
"Time bomb? I've already got a dozen hand grenades going off inside my skull!" I rubbed my forehead trying to massage some of the shrapnel out of my hairline.
"This could well be a political move on the part of your enemies."
"Ya think? Problem is it seems a little too subtle and too sophisticated for the East Village People. So far everything they've thrown at me has been teeth and talons."
"Christopher," he said in that voice that reminded me that he had a couple of centuries of maturity and sophistication on me, "your enemies are not confined to the New York clans."
I sighed. "Now what did I do?"
"Christopher, you may believe that your sudden displacement of Erzsщbet Bсthory has only stirred up enmity on the East CoastЧ"
"Gee, only the East Coast."
"Чbut the shock waves of your ascension have had a great impact on the other side of the continent, as well. I have had my hands full."
"Meaning what?"
"Everything is political, my naяve friend. New York is convulsed with infighting over who will transfer their loyalties to you and who will challenge for succession before your ashes hit the ground." He paused and let that delightful image sink in. "But other enclaves, long fearing the power and politics of the East Coast, now see opportunities during this period of uncertainty. Many feel the time to strike is while Gotham is crippled by weak and uncertain leadership."
"Ouch."
"I thought you were a big fan of the truth."
"Think of me as an 'oscillating' fan. But since we're on the subject of truth, ever consider taking a run at me, yourself?"
"Christopher, you do not have the ruthlessness required to rule the wampyri. You have made one brief visit to New York to meet with the heads of the various clansЧand then retreated back to Louisiana where you have no power base, no demesne of your own. You are not fully transformed, not completely undead. You have no real clan or family. The only respect you have, at this point, is that you have survived seven assassination attemptsЧ"
"Seven? I only count five. How do you figure seven?"
"Чdestroyed the demons Kadeth Bey and Lilith, known as Elizabeth Bсthory, and were sired by Vladimir Drakul Bassarab the Fifth, known as Dracula."
"Not sired, exactly. More like a stepfather," I said. "Godparent, actuallyЧlight on the 'God' part."
"Every Doman I have spoken with sees you as a major threat to the demesne system. It was better when you were considered rogue. As the weakest claimant to leadership of the largest and most powerful enclave in the undead underground, you are destabilizing the order of things. Civil war is threatening to break out in a half dozen demesnes. My own people are divided over your status and what they should do about it."
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |