"Peter Watts - A Niche" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

hands across her face; her corneal caps come off, milky
hemispheres dropping from enormous hazel eyes. "And to think
they're usually just a few centimeters long..."
She starts to strip down, unzipping her 'skin along the forearms,
talking the whole time. "And yet it was almost fragile, you know?
Hit it hard enough and it just came apart! Jesus!" Ballard always
removes her uniform indoors. Clarke suspects she'd rip the
recycler out of her own thorax if she could, throw it in a corner
with the 'skin and the eyecaps until the next time it was needed.
Maybe she's got her other lung in her cabin, Clarke muses.
Maybe she keeps it in a jar, and she stuffs it back into her chest at
night... She feels a bit dopey; probably just an aftereffect of the
neuroinhibitors her implants put out whenever she's outside. Small
price to pay to keep my brain from shorting outтАФ I really
shouldn't mind...
Ballard peels her 'skin down to the waist. Just under her left
breast, the electrolyser intake pokes out through her ribcage.
Clarke stares vaguely at that perforated disk in Ballard's flesh.
The ocean goes into us there, she thinks. The old knowledge
seems newly significant, somehow. We suck it into us and steal its
oxygen and spit it out again.
Prickly numbness is spreading, leaking through her shoulder
into her chest and neck. Clarke shakes her head, once, to clear it.
She sags suddenly, against the hatchway.
Am I in shock? Am I fainting?
"I meanтАФ" Ballard stops, looks at Clarke with an expression of
sudden concern. "Jesus, Lenie. You look terrible. You shouldn't
have told me you were okay if you weren't."
The tingling reaches the base of Clarke's skull. "I'm тАФ okay,"
she says. "Nothing broke. I'm just bruised."
"Garbage. Take off your 'skin."
A Niche 7

Clarke straightens, with effort. The numbness recedes a bit.
"It's nothing I can't take care of myself."
Don't touch me. Please don't touch me.
Ballard steps forward without a word and unseals the 'skin
around Clarke's forearm. She peels back the material and exposes
an ugly purple bruise. She looks at Clarke with one raised
eyebrow.
"Just a bruise," Clarke says. "I'll take care of it, really. Thanks
anyway." She pulls her hand away from Ballard's ministrations.
Ballard looks at her for a moment. She smiles ever so slightly.
"Lenie," she says, "there's no need to feel embarrassed."
"About what?"
"You know. Me having to rescue you. You going to pieces
when that thing attacked. It was perfectly understandable. Most
people have a rough time adjusting. I'm just one of the lucky
ones."
Right. You've always been one of the lucky ones, haven't you?