"Charles Stross - Tarkovsky's Cut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

the floor.

The skeletons are crying again, but Jessie just says, "Was that interesting?" and he slaps her
again.

She pulls his arms off at the socket. Gristle pops and servo motors chitter.

He kicks her.

She dismembers them all. She takes Jessie's femur and cracks it against the wardrobe. She
beats on the windows with it and they shatter, letting in the dust of the Old City. She picks up
furniture and throws it out the window. She tears down the curtains and wraps the bits of her lover
with them and throws them out the window. She uses a shard of glass to shred the carpet until
her fingers are slippery and an icon tells her the nanotechs in her hands might not be able to
repair the cuts.

She sits in the dust and the blood and she waits.

Nothing happens.

She waits.

Nothing happens.

She waits.
 Having fun?

Jewel leaps up, rushes across the room and kicks Jessie's skull. She kicks and kicks and kicks
until it breaks and she plucks out the drain within it and she tears it up with her hands and her
teeth and she jumps up and down on the shreds.

She goes back to the window and sits.

She waits.

Fancy a coffee?

Her eyes go wide.

There is a very loud grating noise, deep within her skull. Jessie is laughing.

Oh come now, Jewel," he says. did you never hear the one about the immortal soul?

Alia lies down on the futon and keeps very still. The thing that lives in her stomach grapples with
the tiny skull as soon as it slips through her oesophagus. She feels violently nauseous as the
symbiote finds the correct connections and handshakes the brain of the rodent. A sudden cramp
seizes her guts and she doubles over, half-hoping to vomit. But before it gets any worse
everything around her goes black, and she is in.

It is a grey place, a world a billion years too old to support life. A fire hangs in the featureless