"Mary A. Turzillo - When Gretchen Was Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Turzillo Mary A)

When Gretchen Was Human
Mary A. Turzillo

You're only human," said Nick Scuroforno, fanning the pages of a tattered first
edition of Image of the Beast. The conversation had degenerated from half-hearted
sales pitch, Gretchen trying to sell Nick Scuroforno an early Pang-born imprint. Now
they sat cross-legged on the scarred wooden floor of Miss Trilby's Tomes, watching
dust motes dance in August four o'clock sun. Gretchen was wallowing in
self-disclosure and voluptuous self-pity.
"Sometimes I don't even feel human." Gretchen settled her back against the soft,
dusty-smelling spines of a leather-bound 1910 imprint Book of Knowledge.
"I can identify."
"And given the choice, who'd really want to be?" asked Gretchen, tracing the
grain of the wooden floor with chapped fingers.
"You have a choice?" asked Scuroforno.
"See, after Ashley was diagnosed, my ex got custody of her. Just as well." She
rummaged her smock for a tissue. "I didn't have hospitalization after we split. And
his would cover her, but only if she goes to a hospital way off in Seattle." Unbidden,
a memory rose: Ashley's warm little body, wriggly as a puppy's, settling in her lap,
opening Where the Wild Things Are, striking the page with her tiny pink index
finger. Mommy, read!
Scuroforno nodded. "But can't they cure leukaemia now?"
"Sometimes. She's in remission at the moment. But how long will that last?"
Gretchen kept sneaking looks at Scuroforno. Amazingly, she found him attractive.
She thought depression had killed the sexual impulse in her. He was a big man,
chunky but not actually fat, with evasive amber eyes and shaggy hair. Not bad
looking, but not handsome either, in grey sweat pants, a brown T-shirt and beach
sandals. He had a habit of twisting the band of his watch, revealing a strip of pale
skin from which the fine hairs of his wrist had been worn.
"And yet cancer itself is immortal," he mused. "Why can't it make its host
immortal too?"
"Cancer is immortal?" But of course cancer would be immortal. It was the
ultimate predator. Why shouldn't it hold all the high cards?
"The cells are. There's some pancreatic cancer cells that have been growing in a
lab fifty years since the man with the cancer died. And yet, cancer cells are not even
as intelligent as a virus. A virus knows not to kill its host."
"But viruses do kill!"
He smiled. "That's true, lots do kill. Bacteria, too. But there are bacteria that
millennia ago decided to infect every cell in our bodies. Turned into тАФ let me think
of the word. Organelles? Like the mitochondrion."
"What's a mitochondrion?"
He shrugged, slyly basking in his superior knowledge. "It's an energy-converting
organ in animal cells. Different DNA from the host. You'd think you could design a
mitochondrion that would make the host live for ever."
She stared at him. "No. I certainly wouldn't think that."
"Why not?"
"It would be horrible. A zombie. A vampire."
He was silent, a smile playing around his eyes.
She shuddered. "You get these ideas from Miss Trilby's Tomes?"
"The wisdom of the ages." He gestured at the high shelves, then stood. "And of