"Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

black hairs marched up her belly like ants. Her legs were
 short, functional, strong. It was a good, healthy body.
But it was not her body. Rebel Elizabeth MudlarkтАЩs body
was long and lean and knobby at the elbows and knees.
Her skin was white as porcelain and her hair was mousy
blond. Her hands and feet were long and slender, with an
artistтАЩs fingers, a concert pianistтАЩs toes. Almost the exact
opposite of the body she had now.
I shall go mad, Rebel thought. I will scream.
But she did neither. She stood and examined her paint
in the obsidian surface of the flat. Ignoring the strange
round face with button nose and dark eyesтАФeyes that
flashed animal fear at her. A line of red paint ran from ear
to ear, like a mask, with spiky wing lines flying up the
brows. тАЬPlease turn on,тАЭ she said, and looked it up under
wetware codes. Logically enough, it identifed her as
Hospital Patient, Wetsurgery Prep.
The paint smeared. It took only a second to change the
markings to Outpatient, Wetsurgery Postop. Two small
antennae now reached down from the eyes, a second pair
of wings sprouted on the forehead. She wrapped the cloak
about her, hood up, and stepped out of her niche, onto a
flagstone walk.
The walk ran between high rosehedges, angled into
another. She was swept up in a flow of medical personnel
in gowns that matched their facepaint masksтАФsurgical
greens, diagnostics blues, wetware redsтАФand a sprinkling
of civilians in their cloaks. They strode along crisply,
blankly, as self-absorbed as robots. Rebel moved invisibly
among them, gliding along on tiptoe since it was a
gravity-light area.
She moved confidently at first, cloak streaming in her
wake. Then the walk branched, and branched again, and
she was hopelessly lost in the rose maze, among the
hundreds of niches where patients were packed tight as
larvae in a hive. Without warning, she felt naked and
exposed, and she couldnтАЩt remember how to walk. All
 those complex motions. In a panic, she pulled her cloak
about her and stumbled.
The zombies swirled by, stepping deftly aside as she
fought for balance. Cold faces glanced quickly at her, then
away.
Just as she went sprawling, an arm reached out and
snagged her elbow, and she was hauled gracelessly to her
feet. Turning, she found herself looking into a thin,
vulpine face slashed by a single orange wetware line. The
stranger smiled, narrow jaw, sharp little teeth. He had a
painful grip on her arm, just above the elbow. тАЬThis way,тАЭ
he said.
тАЬThatтАЩs okay, sport,тАЭ Rebel said quickly. тАЬI just lost my