"Bruce Sterling - Heavy Weather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Alex drew a slow deep breath, relaxed, exhaled. Something viscous
gurgled nastily, deep within him.
"Goddamn it, Alex! You just can't do this! I spent three weeks
tracking you down! Even Dad's people couldn't track you down this
time."
"Well, yeah," Alex muttered. "That's why I did it that way.~~
When his sister spoke again, her voice was full of grim resolve. "Get
packed, Alejandro. You're getting out of there."
"Don't bother me. Let me be."
"I'm your sister! Dad's written you off-don't you get that yet?
You're grown up now, and you've hurt him too many times. I'm the only
one left who cares."
"Don't be so stupid," Alex croaked wearily. "Take it easy.~~
"I know where you are. And I'm coming to get~ou. And anybody who
tries to stop me-you include -is gonna regret it a lot!"
"You can't do anything," Alex told her. "I signed all the clinic
papers . . . they've got lawyers." He cleared his throat, with a long
rasping ache. Returning to full alertness was far from pleasant;
variant parts of his carcass-up per spine, ankles, sinuses,
diaphragm-registered sharp aching protests and a deep reluctance to
function. "I want to sleep," he said. "I came here to rest."
"You can't kid me, Alejandro! If you want to drop dead, then go
ahead! But don't blow family money on that pack of thieves."
"You're always so goddamned stubborn," Alex said. "You've gone and
woke me up now, and I feel like hell!" He sat up straight. "It's my
money, and it's my life! I'll do whatever I want with it! Go back to
art school." He reached across the bed, grabbed the phone lead, and
yanked it free, snapping its plastic clip.
Alex picked the dead phone up, examined it, then stuffed it securely
under the pillows. His throat hurt. He reached back to the bedside
table, dipped his lingers into a tray of hammered Mexican silver, and
came up with a narcotic lozenge. He unwrapped it and crunched it
sweetly between his molars.
Sleep was far away now. His mind was working again, and required
numbing. Alex slid out of the bed onto his hands and knees and
searched around on the thick, plush, ugly carpet. His head swam and
pounded with the effort. Alex persisted, being used to this.
The TV's remote control, with the foxlike cunning of all important
inanimate objects, had gone to earth in a collapsing heap of Mexican
true-crime fotonovelas. Alex noted that his bed's iron springs, after
three weeks of constant humidity, were gently but thoroughly going to
rust.
Alex rose to his knees, clutching his prize, and slid with arthritic
languor beneath the sheets again. He caught his breath, blew his
nose, neatly placed two cold drops of medicated saline against the
surface of each eyeball, then began combing the clinic's cable
service with minimal twitches of his thumb. Weepy Mexican melodramas.
A word-game show. Kids chasing robot dinosaurs in some massive
underground mall. The ever-present Thai pop music.
And some English-language happytalk news. Spanish happytalk news.