"Anderson,_Kevin_J._-_Identity_Crisis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

They hopscotched, and Ob took a deep breath and smiled, glad to be "home," while Eduard experienced disappointment in his own form again. The muscles felt stressed and ragged, without the clean energy of a rigorous workout. Ob had left him with a tension headache in the back of his skull.
As Eduard rubbed his stiff shoulders, Ob stood in the middle of the foyer, touching himself, taking a bodily inventory. Before long, he discovered the scratch on his leg. He rubbed it, scowling, his skin flushing. "What have you done?" He undid his pants and reached under the fabric to feel the wound. "What's this?"
"I scratched it on one of the rosebushes during my morning jog. Just an accident."
"I don't want to hear about any more accidents!" Ob glared with intense, chestnut eyes. Eduard's muscles seized up in an unconscious panic reaction. He could tell why this man was so successful among the Beetles.
"Okay, okay -- I'm sorry! It's just a scratch." After having undergone near-fatal open-heart surgery, Eduard couldn't summon much sympathy for a ridiculously minor blemish. "It'll heal before you know it."
"Eduard, I have entrusted you with my physical being." Ob's voice was low and threatening. "If you can't take better care of my body from now on, I won't need your services any longer."
Eduard struggled to keep his temper in check. This job was too much a gravy train for him to let it go in a fit of pique. "I ... I'll be more careful from now on."
Ob didn't answer as he indignantly strode to his chambers.
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*X*
Daragon stood in the Chief's office, still bemused to see his friend's familiar features sitting behind the massive, plush desk. "It's been two months, sir. I take it everything is satisfactory with Eduard, then?"
"He's adequate, though occasionally careless." The Chief took a deep breath, all business now. "You have accomplished all the tasks I have laid out for you. Now it's time to put your knowledge to work, in a practical manner." Ob leaned back against his desk. "Is there anything you'd like to know? Any mystery you'd like solved? A particular obsession you've had? I'm giving you the full resources of the Bureau to take on your pet project for a few days. Think about it."
The artificial fireplace in front of the desk hissed and crackled with sound effects. Daragon mulled over the question, but the answer was immediately clear to him. "I'm going to locate my mother or father, sir. I've never known who they were."
Even from the days of his youth, Daragon had been intrigued by the identity of his biological mother and father. Why had they abandoned him to the orphanage? What secrets did they hold? Did his family already have too many brothers and sisters? Were his parents poor? Were they also unable to hopscotch? Did they have the mental handicap like he did?
Ob let out a quiet laugh. Ostensibly, this project would hone Daragon's identification and location skills, but the Bureau Chief did it because he liked his student. He waved Daragon toward the door. "Go ahead, then -- indulge yourself."
* * * *
Daragon grew accustomed to the strange smells inside the cool, humid chamber. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the only light the grotesquely stunted Data Hunters seemed to require. He heard the recirculators, the bubbles of life-support fluid. "Jax, are you there?"
One of the fishlike embryos stirred in its harness. Cables trailed from his eye sockets, connecting the creature's optic nerves directly to the computer/organic matrix. "Ah, Inspector Daragon! And I'm glad to see that it _is_ Inspector now, Grade II even. A promotion due, no doubt, to my brilliant assistance?"
"In part."
"A large part, I suspect. But whatever it takes to get you to come in and chat. What can I do for you today?" The stunted body swayed, but the voice that came from the speaker was animated, jovial, and good-humored.
"How good are you at finding missing parents?"
Jax groaned melodramatically. "Oh, not _that_ tedious question again! Let me guess -- Chief Ob gave you your first independent assignment?"
Daragon flushed. "I take it you've done this kind of search before?"
"And succeeded admirably, I might add."
He laughed. "So I take it that success is practically assured?"
"Not a chance. You don't understand the complexity of your question. Let's just start with your mother -- _who_ is it, exactly, that you want me to find? Do you want to locate the biological body that gave birth to you? The womb inside which you gestated, the vagina you slid out of -- no matter who's living inside the head these days?"
"The body won't tell me anything. I want to meet the _person_ who made the decision to give me up. I want to talk to the woman -- "
" -- or man," Jax interjected, "if they swapped sexes. Never can tell."
Daragon sighed. "I just want to have a conversation with the person who decided he or she didn't want to be my parent."
"That's clear enough, I suppose." The Data Hunter's body turned toward him, though Jax could be watching from any number of optical sensors. Jax swiveled his eye cables toward the COM nexus in the dim chambers. "Tell me, Inspector Daragon -- what's the big deal? Why do you care so much?"
"It's personal," he answered, his voice quiet and a bit hoarse.
"Hey, this is a discretionary task. You're asking me to bust my figurative butt to track down information for you -- don't you think you owe me an explanation?"
Daragon sighed. The hardest part would be explaining it to someone else -- especially to a half-human creature who had no direct experience with the real world. "In the orphanage, I used to read books by Charles Dickens. He was an old classic author -- "
"I _know_ who he was, Daragon." Jax's voice sounded impatient.
"Of course you would. The tales were compelling, people from other times, with problems and concerns so different from ours, but still the same. Especially when someone read out loud, it was a magical experience, like an old storyteller around a campfire. Very primal, the core of what fiction is all about -- not fancy language or convoluted metaphors ... just solid, interesting _stories_."
"_And_ ... ?"
"Why the rush? I thought you enjoyed conversation?"
"Only when it has a point."
He heaved a breath. "I enjoyed _Oliver Twist_ the most. It raised the question of whether a simple boy without parents and without a bright spot in the world might be an unrecognized prince. Oliver didn't know his birthright, thought he was just an unremarkable orphan -- and after a series of adventures, he found that he was much more than he seemed."
Daragon flushed in embarrassment as a staticky chuckle reverberated through the speakers. Jax said, "So you think you might be the heir to some great fortune!"
"I knew you wouldn't understand." Now that he heard someone else say it, the thought seemed ridiculous. "I just want to know."
"Good enough," Jax said brightly. "I can always tell honesty when I hear it. Therefore, I agree to search relentlessly for your parents. But on one condition."
Daragon groaned. "Not again."
"Hey, nothing's free."
"What is it this time?"
"I want you to read _Oliver Twist_ out loud to me."
Daragon crossed his arms over his new uniform. "But you can download the whole text anytime you want to. Isn't that more efficient?"
"In its own way, but downloading isn't the same."
"You're probably right," Daragon said, and agreed to the terms.
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