"Lisa Tuttle - Pathology" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

periphery of my life, attached to my lover like a parasite, barring certain possibilities from me forever.

It was harder for me now to leave those two sore subjects alone, but at least I didnтАЩt speak to Daniel
about them. I found a bookshop in Cecil Court which specialized in esoteric learning, and bought an
armload of books about alchemy. On the evenings Daniel did his duty by his ex-girlfriend, I went back to
my rented room and got into bed with his ancient philosophy.

The fact that I was still shelling out money for a room of my own, although I scarcely spent any time
there, was a sore point. I wanted to live with Daniel and found his arguments against it pretty feeble. If he
really felt that his two-bedroomed house wasnтАЩt big enough for the two of us, then he should sell it, and
we could buy something else together. IтАЩd been looking for something to buy when I met him, but I didnтАЩt
want to commit myself to mortgage payments on some tiny flat if there was any future in our relationship.

We had been lovers for nearly nine months when I began to suspect I was pregnant.

IтАЩd been careless about contraception. The truth was, I wanted to have a baby; I wanted to force the
issue of our relationship to a crisis, even if I hadnтАЩt admitted it to myself. When my period didnтАЩt arrive
bang on time, my first response was an inward clutch of sheer joy. I was ready to change my life.

I didnтАЩt tell him straight away. When I got on the train for RaynerтАЩs Lane one evening, two weeks later, I
was still happy keeping my secret. I watched out the window for his house, as I always did. In the
slanting, pre-dusk light and shade the view of row upon row of narrow back gardens was like the
unspooling of a film, one I found inexhaustibly absorbing. Occasionally I saw people, either through
windows or outside, children playing, men or women mowing their little carpet-strips of lawn or taking
washing from a line, but more often there were no people to be seen, only the signs, ordinary and cryptic,
of their invisible occupation.

The back of DanielтАЩs house was normally almost exactly like its neighbors on either side, but not that
evening.

That evening there was something growing out of it. It was a pale, whitish blister, a sort of bubble, or a
cocoon, the size of a small room. I sensed it was organic, something which had grown rather than been
added on. It was as if DanielтАЩs house was a living organism, a body which could extrude a tissue-like
substance.

I was astonished, and then it was out of sight. My mind immediately set to work revising and editing the
memory of what IтАЩd seen. It must have been something else, something ordinary, like a sheet of plastic or
PVC. If thereтАЩd been an accident, fire, or explosion (my throat tightened with the memory of those
smells, those volatile substances locked in his workroom) or even a break-in, it might have been
necessary to shroud the back of the house in some protective material.

Alighting at the station, I ran practically the whole way back to his house, gulping and weeping in fearful
suspense. If only Daniel were all right . . .

Daniel opened the door to my hysterical pounding and I threw myself into his arms. тАЬThank God! Oh,
Daniel, what happened? When I saw the back of your houseтАФтАЭ

тАЬWhat are you talking about?тАЭ

I broke away and hurried through to the kitchen. The window offered me an unobstructed view of the fig