"Ellen Datlow - The Fifth Omni Book of Science Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Datlow Ellen)

This time she found it easier to keep her balance. Knowing that he was nearby helped. But still the waves
of refracted light came pounding in, pounding in, pounding in. The assault was total: remorseless,
implacable, overwhelming. She had to struggle against the throbbing in her chest, the hammering in her
temples, the wobbliness of her knees. And this was pleasure for them? This was a supreme delight?
But they were multiples, and she was only Cleo, and that, she knew, made all the difference. She seemed
to be able to fake it well enough. She could make up a Judy, a Lisa, a Vixen, assign little corners of her
personality to each, give them voices of their own, facial expressions, individual identities. Standing
before her mirror at home, she had managed to convince herself. She might even be able to convince
him. But as the swirling lights careened off the infinities of interlocking mirrors and came slaloming into the
gateways of her reeling soul, the dismal fear began to rise in her that she could never truly be one of these
people after all, however skillfully she imitated them in their intricacies.
Was it so? Was she doomed always to stand outside their irresistible world, hopelessly peering in? Too
soon to tell—much too soon, she thought, to admit defeat.
At least she didn't fall down. She took the punishment of the mirrors as long as she could stand it, and
then, not waiting for him to leave the floor, she made her way—carefully, carefully, walking a tightrope
over an abyss—to the bar. When her head had begun
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to stop spinning she ordered a drink, and she sipped it cautiously. She could feel the alcohol extending
itself inch by inch into her bloodstream. It calmed her. On the floor Van stood in trance, occasionally
quivering in a sudden, convulsive way for a fraction of a second. He was doubling, she knew: bringing up
one of his other identities. That was the main thing that multiples came to these clubs to do. No longer
were all their various identities forced to dwell in rigorously separated compartments of their minds. With
the aid of the mirrors and lights the skilled ones were able to briefly to fuse two or even three of their
selves into something more complex. When he comes back here, she thought, he will be Van plus X.
And I must pretend to be Judy plus Vixen.
She readied herself for that. Judy was easy. Judy was mostly the real Cleo, the real-estate woman from
Sacramento, with Cleo's notion of what it was like to be a multiple added in. And Vixen? Cleo imagined
her to be about twenty-three, a Los Angeles girl, a one-time child tennis star who had broken her ankle
in a dumb prank and had never recovered her game afterward, and who had taken up drinking to ease
the pain and loss. Uninhibited, unpredictable, untidy, fiery, fierce: all the things that Cleo was not. Could
she be Vixen? She took a deep gulp of her drink and put on the Vixen face: eyes hard and glittering;
cheek muscles clenched.
Van was leaving the floor now. His way of moving seemed to have changed: He was stiff, almost
awkward, his shoulders held high, his elbows jutting oddly. He looked so different that she wondered
whether he was still Van at all.
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"You didn't switch, did you?"
"Doubled. Paul's with me now."
"Paul?"
"Paul's from Texas. Geologist, terrific poker game, plays the guitar." Van smiled, and it was like a shifting
of gears. In a deeper, broader voice he said, "And I sing real good too, ma'am. Van's jealous of that,
because he can't sing worth beans. Are you ready for a refill?"
"You bet," Cleo said, sounding sloppy, sounding Vixenish.
His apartment was nearby, a cheerful, airy, sprawling place in the Marina district. The segmented nature
of his life was immediately obvious: The prints and paintings on the walls looked as though they had been
chosen by four or five different people, one of whom ran heavily toward vivid scenes of sunrise over the
Grand Canyon, another to Picasso and Miro, someone else to delicate, impressionist views of Parisian
street scenes and flower markets. A sun room contained the biggest and healthiest houseplants Cleo had
ever seen. Another room was stacked with technical books and scholarly journals, a third was equipped
with three or four gleaming exercise machines. Some of the rooms were fastidiously tidy, some