"Laura Anne Gilman - Strange Playmates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Laura Anne)

"You can ride with me," Ian offered, making a gallant bow that failed to look even remotely graceful.
Jordan snorted -- Ian would do a lot better if he let that tail out of his pants all the time and used it for
balance like it was meant, more than just when they were playing. But people that could overlook his
ears, or Carly's teeth, or even Marta's winglets, so long as she kept them folded, just freaked over a tail.
And Ray, well, Ray was screwed, even if his mom would yell at him for using that word. Even the social
services women who kept trying to talk mom into taking their money for surgery for his ears looked the
other way when Ray walked by. He was too Changed. He wouldn't even be in school if his dad wasn't
the biggest hardass on the planet, and took it all the way to court.

There were seven of them in Applewood. Carly, Ray, Ian, Sen, Marta, and him -- and Leon, whose
folks sent him to a special school. You couldn't really count Leon, though. He was a mess, closer to the
old ones, the ones who hadn't lived, than them. He wasn't real Changed. For one thing, he was slow.

The Applewood Seven, the newspapers had called them, back when it was still a big deal.

As though reading his mind, Marta asked, "did anyone else get reporters hanging around their house last
week after that guy, the scientist, was on the Tonight Show?"

Jordan had, until his mom took out a shotgun and told them to clear out or she'd show them what a
southern girl could do with low-life possums. He'd laughed at that, until he'd seen how mad she was. He
thought it would have been cool to be interviewed, but not if it made her that mad.

"My dad called the cops on 'em."

"Yeah, so did my dad. Said it 'wasn't conducive to me leading a normal life.'" Carly's folks were doctors,
'shrinks,' his mom said, and really big on stuff like that. Most of the words his mom approved of him
knowing, he'd learned from Carly.

"Who wants a normal life?" Ian asked.

There was a pause as they came to where their bikes were stacked on the rack.

"I do," Marta said. Jordan wasn't surprised. Marta wanted to be invisible; she didn't want anyone looking
at her, anyone watching her. To her, that was 'normal.' His mom always said that Marta was a good girl,
if not as smart as Carly.

"Well, I don't." Ian pulled his bike out of the rack, got on it. "Last one to Pine Street's a wussy
normal-boy!" And he took off, legs pumping madly. Max yelped in outrage, grabbing his bike and
running with it, trying to catch up even as he get a leg over and started pedaling. Carly laughed and
followed hard on their heels on her brand-new ten-speed.

"So much for me getting a ride with him or Max," Marta said in disgust. "Can I ride with you, Jor?"

"Yeah, sure." His bike was old, a second-hand dirt bike one of the ladies from the Outreach Group gave
him last year, but it would take their weight. Wasn't like Marta weighed anything, really, with her bones
so bird-light.

"Here, let me carry your bag," she said, slinging it over her shoulder with hers. They were identical
backpacks, dark green army-navy surplus her mom had bought for all of them at the beginning of the