"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 04 - Kalin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

The fair skin and smooth contours of a young girl to replace
the sagging flesh and withered skin. A complete face-transplant
and more. The breasts and buttocks, the thighs and calves, the
arms and hands. Especially the hands.

I need a new body, she thought looking at them. A complete
new body and, if rumor were true, she might get one. The
surgeons of Pane, so it was whispered, had finally solved the
secret of a brain transplant. For money, a lot of money, they
would take out her brain and seal it within the skull of a young
and nubile girl. It was a rumor, nothing more, yet a rumor she
desperately wanted to believe.

To be young again! To watch the fire kindle in a man's eyes as
he looked at her. To thrill to the touch of his hands. To live!

Looking at her, Elmo Rasch read her thoughts as if her mind
had been an open book. The mercenary leaned against the wall of
the cabin, eyes hooded beneath his brows, mouth a thin, cruel
line. Deliberately he reached out and snapped off the truglow
tube. With the dying of the harsh light she lost ten years of
apparent age.
 "Elmo?"

"Why hurt yourself?" he said quietly. "Why twist the knife for
no purpose. Is it so necessary to be young again?"

"For me, yes."

"Was youth such a happy time?" His voice held bitterness. "If
so you were luckier than I. But perhaps you enjoyed the Houses
where you were paraded for sale. The mansions of depravity."

She looked at him and smiled without humor. "Where men
like you," she said softly, "lined up to pay for pleasure you would
not otherwise obtain."

"True." He dropped to sit beside her on the bunk, his thigh
hard against her own. Reflected in the mirror his face was a
mass of crags and hollows, the thin line of scar tissue a web-like
tracery. "Soon," he said. "Very soon now."

He saw the faint tremble of her hands. On her fingers the
gems flashed in living rainbows. Elmo reached out, touched
them with a blunt finger.

"Pretty, aren't they?" he said mockingly. "Good enough to
delude, but you and I and any jeweler know what they are really
worth. Stained crystal with plated settings. The cost of a short