"Lisa Smedman - Psychotrope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smedman Lisa)

jerked to a halt at what he saw.
There was Pip sitting on an overstuffed couch in a room filled not with toys but with computers. And not kiddie
decks like the one Deni had boosted for her, but mega-yen models with squeaky-gleam cases so new they still smelled
of plastic. Pip was playing a game on one of the decks, her hands a blur as they flicked the toggle sticks back and
forth. She wore her favorite blue dress and her "circuit sox"тАФblack nylon shot with brilliant yellow glofiber. Her curly
blonde hair was uncombedтАФas usualтАФ and her pale skin was unbruised. Deni was glad to see that whoever had
taken her hadn't messed her up any. Her aura was bright, clean.
 As if sensing his presence, she looked up with a puzzled frown at the spot where Deni hovered in astral space,
pant-ing from his run across the wasteland, his tongue lolling. Then she looked back at the screen of the cyberdeck in
her lap and she laughed. Out loud. And then she spoke, her eyes still darting as they tracked the game.
"I like it here," she said. "This is fun."
What the . . . ? Pip was happy here? Pip was talking?
No, frag it. She had to be on some kind of mood-altering mind benders. That was what had loosened up the
emo-tional knot that had kept his sister silent all these years.
Pip must've been tricked into coming here. And it didn't take a technowiz to figure out how. She'd probably
met her new "friends" over the Matrix. They'd talked her into leaving the squat by promising her everything Deni
couldn't give her: shiny new toys, the latest computer games, an entire playhouse to roam in.
She'd slipped out of bed, tiptoed past the dog, and un-bolted the locks on the front door of the squat herself.
Somehow she'd gotten through Hell's KitchenтАФDeni didn't even want to think how dangerous that had beenтАФ and
come here.
And gotten her reward. But Deni knew in his gut that there had to be something nasty waiting at the end of it all.
Deni growled. The fraggers who'd lured Pip here would
pay but good. But why hadn't he seen anyone yet? Pip had said "friends," And that meant more than one . .,
She glanced up from her game as a boy walked into the room and greeted her. He was native, with wide
cheek-bones and dusky skin. Maybe fifteenтАФabout Deni's age, but not runty like Deni. He was healthy, well fed. And
clean. His clothes looked new, and trend-smart, except for the knitted red and white scarf around his neck. But his eyes
had the wary look of someone who'd grown up in the Barrens, hungry and on edge.
When the kid turned, the gleam of a datajack flashed from his temple. Deni's astral vision showed the wires that fed
the jack as veins of silver, webbing their way through the kid's brain. He frowned. A datajack was some expen-sive
drek. Where'd a kid get the nuyen for that?
Deni growled as the kid sat down beside Pip on the couch. But the kid didn't make a move on her and Pip didn't
seem to mind him sitting there. And what the frag could Deni do about it, anyhow? This recon had taken only a few
seconds, but by the time Deni returned to his meat bod and slogged it across the wasteland of Hell's
KitchenтАФassuming he didn't boil his brains by falling into a mudholeтАФan hour or more would have gone by. Better to
keep an eye on Pip, for now, and see what went down next.
The kid was talking.
"You'll like being otaku," he told Pip. "Playing in the Matrix is even more fun than playing with toys."
Pip stared at him a moment, then nodded gravely. "I know."
"There's a special place there. A place that makes you feel happy. When you get your datajack you'll be able to go
there as often as you like."
Deni bristled. What was this fragger trying to talk his sister into? Was he trying to get her hooked on BTL? But that
was chips. You needed a chipjack for that. Not a data-jack. Datajacks were for computers . . .
"We're going to take a lot of people to the special place today," the kid told Pip. He glanced at the watch on his
wrist. "In just a few seconds. Would you like to come too?"
Pip nodded. A smile lit her tiny face.
The kid handed her an electrode net and smiled as she strapped the array of sensors onto her head and plugged its
fiber-optic cable into the deck on her lap.
No! Deni raged. Don't trust him, Pip! He flailed for-ward, but his astral body bounced back as it encountered Pip's
aura. He whirled, reached out* tried to claw the thing off her head. But it was no fraggin' use. The hands of his astral
body were thin as mist.