"Peter Watts - Flesh Made Word" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

want to call around."
"Zombie's gone," he said.
"That's what I said."
"No, I mean--" Christ, Carol. You never were much for
euphemisms, were you? "Zombie got hit by a car. He's dead."
Even when we tried using them on you.
"Oh. Shit." The computer paused a moment, some internal
clock counting off a precise number of nanosecs. "I'm sorry,
Russ."
It was a lie, of course, but a fairly convincing one all the same.
Outside, Wescott smiled faintly. "It happens. Just a matter of
time for all of us."
There was a sound from behind. He turned away from the cube;
Lynne stood in the doorway. He could see sympathy in her eyes,
and something else.
Flesh Made Word 4

"Russ," she said. "I'm so sorry."
He felt a twitch at the corner of his mouth. "So's the computer."
"How are you feeling?"
He shrugged. "Okay, I guess."
"I doubt it. You had him all those years."
"Yeah. I -- miss him." There was a hard knot of vacuum in his
throat. He examined the feeling, distantly amazed, and almost felt
a kind of gratitude.
She padded across the room to him, took his hands. "I'm sorry I
wasn't there at the end, Russ. It was all I could do to take him in. I
just couldn't, you know--"
"It's okay," Wescott said.
"--and you had to be there anyway, you--"
"It's okay," he said again.
Lynne straightened and rubbed one hand across her cheek.
"Would you rather not talk about it?" Which meant, of course, I
want to talk about it.
He wondered what he could say that wouldn't be utterly
predictable: and realised that he could afford to tell the truth.
"I was thinking," he said, "he had it coming to him."
Lynne blinked.
"I mean, he'd spread enough carnage on his own. Remember
how every couple of days he'd bring in a wounded vole or a bird,
and I never let him actually kill any of them--"
"You didn't want to see anything suffer," Lynne said.
"--so I'd kill them myself." One blow with a hammer, brains
scrambled instantly, nothing left that could suffer after that. "I
always spoiled his fun. It's such a drag having to play with dead
things, he'd bitch at me for hours..."
She smiled sadly. "He was suffering, Russ. He wanted to die. I
know you loved the little ingrate, we both did."
Something flared where the vacuum had been. "It's okay,
Lynne. I watch people die all the time, remember? I'm in no great