"Gene Wolfe - Copperhead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

Her voice had been so low that he had scarcely heard her. As he spoke again, he wondered whether she
knew about Boone. If she did not, this certainly was not the time to tell her. "It may be hours--I don't
know. I may need more from you tonight, and I may not. I don't know that, either. I want you go into my
wife's bedroom and lie down. She's in Washington, so you won't be disturbed. If there's anything in there
you need, take it. Cosmetics. Clean whatever. I'll square it with her."

"I'll be all right, Mr. President. Don't worry about me."

"Try to get to sleep. That's what I'm saying."

She nodded. "I will, Mr. President."

"I'm going back tomorrow, and when I get back I'll make a slot for you. Something in State, some nice,
quiet country where they speak English, Madame Ambassador."
The other woman laughed, the summons of golden bells.

"You come in here with me," he told her, and shut the door behind them, and locked it.

" 'Ou douh nawt leek mee."

"My feelings about you no longer matter." He waited for her to sit down, then sat down himself. It was in
his desk drawer, the left upper drawer.

He got it out, turned it over in his hands for a few seconds, and laid it on his desk. In appearance it was a
lopsided oval of black plastic with three red buttons, remarkable only in that its black was the black of
space, a deeper black than any human technology was capable of, and in that its buttons might easily
have been drops of fresh blood.

" 'Ou 'ad dawt vhen Aw coom."

"Yes, I did." The sunlit hilltop, the accumulation of fallen leaves at the base of the tree were back, more
vivid than ever. "I slipped it into my pocket." He cleared his throat. "I shouldn't have had it at all, and I
had my hands full with you."

She laughed again; her eyes were of every conceivable color, depending as it seemed upon the lighting
and her mood. Just now they too gleamed scarlet.

Like the eyes of a white rat, the new President thought. Could she have been a pet in the place from
which she came? A laboratory animal? "I never told you about this," he said aloud. "I'm going to tonight,
because I owe it to you. You don't like to listen--"

She smiled, and her perfect teeth looked both whiter and sharper than any other woman's teeth.

"Or sit still. You don't have to listen if you don't want to. If you want to get up and wander around, that's
fine. But I'm going to say it."

"Aw siht awn 'ou lahp? Aw siht vher steal. Naw mahter 'ow meany vhertds, Aw lesson."

"No."