"Robert Frezza - McClendon's Syndrome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frezza Robert)

was clicking, but I couldn't put it together.
"They're very sensitive to light," she said with care.
"Grandmother, what fine, white, delicate skin you have."
She smiled wide. "Beauty cream and lots of sleep," she said with utter insincerity.
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have," I said waiting for the thought to decrypt
before I made too much of an ass of myself.
She looked at me levelly for a long minute. "They're still growing a little."
It all came together. "I get it. You're a vamp!" I edged away delicately.
She made a wry face. "McLendon's Syndrome."
"Like I said, a vampire." Tact is not my strong suit.
She let it go. " How much have you read about McLendon's?"
"Quite a bit, actually." Crewing a torchship eight hours on with Elaine O'Day would
induce an illiterate to finish War and Peace. "McLendon's is a slow bacillus, like leprosy.
For a disease, it's more than slightly unusual. Normal people replace their cells completely
for the last time before they hit puberty. McLendon's germ encourages complete cell
replacement at an age when people are old enough to know better."
"Close enough."
"After the tabloids played it up big, I got interested and read McLendon's paper—I
think it was in the New England Journal of Medicine. Bits and pieces of it stuck. He wrote
the disease up as a veritable fountain of perpetual youth, with a few drawbacks: problems
with porphyrins, hypersensitivity to sunlight up to and including skin sarcoids, allergies I
wouldn't wish on my ex-wife, a few other things."
She nodded.
"Although you aren't exactly Count Dracula, or even Vlad Tepes, the revelation does
put our relationship in a new light. As I recall, McLendon's bug affects different people to a
different degree, and blood was about all some of his subjects could keep down. Reading
through the footnotes, I got the impression that one or two of them hadn't been too particular
how they got it."
"And?" she asked, planting her elbow on the table and leaning her chin on her hand.
 "Ah, yeah. I suspect it's my public duty to turn you over to the health authorities," I
said, trying to sound composed.
My tablemate tilted her head complacently. "I suspect they'd quarantine me forever
and you for at least six months."
"Ah, right. This is Schuyler's World, isn't it?" There were places I could think of where
I'd rather spend six months.
Having heaved an evening's worth of bodies into the street, Harry waltzed by to fill a
slight void in the discussion. "How are you two lovebirds doing?"
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," I observed.
Harry winked. "She's good people, Ken. I told her all about you."
"All?" I commented.
Harry nodded. "Uh-huh."
"That I'm beginning to believe. Later, then?"
"Sure, sure," Harry said, wandering off with a wave of his hand.
"Harry know you're a vamp?" I asked Catarina thoughtfully.
"No. To be truthful, you're the first person to spot it."
"Okay. Well. It was swell talking to you, but I'm allergic to the sight of blood, especially
my own, and I think I feel this attack of amnesia coming on. Also, my mother taught me never
to talk to people I pick up in bars," I said, beginning to rise.
"You really shouldn't be worried," she said seriously. "Less than three percent of the
population has a genetic predisposition for the disease."